This week's attempted murder of the head of Turkey's secular education board was troubling.

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Is she aware of the fact that my home country of France, just a short century ago, and under a democratic regime, outlawed religious schools and vowed religious orders to replace them with a system of secular public education explicitly designed to undermine the influence of Catholic Church?

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But Mr Pena Nieto said the reform would maintain the free and secular nature of education.

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In a number of states, the struggle between religious and secular approaches to education has focused on the teaching of evolution - with disputes over whether Darwin's theory of evolution or the biblical creation story should be taught.

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It may also be a good sign that Mrs Tuksal and her friends have begun a joint education project with secular feminists and the Religious Affairs Directorate, a state agency.

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Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as a part of a secular (public school) program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.

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The National Secular Society, which campaigns for the separation of religion from education, is critical of the need for parental consent for pupils to withdraw from the worship.

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Indeed, the keenly pro-secular President Sezer refused to accept one of them, Besir Atalay, as education minister.

ECONOMIST: Turkey's government