European Journal of Scientific Research - EuroJournals

386 Nazenin Ruso
note at this point is that, education, from Imams’ perspectives, doesn’t only include school education
but teaching students the rationale behind their own existence in this world. Education should not aim
to improve a person’ life standards in this world but also should prepare a person for afterlife.
Another conclusion of this research is the lack of interests shown to religious requirements such
as attending to mosques in the country. According to the statistics and the interpretation of the written
data, out of 30.000.000 capacity of the mosques mentioned, there are only 1500 Muslims who are
regularly visiting the mosques. Only 5% of the mosques are occupied by Muslims. The majority of
people who attend to mosques are Turkish, old, poor and literate according to the conclusions derived
from the statistics. The Turkish nationality of Imams who responded to the questionnaire of this
research is a very good confirmation of the importance given to mosques by Turkish rather than
Cypriots. There were only a few Turkish Cypriot Imams.
Imams complained several times about the youth who lost many of their values. An Imam
wrote this: “When a young person enters into a convertible car, he says: take me to my darling Lejla,
however when the same person enters the coffin, this time he says: take me to my God”. Another
conclusion is increase in the alcohol consumption of the youth which in turn end up in a decrease in the
number of accidents and deaths. This is a very important issue and something should be done to make
youth understand the dangers of alcohol. Seminars, workshops, conferences might be held on the
dangers of using alcohol and it should be a must for the all students to attend these presentations.
Imams stressed the importance of religion for a community. It was interesting to see that
American Dollar was given as an example to support this. The writing on Dollar “In God We Trust”
shows Americans trust and admiration to God as the reason behind America being a very rich,
economically powerful country. So belief in God is an important factor for the development of a
country from Imams’ perspectives. Here, I would like to point out that people sometimes see different
sides of a coin. Many people use dollar, but I don’t know how many realized the importance of the
piece of writing on it.
One other important conclusion derived from this study is the fact that our society members do
not give importance to reading. However, our religion does. The first verses of Koran requires all
Muslims to read. The data pointed out that according to a research an Imam read recently, each
Japanese reads approximately 70 books a year and each American reads about 60 books a year whereas
each Turk reads about 4 books a year. This proves our ignorance as a society. We are not
technologically developed due to our ignorance. Again, this is an important issue to be considered. Our
children should be encouraged to read. The school education can help a lot at this point. For example,
the instructors can require book summaries from the students.
Final conclusion of the study is the optimism of Imams towards European Union. When we
return to initial research questions asking whether there will be any changes in our religious and
educational values if we join to European Union, Imams said yes. Furthermore, they predicted that if
we join to European Union, there will be very positive improvements regarding our religion and
education. More Europeans will come to our island and we will improve our religious values not to be
a minority on the island. We will be in close contact with Europeans who are more devoted to their
religion and this in turn will motivate us towards our own religion. Furthermore, Imams predict that
there will be positive improvements in terms of education as well, because the standards and the
quality of education will be increased to be parallel with the European standards. This will provide
more observations, experiences, research chances, new horizons and technological improvements for
our students. We will wait and see altogether!
Further research
Further research might be conducted for this study. First of all, as this study only reveals Imams’
perspectives on religion and education, the questionnaire might be given to families and religion
teachers and a triangulation might be carried out to compare the results. Later, the same questionnaire
might be conducted in Southern Cyprus with the help of a colleague from there and the results of North