What to do if assignment is against student's religion?

If you can make an accommodation that allows the student to participate

• without violating his religious observance, and
• without compromising the educational goals of the class, and
• without requiring an extreme amount of effort on your part,

then it is reasonable to make the accommodation.

I regularly miss classes and exams due to religious observance. My school has a very clear policy on the matter:

• If students have to miss a class session, exam, or are otherwise unable to participate in a course requirement due to religious observance, they must notify the professor and a certain dean in a timely manner (the definition of "a timely manner" is further specified in the policy)
• If said student follows the above requirement, they cannot be penalized for their religious observance and the professor must offer a fair alternative (e.g., makeup exam or assignment)

If your university has no policy on the matter, feel free to adopt mine, and specify it in your syllabus at the beginning of the semester.

However, I would not take a class where I know the main requirement of a class would violate my religious observance. Indeed, I know people who have refrained from pursuing a career because a non-negotiable required class for that field would require something that violates their religious observance. *

So, if the course is Figure Drawing and someone registers knowing that he cannot draw the human figure... I don't think you are required to let him pass the class by doing still lives instead. If the course is Introduction to Art for Non-Majors, it may be possible to offer an alternative to the portrait assignment.

This applies more generally as well. If a student in good faith (i.e., not to get out of doing work) considers an assignment

• illegal,
• unethical,
• compromising to his health/safety,
• etc.

it seems reasonable to offer an alternative assignment if it does not compromise the educational goals of the course.

* See: Can a Kohen become a doctor?

It's not the job of places of learning to give way to superstition. Indeed, quite the reverse: the whole Enlightenment Project was about bringing light into darkness, and all the Academia I'm familiar with puts itself broadly in the Enlightenment tradition.

So yes, this answer will read as uncompromising. Because, from experience, I've found that rigorous education is incompatible with compromising that rigour in favour of molly-coddling someone's religious beliefs.

There is no sane middle ground. If you're going to start compromising the quality of your teaching to avoid offending someone's belief, you'll quickly find yourself running out of space. Someone's going to get offended that you're teaching males and females at the same time, sat next to each other. Someone's going to get offended that anyone's drawing the human figure, let alone that they have to. Someone's going to get offended that you don't mention their pet crank theory alongside science as if they were somehow of equal merit.

If a particular course's actions are in contradiction to a student's religion, then there are two routes here. If the student is legally a child, then the student completes the actions - they are under the school's guardianship when in school. If the student is legally an adult, then they have the problem, and it's not fair on any of the other students that they should make their problem, the institution's problem. They can either fail that part of the course, or they can do the work.

If a student's beliefs contradict knowledge, science or art, that's not the problem of the place of learning. That's the problem of the student.

If this is about children, then the responsible adults are guilty of abuse, for bringing that state of affairs about, and the school should do as much as it reasonably can to make amends for that failure. Note that I am not saying that a religious upbringing is necessarily abuse. I am saying that teaching children nonsense such as creationism is abuse, because it can cripple that child's future opportunities.

If this is about adults, then they've taken responsibility for failing that part of their education, and should be marked down accordingly.

This has been something of a hot topic in Britain recently, where the teaching of creationism and other ignorances is on the rise, where state-funded schools have been breaking equality laws by selecting staff on the basis of gender, sexuality and religion, and where pressure has been put on educational establishments to subvert the teaching of several branches of knowledge, including the censoring of some exam questions on evolution, and the censoring of two university atheist society's display of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and of "Jesus and Mo" t-shirts, because these were inconsistent with some extremist religous interpretations.

Academia is the bulwark against ignorance and superstition.

I'm not saying that religion = ignorance and superstition. Creationism = ignorance and superstition. Refusing to draw the human figure = ignorance and superstition. Avoiding listening to or playing music = ignorance and superstition. Preventing females from being educated = ignorance and superstition.

If the student chooses, or sucumbs to parental directives to refuse some components of education, then the student or their parents have to accept that they can't achieve so much in that realm. One day the student will have to make A PERSONAL CHOICE as to their direction. Offering them a free ride is not appropriate to that choice. If they persist with their choice, to not participate in some aspects of the multicultural society they live in, then they surely will be happy that they are not 'infected' with whatever perceived ill they deem to spring from the offensive activities.

Why do they want to be seen as masters (ie high grade scorers) of a system they partially or wholly reject? Do we really want to teach children to lie to themselves and others like this?

Make your choices (yes, even as a child) and take the consequences.