This Is Not A Good Thing
The Saudi Arabian government keeps telling the West that it has been cleaning up it's school textbooks to get rid of offensive and harmful ideas like promoting violence against non-Muslims and preaching for repression of other religions by Jihad. They make report after report on it, saying they've really cleaned things up.
"We have reviewed our educational curriculums. We have removed materials that are inciteful or intolerant towards people of other faiths." The embassy is also distributing a 74-page review on curriculum reform to show that the textbooks have been moderated.
The problem is: These claims are not true.
A review of a sample of official Saudi textbooks for Islamic studies used during the current academic year reveals that, despite the Saudi government's statements to the contrary, an ideology of hatred toward Christians and Jews and Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine remains in this area of the public school system. The texts teach a dualistic vision, dividing the world into true believers of Islam (the "monotheists") and unbelievers (the "polytheists" and "infidels").
This indoctrination begins in a first-grade text and is reinforced and expanded each year, culminating in a 12th-grade text instructing students that their religious obligation includes waging jihad against the infidel to "spread the faith."
Freedom House knows this because Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs , gave us a dozen of the current, purportedly cleaned-up Saudi Ministry of Education religion textbooks. The copies he obtained were not provided by the government, but by teachers, administrators and families with children in Saudi schools, who slipped them out one by one.
Some of our sources are Shiites and Sunnis from non-Wahhabi traditions — people condemned as "polytheistic" or "deviant" or "bad" in these texts — others are simply frustrated that these books do so little to prepare young students for the modern world.
We then had the texts translated separately by two independent, fluent Arabic speakers.
The examples quoted in the report show a systematic indoctrination from the very earliest years. Young students are taught such charming things as:
" Every religion other than Islam is false."
"Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________."
Read the whole thing - it's pretty bad. The lessons get progressively more offensive and intolerant as the grades progress.
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Don Singleton — Sunday, 21 May , 2006 @ 2:29 pm
By Jim O'Hara, Sunday, 21 May , 2006 @ 4:36 pm
Would you suggest reprisals against the Saudis for teaching this xenophobic bunk? Forget about it. The Saudis have the Bush administration in their back pocket. Heck, Bush told the Saudi Prince Bandar about our plans to invade Iraq before he told Colin Powell! In return, the Saudis flooded the market with cheap oil during the run up to the 2004 election, so the Dems couldn’t use that as a talking point against Bush. I bet those Saudis are cleaning up now with oil prices at $70 a barrel. Ever wonder what those 20 odd pages of the 9/11 commission report that were withheld due to “nation security concerns” had to say about Saudi financing of the 9/11 hijackers?
This xenophobic teaching should come as no surprise. Remember when Commies were doing their version of “permanent revolution” — forcibly spreading the superior (in their minds) communist form of government to countries like Afghanistan? The Muslims reacted quite violently to the imposition of that foreign concept. Now that Communism has been exposed as the economic and socio-political farce that it is, it’s time for the West to try and impose its version of “permanent revolution” on the middle east - Democracy. Is it any wonder that the same levels of hostility still exist?
Thankfully the US has never been occupied (and I pray it never will), but one can imagine hostility to foreigners and their ideas greatly increasing if that happened. Heck, look at hostility towards people who sneak into this country not to change the political and religious institutions, but just to work to feed their family. Lots of hostility. Now, imagine they came with guns blazing and a superior (in their mind) form of government. How would Americans react to that? Americans would fight tooth and nail to keep “American values” and violently reject foreign values being imposed on us. Keep that though in mind the next time you want to invade a foreign land with a different value system.
Meanwhile Swedes and the Swiss continue to live freely and are not attacked by supposed “freedom hating” radicals. It might have something to do with their conservative “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none” philosophy. Didn’t some American say that quote at some point?
Jim
By Brian DeSpain, Sunday, 21 May , 2006 @ 6:54 pm
Don - These are schools in Saudi Arabia - not schools here in the United States. This highlights an obvious problem. Saudi Arabia isn’t our ally the GWOT.
By Gaius, Sunday, 21 May , 2006 @ 7:04 pm
Brian, the Saudis are supplying these textbooks all over the world. I am not at all sure they are not being brought here. I don’t think that is a safe assumption.