WASHINGTON, June 3, 2006: After 9-11 the government of Saudi Arabia was pressured into reviewing what their students were being taught in schools about other religious traditions. The news release says, “A 2004 Saudi royal study group recognized the need for reform after finding that the kingdom’s religious studies curriculum ‘encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the other.’ Since then, the Saudi government has claimed repeatedly that it has revised its educational texts.” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, says “The kingdom has reviewed all of its education practices and materials, and has removed any element that is inconsistent with the needs of a modern education. Not only have we eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from old textbooks that were in our system, we have implemented a comprehensive internal revision and modernization plan.”
However, the changes have not taken place. The article explains, “Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, gave Freedom House a dozen of the current, purportedly cleaned-up Saudi Ministry of Education religion textbooks (Freedom House is a U.S. non-governmental organization that monitors political rights and civil liberties worldwide). 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. 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 Grade 1 text and is reinforced and expanded each year, culminating in a Grade 12 text instructing students that their religious obligation includes waging jihad against the infidel to ‘spread the faith ‘.”
To realize the scope of the problem the news release adds, “The Saudi public school system totals 25,000 schools, educating about 5 million students. In addition, Saudi Arabia runs academies in 19 world capitals that use some of these same religious texts. Scholars estimate that within the Saudi public school curriculum, Islamic studies make up a quarter to a third of students’ weekly classroom hours in lower and middle school, plus several hours each week in high school. Educators who question or dissent from the official interpretation of Islam can face severe reprisals. In
November 2005, a Saudi teacher who made positive statements about Jews and the New Testament was fired and sentenced to 750 lashes and a prison term. (He was eventually pardoned after public and international protests.)”