James Tonkowich
August 15, 2008
The following originally appeared in a recent IRD Weekly e-newsletter. If you would like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, click here and select “IRD Weekly.”
Back in May 2006 Nina Shea, director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom wrote in the Washington Post, “Saudi Arabia’s public schools have long been cited for demonizing the West as well as Christians, Jews and other ‘unbelievers.’ But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis—that was all supposed to change.”
In fact major changes were announced publicly. Shea cites a Saudi embassy spokesman who said in 2005, “We have reviewed our educational curriculums. We have removed materials that are inciteful [sic] or intolerant towards people of other faiths.”
This was greeted as good news not only about Saudi schools, but about schools worldwide since Saudi Arabia provides textbooks for Islamic schools everywhere—including here in the United States. The content of Saudi textbooks has global implications and now language advocating intolerance and hatred had been removed.
Terriffic. Only, as Shea noted in 2006, “These claims are not true.”
The Post article announced a study that Shea, then at Freedom House, conducted along with the Institute for Gulf Affairs. Textbooks “not provided by the government [of Saudi Arabia], but by teachers, administrators and families with children in Saudi schools”—that is, the textbooks actually in use, not doctored editions provided for public relations purposes—were translated and analyzed.
In them fourth graders were taught, “True belief means . . . that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly.” “Polytheists and infidels” include Jews, Christians, and other non-Islamic religious believers plus any Muslims who differ from official Saudi/Wahhabi Islam.
The eighth grade textbook told students, “As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.”
Finally twelfth graders learned, “Jihad in the path of God—which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it—is the summit of Islam. This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God.”
Small wonder, as Shea wrote in National Review, “The Saudi kingdom is the world’s leading exporter of suicide bombers and terrorists.”
The problem with the Saudi textbooks was not lost on the US Department of State that negotiated with the Saudis asking them expunge intolerant material and extremist ideology. In July 2006, the State Department announced that the Saudis would make the necessary changes and distribute cleaned up textbooks worldwide by September 2008.
Again, terrific. But again it hasn’t happened.
Shea and the Center for Religious Freedom have just released 2008 Update: Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance. The study shows “that the same violent and intolerant teachings against other religious believers noted in 2006 remain in the current text. . . . Taken together, the revisions that have been made amount to moving around the furniture, not cleaning house.”
According to the study, the books still condemn all non-Wahhabi Muslims, instruct student “not to ‘greet,’ ‘imitate,’ ‘show loyalty to,’ ‘be courteous to,’ or ‘respect’ non-believers,” and “Discuss Jews in violent terms, blaming them for virtually all the ‘sedition’ and wars of modern history.”
The report cites the textbook definition of jihad which, as above, is urged on twelfth graders as “wrestling with the infidels by calling them to faith and battling against them.” The report adds, “The word qital here translated as ‘battle,’ is derived from the verb qatala, ‘to kill,’ and is virtually never used metaphorically,” noting that “no argument is made that such reference to jihad mean only spiritual struggle and defensive warfare.”
I suppose it’s only right to give the Saudis the benefit of the doubt. They have the money and the infrastructure to make all the necessary changes, pay for a massive quick-turn-around print job, and over-night the books around the world in the few weeks remaining before schools begin.
That being said, once the deadline passes, the United States needs to hold the Saudis accountable. Saudi Arabia has already been designated a “country of particular concern” by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Their refusal to grant religious liberty and human rights to their own citizens and their determination to export intolerance and hatred to schoolchildren across the globe can no longer be ignored or explained away.
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