Saudi Schoolbooks
Spending the weekend in D.C., I had the opportunity to read a great article about our friends the Saudis in the Sunday print edition of the Washington Post. The article featured excerpts from standard Saudi textbooks for elementary through high-school age school-children. Check out some of these:
From a fourth grade textbook:
"Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________."
Sixth grade:
"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."
Ninth grade:
"The clash between this [Muslim] community (umma) and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills."
Twelfth grade:
"Jihad in the path of God -- which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it -- is the summit of Islam.
The existence of such intolerance in Saudi state-issued school textbooks (after the Kingdom had promised to rid its schoolbooks of intolerance after 9/11) raises some interesting strategic and theoretical questions for the West. Clearly, teaching anti-Semitic, anti-Christian dogma to all ages of children perpetuates the existence of radical anti-Western political Islam. Indeed, as we are constantly reminded by the press, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. Fed on pro-Jihad, anti-Semitic rhetoric from birth, young Saudi men are practically being groomed by the state for terror. (Ironically, the Kingdom has come to realize the extent of their own domestic terrorist problem as the same young men they have educated in radical Wahhabism have turned their violent focus on the corrupt and ambiguously pro-Western Saudi state). So what do we do? What can the West do to stem the creation of a new anti-Western generation of political Islamists? We kindly asked the Sauds to cut the intolerance out of their textbooks. But what I've posted above are quotations from the new "tolerant" versions of their textbooks. So that tactic clearly failed. What other pressure can the West exert on the Saudi state? Furthermore, how can the West convincingly argue against the publication of intolerant texts like these while seen in the eyes of the Muslim world as itself incapable of stemming the publication of anti-Islamic rhetoric (e.g. Danish cartoon controversy)? What legitimate political tools of the state exist to modify or influence discourse internal to a sovereign nation when this discourse poses such a palpable threat to the state's security? And how can the claims of Middle Eastern democratization be reconciled with the clear need to quiet certain violent, intolerant voices?
From a fourth grade textbook:
"Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________."
Sixth grade:
"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."
Ninth grade:
"The clash between this [Muslim] community (umma) and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills."
Twelfth grade:
"Jihad in the path of God -- which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it -- is the summit of Islam.
The existence of such intolerance in Saudi state-issued school textbooks (after the Kingdom had promised to rid its schoolbooks of intolerance after 9/11) raises some interesting strategic and theoretical questions for the West. Clearly, teaching anti-Semitic, anti-Christian dogma to all ages of children perpetuates the existence of radical anti-Western political Islam. Indeed, as we are constantly reminded by the press, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. Fed on pro-Jihad, anti-Semitic rhetoric from birth, young Saudi men are practically being groomed by the state for terror. (Ironically, the Kingdom has come to realize the extent of their own domestic terrorist problem as the same young men they have educated in radical Wahhabism have turned their violent focus on the corrupt and ambiguously pro-Western Saudi state). So what do we do? What can the West do to stem the creation of a new anti-Western generation of political Islamists? We kindly asked the Sauds to cut the intolerance out of their textbooks. But what I've posted above are quotations from the new "tolerant" versions of their textbooks. So that tactic clearly failed. What other pressure can the West exert on the Saudi state? Furthermore, how can the West convincingly argue against the publication of intolerant texts like these while seen in the eyes of the Muslim world as itself incapable of stemming the publication of anti-Islamic rhetoric (e.g. Danish cartoon controversy)? What legitimate political tools of the state exist to modify or influence discourse internal to a sovereign nation when this discourse poses such a palpable threat to the state's security? And how can the claims of Middle Eastern democratization be reconciled with the clear need to quiet certain violent, intolerant voices?
posted by James at 5:43 PM
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