It was the first time I had heard of something called “The Central Committee for the Intellectual Security Project.” I learned that it is a body said to be affiliated to the Ministry of Education. I ran across the name while reading a report in a local newspaper of a meeting of committee members which took place under the director of education in the Riyadh region. The meeting was held to monitor the progress of the “intellectual security project” and devise a mechanism for handling students and teachers who may be influenced by deviant thoughts.
The meeting also discussed the proper reaction to an episode in the popular TV show, “Tash Ma Tash” which is broadcast every year during Ramadan. The episode exposed the reality of the spread of extremist thought and intolerance in schools and in the entire educational administration. The episode presented a boy’s high school in which a science teacher, rather than sticking to his subject, preaches instead to his students about the duty of every Muslim to kill non-believers, to show them no sympathy and have nothing whatsoever to do with them.
The shocking news was that the committee members denied the existence of “any kind of intellectual or religious extremism” in our schools. They said what was presented in the episode did not reflect reality, that claims of extremist thought in our schools is highly exaggerated and that the television episode maligned the ministry and sought to belittle its role.
According to the committee, there is no religious extremism in our schools. Millions of people in the country as well as the state itself know of the problem, but the committee has a different opinion, telling us that all this talk of extremism in our schools is not true.
The committee members seem to be unaware they contradicted themselves. At the same meeting after denying the existence of religious or intellectual extremism, they said the problem “did not represent a widespread phenomenon” in our schools.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation made by the committee was that its members approached students and teachers who had “been influenced by deviant thoughts” and addressed a number of such cases.
Now, how can we deal with such contradictions? Denial is not new to us; we have always been a nation of denial after denial. The presence of the committee is nothing new; we love to set up committees to oversee and supervise the work done by other committees. We are overrun with committees.
We are dealing here with a serious issue whose influence is felt by every one, and that should no longer be treated as a secret or as something that does not exist. I wish the committee members would explain to us what they meant by such contradictory statements and who will benefit from them. The attitude of the committee will only prolong the trends and tendencies that brought us to the tragic position we now find ourselves in and which threatens to engulf us.
