Regurgitated charges against Saudi Arabian schoolbooks were given center stage in the Washington Post last month (“This Is A Saudi Textbook — After The Intolerance Was Removed”, May 21, 2006). The oxymoronic Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House’s mission statement reads in part that it “insists upon the right to religious freedom for every individual” in the world — except, it seems, Saudi Arabia. It charged that the Kingdom has not quite done enough to change its schoolbooks to suit US preferences. This report followed hearings on the same topic in December on Capitol Hill. Director of the study “Saudi Arabia: Curriculum of Intolerance”, Nina Shea, an Evangelist Christian, worked with Ismaili Muslim Ali Al-Ahmed, dissident director of the anti-Saudi Institute for Gulf Affairs, to impress upon Congress how Saudis are ill-educated, ignorant of religious fact, and inculcated to hate non-Saudis.
The books they studied amounted to twelve in total. Out of 25,000 public schools, a dozen or more books per grade per year, hundreds of pages per book and hundreds of thousands of words, Freedom House found a few words objectionable. Shea and Al-Ahmed state that because Saudi Arabia is such a closed society, the books had to be “smuggled out” by Al-Ahmed. Quite James Bond, presumably under the cover of darkness.
What they did not reveal is that no one bothered to ask Saudi Minister of Education Dr. Abdullah Al-Obeid. There were no requests made for copies of the textbooks, and in fact, there never have been any such demands by anyone in the US government for such materials.
I met with the minister of education, and Dr. Al-Obeid made clear, “I have never received any demands from America to change anything!” Yet according to US State Department spokesman Tom Casey, Saudis “appreciate the fact that there are efforts under way to work on this, but certainly, it still is an ongoing concern and something we will continue to be discussing.”
“[T]he textbooks instruct students that Christians and Jews are apes and pigs,” claims Freedom House — a gross mistranslation of Qu’ran Surah 5 Verse 60. “Infidel in Arabic is “kafir”,” Dr. Saleh Al-Wohaibi of the World Association of Muslim Youth told me. “The correct definition of kafir is “disbeliever” in the sense of covering the truth, as a farmer who “covers the seed” with soil. Infidel (kafir) simply means “one who covers the truth of the word of God as revealed in the Holy Qu’ran.” Certainly less damning than some of the Talmudic (Jewish) laws taught in Israeli schools against Gentiles — which include Arabs — such as death for a non-Jewish woman if she had carnal relations with a Jew, or that if a Jew kills a Gentile no court can punish him. In wartime, it is considered a religious duty to murder non-Jews including women and children, according to Rabbi Shim’on Weiser. (See “Hesronot Shas” for the Talmudic Omissions that have been changed from classical to Modern Hebrew so as not to offend.) It was not until the 19th century that rabbis allowed any nonreligious books to be studied; when the first geography book was printed in Hebrew in Russia in 1803, the rabbis denied that a land called “America” even existed. (“Jewish History, Jewish Religion” by Israel Shahak)
American schoolbooks today teach that Columbus was a discoverer and hero, but he was the 15th to “find” America and actually left a legacy of mass murder behind in Haiti, reducing the population from 8 million to zero within 100 years. History classes omit how George Washington was a designated terrorist per the British. The Alamo was fought for the right to maintain slaves, President Woodrow Wilson was an avowed racist and anti-Semite, and Warren Harding ascended the presidency with mass support from the Ku Klux Klan. And three quarters of Americans still can’t find Iraq on a map. Let’s not worry about textbooks in Israel or America — let’s talk about “Wahhabi” madrasas breeding terrorists and change another nation’s education system first.
“Wahhabism”, Freedom House states, is Saudi Arabia’s “official religion”. This is akin to claiming “Falwell-ism” to explain dispensationalist Christianity, or “Moses-ism” to explain Orthodox Judaism. Article 1 of the Constitution of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia states that it “is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion”. It is not written that this refers only to Sunni Islam; certainly nowhere does it state “Wahhabi” Islam. The majority of Muslims here are Sunni but there are thousands of Shiite Muslims, and among the expatriates you will find people belonging to all religious denominations including Christians and yes, Jews.
“These textbooks groom a child to be a terrorist,” Ali Al-Ahmed fears. Robert Pape of the University of Chicago analyzed the causes of terrorism in his work “Dying To Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism” published last year. Saudi schoolbooks don’t make the grade: It is the Occupation of Foreign Lands by a mile. The report states that Saudi books require students to “hate the infidels”, not to “respect, greet, or be courteous” to non-Muslims, and that “qital” should always be translated as “battle — to kill”. Certainly “jihad” is translated as “military force”.
“There is no such thing as ‘Islamic’ science. It’s just science. Like history and languages...just straight facts, not ‘Islamic’”, said Education Minister Al-Obeid.
Are there books in Saudi Arabia that merit updating? Without question, as do many books in countries worldwide. Any American can find a schoolbook still in circulation full of distortions of race relations, Judaism, and Native American Indians. Every country has flawed writings — Saudi Arabia is no different.
It is clear that behind this velvet curtain, much as there was the Iron Curtain, accusations borne of ignorance will remain. As protagonist of the misnomer “Wahhabism”, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab himself said: “If we have some truth and some falsehood, or we have gone to an extreme in some manner, then it is obligatory upon you to point it out and to advise us and show us the statements of the people of knowledge... I love for someone to advise me whenever I am mistaken... I do not claim to be free of mistakes.”
— Tanya C. Hsu is a British Saudi-US Political Analyst. She was one of the contributors of the FOCA written testimony on Capitol Hill for the Senate Judiciary Committee. She lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
