February 02 2012

According to the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute and their published report entitled ‘Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance’ (download or read), it has become quite clear that extreme Islamist ideologies have been gaining adherents throughout the world.  Where they are implemented as governing ideologies, we see a brutally enforced hierarchy of group rights, favoring Muslims over non-Muslims, men over women, and a dominate Muslim sect over other Muslims, with individual rights and freedoms subordinated for all.  (See YouTube video “Shariamerica: Islam, Obama and the Establishment Clause”)  Such extreme rule lies at the heart of the Islamist terrorists’ radical agenda and it is equally clear that much of this extremist religious thought is originating from and being spread by the Saudi Arabia’s Islamist sect known as Wahhabism.

From the 1980’s onward, in return for the protection of their own powers and privileges, the Saudi royal family chose not only to accommodate Wahhabi views about propriety, pious behavior, and Islamic law, but effectively to turn over education in the Kingdom to the Wahhabi establishment.

The 2006 report on textbooks concluded that “The Saudi public school religious curriculum continues to propagate an ideology of hate toward the ‘unbeliever’, that is Christians, Jews, Shiites, Sufis and Sunni Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine, Hindus, atheists, and others.  This ideology is introduced in a religion textbook in the 1st grade and reinforced and developed in the following years of the public education system, culminating in the 12th grade, where a text instructs students that it is a religious obligation to do ‘battle’ against infidels in order to spread the faith.”   

It was verified that the currently posted 2007-2008 textbooks also contained the same passages that were found in the 2006-2007 ISA (Islamic Saudi Academy in Washington, DC) by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  The Commission assessed these passages as “overt exhortations to violence” and “promoting intolerance.”

These texts teach students that there exist two incompatible realms – one consisting of true believers in Islam, the monotheists, and the other of infidels or unbelievers – and that these realms never coexist in peace.  They assert that unbelievers, such as Christians, Jews and Muslims who do not share Wahhabi beliefs and practices are hated “enemies”, and that true believers should aid and show loyalty only to other true believers.  These texts teach that Christians, Jews and others have united in a war against Islam that will ultimately end in the complete destruction of these infidels.  The books promote global jihad as an “effort to wage war against the unbelievers.”  In these lessons, no argument is made that such references to jihad mean only spiritual struggle and defensive warfare.  Some Saudis themselves have linked the Saudi Kingdom’s educational curriculum to patterns of violence in young Saudi men.

In the lessons examined in this report, the Saudi government discounts or ignores passages in the Qur’an and in the accounts of the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad that support tolerance.  This is in striking contrast to the Saudi government’s invocation of just such passages when it addresses Western audiences.  In the international arena, the Saudi government argues that there is no religious coercion in Islam and that the Islamic tradition supports “inalienable human rights” and the peaceful coexistence of Muslims with other religious believers.  These are the types of arguments that the Saudi government needs to make in its own textbooks and educational materials in place of lessons that sanction and promote violence and extreme intolerance.

In its 1970 memorandum to the United Nations, the Saudi government quoted extensively from Islamic sacred texts to argue that “the dignity of a human person” would be “protected by us without any distinction between one man and another under the impetus of the divine Islamic creed and not by the material law”.  However, their actions speak louder than their words.

In 2006 Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance demonstrated that such Saudi claims of having cleaned up the Kingdom’s textbooks were far from true.  The following are excerpts as “disturbing examples” of intolerant passages in the texts regarding Christians Jews, Polytheists (including Muslims who are not followers of Wahhabism) and other infidels, the books:

1. Command Muslims to “hate” Christians, though incongruously, not to treat them “unjustly”.
2. Teach that the Crusades never ended and identify the American Universities in Beirut and Cairo, other Western and Christian social service providers, media outlets, centers for academic studies of Orientalism and campaigns for women’s rights as part of the modern phase of the Crusades.
3. Teach that “the Jews and the Christians are enemies of the {Muslim} believers” and that “the clash” between the two realms “continues until the Day of Resurrection.
4. Instruct students not to “greet, imitate, show loyalty to, be courteous to or respect” non-believers.
5. Define Jihad to include “wrestling with the infidels by calling them to the faith and battling against them” and assert that the spread of Islam through jihad is a “religious obligation”.  {The word qital, translated here as “battle” is derived from the verb qatala, “to kill”, and is virtually never used metaphorically.}

Regarding Anti-Semitism, they:

1. Instruct that “the struggle between Muslims and Jews” will continue “until the hour {of judgment}” and that “Muslims will triumph because they are right” and “he who is right is always victorious".
2. Cite a selective teaching of violence against Jews, while, in the same lesson, ignore the passages of the Qur’an and hadiths (narratives of the life of the Muhammad) that counsel tolerance.
3. Teach the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact and relate modern events to it.
4. Discuss Jews in violent terms, blaming them for virtually all the “sedition” and wars of the modern world.

Inside the Kingdom, the Saudi government exercises strict control over what teachers say to their students about those who do not subscribe to the Wahhabi doctrine.  Some analysts estimate that over the past quarter of a century Saudi Arabia has expended over $75 billion for disseminating Wahhabism worldwide, and this ideological export is having an effect.  Wahhabi thought and customs are taking root in Muslim communities from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and elsewhere.  Those who advocate tolerance and reform risk being condemned as blasphemers and punished.  An infamous example was the Saudi schoolteacher who was fired in 2005 from his job and sentenced to 750 lashes and a 3-½ yr. prison term for making positive statements about Jews and the New Testament; he was pardoned after public protests and international pressure.

To Western audiences, the monarchy has repeatedly compared itself to the Vatican, with the King as a type of Islamic pope.  One Saudi royal family member placed full-page ads in the international press that make the same point with visual parallels between the pope and the king, and the Vatican and Mecca.  A slogan at the bottom reads, “Two great faiths, sharing one great cause: humanity”.

Here are some quotes from 2007-2008 textbooks of the Saudi Ministry of Education.

	The Jews and Christians are enemies of the believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims
	The punishment for homosexuality is death.  Ibn Qudamah said, the companions of the Prophet were unanimous on killing, although they differed in the description, that is, in the manner of killing.  Some of the companions of the Prophet stated that a homosexual is to be burned with fire.  It has also been said that he should be stoned, or thrown from a high place.
	In Islamic law jihad has two uses: One usage is specific.  It means to exert effort to wage war against the unbelievers and tyrants.
	In its general usage, jihad is divided into the following categories, wrestling with the infidels by calling them to faith and battling (to kill) them.
	In these verses is a call for jihad, which is the pinnacle of Islam.  In jihad is life for the body; thus it is one of the most important causes of outward life.  Only through force and victory over the enemies is there security and repose.  Within martyrdom in the path of God is a type of noble life-force that is not diminished by fear or poverty.
	As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.

What is the link between religiously-inspired violence by Saudi nationals and the Saudi public education curriculum?  It is becoming disturbingly apparent that a disproportionately large number of the world’s suicide terrorists, acting in the name of Islam, have been born, raised, and educated in Saudi Arabia.  When it was discovered that ¾ of the hijackers on 9/11, along with the founder of al Qaeda himself, were from Saudi Arabia, the whole world suffered the realization that Saudi nationals are deeply involved in suicide terror.  Unless the curriculum is fully reformed, millions of Muslim students will be indoctrinated from textbooks that promote extreme intolerance and hatred, and have even been linked by some Saudis to religious violence.  Like time bombs, they are mentally and politically ready and are like pawns in the hands of organizations with very dangerous political plans.
 

(Sample Report Sections of Particular Concern:  Page 5, 13, 24, 26)

          
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