Posted on 06/24/2006 7:11:42 PM PDT by blam
Christians still 'swine' and Jews 'apes' in Saudi schools
By Harry de Quetteville, Middle East Correspondent
(Filed: 25/06/2006)
Saudi Arabia has been accused of continuing to foster religious hatred in its schools, despite its repeated assurances since the September 11 attacks that it would rewrite textbooks that refer to Jews as "apes" and Christians as "swine".
The charges come after Freedom House, a non-partisan American research group which monitors civil rights worldwide, examined textbooks that it smuggled out of Saudi Arabia. The group found that despite promises of change from leading Saudi officials, including Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, and Turki al-Faisal, the ambassador to America, schoolbooks in the kingdom still promote hatred of those who do not practise its strict form of Wahhabi Islam.
The report also alleged that some of the textbooks are used in official Saudi schools around the world. Senior staff at the King Fahd Academy in Acton, west London, which has 750 pupils, said that it was not for the school to comment.
"Even if only a small percentage of the people who are exposed to this take it to heart and act on it, that's still a lot of people," said Nina Shea, Freedom House's director, after the release of the 39-page report, Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance.
The report cites extracts from textbooks used in religious education classes for children aged between five and 16. It quotes the following exercise for the youngest children: "Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ------- is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters -------."
It claims that older students are taught: "It is part of God's wisdom that the struggle between the Muslim and the Jews should continue until the hour (of judgment)."
The report is an embarrassment for the Saudi government, which has made great efforts to restore its image since being painted as a bastion of extremism after September 11. When it emerged that 15 of the 19 hijackers that day were Saudi, many blamed the kingdom's education system for breeding hatred.
Last month, however, only days before the report was released, the Saudi education minister gave a joint press conference with the American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, in which he boasted of Saudi school reform.
"The education reforms in Saudi Arabia go beyond textbook rewriting," he said. "They go into teacher training [and] the messages that are given to children in the formative years… The whole system of education is being transformed from top to bottom."
When asked about offensive language in textbooks, he said: "This is taken out." But, according to Miss Shea, this is not true. "Teaching methods that ask kindergarten children to give examples of 'false religions', like Judaism and Christianity, add up to an ideology that runs throughout," she said. "It is not hate speech here and there. It adds up to an argument, an ideology of us versus them."
In the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the accusations are being investigated. "We do think some things need to be changed," Abdullah al-Obeid, the Saudi education minister, admitted. "There is some misunderstanding of some of the texts."
But according to Tanya Hsu, a political analyst in Riyadh with close ties to the education ministry, there is anger behind the scenes at an alleged propaganda campaign designed to make the government look bad.
"The charges are absolutely not true," she said. "We're really just looking at a few sentences and a few words. I don't know of any country in the world that doesn't have a few mischosen words in textbooks."
The report comes as the Saudi royal family walks a fine line between external pressure to reform and internal conservative pockets that could shake its grip on power.
But Turki al-Faisal insists that change is happening. "We admit we have people in our midst who are bigots, who are intolerant and who see the world through a prism of 'us and them'," he wrote in a recent newspaper article.
"Are we working hard to change mindsets that encourage prejudice and intolerance? Yes, absolutely."
Saudi Arabia is our enemy, while they pretend to be our friend. They support terrorist ideologies like Wahhabism around the globe, and they are a major part of the terrorist problem. We should take them out.
bttt
We're a lot lower than that. Haha.
Speaking for myself naturally.
Fine. They are parasites which sicken swine and apes.
Lovely folks, those Saudis.
With-Friends-Like-These ping!
I have just one thing to say to that...
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Part of me disdains them with everything I am.....
Part of me pities them because they do not know to God, "Father." All their personal and spiritual relationships are based in fear. To me that is a huge tragedy.
It's amazing how those "apes" were clever enough to forge
that document called the Bible.
Where are the textbooks that say muslims are sewer rats?
The rest of the civilized world knows you cannot live and thrive with hatred. That is why we will be fighting these psychos forever, and forever they will be ignorant without any future, unfortunately they will continue to blame us for their situation.
Saudi Arabia is our enemy.
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