KSA Religion Textbooks Promote Intolerance

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Saudi Arabia: Religion Textbooks Promote Intolerance
 
Textbooks Disparage Sufi, Shia; Label Jews, Christians ‘Unbelievers’


September 13, 2017 

Saudi Arabia’s school religious studies curriculum contains hateful and incendiary language toward religions and Islamic traditions that do not adhere to its interpretation of Sunni Islam, Human Rights Watch said today. The texts disparage Sufi and Shia religious practices and label Jews and Christians “unbelievers” with whom Muslims should not associate.

A comprehensive Human Rights Watch review of the Education Ministry-produced school religion books for the 2016-17 school year found that some of the content that first provoked widespread controversy for violent and intolerant teachings in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks remains in the texts today, despite Saudi officials’ promises to eliminate the intolerant language.

“As early as first grade, students in Saudi schools are being taught hatred toward all those perceived to be of a different faith or school of thought,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The lessons in hate are reinforced with each following year.”

This research was part of a broader investigation into Saudi officials and religious clerics’ use of hate speech and incitement to violence for an upcoming Human Rights Watch report. The reviewed curriculum, entitled al-tawhid, or “Monotheism,” consisted of 45 textbooks and student workbooks for the primary, middle, and secondary education levels. Human Rights Watch did not review additional religion texts dealing with Islamic law, Islamic culture, Islamic commentary, or Qur’an recitation.

The United States Department of State first designated Saudi Arabia a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act for particularly severe violations in 2004. It has continued to do so every year since. The designation should trigger penalties, including economic sanctions, arms embargoes, and travel and visa restrictions. But the US government has had a waiver on penalties in place since 2006. The waiver allows the US to continue economic and security cooperation with Saudi Arabia unencumbered.

Saudi Arabia has faced pressure to reform its school religion curriculum since the September 11 attacks, particularly from the US, after it was revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Saudi officials have said repeatedly they will carry out these reforms, although past reviews of the curriculum over the last dozen years have shown these promises to be hollow. In February 2017, Saudi’s education minister admitted that a “broader curriculum overhaul” was still necessary, but did not offer a target date for when this overhaul should be completed.

Saudi Arabia does not allow public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam. Its public school religious textbooks are but one aspect of an entire system of discrimination that promotes intolerance toward those perceived as “other.”

As Saudi Arabia moves towards implementing its Vision 2030 goals to transform the country culturally and economically, it should address the hostile rhetoric that nonconforming Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and non-Muslim expatriate workers face in Saudi Arabia, said Human Rights Watch.

Saudi Arabia’s al-tawhid, “Monotheism,” curriculum harshly criticizes practices and traditions closely associated with both Shia Islam and Sufism. In many cases, the curriculum labels practices, such as visiting the graves of prominent religious figures, and the act of intercession, by which Shias and Sufis supplicate to God through intermediaries, as evidence of shirk, or polytheism, that will result in the removal from Islam and eternal damnation.

The curriculum repeatedly condemns building mosques or shrines on top of graves, a clear reference to Shia or Sufi pilgrimage sites.

The third book in the five-part secondary level curriculum, for example, contains a section, entitled, “People’s Violation of the Teachings of the Prophet with Graves,” stating that “many people have violated what the prophet forbade in terms of bida’ or ‘illicit innovations’ with graves and committed what he prohibited and because of that fell into illicit innovations or the greatest polytheism” by “building mosques and shrines on top of graves.”

The text also states that people use shrines as a place to commit other acts of illicit innovations or polytheism, including: “praying at them, reading at them, sacrificing to them and those [interred] in them, seeking help from them, or making vows by them…”

Ministry of Education, Al-Tawhid, Student Book, Secondary Semester Program, Level Three, 2016-17, p. 104

The second semester of the seventh-grade text expresses similar sentiment, saying that “those who make the graves of prophets and the righteous into mosques are evil-natured.”

Toward the end of one chapter, “The Role of Reformers in Declaring and Defending the Correct Doctrine,” in a secondary-level textbook, a short glossary lists practices of those who have deviated from correct religious practice. It describes Sufism as “a perverse path that began with the claim of asceticism, or severe self-discipline, then entered into illicit innovation, mis-guidedness, and exaggeration in reverence to the righteous.”

 

Saudi Ministry of Education, Al-Tawhid, Student Book, Secondary Semester Program, Level One, 2016-17, p. 40

The curriculum reserves its harshest criticisms for Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths, often describing them as kuffar, or “unbelievers.”


In one fifth-grade second semester textbook, the curriculum calls Jews, Christians, and Al Wathaniyeen, or “pagans,” the “original unbelievers” and declares that it is the duty of Muslims to excommunicate them: “For whoever does not [excommunicate them], or whoever doubts their religious infidelity is himself an unbeliever.”

Saudi Ministry of Education, Al-Tawhid, Student Book, Fifth Grade, Second Semester, 2016-17, p. 55

In a chapter listing markers by which one can recognize the approach of the Day of Resurrection, one passage states: “The Hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill the Jews.”

Saudi Ministry of Education, Al-Tawhid, Student Book, Secondary Course, Level Two, 2016-17, p. 102.

A recurring and alarming lesson in the curriculum warns against imitating, associating with, or joining the “unbelievers” in their traditions and practices. One passage rejects and denounces the Sufi practice of celebrating the birth of the prophet, accusing Sufis of imitating Christians, i.e. “unbelievers,” in their celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Al-Tawhid, Student Book, Fifth Grade, Second Semester, 2016-17, p. 279
[Translation: Celebrating the prophet’s birth in the spring of every year is prohibited; for it is a new innovation and is in imitation of the Christian celebration of what is known as the birth of Christ.]

In another chapter, “Loyalty to Unbelievers,” the text explicitly calls on Muslims to reserve loyalty to God, the prophet, and other believers and to express hostility and antagonism toward “unbelievers.” It warns Muslims that by imitating “unbelievers” or even joining them in their celebrations, one is at risk of expressing loyalty to them, and worse even, becoming one of them.

Saudi Ministry of Education, Al-Tawhid, Student Book, Secondary Course, Level One, 2016-17, p. 165

The Saudi government’s official denigration of other religious groups, combined with its ban on public practice of other religions, could amount to incitement to hatred or discrimination.

International human rights law requires countries to prohibit “[a]ny advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Article 18 of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include the freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or relief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.”

“Saudi Arabia’s officials should stop denigrating other people’s personal beliefs,” Whitson said. “After years of reform promises there is apparently still little room for tolerance in the country’s schools.”

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Read also:

“They Are Not Our Brothers” 

Hate Speech by Saudi Officials

September 26, 2017 Report

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• تنزيل التقرير الكامل - (Download the full report in Arabic) 

   

  Saudi Arabia: Official Hate Speech Targets Minorities

  Incitement Leads to Discrimination Against Shia, Other Groups

Muslims raise thousands to repair vandalized Jewish cemetery in USA

The Independent
Muslims raise thousands to repair vandalised Jewish cemetery

Campaign more than doubles its cash goal

Wednesday 22 February 2017

Jon Sharman 

Muslim groups have raised tens of thousands of dollars to repair a Jewish cemetery that was vandalised amid a wave of anti-Semitic threats sweeping the US.

More than 100 headstones were toppled in the 123-year-old Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in Missouri at the same time some 11 Jewish community centres received bomb threats across the US. All bomb threats were determined to be hoaxes.

Now campaigners organised by the Mpower Change and CelebrateMercy Muslim groups have pledged some $55,000 (£44,000) to repair the graveyard. Their target was just $20,000, and organisers Linda Sarsour and Tarek el-Messidi say the rest will go to repair other vandalised locations.

They wrote on their fundraising page: "While these senseless acts have filled us with sorrow, we reflect on the message of unity, tolerance, and mutual protection found in the Constitution of Medina, an historic social contract between the Medinan Jews and the first Muslim community."

A regional director of the Anti-Defamation League said she reacted emotionally when she saw the damaged headstones in University City.

“To see their lives desecrated this way is horrific,” Karen Aroesty told the St Louis Post-Dispatch. She did not speculate about whether the damage was caused by a hate-fuelled attack, but she did have suspicions as to the motivations behind the destruction of the headstones.

The St Louis Rabbinical Association denounced the destruction as “horrifying and disgraceful acts of vandalism” in a statement released on Facebook. “Planning is underway for a community clean-up effort,” they said.

Donald Trump spoke against anti-Semitism on Tuesday.

“Anti-semitism is horrible, and it’s going to stop”, he told MSNBC.

He added that anti-Semitism was “age-old, and there’s something going on that doesn’t fully allow it to heal. Sometimes it gets better and then it busts apart.

“But we want to have it get very much better, get unified and stay together," he said.



*Photo courtesy of USA Today

Prosecutors interrogate another comedian over political satire show

Al-Arabiya
Egypt questions another comedian over political satire show

Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Egyptian prosecutors on Wednesday questioned a stand-up comedian on blasphemy charges following a guest appearance on the show of popular satirist Bassem Youssef, himself the subject of an investigation.

Ali Kandil is accused of insulting Islam during a segment on Youssef’s show Elbernameg in February, in which he poked fun at the discourse and style of some Muslim clerics -- bringing to television screens what is already widely said in Egyptian homes.

Kandil’s questioning comes hours after Islamist President Mohamed Morsi stressed Egypt’s commitment to freedom of expression.

“The presidency reiterates the importance of freedom of expression and fully respects press freedom,” Mursi’s office said in a statement.

In a video posted on the Internet, Kandil dismissed the charges against him as “utter nonsense” but said he would go to the prosecutor’s office because he had nothing to hide.

“I take responsibility for every word I said,” Kandil said.

He said that it was people’s responsibility to uphold the goals of the 2011 revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak -- bread, freedom and social justice.

“The part in my control, the one I can guarantee in my role, is freedom, freedom of expression,” Kandil said.

The soaring number of legal complaints against journalists has cast doubt on Morsi’s commitment to freedom of expression.

Youssef’s high profile case prompted the United States to express “real concerns” about the direction being taken by the Egyptian government.

Youssef’s fight for free speech was buoyed on Monday by top U.S. satirist Jon Stewart, who Youssef has been internationally likened to.

Continuing Youssef’s theme of poking fun at the Egyptian president, Stewart did the same.

“I know Bassem pretty well,” Stewart said on his Monday night episode of The Daily Show, “so you can imagine I was shocked that this whole time I was consorting with a criminal!”

“If insulting the presidency and Islam here were illegal [in the U.S.], Fox News would go bye-bye!”

“Sounds like Egypt’s Mohammed Mursi’s got his hands full,” adds Stewart after a brief rundown of crises in Egypt which have peaked since the revolution, including diving tourism revenues, economic drawbacks, aging infrastructure and a spike in sexual harassment.

“Can’t wait to see how President Mursi tackles these complex and urgent issues,” he satirically says before beginning to chew over the arrest of Youssef for insulting the presidency, which included mocking Mursi for his English skills and for the hat he wore in Pakistan while being awarded an honorary degree.

“Making fun of the president’s hat and his less-than-fluent English, that was my entire career for eight years!” Stewart said, bringing up an image of a previous George Bush sketch, in which he wore a hat identical to that one worn by the former U.S. president.

“Has he [Youssef] been sabotaging Egypt’s infrastructure? Harassing Egyptian women on the streets, or unemploying the Egyptian people? What did he do?” Stewart asks mockingly.

Stewart then proceeded to show clips of Mursi insulting Jews, with one clip showing Mursi labeling them the “descendants of apes and pigs.”


*Al Arabiya with AFP