http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=662057
Saudi textbooks still teaching hate: re****t
Jews, Christians referred to as apes and swine
Charles Lewis, National Post
Published: Thursday, July 17, 2008
Fahad Shadeed/Reuters
Despite promises to the U.S., Saudi students are still learning from
textbooks
that espouse the killing of homo***uals and vilification of non-Muslims.
Despite a promise to remove attacks on other faiths from the public school
curriculum, Saudi Arabia's state-produced textbooks still refer to Jews
and
Christians as apes and swine, insist that Jews conspire to take over the
world
and on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to
kill
the Jews, says the Wa****ngton-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think
tank.
The textbooks, used by five million students in the kingdom every year, as
well as in many Saudi-funded institutions outside the country, also attack
homo***uals and Muslims who do not practice a fundamentalist form of
Islam.
For example:
• "The punishment for homo***uality is death. The companions of the
Prophet
were unanimous on killing although they differed ... in the manner of
killing.
Some companions ... stated that a homo***ual is to be burned with fire ...
he
should be stoned or thrown from a high place."
• "You can hardly find an example of sedition in which the Jews have not
played a role."
• Zionism has achieved its aims through a variety of "destructive
movements"
including the Rotary Clubs and International Lions Clubs, which are
"Masonic
clubs based in America and they have secret agents all over the world."
One of the suggested activities for Grade 8 students is to "write a
composition on the danger of imitating infidels, giving some examples of
imitation among the students and then present it to his classmates."
Nina Shea, author of the re****t, Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance,
said the deeper problem the textbooks represent is a noxious ideology that
is
being ex****ted all over the world.
"This ideology is kindling to [Osama] bin Laden's match," she said.
"It radicalizes those who are indoctrinated with it. The aim is to
radicalize
students to hate the West, hate non-Muslims, to hate Jews, and to say that
killing is sanctioned by God.
"Saudi Arabia is making every effort to make it mainstream in the Muslim
world
and make it the dominant interpretation of Islam."
She said the Saudi education system is the main reason Web sites designed
to
recruit suicide bombers are directed so heavily at Saudi youth.
The ultra-conservative Sunni kingdom practises a form of Islam called
Wahhabism, which advocates jihad.
Ms. Shea, who produced her first re****t on the textbooks in 2006, said
Saudi
Arabia agreed to make changes after pressure from the United States. The
deadline is September, 2008.
"[The State Department] had to look like we're doing something in the face
of
this really toxic teaching," she said.
"It's so indefensible and so inexplicable that this is being disseminated.
It's not even private clerics or an enemy who is disseminating this. This
is
our ally."
The international human rights lawyer said her latest study looked at the
textbooks used in the 2007-08 school year. But she found little difference
from the books studied for her first re****t and does not believe the
Saudis
will meet the September deadline.
Rather, she believes they agreed to make the changes as a "publicity
ploy."
"They want to take some of the pressure off by promising to make the
changes
,but they are fairly confident that the State Department will not go after
them and will not even bother to open the books or translate them, which
they
have not done at all."
And when a new president enters the White House in January, the agreement
will
likely be forgotten, she said.
Ms. Shea believes Americans give Saudi Arabia an easy ride because of
their
country's dependence on foreign oil.
"Oil independence is really im****tant for this reason. Because it's going
to
be very hard for the Saudis to change."
Officials at the Saudi embassy in Wa****ngton, D.C., declined to comment.
National Post
clewis@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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