Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: At a time when relatively liberal Muslim countries, like Turkey, have turned hardliners and the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is falling apart into the Arab and non-Arab camps, their religious leader, Saudi Arabia, is silently introducing far-reaching transformation within the conservative kingdom.
Not only are the Saudis, indeed all other 21 Arab nations, inching closer to arch-enemy Israel to ward off the threat of their reabsorption into a possible revivification of the Ottoman Empire led by Turkey, they are also causing fundamental changes in the mind-set of the Arabs.
And they are picking young Arab students to carry this torch in the future.
With this purpose, the Saudis have introduced far-reaching and fundamental changes in school curricula, according to media reports.
They have removed hard-line Islamist and anti-Israeli content from Saudi Arabia’s curriculum, marking a historic shift in attitudes in the Gulf Kingdom, which is also the Custodian of the Holy Mecca and Medina, and thus leads the OIC.
The latest teaching materials, and official state textbooks distributed to 30,000 schools in Saudi Arabia and abroad no longer contain calls for non-believers and gay men to be punished by death, nor the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the Jews control the world.
Extremist Islamist content, like the exhortation that Muslims must prepare for jihad (holy war) and martyrdom as the “climax” of their faith, has been removed.
Dire predictions of an apocalyptic final battle in the world, in which Muslims would kill all Jews, have also been removed, according to the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), an Israel-based group that reviews teaching materials from around the world.
This report has come close on the heels of the historic “Abraham Accords” signed by the UAE and Bahrain with Israel in September 2020 at the instance of President Donald Trump in Washington, with silent support from the Saudis. In November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also traveled to Saudi Arabia for a ‘secret’ meeting with Crown Prince Muhammad bin-Salman (MbS), in what was viewed as a significant step towards normalization of relations. The Saudis have also allowed the Israeli aircraft to overfly their skies.
Earlier, other Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan had also signed peace deals with Jerusalem.
The changes in the school curricula are being viewed as part of a growing trend in Saudi Arabia, which has “started to allow space for the viewpoint that accepts a permanent Jewish presence in the region”.
Even Saudi officials said in November that parts of the curriculum were removed being “offensive”, and signaled that reforms would continue.
The Saudis are also slowly introducing some liberties in the Kingdom, like allowing women to drive cars.
Not only the Arabs are, therefore, getting closer to Israel, they are also putting pressure on other Muslim nations, including Pakistan, to follow suit in an attempt to wean Islamabad away from Turkey.
At present, Israel is still not officially recognized by or represented on maps in Saudi Arabian schools. Zionism is presented as a “racist political movement” and Christians and Jews continue to be described in the new textbooks as the “enemies of Islam”, according to the study. But removing the concept of a holy war is seen as the first step towards the removal of these ideas too.
Marcus Sheff, Chief Executive of IMPACT-SE, said that in previous years, lessons had been heavily influenced by Wahabbism, a puritanical form of Sunni Islam, including “very radical” content.
“The latest textbooks reflect a real leap forward and an institutional effort to remove some references to hate, including anti-Semitism, jihad, and homophobia,” he said.
“There is more work to be done, but these revisions are a real cause for optimism.”
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) had changed its curriculum in 2016 to make it less focused on conservative Islamic doctrine, media reported.
