Transcript

Host: According to a report by the independent monitoring group, Freedom House, the textbooks used in Saudi Arabia's schools promote religious intolerance. Religions other than the Wahhabi branch of Islam are demonized, beginning in the first grade, according to Freedom House, with one Saudi textbook stating, "Every religion other than Islam is false." By eighth grade, Saudi students are taught: "The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus." By the twelfth grade, Saudi students are reading that "Jihad is the path of God - which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it - is the summit of Islam."

Freedom House analyzed twelve textbooks used by some twenty-five million students in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government distributes the same books to schools it operates in nineteen countries, and also makes them available around the world to privately run madrassas and other schools.

Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Turki Al-Faisal, responded to the Freedom House report in a written statement, saying: "The Saudi government has worked diligently during the last five years to overhaul its education system." He wrote that "the objective of the [Saudi] education system is to fight intolerance."

In its latest report on international religious freedom, the U.S. State Department designates Saudi Arabia as one of eight countries of particular concern. State Department acting spokesman Tom Casey says, "This certainly has been an issue that we've raised with the government of Saudi Arabia as well as with other governments." Mr. Casey said, "we appreciate the fact that there are efforts underway to work on this, but certainly, it still is an ongoing concern and something we'll continue to be discussing with them."

Do Saudi textbooks teach hatred of other religions? And what are the prospects for reform? I'll ask my guests: Nina Shea, director, Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House and an author of the report and Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and professor of international relations at American University in Washington D.C. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Nina Shea, the first question is; why does it matter what Saudi schools are teaching in their religious affairs textbooks?

Shea: It's very important, not only to the United States, but to everyone around the world, because Saudi Arabia now is positioning itself as, as they say, the Vatican within Islam. That is what they are saying in letters in Washington to the Commission on International Religious Freedom, and to members of Congress. That's what they said on television here -- that they are comparable to the Vatican within Islam. And therefore, they're saying their interpretation of Islam is authoritative. They are then disseminating their textbooks and educational materials around the world. It's not just the five million students within Saudi Arabia who are being indoctrinated in this ideology. And that's what it is: an ideology of intolerance, of hatred. But they're disseminating it and exporting it to their own schools, a network of twenty schools around the world. Including one near Washington, but in other major capitals, and then to Islamic schools in other places as well that they don't directly run. It has huge ramifications around the world.

Host: Akbar Ahmed, how large are the ramifications of the school materials in the Saudi system?

Ahmed: Eric, I agree with Nina. I don't think they are positioning themselves to be the Vatican. They are, for Muslims, the Vatican. You've got to be very clear about that Nina. Mecca and Medina, are the holiest cities of Islam. And they happen to be in Saudi Arabia. Governments may change, but those cities will be there and they are the holiest cities of Islam. Muslims throughout the world look to the Saudi Arabs. Now, this is a terrible burden on the Saudis because some of them may be religious, some of them may not be religious. And judging from the textbooks a lot of them need to be educated, especially about Islam, because as you point out, as some people may believe in one kind of Islam -- in one kind of ideology within Islam, one perspective within Islam -- a lot of people may not believe in that. So, what the Saudis do becomes important to ordinary Muslims, because they are looking at Mecca and Medina and the people who are, as it were, in charge of that. And the king of Saudi Arabia has his title, “The Servant of the Holy Places of Islam, Mecca and Medina.” That's what they call themselves. So ordinary Muslims would say, what are the Saudis doing? What are they teaching their kids? For example, as the [Freedom House] report said many of these textbooks now find their way into the madrassas. In my part of the world, along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Some of the madrassas are then producing kids who are then going to want to go on and implement what they are reading. When you read about hatred for a certain people, they would want to implement it as an Islamic duty. What they are not being taught, Eric, are the verses in the Koran because the Koran is a very universalist book. For Muslims, it's the divine word of God. It also has a universalist message. It talks of the high respect for Jesus. The high respect for Jews and Christians, as people of the book. This is also a message of the Koran.

Host: Professor Ahmed, how much is the “where Saudi Arabia is” -- Mecca/Medina -- and how much is also that Saudi Arabia has the resources with its vast oil income, that it has been able to put into funding mosques, funding schools, and also providing textbooks around the world?

Ahmed: Yes, it is partly economic and remember this is recent. This may be fifty, sixty, seventy years. More important Eric, is the cultural aspect. Remember that the Arab world, in the world of Islam, is only eighteen percent. So, the rest of the Muslim world is not Arab. Which means they don't speak Arabic as a mother-tongue. Which means that for a lot of Muslims, what is coming from the Arab world becomes literally the truth. This becomes doubly dangerous. If you've got an ordinary kid, say in Pakistan, or Afghanistan reading this textbook, it's coming from Saudi Arabia, that kid is going to say, this is Islam. That is why it's a crucial exercise that we are doing. Which is discussing the textbook, the syllabus. And I'm a professor on campus. For me, this is where it all begins. How you teach youngsters. How you are influencing your next generation. This is where the kids have to be told what the vision of Islam is, the true vision of Islam.

Host: Nina Shea, what do you think are some of the things that have been most disturbing that you've found in your study of the textbooks?

Shea: It is an ideology that starts in first grade. It demonizes other religions. It also demonizes other Muslim interpretations. So, the Asharite Sunni Muslims, which are most of the Sunni Muslims, the Maturidi doctrine followers, are called polytheists. The Shiites are called polytheists.

Host: Polytheists being people who would believe in more than one god.

Shea: Yes, it's basically heretical. That's very disturbing. And really fomenting hatred against other divisions -– sectarian divisions within Islam like that.

Host: Let me ask you. One example that's in your report, is from a first grade text and the first grade text states very bluntly, every religion other than Islam is false. How does that differ, and why is that a statement of hatred in a way that say, that in a parochial school in the U-S, or in a Jewish school, that the curriculum in those schools also promotes the notion that the religion that's being studied is true. And if one thinks that that religion is true by default, that would mean that other religions are not true. How is that different?

Shea: It's different in a couple ways. One, is this is the government. This is not a religion, that's speaking or a religious cleric whose speaking, it is the government of Saudi Arabia, which is a member state of the United Nations. Then, it is also -- it contradicts traditional Islamic teaching that Judaism and Christianity are heavenly religions. And three, I think it's most disturbing because it's just the first step in an argument that leads -– that advocates and says it's a religious duty to commit violence. To wage Jihad and where they used for battling the infidels to spread the faith is derived from the verb, to kill. So, it has almost no metaphorical meaning there. That's why it's different. It doesn't stop with saying, we're the one true religion. It then goes on to say, it's also, you have to hate the other. You have to show the hatred. It actually says that the Jews and the Christians, are enemies of the believer. Very divisive, antagonistic really. And then again, on to wage Jihad as a religious obligation.

Host: Akbar Ahmed, this question of jihad and what is the meaning of jihad, is something that gets discussed very often. And in the Saudi textbook the word “qital” is used for “battling” against unbelievers. Is that a word that means battling in the physical sense or can it be used metaphorically?

Ahmed: Eric, an excellent question. It's important for your viewers to understand that jihad simply means striving. It comes from the root for striving. To improve yourself. To elevate yourself. That is in fact the definition of what is called the greater jihad. How in every good human being does it. Whether religious or not religious. We are always striving to improve ourselves. The second point you raised about the conflict in other traditions -– every major world civilization today is experiencing the same kind of polarization and contradiction that you talk about for Islam. We mustn't make the mistake that we are accusing the Saudis of. Which is, to demonize one particular system. Every world civilization is in intense debate, in the context of the age of globalization within which we are living. The danger for us is this -- you have a world civilization for Islam, one-point-four billion people, and unless we begin to come to grips with it, you will have a generation, a generation of young Muslims that will be growing up with a very clear-cut, black-and-white view of the world. And that's not Islam. Remember, we are talking about the Arabs basically. The Arabs gave the world civilization for the first thousand years of their history from the coming of Islam, which was at the cutting edge of art, architecture, intellectual endeavor, thought, and tolerance. Jews, Christian, Muslims, living together for centuries and centuries. So, we need to be very careful about not making the Muslim world feel that somehow this discussion, is simply to demonize the whole religion.

Host: Nina Shea, we did invite the Saudi embassy to send a spokesman to be part of this discussion. They declined to do so, but they did send us a statement, from Saudi ambassador [to the United States] Prince Turki Al-Faisal, that said “Freedom House continues to exhibit a disregard for presenting an accurate picture of the reality that exits in Saudi Arabia,” and also that “overhauling an educational system is a massive undertaking,” suggesting that perhaps the books you found are not representative of what is the main part of the curriculum at this point. What’s your response to that?

Shea: That's very different from what the ambassador was saying over the last six months, here in Washington [D.C.] and around the country. He's been on a ten-city tour, going from American city to American city saying we have overhauled all the textbooks, we've cleaned them all up, and there's not even a hint, there's not even a perception of intolerance remaining. Now, he's really changed his tune quite a bit in saying, oh, it's a long process, and it's going to take a long time. My challenge to him, and to the government of Saudi Arabia -- and again it's the government I have the quarrel with. There's intolerance with a lot of clerics in all religions as the professor said. But it's when a government endorses and advocates jihad and they do use the word “qital” which means to kill, I think professor. So there's no misunderstanding, no metaphorical sense of struggling within the self. They do mention that in the textbook, but they also go on and say, and then there's this other meaning, and you have this religious obligation. Saudi Arabia government has been the government and the custodian of the true holy shrines, for less than a hundred years. And the king has taken on that title, just since the eighties, so it's a very recent phenomenon that it's been asserting itself as the Vatican, the government of Saudi Arabia. And the ambassador has really been very misleading to the American public, saying they've been cleaned up. My challenge to him and to the government of Saudi Arabia, is to open up the books. Put them online. Let us see the books. We have put the books online and it's on our website, freedomhouse.org/religion. And we have the Arabic and we have the English next to it. These are excerpts, but I'd like the government to come forward, and say, these are our new, cleaned-up textbooks. These are the reformed ones. They don't argue in defense of what they say in these textbooks. Instead, they say: Oh, we are working on it. Or in the past six months he's been saying, it's been done. I really would like to see him open up the textbooks. He promised it to Senator [Arlen] Specter at a public forum in the Council on Foreign Relations last September. Actually it was his [ambassador Prince Turki Al-Faisal] brother, the foreign minister, and he said: Oh, let everyone see, who has an interest. And we're going to give the whole curriculum to Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and you can ask him. And we checked with Senator Specter two weeks ago. He had received a single textbook.

Host: Akbar Ahmed, how much change, if any, has there been in the Saudi curriculum? Several years ago, the process got going. There was a Second Forum for National Dialogue in Saudi Arabia, which presented a study done by prominent Saudi scholars. And their findings were that the curriculum, "encourages violence toward others and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the other.” Were the findings of that study, presented in Saudi Arabia by Saudi scholars, taken to heart? And how far has the Saudi government gone in trying to revise the curriculum?

Ahmed: Eric, [this is] an important question, because I genuinely believe that there's a process of change taking place in Saudi Arabia. There's a soul-searching. The intellectuals are active. Not a very large group, but they are active. The government is active, that Nina is concerned about. Especially the elite because they do the actual direction of the government itself. It's important to remember Eric, that the Muslim world is not one country. Saudi Arabia is a very important country. But small in terms of population, country. There are fifty-seven [Muslim] nations. Now what happens in Saudi Arabia does have an impact on the others. But it is also the other way around, as Nina pointed out there are other sects within Islam, other thinking within Islam which are now coming to Saudi Arabia. I read a report recently that for the first time Sufi groups -- the mystical universalist form of Islam -- they're being encouraged in Saudi Arabia. People are encouraged to listen to them and talk to them. So again, there is a ferment, I would say in Saudi Arabia. And it's interesting. I wouldn’t like the impression to be formulated that somehow we are beating Saudi Arabia because there would be a reaction. It's primarily a society that has been a closed society. As she [Shea] points out Saudi Arabia has existed less than a century. And the tendency then, primarily for tribal societies is to close up. To fall behind the lines as it were. And then reform stops. So, we've got to help, not only the Saudis, I would say the whole Muslim world, reform, change, improve the syllabi, the curriculums, that they have in the schools to bring kids into the twenty-first century. And help them March to the beat of the twenty-first century.

Host: Nina Shea, what do you think U-S policy in regard to the Saudi curriculum ought to be? Is there a risk, as Akbar Ahmed suggests of causing a backlash, a closing down that would thwart efforts internally to reform?

Shea: I think that the Saudi people want reform. I really do. There's a lot of frustration from Saudis that I've met and some have sent me e-mails in fact -– they're very frustrated that they're not being prepared for the real world. That they cannot find jobs. They are not equipped to be employed when they graduate. So much of what they learn is just out-dated and false. There is one of the religion texts and this is, again, where I fought the government of Saudi Arabia. One of its religion texts contains a lesson about the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which is a forged document from czarist Russia. Has nothing to do with Islam, but is an Islamic studies religion textbook. Why is it in there? It treats the protocols as historical fact and then goes on to link them the Zionist conspiracy to all sorts of clubs, business people's clubs, like the Rotary clubs or The Lions clubs, or the Freemasons, in saying they're going to take over the world. This is nonsense. And yet, students are forced to learn and memorize the very points of this lesson. This does not prepare students well. And the Saudis themselves, as you have pointed out. The Saudi scholars, have sat down and reviewed this Islamic studies curriculum for boys, and found there is a link to violence. That the only way students are taught that they can really assert their own religion and defend their own religion is to eliminate physically the other. That's a very serious charge and that was not made by me. That was made by Saudi scholars in a national dialogue and it was a royal study group -- to the king's credit. But they really need to act on it. We cannot wait five years, or ten years or whatever they are saying now, whatever the ambassador is saying. They need to work on it right away. And certainly with the price of oil, I think they would be able to afford to replace the textbooks very quickly.

Host: Akbar Ahmed, what is the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” this notorious falsehood, doing in textbooks?

Ahmed: You're absolutely right. That has to be completely rejected. It's unacceptable that we distribute that especially to the young. I was very saddened to see that there's a film made on this. You probably know about the documentary made in Egypt. This is being seen, Eric, as reality. You know that’s a forgery; we'll accept it as a forgery. Now they will argue, as I've just got back from the Muslim world on my travels for Brookings and American University. And I discovered, every time I raised this and said this is a falsehood, Muslims would tell me: What about the falsehoods being distributed in the American media? And they'd give dozens of examples. You've got all these absurd stories about virgins in heaven and Muslims blowing themselves up because so many virgins are promised them. And they'd say: Where are they [the U-S] getting all this rubbish from? Stories about the Prophet, stories about the Koran. Stories about Islamic tradition and Muslim tradition, and Muslims, in a sense, I would not, and I would say I am making a very general statement, in that rational balance frame of mind, to say look, we need to move ahead. There is a problem, there is a world crisis. It involves Muslims, we need to move ahead. They're in the frame of mind, when they are locked up in this tit-for-tat situation, and that I find Eric, very dangerous. Because their minds become closed and it becomes national honor, religious honor, tribal honor to protect your group.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word for today. We are out of time. But, I'd like to thank my guests: Nina Shea of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House and Akbar Ahmed of American University. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our web site at w-w-w-dot-v-o-a-news-dot-com-slash-ontheline. For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.