In an update to stories about Saudi textbooks, Slate ran an article about current revisions. The story was about a report published by the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. One example is a question that appears in a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, Monotheism and Jurisprudence, in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish "true" from "false" belief in god:
"Q. Is belief true in the following instances:
a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers."
The correct answer, of course, is c). According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, worship of God includes hating unbelievers too. By the same token, b) is also wrong. Someone who worships god cannot be said to have "true belief" if they love unbelievers.
"Unbelievers" are Christians and Jews.
This question is typical of the new, "revised" Saudi textbooks. Previous versions contained even darker passages and the Saudis agreed to clean up their act, and this is the clean-up, to eliminate the disparaging remarks about other religious groups.
The textbooks in question do not remain in Saudi Arabia, a nation that is no ideological friend to the U.S. The texts are written and produced by the Saudi government and subsequently distributed, free of charge, to Saudi-sponsored schools throughout Africa and South America. Muslim British textbooks contain books that call Muslims to kill all apostates.
The West is charged with cultural imperialism so I will now wait to hear from American academics who will denounce the Saudis as religious and cultural bigots.
Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.