Arabian Schools and Teaching Hate
Nina Shea, from the Center for Religious Freedom, wrote a weekend article for the Washington Post that was reprinted in the Austin American Statesman called Uncovering ideology of them vs us. The article is a summary of the longer report that can be found on the center's website. The basic claim is that the Whahabistic government of Saudi Arabia is using its control of the Arabian school system to ensure that the children are raised in a dualistic view of the world, Whahabists vs. the universe, and that they will hate and lead violent jihad against everyone else.
All of this is a very interesting and pressing matter, but it would be much more accessible if it were not presented in such a manner that begs the question. For example, they cite the sentence "... that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly.” but then comment on the fact that the second part of that sentence is incongruous with the first. Well, I fear that is only true if one has already decided (or shown elsewhere) that the Arabs are teaching hate with the intention of treating the polytheists and infidels unjustly. So, while this example establishes beyond a doubt the teaching goal that the polytheists and infidels are to be hated (that is after all the verbatim interpretation), there is obviously some divergence as to what follows from that hate between the intentions of the school book authors and the reconstructing Freedom researchers.
The report also finds fault with the fact that many of the mourning rituals of other forms of Islam, including building mosques over graves, are forbidden. So in end-effect they are saying that Whahabism differentiating itself from the other Islamic forms is a sign of its us-vs-them mentality. I dont know how to read this but as a circular argument. Whahabism could not really be a separate group if there were not opinions that it (a) held resolutely and (b) that other groups in Islam did not share.
One example given is a fill-in-the-blanks question, which tests the student's knowledge that Islam is the only true religion and that everyone outside of Islam will end up in hellfire. I find this example particularly unhelpful, because I cannot think of a single religion that does not claim the first (including the Baha'ai who appear to escape this problem by redefining everyone else as just a specialization of their viewpoint) and believes the second - provided they have a doctrine regarding hellfire.
The teaching moment this question is primarily after is that any religion claims to capture important information, information whose possession has vital, epic consequences to the believers. One way of conceptualizing this is to say that there is a moment of decision coming (a great cosmic battle, the coming or return of the Messiah, the burning of the world, whatever) when access to this information will be a distinguishing criterion. [Dante put his beloved Virgil into purgatory, a compromise in some sense, but about the most that was doable from Dante's point of view.] If the information that the religion conveys decides nothing, that information is not relevant and one can simply no longer build a religion around it. The fact that fundamentalist movements are on the rise underscores that those parts of the public that participate in these fundamentalisms understands this very well; they are consciously side-stepping the "enlightened" religions who are denying the relevance of their message in the same breath in which they are spreading it. Of course the intended argument of Nina Shea and her collaborators is clear: If there is a hellfire, and everybody else is going there, isn't that a hateful statement about everybody else? In the religious view, that does not necessarily follow: To a believer this sounds like someone saying that warning an alcoholic about the effect of the drinks on their liver is being hateful. Again, if the information is real and relevant, then not conveying it is the hateful (or spiteful) thing to do.
And so on, for example after example. "Jihad in the path of God - battling the unbelief, oppression, injustice and those that perpetrate it - is the summit of Islam." is cited as an example that the eventual goal of all this is the destruction of the other religions - including a chilling note on the fact that the verb underlying the "battling" means "to kill" and is rarely used metaphorically. Unfortunately, the very example they cite is one of the rare exceptions. And considering that the school books analyzed have absolutely no problem calling spades spades, if this was meant to argue for a Holy War against Christianity or Judaism to the death, this is pretty oblique speech.
So what does the report contribute to this important debate? One has to really wonder whether it is saying more than "They should not be so they, they should be more like us!" One of the most telling quotes in the report is the following:“The Jews and Christians are enemies of the believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims.”
I fear a Muslim who reads this report could only see that view confirmed.