by James M Dorsey
Lost in the Middle Eastern fog of war is a struggle that is as much about geopolitics as it is about shaping future generations in a swath of land that stretches from the Gulf states and the battlefields of Gaza and Lebanon to Houthi schools in Yemen and jihadist seminaries in Indonesia.
It’s a rivalry of competing worldviews in textbooks designed to shape education in the 21st century in Muslim lands. The players run the gamut from jihadists and religious militants to autocracies that propagate a socially more tolerant but politically repressive interpretation of Islam.
The Middle East, conditioned by the Gaza war and geopolitical rivalries, is the focal point of competing approaches toward education.
Even so, a comparison of changes in textbooks in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen and Indonesian seminaries run by Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian Islamist dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic state in Southeast Asia reveals stark differences in militant ranks.
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A recent report by Impact-se, an Israeli textbook watchdog, praised Saudi Arabia for dumping textbooks that “contained…inflammatory examples” related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the promotion of jihad defined as “an offensive, violent act” and martyrdom.
In 2022, Impact-se praised the United Arab Emirates for mandating schoolbooks that teach tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and engagement with non-Muslims.
Promoting concepts of “moderation, openness, and peaceful development through a step-by-step process” as well as tolerance, the kingdom’s new textbooks have largely removed negative portrayals of Jews and Christians and much of the homophobic content in older texts.
The deletions include references to Jews as “treacherous individuals” and Qur’anic verses that allegedly describe Jews as apes, monkeys, and pigs.
The new textbooks draw the line of tolerance at non-violent political Islam, militant and jihadist Islamists, and atheism described as a dangerous phenomenon that can lead to moral corruption, crime, and the destruction of the family.
The new textbooks walk a fine line in dealing with Israel and the Palestinians at a time when the Gaza war has enraged Saudi, Middle Eastern, and Muslim public opinion, with no ability for Saudis to show solidarity with the Palestinians or vent anger against Israel and its supporters.
“I don’t understand why we need to come closer to Israel; it will only harm our position in the Muslim world. I fear that normalisation will hurt our beliefs and bring changes that we’re not ready for,” said Ghanem Abed Arahman, a resident of Medina, in a rare on-the-record comment.
Even so, the textbooks appear designed to prepare the next generation of Saudis for the possibility of normalisation of relations with Israel and a potential three-way deal with the United States and Israel that would involve Saudi recognition of the Jewish state.
The textbooks seek to strike a balance by not identifying Israel by name and removing the term ‘Palestine’ from maps that in older texts was used to refer to pre-1967 Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza conquered by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.
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Comparison of Saudi Social Studies textbooks showing absence of the term ‘Israel’ the removal of the name ‘Palestine’ from maps of Israel and Palestine. Credit: Impact-se
At the same time, the books no longer identify Israel as an “enemy state” or Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Instead, the textbooks refer to ‘occupied East Jerusalem,’ suggesting that the western part of the city could be Israeli and the eastern part Palestinian in a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involving the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Similarly, the textbooks have dropped references to Zionism as a “racist European movement” and portrayals of the conflict as a religious dispute in which Israel seeks to destroy Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, and take over Muslim holy places.
Saudi and UAE textbooks could serve as models in Israeli plans to reconstruct and reshape Gaza’s war-ravaged education system in ways that would deemphasise Palestinian national aspirations and promote the two countries’ concept of moderate but autocratic Islam.
A just-published Washington Institute for Near East Policy report argued that the West Bank-based internationally-recognised Palestine Authority’s (PA’s) educational system has long been identified as an obstacle to advancing the peace process and to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.”
The report went on to say that “existing textbooks contain materials easily interpretable as incitement to violence and glorifying terrorism against Israelis and Jews. In a highly insecure post–October 7 reality, students will be especially susceptible to such messages, which can shape the future of politics and society.”
The report suggested that “regional success stories in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and other countries—where new curricula emphasize diversity and exposure to different cultures—can provide a blueprint” for reconstructing Palestinian education. “These countries should play a direct role in providing technical assistance,” the report said.
The problem is that Israeli, Palestinian, and regional players’ goals are at odds.
Israel sees education as a tool to delegitmise Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, sensitise Palestinians to Israeli concerns and control, focus them on social and economic development, and weaken their national aspirations.
However, regional players are unlikely to engage without a Palestinian buy-in and a credible peace process that leads to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, textbooks adopted by the Houthi rebels that control much of neighbouring Yemen share the propagation of autocracy with materials adopted by Saudi authorities. However, that is where the similarities end.
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Houthi textbooks. Credit SidqYem
Yemeni fact-checking platform SidqYem concluded in two studies in 2021 and 2022 that revised Houth textbooks preached loyalty to the movement’s spiritual guides, including its current leader, Abdul Malek al-Houthi, who, like prophets, are tools of divine will on Earth.
The books intend to prepare Houthi children for an already raging war between Islam and the enemies of God, the United States, Israel, and the Jews, who seek to subjugate Muslims. They celebrate fighting and dying for God.
If Israel is the Houthis equivalent of Iran’s Great Satan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, which intervened in Yemen in 2015, are the group’s Lesser Satans, who act on behalf of the United States.
Students learn that Jews are cruel, deceptive, dishonest, greedy, and cheap, spread corruption on Earth, and kill whoever opposes them.
Sixth-grade textbooks assert that the “Jewish lobby” controls the world’s colonial powers, which created Israel, “’this cancerous Jewish gland,’” to spread their evil and corruption to all Islamic lands.”
“As Yemen’s conflict nears its second decade, the Houthis are striving to place the next generation on a war footing, and they have shown no qualms about sending underage soldiers into combat,” said researcher and journalist Dan Wilkofsky.
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Leaders of Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah announce the dissolution of the group and reform of their religious seminaries. Source: YouTube
In stark contrast to the Houthis, Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah, a jihadist group linked to Al-Qaeda responsible for multiple attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people and wounded 209 others, announced its dissolution in late June.
Pledging allegiance to the Indonesian state, the group’s leaders guaranteed that the curriculum and teaching materials in their 68 religious boarding schools, or pesantren, “will be free from the attitude of extremism.”
Noor Huda Ismail, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, reported in 2022, quoting a captured Jemaah Islamiyah foreign fighter, that the group’s young cadres were awarded internships with Jabhat Al-Nusra, a Syrian jihadist group that in 2016 said it had ended its association with Al-Qaeda.
Mr. Ismail said Religious Affairs Ministry inspectors had, over the years, given the Jemaah Islamiyah pesantren a clean bill of health because much of the radicalisation process, including the teaching of supremacist interpretations of Islam, and the singing of jihadist Nasheed, Arabic songs promoting jihad, occurred beyond the classroom.
In the Greater Middle East, the roll-out of competing educational models takes on added significance with geopolitical rivals jockeying for influence in a region in which generations of Palestinians, Yemenis, Syrians, Somalis, and Sudanese have little hope for the future and wars have devastated and disrupted educational systems and infrastructure.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warned in 2020 that wars had put 15 million children in the Middle East and North Africa out of school. The UN agency predicted the number would increase by five million by 2030.
That figure did not take into account Gaza, where the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNWRA) schools, often serving as shelters for Palestinians displaced by the war, have been a particular target.
“The magnitude of people on the move has threatened a whole generation, overwhelmed host communities, straining already limited resources and increasing social tensions,” Hamed Al Hammami, Director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in the Arab States, warned at the time.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.