Saudi textbooks 'demonise west'
Brian Whitaker Wednesday July 14, 2004 The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,11599,1260867,00.html

Saudi schoolchildren are being taught to disparage
Christianity and Judaism in a textbook issued by the
education ministry, a report said yesterday.
The book forms part of the kingdom's revised
curriculum - supposedly cleaned up after complaints
that demonising the west had become endemic in Saudi
schools.

A lesson for six-year-olds reads: "All religions other
than Islam are false." A note for teachers says they
should "ensure to explain" this point.

The Saudi Institute, a Washington-based pro-reform
group, said yesterday the book, Monotheism and Fiqh,
contradicted the Koran.

"The Saudi contention that Judaism and Christianity
are false religions is clearly refuted by the Koran,"
it says in a report, quoting a verse.

The kingdom reviewed its textbooks after revelations
that 15 of the September 11 hijackers had been
Saudi-educated.

One textbook had urged teenagers not to befriend
Christians or Jews: "Emulation of the infidels leads
to loving them, glorifying them and raising their
status in the eyes of the Muslim, and that is
forbidden."

Last year the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal,
said there was "no room in our schools for hatred,
intolerance or for anti-western thinking". Officials
announced two pilot programmes to develop new teaching
methods.

But the Saudi Institute said yesterday there was no
evidence the pilot programmes had taken place. The new
curriculum, it said, had "the same authors and the
same ideas" as the old one, but in different language.