As President Barack Obama visited Saudi Arabia at the end of March, at a time when relations between the two countries are rocky, a new report on the state of education in Saudi Arabia, and how successful the kingdom has been at eradicating discriminatory and extremist language in public school textbooks, cast a shadow over the meeting. The report, "Textbook Diplomacy: Why the State Department Shelved a Study on Incitement in Saudi Education Materials", written by David Andrew Weinberg of the Washington think tank the Foundation for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), alleges, as the title suggests, that the U.S. State Department is in possession of a study that is highly critical of the claims of Saudi officials that they have "cleaned up" extremist and discriminatory language in textbooks, and condemns what it calls "Saudi Arabia's ongoing sponsorship of religious hatred in public education". Saudi Arabia has maintained for many years that is it making progress in this area. In 2005 the Saudi government took out a full-page ad in newspapers to boast of its success at "having modernized our school curricula to better prepare our children for the challenges of tomorrow." But despite claims of changes being made, concerns remained. In 2011, the State Department paid the International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) an initial fee of $500,000 to do a study of the level of intolerance in Saudi textbooks. ICRD's website says the study was commissioned to "assist in the ongoing effort by Saudi Arabia to remove discriminatory content from its public school curriculums and to evaluate its global impact in other Muslim-majority countries". The subject has been of concern since the 9/11 Commission and other officials starting looking at Saudi educational materials around 2003. The problem, as these officials saw it, was that the Saudi textbooks in question are not only used in Saudi Arabia, but in 20 other countries around the world. The 9/11 Commission report said "Saudi Arabia has undeniably been a key exporter of jihadist indoctrination, specifically highlighting the spread of Wahhabism," and that Saudi officials had supported the construction of schools that "produced large numbers of half-educated young men with no marketable skills but with deeply held Islamic views". When contacted by Weinberg, State Department officials said that the ICRD study was not a study but a "technical assistance program" and never destined to be released to the public. But as Weinberg notes, this contradicts what is said about the study on the ICRD website and by the ICRD's president and founder, Douglas Johnston ICRD's official position is that the study was due to be released but it was held back because it showed the kingdom was making progress and that that it would be "unfair" to release the report while that progress was still taking place. But Weinberg alleges that his sources (including individuals with access to the report) told him that the report was held back because of "how bad it makes the Saudis look". "According to its own language, ICRD's report concluded that, 'despite the clear progress to date in reforming the Saudi education system...it continues to create a climate that fosters exclusivity, intolerance, and calls to violence that put religious and ethnic minorities at risk,' " the FDD report says. "Although books for grade one through six had allegedly been revised, the [ICRD] report described this step as 'an important but unambitious undertaking, since the most hateful material is usually taught in high school' ". The FDD report quotes Ali al-Ahed who runs the Institute for the Gulf Affairs. He has been reporting on the kingdom's textbook for over a decade. He says he has read textbooks currently in use and the books are "still highly inflammatory". Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson's Institute's Centre for Religious Freedom and the author of several reports on Saudi textbooks told Weinberg that "First grade was not the problem. The problem is with the religious and Arabic 'sciences' in senior high school grades and they haven't changed those." The State Department waited almost a year after the ICRD submitted its report in June of 2012 to brief the Saudis on its findings, which apparently gave them the wiggle room to say the study's findings were "out of date". Compounding the issue for the States is that a similar, very controversial report on the textbooks used by Palestinians and Israelis was released in 2012. That report found problems in the educational materials used by both groups. Critics like Ali, Shea and Weinberg wonder if that report was released, why not the one on the Saudi textbooks? The issue would seem to be one of pure political and commercial pragmatism. The US needs the co-operation of Saudi Arabia on too many other issues to make the textbook issue a priority. Security issues, especially, are number one on the U.S. list of concerns. Also, some Saudi officials have made the point that every time a study like this is made public, "The moderates get pushed aside and the ultra-conservatives dig in their heels." So releasing the report, they say, would achieve the opposite effect of what was desired.
