DUBAI: Anger and fear is fomenting in Saudi Arabia and abroad after revised textbooks for children are promoting the idea that hands and feet should be cut off for crimes committed. According to the Institute for Gulf Affairs (IGA), a conservative think take based in Washington DC, the textbooks are creating a stir in policy circles over the use of what many are calling “archaic and eye for an eye policies” in the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom. The new books come as King Abdullah promised recently to amend the education sector and provide new education materials to the country's children. According to Alu Al-Ahmen, the director of the IGA, “terrorism starts” in the education system. “If you teach six million children such knowledge in these important learning years of their lives, if you install all those in their brain, it is of no wonder we have so many Saudi suicide bombers,” he said in a statement published by the group. Al-Ahmen, a Saudi citizen, said his organization obtained the textbooks from confidential sources within the kingdom, and brought them out from the kingdom to the US. He added that the texts are paid for by the Saudi government. The government's role in the funding of the textbooks makes the presence of controversial and dangerous language even more concerning. However, despite what many observers are calling “violent language,” not everyone believes they will create terrorists and the language being employed by the IGA should be more constructive. A former CIA researcher, now based in Dubai as a political consultant, told Bikyamasr.com that the textbooks are worrisome, “but they do not amount to much. We have always seen the difficulty in getting it right in textbooks, in the United States as well as here in the region.” He pointed to Israel's re-making of the history of the region in its own textbooks that “have basically wiped out the idea that Palestinians were a majority of the area before Israel was created. “Yes, I do worry about the concept of teaching children that cutting off hands and feet are okay, but it is Saudi Arabia and they are known for their outside the norm thinking,” he said. In a textbook for 10th-graders, printed for the 2010-2011 academic year, al-Ahmed said teenagers are taught barbaric practices. “They show students how to cut (the) hand and the feet of a thief,” he said. In another textbook, for ninth-graders, the students are taught the annihilation of the Jewish people is imperative and necessary. One text reads in part: “The hour (of judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. The Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone or tree will say: Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” That passage has many conservative observers in Washington worried that the books could create more anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiments in the country. Hassan AbdelKarim, a Saudi school teacher in Jeddah, told Bikyamasr.com via telephone that he usually glosses over such passages when he teaches. “While we are supposed to use the textbooks throughout our teaching process, sometimes many of us just skip over it or create a discussion in class, so the fearmongering over the books is a bit much. Worries sure, but creating this idea that the education system is creating future terrorists is wrong,” he said. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/B3VfX Tags: Education, IGA, Terrorism, Textbooks Section: Culture, Latest News, Saudi Arabia
