Saudi textbooks still promote violence, hatred against Jews, women, homosexuals — study

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A comprehensive analysis conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) showed that Saudi government-published textbooks for the 2018-2019 academic year continue to teach anti-Semitic incitement and hatred.

This finding comes contrary to Saudi Arabia’s promise to the United States government in 2008 that the vitriolic passages would be removed from its textbooks, as the textbooks today still hold such passages in the Saudi educational curriculum.

The report was published by ADL this November, titled “Teaching Hate and Violence: Problematic Passages from Saudi State Textbooks for the 2018-19 School Year” as per their news release on Nov. 19.

The report revealed the texts, translated from Arabic to English, to be perpetuating incitement to hatred or violence “against Jews, Christians, Shi’ite, Muslims, women, homosexual men, and anybody who mocks or converts away from Islam.”

“Beating [women] is a means of discipline, for the Almighty said ‘beat them,'” one translated passage in the report read.

Other passages showed intolerance towards Jews and Judaism, and counseled violence against the group. The LGBTQ+ community was also not spared, as some passages showed that anybody who engages in anal sex or sodomy shall be punished with the death penalty.

“As with adultery, the curriculum also teaches that anal sex brings shame to an individual’s family and entire tribe,” ADL’s report read. “[It] is a belief that is central to the occurrence of so-called ‘honor killings’ against LGBTQ people.”

ADL’s report comes contrary to Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir’s claims during an interview with U.S. nonprofit think tank Council on Foreign  Relations last September.

During the interview, Al-Jubeir defended their thrice-revamping of Saudi’s educational system over the past fifteen years.

“We have introduced new teaching methods. We have new textbooks. We have new curriculums,” he was quoted as saying. “We have reeducated public school teachers and private school teachers.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of ADL, however, said that the U.S. must hold Saudi Arabia to a higher standard.

“The US cannot look the other way while Saudi Arabia features anti-Semitic hate speech year after year in the educational material it gives to its children,” Greenblatt said in the ADL news release.

Meanwhile, David Andrew Weinberg, author of the comprehensive report and ADL’s Washington director for international affairs, noted that the groups of people disparaged in Saudi textbooks during the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks continue to face vilification until this very day.

He said, “If you go back to around the time of 9/11, virtually every group of people that was demonized in Saudi textbooks then is still demonized in the kingdom’s official textbooks today.” JB

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