Shiites, not Jews, emerge as a touchstone of Saudi moderation
By James M.
Dorsey
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Saudi Arabia
has removed anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli
references from
Islamic studies schoolbooks, according to an Israeli textbook watchdog.
The
watchdog, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School
Education (IMPACT-se), said the deletions were part of a broader textbook
revision that also eliminated anti-Christian references and toned-down negative
portrayals of infidels and polytheists.
Instead of
explicitly referring to infidels and hypocrites, the revised textbooks asserted
that on the Day of Judgement. Hell, “the home of painful punishment,” would be
reserved for "deniers," rejecting Mohammed's prophecy. Deniers replaced
the term infidel or hypocrite.
In its
203-page report, Impact-se further noted that problematic concepts of jihad and
martyrdom were also deleted, while two newly released 'Critical Thinking’ textbooks
stressed notions of peace and tolerance.
The report
acknowledged an improved approach to gender issues, including removing "a
significant amount of homophobic content.“ Nevertheless, the textbooks
maintained a traditional approach to gender, the report said.
However, the
review suggested that progress was limited in altering attitudes towards Shiite
and Sufi Muslims, considered heretics by Wahhabism, the austere
ultra-conservative strand of Islam that was dominant in the kingdom until the
rise in 2015 of King Salman, and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Some problematic
examples remain…in the approach to perceived heretical practices associated
with the Shi‘a and Sufism,” the report said.
The report
will likely be read against the backdrop of US efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia
to follow the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco in formalising
relations with Israel and the recent Chinese-mediated Saudi-Iranian agreement
to restore ties broken off in 2016.
In contrast
with the three Arab states that unconditionally established diplomatic
relations with Israel in 2020, Saudi Arabia has made formal relations dependent
on Israeli moves to solve its conflict with the Palestinians.
Israeli
media reported that Bahrain had mediated a recent telephone conversation between Mr. Bin Salman, Israeli
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.
Mr. Netanyahu
has made diplomatic relations with the kingdom a priority. He has pressed Mr.
Bin Salman to allow direct flights between Israel and
Jeddah, the Saudi
Red Sea gateway to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, during next
month's annual pilgrimage. Without direct flights, Palestinian pilgrims have to
transit through a third country to reach the kingdom.
Prospects
for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are dim, with Mr. Netanyahu
heading the most religiously ultra-conservative and nationalist government in
Israeli history.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions have
significantly increased since the government took office in December. Earlier this month, they led
to five days of Israeli airstrikes against targets in Gaza and Palestinians
firing rockets into Israel in response.
Complicating
matters, Saudi Arabia wants the United States to offer the
kingdom more binding security guarantees, grant it unrestricted access to US weaponry, and assist in
developing a peaceful nuclear program as part of any agreement to establish
diplomatic relations with Israel.
Long in the
making, the revision of Saudi textbooks constitutes a gesture towards the
United States and Israel.
However it
is, first and foremost, designed to counter the ultra-conservative,
supremacist, and intolerant religious concepts that have shaped the education
system since the kingdom was founded.
The
revisions are also crucial to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to diversify its oil
export-dependent economy, prepare its youth for competition in the labour
market, and project the one-time secretive kingdom that banned women from
driving as an open, forward-looking 21st-century middle power.
Furthermore,
the revisions bolster Saudi Arabia's quest for religious soft power as the
custodian of Islam's holiest cities and a beacon of a socially liberal moderate
Islam.
Getting
Saudi Arabia revamping its textbooks has been a long, drawn-out process. The
United States and others have pushed for changes since the September 11, 2001,
Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. Most of the perpetrators were
Saudi nationals.
Yet, Impact-se, Human Rights Watch, and the Washington-based Institute of Gulf Affairs, a Saudi opposition think tank,
first reported progress in 2021, two decades later.
The more
limited progress in redressing prejudiced attitudes towards Shiite and Sufi
Muslims compared to Jews and Christians suggests the continued influence of
ultra-conservative religious thought in Saudi Arabia despite Mr. Bin Salman’s
social reforms.
It also puts
into perspective the kingdom's reluctance to anchor the reforms in religious as
well as civil law, an approach propagated by Nahdlatul
Ulama, the world’s
Indonesia-based largest and most moderate civil society movement.
On the plus
side, Saudi Arabia’s revised textbooks no longer describe visitors to sacred
figures’ tombs, a widespread Shiite practice, as “evil” and “cursed” by the
Prophet Mohammed.
Nevertheless,
textbooks still condemn such visits as innovations banned by Wahhabism. For
example, one revised textbook implicitly described tomb visits to supplicate
the deceased rather than God as a polytheistic practice to be punished in Hell.
“Students
learn that polytheism is dangerous, as it is the ‘most heinous’ of sins.
However, while the 2021 edition also taught that those who practice it will be
punished with eternity in Hell, this was removed in 2022,” the report said.
At times,
the Impact-se report conflated thinking among some Arab and Sunni Muslims with Islam
in general, particularly regarding Shiite-majority Iran.
In one
instance, the report noted that in the textbooks, "Islamic historical
animus toward Persia is maintained through claims that the assassination of the
second caliph was a Persian conspiracy.”
The animus
is maintained by some Sunni Muslims rather than Muslims as such. It relates to
the killing by an enslaved Persian of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second of the
first four 7th-century caliphs to succeed Prophet Mohamed.
On an
optimistic note, the report concluded, "Saudi efforts to reform the
curriculum reveal a reasonably consistent step-by-step approach…and one...hopes
that the approach will be applied to the handful of problematic content
remaining in some textbooks.”
The report
did not say that tackling problematic attitudes towards Shiites and Sufis would
constitute one indication of how far Saudi rulers are willing to venture in
challenging ultra-conservative Muslim precepts.
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Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning
journalist and scholar, 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.
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