Secondary students sit for an exam in a government school in Riyadh
Credit: FAHAD SHADEED /Reuters
Hardline Islamist and anti-Semitic content has been removed from Saudi Arabia’s curriculum, according to a new report, in what researchers say marks a historic shift in attitudes in the Gulf Kingdom.
A study of the latest Saudi teaching materials found that official state textbooks - distributed to 30,000 schools in Saudi Arabia and abroad - no longer contained calls for non-believers and gay men to be punished by death, nor the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the world.
Also gone were predictions of an apocalyptic final battle in which Muslims would kill all Jews, found the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), an Israel-based group that reviews teaching materials from around the world.
The foreign minister of Germany was criticized on Monday after he expressed disapproval of the sabotaging over the weekend of.
The GEI review made serious mistakes that undermined the credibility of the report. These included analyzing the wrong textbooks and attributing Arabic-language Israeli textbooks to the PA, ignoring antisemitism and ignoring incitement to violence, martyrdom and jihad.
In a turn of events that exposes the EU’s seeming engagement in pretense, Riem Spielhaus, the head of the study at GEI, actually admitted to German daily newspaper
Taggesspiegel in October that the Israeli textbooks were indeed mistakenly included in the review.
By Israel Kasnett, JNS
In a ground-breaking move and in response to the lack of change in the Palestinian Authority school curriculum and the continued insertion of anti-Semitism, hate and incitement to violence and martyrdom in its textbooks, the Norwegian parliament endorsed a cut last week in aid to the P.A.
In 2018, the United Kingdom commissioned a report on Palestinian textbooks from the Germany-based Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI), which then published a report that was found to be riddled with mistakes. The European Union then decided to commission another report, due to be completed this month, again using the GEI.
Observers say EU-funded review of Palestinian textbooks reeks of incompetence and concealment | JNS clevelandjewishnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from clevelandjewishnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.