Middle East Focus: On Salafis and Polygamist Textbooks

Arabia Deserta

On Salafis and Polygamist Textbooks

“As an example of the destruction of the educational system let’s review examples from the questions posed to 12th grade high school students, their last year before the university, in the textbook of ‘Islamic Education’:

‘Question: ‘What is the mind?’.
‘Answer: the mind is a blessing, and it is the difference between humans and animals.

‘Question: what is the function of the mind?
‘Answer: It is to make man understand his creator, understand the truth of the prophets, ascertain that he is going back to his Lord, to understand the Shari’a laws,…….

‘Q: What is air? A: It is a thin body that is invisible.’
'The skin and sir are proof that God exists........................."
This for students heading to colleges and universities.

Salafis in the Gulf region, especially in the home of Wahhabism Saudi Arabia are silent about repeated calls to get rid of some of the hateful references to Jews and Christians in school textbooks. They are tacitly accepting the idea of change, and that is all good. (Or maybe they know there will be no serious change?)

Yet when a bold minister of education in the Gulf recently publicly raised the issue of cleaning up the anti-Shi’a material in the school textbooks, she caused a media uproar and stiff opposition from the Salafis. She has been threatened with a no-confidence vote in the tribal/Islamist controlled assembly.

I suspect the bold minister was floating a trial balloon for her bosses in the government, to see if such a reform move is doable. Or maybe they just wanted to flush out some people, force them to come out and play their hand publicly- for some reason. Ministers in the Gulf and the wider Arab world usually do not make such bold public suggestions on their own, not for long.
But then again: enough women are downright smarter than the men to the extent that the local university has much higher admission requirements for female admission than for males.
For the males; it seems that all they need to get in is be able to breathe, almost. As Woody Allen said “Being there is 80% of life”.

I can see the outrage of some of these opponents (Salafis and tribals) at a smart woman. They remind me of some of my male students when I taught at the university, at the same college where she, the minister in question, was the Dean. In fact I bet some of them were my students, very likely the pendejos I used to catch cheating during exams.
Cheers
mhg
Mon Email