Well-informed sources confirmed that Saudi Arabia has gradually eliminated “negative” terms pertaining to Jews and Christians from its school textbooks.
The schoolbooks now moderate their language regarding Israel. References to “the Israeli enemy” or “the Zionist enemy” have been replaced with phrases such as “the Israeli occupation” or “the Israeli army of occupation.”
A recent report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli organization focused on monitoring the representation of Israel and Jews in educational materials in Lebanon, Syria, occupied Palestine, Morocco, Iran, and Egypt, conducted a study on the Saudi curricula.
The organization, which has been monitoring Saudi textbooks since the early 2000s, examined changes made to more than 80 textbooks from the 2022-23 Saudi curriculum and more than 180 textbooks from previous curricula.
According to Impact-se, references to Christians and Jews were recently amended in Saudi school textbooks.
This is not the first instance of Saudi school curricula being altered for political purposes. Saudi Arabia’s school curricula fell under Western scrutiny after the 9/11 attacks.
In response to the concerns raised, Saudi Arabia undertook a gradual process of eliminating radical content from its textbooks.
The IMPACT-se’s report on Saudi Arabia’s national curriculum covers 2016-19 textbooks said that it derived standards of peace and tolerance.
The Saudi curriculum, at this stage, should be viewed as a reflection of the efforts being made to transform an exclusively traditionalist Islamic society into one that incorporates more Western economic values and its pre-Islamic heritage, the reprot claimed.
The report of Saudi 2020-21 textbooks by IMPACT-se showed that while many problematic examples have been removed from the curriculum, some still remain.
IMPACT-se 2021 report on the Saudi Curriculum showed further dramatic improvements to Saudi Arabia’s school textbooks
IMPACT-se’s 2022 study said that Saudi textbooks have shown an overall trend of improvement following major reforms since 2020.
IMPACT-se’s latest review of the Saudi national curriculum evaluates textbooks currently taught in the 2022–23 school year, and looks at any changes made compared to previous editions.
The report examined the entire humanities corpus over the last five years, totaling 301 textbooks, including 80 textbooks for the current 2022–23 school year.
The findings revealed “an overall trend of improvement and reform, building on the gradual removal of problematic content in Saudi textbooks since IMPACT-se’s 2020 report.”
“A significant number of examples teaching harmful material on Jews and Christians, violent jihad, gender, and homosexuality have been removed, and negative portrayals of infidels have been moderated,” the Israeli study said.
According to the study, the importance of peace, tolerance, and respect for the other are emphasized, reflecting a move toward moderation, openness, and peaceful development.
