Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East 9781626372726

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TEACHING ISLAM

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TEACHING ISLAM Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East edited by

Eleanor Abdella Doumato Gregory Starrett

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

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Published in the United States of America in 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Teaching Islam : textbooks and religion in the Middle East / edited by Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Gregory Starrett. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-450-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58826-450-5 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Islam—Study and teaching—Middle East. 2. Islamic religious education—Middle East. 3. Islamic education—Middle East. 4. Islam and politics—Middle East. 5. Islam and state—Middle East. 6. Middle East—Politics and government. 7. Islamic ethics. I. Doumato, Eleanor Abdella. II. Starrett, Gregory, 1961– BP43.I48T43 2006 297.7'70956—dc22 2006012601 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

1 Textbook Islam, Nation Building, and the Question of Violence Gregory Starrett and Eleanor Abdella Doumato

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2 Egypt: Promoting Tolerance, Defending Against Islamism James A. Toronto and Muhammad S. Eissa

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3 Iran: A Shi‘ite Curriculum to Serve the Islamic State Golnar Mehran

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4 Jordan: Prescription for Obedience and Conformity Betty Anderson

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5 Kuwait: Striving to Align Islam with Western Values Taghreed Alqudsi-ghabra

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6 Oman: Cultivating Good Citizens and Religious Virtue Mandana E. Limbert 7 The Palestinian National Authority: The Politics of Writing and Interpreting Curricula 7.1 Genesis of a New Curriculum Nathan Brown 7.2 A Conflict of Historical Narratives Seif Da‘Na 8 Saudi Arabia: From “Wahhabi” Roots to Contemporary Revisionism Eleanor Abdella Doumato

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9 Syria: Secularism, Arabism, and Sunni Orthodoxy Joshua Landis

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10 Turkey: Sanctifying a Secular State Ozlem Altan

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11 Textbook Meanings and the Power of Interpretation Gregory Starrett

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12 Conclusion: Tailor-Made Islam Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Gregory Starrett

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Bibliography The Contributors Index About the Book

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People who mix with Gentiles can’t be called the Saved. . . . You rub shoulders with them every day, but do remember that in mind and spirit you and they live in two very different worlds. . . . Rearrange your schedule to spend more time following your Redeemer. . . . That is to say, don’t continue to commingle with the Gentile Pagans when it comes to the do’s and don’ts of the moral life. . . . And for God’s sake, don’t do anything else they do either! —St. Augustine of Hippo, fourth century What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? . . . I shall give you my sincere advice: First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming —Martin Luther, 1543 of his Son and of his Christians. If you do but wear a surplice for peace sake, why not as well admit the sign of the cross in baptism, or bow to an altar, and in a little time you will find that the same reason is as strong for bowing to an image, to a crucifix, and why not as well say Mass too, for the peace of the church, and then at last swallow down everything, submit to the Pope, worship the beast, and so be damned to Hell. . . . Oh there is no end here, when a man is going down the hill in a way of carnal —Samuel Mather, 1670 compliance and superstition, he will never cease. Isn’t one religion as good as another? The plain answer to this question is an emphatic, No. This saying for the most part is the work of those who in reality are indifferent to all religion, and make this an excuse for their indifference. —Fr. James V. Linden, 1947 The Gentiles are fighting for their mere survival as Gentiles, as the ritually unclean. Iniquity is fighting its battle for survival. It knows that in the wars of God there will not be a place for Satan, for the spirit of defilement, or for the remains of Western culture, the proponents of which are, as it were, secular —Rabbi Yehuda Amital, 1973 Jews. Almost every day I get at least one letter from someone who has discovered the difficulty of being married to someone who does not share their faith in Christ. The Bible specifically warns against this kind of relationship: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14) —Billy Graham, 1999

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1 Textbook Islam, Nation Building, and the Question of Violence Gregory Starrett and Eleanor Abdella Doumato

The world created in . . . schoolbooks is essentially a world of fantasy—a fantasy made up by adults as a guide for their children, but inhabited by no one outside the pages of schoolbooks. It is an ideal world, peopled by ideal villains as well as ideal heroes. . . . Wishfully, adults in any age would like to proffer to their children a neatly patterned model of life, however mythical, which the child can accept and, following it, live happily ever after. But inevitably the growing child soon sees that life is not so simple. —Ruth Miller Elson (1964: 337)

Hearts and Minds In April 2002 a committee of journalists led by James Hogue, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, citing him “for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat” that September 11, 2001, burned into the American consciousness. Several of Friedman’s columns from that dark autumn that so impressed the Pulitzer judges took an unusual direction for reflections on sudden national trauma. They were about schools. Recalling a recent parent-teacher night at his daughter’s middle school a fortnight after the attacks, Friedman observed, These terrorists so misread America. They think our strength lies only in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon . . . and if they can just knock them down we’ll start to fold: as if we, like them, have only one truth, one power center. Actually, our strength lies in . . . thousands of such schools across the land. That is where you’ll find the spirit that built the twin towers and can build them all over again anytime we please. (October 2, 2001)

Contrasting the “spiritless, monolithic societies” terrorists want to build with the “Noah’s ark of black, Hispanic, Asian and white kids [leading] 1

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everyone in ‘God Bless America’” that night, Friedman wrote that American wealth and power “flow directly from a deep spiritual source—a spirit of respect for the individual, a spirit of tolerance for differences of faith or politics, a respect for freedom of thought as the necessary foundation for all creativity and a spirit of unity that encompasses all kinds of differences.” Developing this line of thought during the following month as the United States invaded Afghanistan, Friedman blamed Taliban barbarity on the stunted educational programs of Afghan and Pakistani madrasas—religious schools—which taught an eighteenth-century curriculum of rote scripture memorization without exercises in critical thinking or instruction in science, history, or literature. “The real war for peace in this region,” he warned, “is in the schools. . . . When we return [after dealing with Osama bin Laden], and we must, we have to be armed with modern books and schools—not tanks. Only then might we develop a new soil—a new generation . . . hospitable to our policies” (November 13, 2001). And as the year wound to a close, he extended the argument to Saudi Arabia, the home of the majority of the September 11 hijackers, taking on the persona of President George W. Bush in an “Open Letter” to the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs: The American people . . . have come to fear that your schools, and the thousands of Islamic schools your government and charities are financing around the world, are teaching that non-Muslims are inferior to Muslims and must be converted or confronted. . . . In a wired world . . . we need you to interpret Islam in ways that sanctify religious tolerance and the peaceful spread of faith . . . [because] in the age of globalization, how we each educate our kids is a strategic issue. . . . On Sept. 11 we learned that another country’s faulty education . . . can destroy. (December 12, 2001)

Friedman’s faith that ideas have the fundamental motive power to shape civilizations constituted the clarity of vision that struck such a deep chord with the Pulitzer judges. This idealism is a mental habit shaped, in turn, by a number of intersecting social and cultural institutions, including the very tradition of school-based education. Most of us, from secretaries to secretaries of state—and most especially teachers, scholars, writers, journalists, and other intellectuals—take for granted the deeply Protestant notion that the contents of our hearts and minds are better indicators of our state of grace than the imperfections of our actions, that the knowledge of truth will make us free, and that the power of positive thinking is transformative. We imagine that of all public social institutions, the school is the arena par excellence in which the unformed potentials of our children are given shape as they are molded into members of our nation, bearers of our culture and tradition, and the laborers who will build our future. We imagine

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further that the important conflicts between one nation and another, the lasting ones that transcend ephemeral trade disputes and territorial squabbles, are spiritual conflicts arising from differences that ultimately have to do with different kinds and levels of education (Lutz and Collins 1993: 233). “This is a battle of ideas and a battle for minds,” stated then–assistant secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz in 2002. Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser and now secretary of state, concurred in 2003: “To win the war on terror, we must win a war of ideas” (Kaplan 2005). For when ideas go wrong, the result is disaster not merely for political leaders or victims of misguided violence, but for societies who will find themselves marginalized from the flow of world history. On this issue, as on so many others, foreign policy emerges from a genuine humanitarian concern resting atop a bare and sometimes brutal instrumentalism. As former secretary of state Colin Powell declared in a January 2004 radio interview, “[Middle Eastern countries have got to teach their students] Science and Math and all the other things that are necessary for societies to be successful in the 21st century. And if they’re just going to . . . put [their young people] in these madrasas . . . that do nothing but indoctrinate them in the worst aspects of a religion, then they are . . . leaving themselves back as well as teaching hatred that will not help us bring peace to the region, and will not help their societies.” The concern that faulty education is connected to violent extremism and terrorism predated September 11. Particularly with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two intifadas and the waves of suicide bombings since the early 1990s heightened fears both that youth culture could become a home for violent imagery and action and that adults might purposely be manipulating the religious sensibilities of children and youth to make them into human bombs. Photographs of toddlers in simulated dynamite belts, descriptions of “terror tot” summer camps, and highly selective, sometimes misrepresented, excerpts from various official and unofficial texts in translation (provided by organizations such as the Middle East Media Research Institute [MEMRI] or the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace [CMIP]) served to make a “Palestinian culture of death” a staple of media coverage and political mobilization in both the United States and Israel.1 Recently, New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton told a packed meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that making progress toward peace and security . . . requires the end of the barrage of hate and incitement that is still officially sanctioned by the Palestinian Authority. . . . We must . . . be vigilant about monitoring hate and incitement and anti-Semitism, not only by the Palestinian Authority but throughout the Arab world. Saudi textbooks characterize Jews as wicked. . . . [F]ive years ago, I stood . . . to denounce this incitement, this violence, this anti-Semitism in Palestinian textbooks. . . . [W]e must shine

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Teaching Islam a bright spotlight on these messages of hatred and these incitements for martyrdom in these textbooks and on the media that take young minds and twist and pervert them and create a new generation of terrorists and insurgents. . . . [W]hen it comes to children, whoever those children are, shielding them from hate and violence should be the number one priority of their families and their governments and the entire global community to prevent this hate from festering. Using children as pawns in a political process is tantamount to child abuse, and we must say it has to end now! And, of course, that infection is contagious, and it can spread beyond the Palestinian territories. It can spread into other parts of the Arab world, and it can impact what goes on there. (May 24, 2005)

By linking hatred, incitement, and murder to schoolbooks—rather than, say, to the daily experiences of children and adults living under foreign military occupation or dreadful repressive monarchies or to family background, social and economic structure, the public sphere more generally, or the self-interest of local political leaders—an explicit set of claims is being made about the content of schoolbooks and curricula. But even more important, another and almost entirely implicit set of claims is being made about their psychological, sociological, and political effects and about the steps necessary to curb violence. These claims are, broadly speaking, the following: (1) the textbooks under consideration preach exclusion; (2) the textbooks under consideration preach violence against excluded populations; (3) representations of exclusivity and/or violence are intended by the books’ producers to provoke these behaviors in their users; (4) representations of exclusivity and/or violence actually provoke these behaviors in their users; and (5) changing the contents of these books is a significant, practical, and effective means of overcoming exclusive attitudes and thereby controlling violence. This book is, in part, a response to current concerns that the content and character of official Middle Eastern educational programs are a danger both to local children and to international peace and security. Each chapter deals with the issue of the actual content of government-produced religious studies textbooks, as well as the content of history and civics textbooks that incorporate religious themes. Thus this book specifically addresses the first two claims listed above.2 As for the three claims that follow, many of the chapters also explore the genesis of the textbooks in individual countries and consider the relationship between schoolbook lessons and classroom environment in determining the impact of the lessons on students’ behaviors and ideals. This book is the product of a conference convened in November 2003 by Eleanor Doumato, “Constructs of Inclusion and Exclusion: Religion and Identity-Formation in Middle Eastern School Curricula,” at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. As part of a year-long research project supported by the Watson Institute, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Institute for International Education, con-

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ference participants were given the mandate to explore how religion is represented in textbooks used in state schools in the region, focusing especially on the way categories of inclusion and exclusion are configured through religious identity. Participants in the project examined curricula in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Iran. Each researcher was asked to examine textbooks that were in use for the school years 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 and to address the same set of issues for the sake of comparability. Five general conclusions emerged from this collaboration. First, nowhere in the textbooks explored in this study, with the exception of an entry in the Syrian curriculum and parts of the Saudi curriculum, have we found what could be construed as incitement to violence in the name of religion, or for any other reason. Wherever jihad as military struggle is mentioned, it is always in the context of defense, a concept championed by ruling and religious establishments throughout the region in response to contemporary jihadis, who, inspired by Sayyid Qutb, would argue that “there is no such thing as a defensive, limited war in Islam, only an offensive, total war” (Gerges 2005: 4). Even the Iranian curriculum, highly militarized during its decade of war with Iraq and its conflict with the United States, phrases violence as a response to constant provocation and oppression by neocolonialist powers rather than as a value to be held in the absence of such outside aggression. Second, textbook constructions of what it means to be Muslim vary, in some cases dramatically, from country to country. Each set of schoolbooks invents an original generic Islam that avoids recognition of sectarian differences and is designed to foster a sense of nationalism, promote the legitimacy of the regime in power, or, in some places, provide a counterweight to an immoderate Islamism being disseminated through public discourse. That is the case even for countries like Syria and Turkey that harness religion alongside official ideologies of secularism. Third, a master narrative permeates all the religious studies textbooks, portraying Islam and Muslims as eternal victims facing real and potential enemies. Fourth, most religion curricula build on traditional Islamic values, such as obedience and compassion, to advocate for religious and ethnic tolerance. In addition, both religious studies and civics textbooks promote values in the name of Islam designed to foster economic development and civic harmony, such as hard work, study, punctuality, teamwork, and cleaning up after oneself. Fifth, regional comparison shows that despite Friedman’s admonitions about “the thousands of Islamic schools [Saudi Arabia’s] government and charities are financing around the world,” Saudi Arabia’s brand of Islam stands alone, with virtually no echo—in the national curricula, at least—of other Middle Eastern countries. Each curriculum’s representation of Islam is unique. Each is closely tied to the policy interests

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of individual states, including accommodating internal constituencies, and is often distinct from expressions of Islam in public discourse. Elevated Expectations: US Policy and Middle Eastern Education In producing this book, we intend to encourage both scholars and policymakers to think about how local understandings and disagreements about identity, loyalty, duty, and truth might shape and be shaped by schooling and also about the inescapable limitations of schools either as institutions for creating identities and solving social problems or as simple explanations for why things go wrong. The concerns Senator Clinton expressed above are not restricted to Pulitzer Prize winners or to politicians courting important constituencies. They are taken seriously by congressional staff, career foreign service officers, and intelligence analysts in the US government and elsewhere who are actively exploring the presumed link between the schools and the current international terrorist threat or who indicate that “Palestinian curriculum reform is an important element in the broader US policy of promoting Middle East democracy and governance reforms” (Pina 2005). Thus it is worth noting that along with its many positive contributions to international educational development, the United States has some record of involvement, both currently and historically, in the explicit politicization of school curricula in the Muslim world. During the 1980s, for example, the US Agency for International Development financed the development of textbooks combining Islamic content with violently xenophobic military themes and pictures for distribution to schools in Afghanistan and refugee areas of Pakistan. These textbooks were intended to militarize youth and reinforce ideological opposition to the Soviet invasion in Islamic terms. Endlessly recirculated and then partially censored by the removal of human faces from the pictures, the books later formed the core of the Taliban school curriculum (Stephens and Ottaway 2002; International Crisis Group 2002). Currently, a broad interagency effort approved by President Bush, called “Muslim World Outreach,” is using combinations of public diplomacy and covert operations to “neutralize” anti-American Muslim preachers and recruiters, to build Islamic schools and fund religious broadcasts, to renovate mosques and preserve historic Muslim texts, and otherwise to strengthen what it perceives as “moderate” Islamic alternatives in the Middle East and Asia. That includes encouraging the spread of Sufism, which is perceived as being opposed to the puritanism of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi version of Islam (Kaplan 2005; Mahmood 2006). Apparently, if fundamentalism is the heroin of the Muslim street, Sufism is to be its methadone, a halfway measure to be used in weaning a patient off the

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addiction. Both cases underscore the fact that the nature of Muslim identity anywhere in the world is conditioned by broader political projects, not just on the part of the Palestinian Authority or the Saudi royal family or the Iranian Council of Guardians, but on the part of non-Muslim governments as well, including those of the United States, various European nations, Russia, Israel, India, and China, each of which has particular ways of defining citizenship, history, and national interest and identity. Finding Comparative Contexts for Religion Curricula in Public Schools Examining Middle Eastern countries’ official religion curricula requires careful attention to comparative context and to the conceptual framework in which we place them and according to which we evaluate their appropriateness. Interpretations of these texts—as becomes clear from the subsequent chapters—depends on which framework we choose. There are two sorts of comparisons we might make: first, to other religion curricula with which we are familiar and, second, to other state-sponsored curricula with which we are familiar. In the United States the legal and conceptual separation of these domains, not to mention significant historical differences, can present readers with difficulty when evaluating the content and approach of Middle Eastern curricula. Truth claims and community boundaries that one might consider legitimate when promulgated by individuals or private groups might be perceived as illegitimate when articulated by the state. The textbooks examined here are explicitly and by necessity about drawing firm confessional boundaries. Many religious traditions, including the JudeoChristian, claim exclusive access to truth. Religious education is about building understandings of that truth and contrasting it with the ever-threatening error that lies without (see the inspiring quotes at the beginning of this chapter). Texts that take such exclusive truths seriously should ideally be compared with other texts that take this approach: scriptures, catechisms, tracts, apologias, motivational texts, Bible study guides, examinations of prophecy, and other materials that might, in the American context, be used in Sunday schools and found in the Christian religious bookstores that append large churches and punctuate suburban shopping malls, or in the European context, be used in official state-sponsored programs of religious instruction.3 The second comparative context is that of state-sponsored curricula that discuss the extent and meaning of human diversity and solidarity inside and outside the polity. The texts examined in this book should not be compared uncritically with the content of, for example, contemporary American civics or history texts, which have undergone an extensive, decades-long process of transformation from catalogs of ethnic stereotypes and justifications for

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racism to works that stress the value of tolerance and inclusiveness (Elson 1964; Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1999). Yet because these Middle Eastern curricula are state-sponsored, readers interested primarily in policy issues might naturally use American public school curricula as the comparative framework for evaluating them. To do so can be misleading. To return to Thomas Friedman’s example of the distinctly American ethnic rainbow of his daughter’s school, we must recall that this scene was rare and would have been unimaginable in many places prior to the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down legal racial segregation in American schools. Nineteen fifty-four was also the year Saudi Arabia established a Ministry of Education, building on the post–World War II establishment of its first state-funded elementary schools (for boys only; there were no state-funded schools for girls prior to 1960). Both countries have come far in the subsequent half-century, but it is disingenuous to congratulate ourselves too much, given the very different histories of the two countries and their surrounding regions. When Friedman wrote the column about his daughter’s school, not even a decade had passed since one of the most vicious episodes of the so-called culture wars in the United States, which centered precisely on exclusion and inclusiveness in a years-long effort at creating voluntary national standards for history instruction in American schools. A brief examination of that case helps clarify many of the issues raised in the following chapters. Initiated under President George H. W. Bush in 1989 and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), headed by Lynne Cheney, the National Council for History Standards began releasing drafts of its model curriculum in 1994. Seeking to insert elements of social history and the diversity of American gender and ethnic experience into the standard political narrative focused on the great deeds of Anglo-American leaders, the proposed standards were greeted warmly by classroom teachers but were attacked immediately and vociferously by right-wing pundits, including Cheney herself, by that time no longer at the NEH and taking her cues from the 1994 Republican victories in Congress. Claiming that the new standards were a “politically correct” but factually distorted attack on American achievements by elitist left-wing professors, critics sought to have them scuttled on the grounds that “The so-called multi-cultural agendas in history threaten to balkanize American society. They will serve to drive people apart and will diminish the critical importance of teaching about our common American heritage” (quoted in Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1999: 161). Similar debates have overtaken curricular projects from South Africa and Mexico to Japan and Great Britain, where the issues concerned the histories (and perforce the current significance) of ethnic interactions, economic policy, war, and culture (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1999). In each case,

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broad issues regarding the balance between factual accuracy and the inculcation of patriotic pride have meant that schoolbooks in religion or history or civics—or even biology—become the center of debates among teachers, parents, school administrators, scholars, sponsoring political institutions, and members of the media and the public. Any discussion at all about what should be included in a curriculum is inherently a moral and thus a political discussion, subject to the possibilities, restrictions, and discursive terms formed by complicated intersections of group interests and resources. Such debates often center on the object of belonging, the specific collective(s) into which the student is being drawn or against which his or her identity is being contrasted. They are not always obvious. Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, who were involved in drafting the American history standards, point out, for example, that the American controversy over the importance of teaching the Western tradition had no parallel in the [Thatcher-era] British debate. . . . [T]he very concept of Western civilization as a school subject was invented in the United States in the early twentieth century and served to link the experience of a large but still young nation to the much weightier civilization of Europe, especially of England. Ironically, the concept is alien to British history education. . . . British traditionalists . . . wished to accentuate the historical and cultural differences between the citizens of Britannia and everyone else in the world, not only Sri Lankans and Senegalese but French, Italians, Americans, and even Irish. (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1999: 147)

Whether the books one reads in school encourage loyalty to a civilization, a people, an idea, a country, a ruler, or a God—or to some combination of the above—makes a difference in how social, political, and cultural boundaries are drawn, perceived, and performed. But understandings of boundaries and the differences they construct are ambiguous. To take the example of minority groups, notions of “exclusion” and “presence” in a text are by no means straightforward. To the argument that exclusion of Asian populations from American history texts or Kurds from Turkish texts is tantamount to the denigration or even denial of their history, a text supporter might reply that exclusion from a construct of national origin or progress creates a unified narrative that encourages assimilation to a cultural ideal theoretically open to anyone. If, on the contrary, particular minority groups—for example, gays or women, Alevi Muslims or Russian Jews—are included in such a history, are they to be included as heroes of a proud heritage, as victims of majority discrimination, as fools, as foes, or as complex human beings who are neither heroes nor villains? The choices textbook authors and their sponsors make even in including minority groups might arguably harden and institutionalize normally vague, subtle, or changing ethnic and confessional boundaries, to play on positive or negative stereo-

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types, to foster a sense of victimization, or to encourage individualism or nihilism by presenting beliefs as simply alternatives in an unregulated marketplace of ideas. Furthermore, different sorts of boundaries and exclusions—gender, ethnicity, religion, regional or national origin, language, kinship networks, class—cross-cut each other in complicated and unstable ways, meaning that “identities” salient in one place or at one point in history or the individual life cycle might change. Acquiring the Secret Wisdom of the West: Schools as Political Panacea Nationalist educational projects were not initially the reason for the introduction of modern European-style schools to the Middle East during the early nineteenth century, although over time that became one of their many functions. Historically, institutions of formal cultural reproduction in the Muslim world have taken a number of forms. Local home- or mosque-based devotional circles in which children learned from a master to recite correctly the Quran, the speech of God, could be found in cities, towns, and many villages, although as elsewhere in the world, the opportunity to spend time on nonsubsistence activities like study was and still is highly stratified in terms of gender, social class, and residence. Some boys might continue to more advanced study at madrasas, largely urban institutions where the sciences of scriptural interpretation were taught through the study of scholarly commentaries, the traditions of the Prophet and his companions, and other materials.4 In some times and places madrasas were also centers for the study and development of thought in mathematics, philosophy, law, medicine, astronomy, history, and other subjects. Other social institutions providing formal instruction included private tutoring, Sufi discipleship, and statesponsored programs for training soldiers and administrative officers (for an entree into the recent literature on Islamic education in the Middle East and Central Asia, see, for example, Berkey 1992; Chamberlain 1994; Eickelman 1985, 1992; Fortna 2002; Kaplan 2006; Khalid 1998; Messick 1993; Mitchell 1988; Mottahedeh 2000; Ringer 2001; Starrett 1998; Zaman 2002). By the end of the eighteenth century, industrialization and domestic political developments had begun to reinforce western European expansion into northern Africa and southwestern and central Asia, altering the geopolitical context in which the leaders of the Ottoman Empire and the new Qajar dynasty in Iran operated. Threatened by an expanding Russia and by internal nationalist and tribal movements, Qajar and Ottoman leaders developed a number of initiatives to strengthen their positions at home and abroad. Their first concern was technology transfer. Keenly aware of the military successes of Prussia, France, and England, Qajar and Ottoman leaders, as well as regional powers like Muhammad Ali’s Egypt, began

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importing European experts in surveying, cartography, mining, engineering, mathematics, ballistics, chemistry, medicine, and military organization to train officers and troops in new military tactics and to begin developing domestic bases of expertise in military-related industries (Lewis 1968; Ringer 2001). In the first half of the nineteenth century, first Iran and then Egypt and the Ottomans began dispatching small student missions to Paris, London, and Moscow to study not only contemporary sciences but also European languages, translation, and crafts like printing. By the second half of the century, some students also studied European law, literature, and political science. Students taught at home by foreign experts or those returning from abroad were then used as teachers in the first indigenous schools not focused primarily on religious instruction. The complex history of modern-style schools alternately marginalized and depended on traditional religious elites, who formed the majority of the literate populace and thus provided children with basic literacy skills. Although sometimes opposing educational missions and new schools on the grounds that they might result in the import of culturally dangerous foreign ideas, many of the international religious luminaries of the late nineteenth century had themselves studied abroad (Hourani 1983). Both in Iran and in the Ottoman Empire, leaders spoke optimistically of acquiring the “secret wisdom” transmitted through education that accounted for European military, economic, and political success (Fortna 2002: 12, 82; Ringer 2001: 10). “In the late Ottoman context,” Benjamin Fortna observes, “the notion of education was fresh and quasi-magical, implying the ability to right all of society’s wrongs” (2002: 85). In Iran, courtier Mirza Mostafa Afshar imagined as early as 1829 a system of instruction in which the students would learn both Iranian sciences from Iranian teachers as well as Western sciences from Western instructors. . . . In this way, whether from amongst the military or the men of the pen, accomplished and capable servants will be obtained for the government who will be informed of the world situation and the complicated ways of the world. The military will be ordered and trained like the military of the rest of the governments, affairs of the kingdom would be organized like the rest of the kingdoms. From this best management, the splendor and improvement of the kingdom would increase daily. (quoted in Ringer 2001: 61)

Such grand early plans as often as not failed or foundered for political and financial reasons, but over the course of the century faith in the potential of systematic schooling throughout the imperial territories was maintained. Substantial government reorganizations in the Ottoman Empire in mid-century set the stage for energetic programs of school building in the last quarter of the 1800s, with the establishment of nearly 10,000 during the 1876–1909 reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (Fortna 2002: 98–99). By that

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time the focus of modern schooling had broadened from concern with military affairs and technology to issues of political stability and the loyalty of imperial subjects. Of particular concern were foreign and missionary schools supported by religious orders or by foreign governments seeking to increase their influence in the Middle East, as well as schools established by neighboring states like Greece and catering to local Muslims (Fortna 2002: 53–55, 77). Likewise, minority communities—Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews—established schools of their own that earned both admiration and fear from Ottoman civil servants. Admired for their quality, which the state sought to emulate, they were feared because of the potential for foreign influence and the concern that “Christian subjects will continue to acquire sciences and education while the Muslims remain entirely in the ‘darkness of ignorance’” (Fortna 2002: 56). In Iraq the Ottomans looked to state-sponsored schools to counter Shi‘ite propaganda from Iran. “If the state establishes a teacher-training school in Baghdad right away,” wrote General Sulayman Pasha in 1878, and later builds [schools] in every town, village, and tax farming district, and . . . in the cities of Mosul, Kerkuk, Baghdad, and Basra, then the people educated there, being brought under the aegis of proper upbringing and education, will be in a position to benefit the state, and it will be able to be said of them that “we have people who can distinguish between good and evil.” If not, they will be of no possible benefit to the state. On the one hand, they will remain shrouded by the nightmare of ignorance and, on the other, they will continue to be corrupted by the false principles of their [local and Shi’ite] spiritual leaders. . . . The expansion of education will confirm their affinity to religion, fatherland, and patriotism, and render sincere the bonds to our highness the Caliph of the Muslims. But if ignorance continues, it will intensify and aggravate the splitting apart and disintegration [of these bonds]. (quoted in Fortna 2002: 65–66)

It should be noted that these educational goals were moral, political, and religious but not, at that point, nationalist. The confidence of states that proper forms of schooling can reinforce both vertical and horizontal loyalties irrespective of other features of social, economic, or political organization has remained unchanged over more than a century. Western European colonial powers built irregularly on the educational foundations established by the Ottomans and Egyptians. In much of the region—Yemen, for instance—Ottoman school-building policy had remained that—mere policy—outside the largest cities, and neither colonial nor indigenous modern schools penetrated the countryside until the late 1960s. In many of the Gulf states as well, such late starts were common. In Egypt, the British tried to systematize village quranic schools as the basis for a national system of elementary literacy instruction, although they resisted expanding higher education beyond the needs of staffing the national

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administration, for fear of creating a discontented educated class that would agitate against European rule, using its own principles of democracy against it. Despite restrictive policies, nationalist movements spread through the region on the backs of modern schooling, newspapers, and the interlocking traumas of the world wars, epidemics, and depressions that punctuated the colonial period. In the process, Islamic education had changed. By the time independent and nationalist governments began taking charge, traditional practices of Islamic instruction, though still present in many countries as a parallel system of training, had been eclipsed in popularity and scope by modern-style school systems. In many of these systems Islam was taught as a bounded and defined classroom subject rather than a life-defining tradition of learning, now categorized along with chemistry, math, and French as an area of knowledge that could be unproblematically communicated in a textbook and examined at the end of the term (Eickelman 1985, 1992; Fortna 2002). By the early twentieth century, this developing textbook Islam had been put to use to supplement and sanction lessons in family life, civics, hygiene, and etiquette as part of a civilizing mission to spread middle-class values among the general population (Khalid 1998; Pollard 2005). Sa’d Zaghlul, Egyptian minister of education and future nationalist leader, commented in 1908 that with elementary education, “the Government has found itself the means of developing general morality amongst the popular masses, in order to diminish the number of noxious and blameworthy acts due to the ignorance of the true principles and . . . exact rules of the religion” (quoted in Starrett 1998: 67). With independence, nationalist values and interpretations of history joined these lessons. Textbooks: Home of “Official Wish-Images” The books examined in the following chapters have all been written about, and in a sense for, the interests of state governments, rather than about or for the interests of their student readers. The social environments of their readers and the complications of the available historical record are of less interest to textbook producers than state policy objectives, tempered by demands of domestic interest groups, and sometimes by interference from international agencies. Textbook producers aim primarily to articulate nations by crafting master narratives into which the smaller narratives of family and personal life can be placed. These aims are practical rather than intellectual. They are not meant to inform or to stimulate thought but to act as benchmarks against which alternative realities may be found wanting, what Mandana E. Limbert calls “official wish-images” in Chapter 6. The ascendancy of state interests in curricula and the sorts of complications that underlie their form and formation are highlighted in two subchap-

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ters in Chapter 7 on curricula for Palestinian students: Nathan Brown’s subchapter on the revised curriculum designed by the Palestinian Authority, and Seif Da‘Na’s subchapter that deals with both the Jordanian high school religion texts adopted under the Palestinian Authority (vetted by Israeli military occupation censors), and with interpretative issues associated with representations of history in the revised curriculum. Both subchapters show how the planning processes of curriculum experts are only a part of the genesis of finished curricular products, which are heavily shaped by political institutions, by disagreements about contentious issues that nevertheless must be boiled down into comprehensible and noncontroversial form, and by the perceived difficulty in treating the subject of “religion” in innovative ways. Taken together, these subchapters also illustrate how civics and history texts have the capacity to make distinctly different communications about traditions, boundaries, and behaviors than do religious studies texts (see Chapter 8 of this book). Like the other chapters in this volume, these subchapters illustrate how religious themes are readily employed in nonreligious subject texts to validate and lend authority to official narratives, including narratives of national identity. This use of religious themes regionally is not confined to Muslim-majority countries, as shown in a forthcoming article by Riad Nasser. In Nasser’s essay we see the process of producing an Israeli curriculum for Arab students geared toward constructing an exclusively Jewish nationalism, one that neither makes an effort to inform non-Jewish students about their own pasts, nor attempts to make them into Jews.5 The texts discussed by Da‘Na were produced in part as a response to the Israeli narrative, confirming Palestinian existence while asserting Palestinian affiliation with Islam and the Arab regions. Brown shows that despite attempts to formulate a definition of Palestinian identity that avoids religious affiliation, the new Palestinian curriculum ended up foregrounding the Islamic dimension of Palestinian identity. Other chapters in this book that touch on the textbook treatment of minority confessional populations can be read with these issues of silence and historical selectivity in mind. How might minority students read these texts? What is being articulated about the possibility or desirability of being members of the majority population? What is the purpose of constructing such synoptic and exclusivist master narratives and providing them specifically to populations they do not describe? Understanding Contradictions: “Wish-Images” Versus Reality Such official wish-images—even ones that are closer to day-to-day experience than the ones Nasser describes—are subject to critical readings. In Chapter 9, Joshua Landis shows that in Syria, distrust and cynicism pervade

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views of both the religion curriculum and the traditional Ba’thist ideology of the state: “The textbooks are medieval and political,” said one Syrian, “but at the end of the day everyone knows in these countries that you don’t pay attention to such classes” (see also Wedeen 1999). Even the extent to which textbook writers themselves “believe” any of their content is open to question. The discussion of the cooperative and consultative nature of the ideal Islamic government in Syrian schoolbooks, for example, can be read either as particularly cynical propaganda or as a stunning critique of the repressive nature of the Syrian state. Many chapters in this book point to the wide gaps between the textual narratives and the experiences of the texts’ readers. “The moral posturing embedded in Saudi Arabia’s political culture has grown ever more distant from the world into which the country has emerged,” Doumato states in Chapter 8. Betty Anderson elaborates in Chapter 4, saying that in Jordan the Hashemite regime appears to be creating too great a disjunction between image and reality. Socioeconomic changes have impinged upon most students’ lives, yet these texts ignore or denigrate the bulk of them. The state pushes normalization with Israel but encourages hatred toward Jews in its schools. It supports US economic and political policies in the region but attacks Western cultural intrusions. It conducts sweeping arrests of Islamists in the US war on terror while extolling their basic beliefs in government schools.

James. A. Toronto and Muhammad S. Eissa, writing about Egypt in Chapter 2, and Taghreed Alqudsi-ghabra, writing about Kuwait in Chapter 5, discuss similar contradictions, arguing that the lack of coherence in contemporary curricula, both between wish-image and reality and between different units within the curriculum itself, might breed confusion among students and diminish the rhetorical force of the texts’ arguments. But at the same time the chapters in this book criticize an overall rigidity of viewpoint, the denial of difference, alternatives, and multiple voices. Like many of the other authors, Anderson notes that for any given point of argument in the Jordanian books, a single proof text (a scriptural text that validates an argument) is provided, without students gaining the sense that other quranic verses or prophetic traditions might support alternate interpretations. This critique may rest too heavily on a reading of the texts themselves. When examined within their living context in classrooms, both the rigidity and the contradictions in texts can provide opportunities for discussion between students, as Fida Adely (2004) witnessed in rural Jordan. There, high school girls use school—for some of them, the only opportunity they have to get out of the house and socialize with nonrelatives—as an opportunity to discuss and to question out loud issues like gender segregation, occupational discrimination, and other topics. They are well aware, as ado-

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lescents are everywhere, of the contradictions that shape their lives. In Chapters 5, 6, and 10, by Alqudsi-ghabra, Limbert, and Ozlem Altan, respectively, the teacher-student relationship emerges as another complicating factor, sometimes undermining and sometimes reinforcing the claims being made in the texts themselves. Altan, for example, mentions the lack of regard Turkish students hold for their religion teachers’ competence, a disregard compounded by perceptions of class difference, which has the effect of lending credibility to school texts that have been critiqued by their teachers. In Oman, Egypt, and even Saudi Arabia, officials worry that school administrations and teaching staffs are being infiltrated by Islamists, so that while education ministries can control the content of textbooks, they can’t guarantee how that content will be presented to students. In Jordan, however, members of the Salafi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood have frequently occupied high positions in the Ministry of Education as part of the Hashemite dynasty’s delicate political strategy to curry the loyalty of its many different ethnic and political constituencies. Values Education in Textbook Islam: Personal Morality and Civic Virtue The patterns that emerge in the following chapters show clear continuations of the curricular innovations, genres, and styles that developed during the twentieth century. In terms of format, unlike Islamic texts used in traditional settings, contemporary textbooks often contain pictures, skits, discussion questions, and other techniques to engage their young readers (even though, in practice, such texts are often memorized verbatim like the old ones were). Some of the most important content of religion texts in all countries focuses on the quotidian duties of children to parents and siblings, teachers and leaders, as well as to the poor and the sick, the guest and the neighbor. Just as the first Weekly Reader Starrett’s son received when in first grade phrased the idea of “good citizenship” as a very local issue of respect for teachers, fellow students, and classroom rules, so in Middle Eastern curricula, belonging and behavior are conceived simultaneously as concrete, practical matters of group function and as abstract elements of self-formation and historical and cultural heritage. As Limbert and Brown indicate in Chapters 6 and 7.1, respectively, there are links between the largest scale of the politics of inclusion and the smallest scales of personal comportment and individual morality. These different scales of loyalty and duty reinforce one another all the way from the family circle through the society and the national polity to the umma of Islam, sometimes in an inflexible form that Anderson imagines in Chapter 4 as a cross between novelist Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives and political scientist Samuel Huntington’s Clash of

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Civilizations. Each person is assigned a role that must be followed to keep the family on the front line of defense, with everyone knowing whom to obey so that the umma will be strong and able to withstand alien ideas and assaults from outside enemies. Islamic values and ethics are presented in different ways. In some curricula, Islam has absolute answers to life’s moral questions, and for every answer, passages from the Hadith or Quran offer proof. In other curricula, Islamic ethics and values are reinterpreted to send more nuanced messages. As an example, the concept of tawhid (the oneness of God) is at the center of both the Saudi texts analyzed by Doumato in Chapter 8 and the Egyptian texts analyzed by Toronto and Eissa in Chapter 2. But the concept and its moral and behavioral implications are not the same in the two curricula; indeed, they appear to be mutually contradictory. In the Saudi texts, tawhid requires rejecting foreign behaviors and the arts, specifically discouraging music, laughter, singing, and other frivolous activities. But the Egyptian texts assert an Egyptian Muslim cultural identity that appreciates literature, music, fine art, and sculpture. Both Egyptian and Saudi texts frame their approaches as a wholesale rejection of “superstition,” but while the Egyptian books emphasize the use of reason to liberate the mind from superstitions, Saudi books derive their view of superstition from very specific illustrative acts compiled by eighteenth-century reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Despite the tolerance outlined in the Egyptian books, a contradictory theme emerges in these texts and in the Islamic curricula in other countries as well: the supremacy of Islam, whose founder is the last of the prophets and whose sacred text is the most perfect of God’s revelations. This supremacist positioning is inherent in each of the three monotheistic religions. Most of the texts examined in this volume repeat familiar Islamic values of family, the duties of and differences between men and women, proper ritual observance, and obedience. They also discuss the values of brotherhood among all human beings; the prohibition of cruelty; and equality for all regardless of race, sex, or color. Kindness and compassion, cleanliness and tranquility, honesty and humility, moderation and chastity, are mentioned repeatedly as core values. Most of the textbooks incorporate hard work, cooperation, and study as forms of worship, along with the responsibility of individuals for themselves, each other, and society, deliberately reformulating Islamic ideas about the inevitability of fate. In these examples, Islam becomes an instrument for civic good and economic development, harnessing religion in the cause of social change, with Islam detached from scripture and reattached to civic virtue (see Starrett 1998). A civic dimension of Islamic education has been introduced into the curricula of many Muslim countries, including countries not included in this volume, such as Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bosnia (Leirvik 2004).

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A Master Narrative: Victims and Enemies Many of the textbooks incorporate a foundational story that binds the umma together through a common historical memory portraying Muslims as a well-intentioned community that is perpetually under assault. Therefore, if militant action is necessary, it is always out of the imperative to defend family, homeland, and religion. This narrative, which appears in the textbooks in various renditions, is extracted from scriptural sources on the life of the Prophet and serves as a template for explaining events that occurred later in history and are occurring now in the present day (see Chapter 11 by Starrett in this book). In broad outline, the narrative begins with the fledgling community in Medina, where, having been forced to leave Mecca, Muhammad becomes the lawgiver. But the Muslims continue to be harassed by their pagan enemies and are betrayed by neighboring Jewish tribes who treat the Prophet with derision, break the truce they had concluded with him, and incite the pagan enemies of the Muslims to battle against them. Forced onto the offensive, success comes to the Muslims only after God gives victory on the battlefield and the inhabitants of Mecca peacefully submit. Subsequent history becomes a recasting of the narrative: waves of unprovoked invasions from outside enemies sweep across the region, from Christian crusaders to Mongols to European and American colonialists and their alien ideologies, but out of defeat, ultimately comes victory and peace for Islam and Muslims. However, enemies from the outside remain poised for renewed attack and continue to lurk within the umma to sow dissension. This narrative is a template for explaining contemporary animosity between Arabs and Israelis. Its presence in the textbooks, though, is a product of this animosity, projected backward with particular vitriol toward the Jews. It is in the context of this dialectic between a fictive homogeneous past and contemporary experience that openly anti-Semitic language occurs in some of the textbooks. In the elementary-level textbooks of Saudi Arabia and in the Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian textbooks reviewed in this volume, an eternal Jew is portrayed in images that are as puerile as they are ugly: Jews are monopolistic, clannish, self-interested, untrustworthy, violent, and hate-filled. These images are not, however, universal, and are being attenuated and eliminated in more recent books. They are not found in the new curricula designed by the Palestinian Authority. Such images are not found in Kuwaiti or Iranian books, the latter of which criticize Israel not for any inherent Jewish hatefulness and not because of seventh-century events or because of the Palestinians, but because of Israel’s alleged training of the shah’s dreaded secret police. In more recently designed Syrian texts, an older discourse of “the evil enemy characteristics that are imbedded in the personality of the Jews” is absent. Instead, there are respectful

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discussions of the Torah and descriptions of Jews “as an unfairly oppressed people whom God has chosen for salvation and honored with a great prophet” (see Chapter 9 by Landis in this book). In the Egyptian and some other national curricula, the depiction of Jews contrasts with the concurrent emphasis on tolerance and inclusiveness but reflects the prevailing sentiment in Egypt and the Arab world regarding Israel. The religion textbooks used in the new curriculum of the Palestinian Authority take a more ambivalent approach to aligning the seventh-century experience with the current situation (see Chapter 7.1 by Brown in this volume). Although students are encouraged to think about the violence to which their own communities have been exposed, the same texts also highlight coexistence and tolerance as Islamic normative values and express the view that these values were fulfilled in practice when Muslim nations held power over others. Over the long term, in fact, Arab and Muslim societies have had better relationships with their Jewish populations than have European Christian societies (Cohen 1995; Lewis 1968, 1987; Menocal 2002). It must be noted that the language in the Arab textbooks has been produced in dialogue with Israeli textbooks. As we see from Nasser’s work (mentioned above, and Nasser 2005), Israel’s curriculum has its own master narrative that speaks pejoratively of Arabs while negating the existence of the very Palestinian Arabs living in Israel for whom the textbooks were written. One textbook used in the 1960s, for example, says that at the opening of the twentieth century, Palestine was an “empty” space, “awaiting” its redemption by the Jewish people, who have “made many sacrifices to purify it from nature’s enemies” such as “swamps and Arabs” (see Nasser 2005: 146). Negative representations of Arabs also occur in textbooks used in Israeli schools for Jewish students. In a study of 124 elementary, middle, and high school textbooks on grammar, Hebrew literature, history, geography, and citizenship, Daniel Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks teach children that Jews are industrious, brave and determined, and able to improve the land, whereas Arabs are incapable, unproductive, and apathetic, as well as sick, dirty, noisy, colored, easily inflamed, hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, and bloodthirsty (Bar-Tal 1996, 2006; Bar-Tal and Zoltack 1989). Adir Cohen’s research on 1,700 Israeli children’s books published after 1967 found that 520 of the books contained similarly humiliating and negative descriptions of Palestinians, including their portrayal as the Jews’ eternal enemy (Cohen 1985).6 The current conflicts between Jews and Arabs are conditioned not only by mutual defamation, including the sorts of irrational anti-Jewish stereotypes that have long characterized Europe and the United States and now appear in some Middle Eastern media, but also by actual political and territorial conflict between a regional nuclear power and its neighbors, a conflict

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with deep roots in a previous violent history of colonization of the region by European powers and a mass slaughter of Jews at home by Europeans. None of this is to excuse anti-Semitism when it appears. It is merely to recall that there are real and not merely imaginary conflicts at stake in the Middle East. In the words of Seif Da‘Na (see Chapter 7.2), “Palestinian resistance [to Israel] stems from real-life conditions, and not from ideas contained in the curriculum.” Generic Islam: Redesigning Islamic Identity in School Curricula In tailoring their textbook portrayals of Islam to local conditions, Middle Eastern states have generally chosen to ignore altogether sectarian differences in Islam. With the goal of fostering a common sense of national identity and a broader sense of an ideal truth, each curriculum invents its own particular version of generic Islam as a sort of melting pot for unmentioned Others. Thus there are no Shi‘a (except, of course, in Iran’s textbooks), no Sufis, no Ismailis or Druze, no Alawis, no Ibadis. This is the case even in countries such as Oman, where half the population, along with the political leadership, are Ibadi, and Syria, where the ruling family is Alawi. In Oman, the books’ avoidance of identification with Ibadi sectarianism makes the issue all the more significant to students, who must seek out information about “their own” religion from nonstate sources; in Syria, the avoidance of mentioning the Alawis’ minority status in the texts makes them into “Sunnis” by default, despite their leader’s education in Christian schools. Turkish texts take another tack, transforming Islam into a Turkish religion by identifying famous Muslim Arab or Persian scholars as Turks and restarting the historical clock from the time the Turks adopted Islam so as to avoid associating Turkishness with the Islamic civilization of the surrounding Arab world. The exceptions to this avoidance of Muslim diversity are the Saudi and Iranian texts studied by Doumato and Mehran, respectively. Saudi texts teach that there is one correct Islam for all the world’s Muslims, but define that one Islam so narrowly as to exclude most of the world’s Muslims. Heterodox divisions are mentioned by name only to repudiate them, and the texts declare that Shi‘a, Sufis, dabblers in magic, and secularists are no different from infidels. One text discontinued in 2003 declares Muslims who express friendship toward unbelievers to be themselves unbelievers for having denied the Muslim principle of “showing loyalty” only to Muslims and “bearing enmity” toward others. In the very different Iranian books, despite their immersion in a specifically Shi‘ite theology and cultural sensibility and the exclusion from the texts of Zoroastrians and Baha’is, Sunni Islam (the religion of Iran’s Kurds and Azaris) is discussed without derogatory

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comments. Students are taught that despite disagreement over political succession to the Prophet, Shi‘a and Sunni are Muslims with a single religion, united in brotherhood and in their struggle against Islam’s enemies, including “American Islam,” the “Islam of the capitalists, oppressors, opportunists, hypocrites, the careless well-to-do, and those who seek a comfortable life.” When non-Muslims are portrayed as enemies, it is not because of their religious affiliations, but because their actions threaten Muslims. On the Power of the Textbook How important are schoolbooks for molding the beliefs, identities, and actions of students? As suggested at the beginning of this chapter, some in media and government would invest schoolbooks with the power to cause violence and even instigate worldwide terrorism. The US State Department proposes radical changes in the content of Middle Eastern textbooks on the theory that a different kind of education would diminish religious identity and encourage productivity and economic advancement, which would in turn undermine the appeal of political violence as a course of action for unemployed and disaffected youth. This book makes no claims as to the power of the textbook to affect students’ behavior because the task set before the authors was to examine the texts, not the teaching of the texts or the receptivity of students to them. Nevertheless, a number of the authors did explore these questions: Altan, for example, in interviewing Turkish students for Chapter 10, found that even as students disparaged their teachers and religion courses, their views on religious subjects appeared to coincide with those contained in the textbooks. Toronto and Eissa, by contrast, note in Chapter 2 that Islamic education classes represent only a small part of the religious socialization that a student experiences in Egypt, as they are exposed to a “hidden curriculum” coming out of youth organizations, mosque-sponsored activities, social service agencies, and ideas encountered in electronic and print media. At the same time, they note, the Islamist influence within the schools is expanding, not by virtue of the textbooks but through the radicalization of teachers. Whatever the competition for the hearts and minds of students, however, and whatever the teaching context, that textbooks have some influence on students is undeniable. The precise nature and extent of that influence cannot be ascertained without focused research with students in school settings, official clearance for which is difficult to receive, either in the Middle East or elsewhere. We can, however, outline roughly some of the conditions of influence. Textbooks speak to their readers with an aura of authority because the text represents the choices of those who are in authority and because the student is told he or she will be tested on their contents (Luke,

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de Castell, and Luke 1989). Today in the Middle East, at any given time, a huge proportion of the population is being exposed to these textbooks because about half are of school age. In developing countries, schoolbooks may be the only books to which students are exposed, and therefore their influence as a source of authoritative textual knowledge may be unopposed. Dale Eickelman has pointed out that the influence of the textbook may be significant even when students remain in school only to the elementary level because access to alternative information is limited.7 Students may not internalize information, however, whatever their level of education, if the reality presented in the textbook does not accord with the reality of their own experience (Altbach 1987; Eickelman 1989). For most of the Middle East, as mentioned above, schoolbooks are far from the only source of religious information. Students may be exposed to alternative views through the mosque and the media and also through their own family and friends. As anthropologist John Dollard wrote near the end of World War II, The real controls of individual opinion are exercised by the intimate social group to which the individual belongs, and these cannot be blithely supplanted by mere mass propaganda. . . . Prejudice is . . . in the social environment which punishes us when we make any other than prejudiced responses. . . . Against such massive processes one cannot work very effectively by the indirect means of books, radio or periodicals. What counts is the private behavior of the group members in intimate situations. (Dollard 1947: 460, 463–464)

Student receptivity to the messages of the textbook is also shaped by the bureaucratic organization of religious instruction. In most countries, religion classes are required but are usually irrelevant to students’ grade point average (GPA), to their graduation requirements, and to their chances for career or college entrance. As shown above, both students and teachers often belittle such courses as trivial, pointless, and unimportant. Only two countries in our sample, Iran and Saudi Arabia, place substantial weight on student performance in religion courses in determining promotion and GPA. In Saudi Arabia more than one-third of the school week is spent studying religion, and a passing grade is needed for grade promotion each year. In Iran about 13 percent of the week’s schedule is devoted to Islamic subjects, and a student’s promotion from one grade to the next, as well as admission to university, is dependent on obtaining passing grades in religion courses. To go on to university, Iranian students’ moral character and commitment to state Shi’ism must be certified by a Committee of Fostering Affairs. Yet exposure is clearly not equal to influence. If it were, we’d have to wonder why Saudi Arabia has produced a generation polarized between radical conservatives, including jihadis, and risk-taking liberals, all of whom

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read the same books in school, and why Iran has produced a generation of dissidents chafing under clerical rule, as well as a voting public that elected an arch-conservative as president. But influence there is, and the messages are mixed: whatever else religion texts teach of exclusiveness, every curriculum also uses religion to promote tolerance, civic virtue, and national unity, including Saudi Arabia’s curriculum. Only in Saudi and Syrian textbooks did we find outright legitimation of violence outside of perceived defensive contexts. As in the textbooks of other countries, military jihad is not a pillar of Islam and is solely for defense, but in repeated instances in the unrevised Saudi textbooks, unlike every other religion curriculum, quranic passages are presented out of context calling for the death of polytheists and hatred of infidels (see Chapter 8 by Doumato in this book). One short sentence in one Syrian textbook says that pagans and atheists should face the choice of conversion or death, but without citing scriptural justification (see Chapter 9 by Landis in this book). The Saudi curriculum, it is clear, deserves its “worst case” distinction among textbooks on Islam, notwithstanding the reforms incorporated in 2003–2005, but the power of even this curriculum to shape students’ propensity toward violence is far from certain. The terrorist attacks against compounds that housed primarily non-Muslim foreigners in May 2003 in Riyadh and in al-Khobar in 2004 (Bowcott 2004), where the perpetrators reportedly went from house to house looking for non-Muslims, may be seen as a wish-fulfillment for some of the claims made in the textbooks. At the same time, however, the attacks elicited no popular following, and no cadre of proselytes stepped forward to applaud them. If mass education had indeed engendered a culture eager for religiously motivated violence, surely we would see more of it deployed on the Saudis’ home turf.8 This book does not attempt to assess directly the linkage between text and violence. What we are saying is that, the two cases discussed above excepted, there is no outright advocacy of violence in Middle Eastern religion curricula. It seems likely, then, that the causes of terrorism must be sought elsewhere than in public school education. Conclusion: Textbook Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity “In reality,” Toronto and Eissa remind us in Chapter 2, “the core of the question is not about education per se: what children should study or how they should dress in school. These educational issues are merely ancillary to the more fundamental dispute about the role of religion in the public life of a modern Islamic state.” Discussions of this role are ongoing and broadly based in every country in the region (and beyond). They are inevitable and necessary. And they are not likely ever to be finally resolved. In the end, the contradictions within and between texts and between texts and broader gov-

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ernment policy and activity, as pointed out by most of the authors in this volume, derive from three inescapable contradictions in the very nature of religious and national education. First, a contradiction exists between the common sense of identity nationalist movements everywhere strive to create and the empirical linguistic, cultural, gender, class, ethnic, regional, and confessional diversity in the real world, which such movements must find ways to mask, ignore, delete, or transcend. Second, there is a contradiction between nationalist ideologies and religious ideologies, which can work at cross-purposes. There are often conflicts between the identities and activities favored by state ideologies and those favored by religious ideologies, which have separate but interconnected histories and goals. If, for example, the Kuwaiti curriculum as described by Alqudsi-ghabra in Chapter 5 includes complimentary stories about the nonviolent political movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, it nevertheless must also claim that Hindus are beyond the pale of righteousness. If Toronto and Eissa’s Egyptian texts encourage love and respect for Christian neighbors, they must also find ways to convince their readers not to become like them. Abrahamic religious ideology and practice always struggle with the balance to be drawn between love and repudiation, just as other systems of social ideology and practice struggle with the balance between the boundaries of group belonging and the necessity of intergroup interaction. Finally, there is the contradiction between the linear nature of narrative and the always nonlinear nature of real life. How do we construct stories that touch our imperfect lives without succumbing to those imperfections? How do we construct single, comprehensible guides to moral development that acknowledge the very different challenges each of us faces? And how do we apprehend and portray the unity underlying the world’s diversity and the eternal truths that stand fast behind the world’s busy avenues of change? We hope that the research in this book can illuminate, from the perspective of one region, what are in fact common problems and processes in systems of national and religious education around the globe; that it can provide useful information both for students of the Middle East and for policymakers; and that it can, above all, contribute to a more thoughtful, humane, and productive discussion about the shape and role of Islam in the contemporary world. Notes 1. Depending on whom one asks, MEMRI is either an indispensable and politically neutral research organization or a propaganda arm of the Israeli intelligence community. Likewise, CMIP’s reports on Arabic-language curricula have been criticized for consisting largely of decontextualized fragments of text. Criticisms of the Palestinian curriculum made by this organization have been judged by both Brown

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and Da‘Na, in this volume, as well as by numerous research groups and other scholars, to be misleading and in some cases absolutely false, but not before CMIP succeeded in harming the development of education in the Occupied Territories. See www.informedconsent.com, http://www.palestinemonitor.org/takpoints/report_on_ palestinian_textbooks_.htm, and the Brown and Da‘Na chapters in this volume. 2. See Chapter 11 in this volume for some further discussion. This volume explicitly does not deal with the issue of private, unlicensed schools. 3. A thorough comparison with state-sponsored religious curricula in Europe would be most useful, particularly insofar as it raises issues of the dual relationship of contemporary states with philosophies of secularism and traditions of faith. It is, unfortunately, well beyond the scope of this book, as is the comparison with any of the myriad Christian curricula in US churches. We hope the information included in this volume can help provide one part of such a comparison by other scholars. See Bentley 2005. 4. “Madrasa” means simply “place of study.” The term has, unfortunately, been stigmatized over the past few years by being used by Western audiences as a label for a quasi-school setting used as a recruiting base for militants. 5. Riad Nasser, “State Efforts to Shape Palestinian-Israelis’ Identities as Citizens,” under review, Comparative Education Review. 6. There is now an extensive body of published research on identity, nationalism, and historical representation in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks. See, for example, Firer and Adwan 2004; Pingel 2003; Podeh 2002, 2003a; and Aweiss 2003. 7. Eickelman, comment during discussion at the conference, “Religion and Identity-Formation in Middle Eastern School Curricula,” Brown University, November 14–15, 2003. 8. A recent report that looked at terrorist actors and madrasa education (which differs from the official religious education discussed in this book in that it is usually limited to early elementary ages, is not government-sponsored, and is not necessarily linked to literacy training) suggests that there is no linkage between madrasa education and the 9/11, Kenya, and Tanzania bombings (Bergin and Pandey 2005).

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2 Egypt: Promoting Tolerance, Defending Against Islamism James A. Toronto and Muhammad S. Eissa SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS PROVIDE A WINDOW onto a country’s ideals,

challenges, and inner dynamics, and analysis of textbooks can therefore yield significant insights about processes of nation building, identity construction, and social change. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the constructs of political and religious identity formation in Egyptian schools by analyzing the contents of Islamic education curricula for grades 1–11. In doing so, we also provide evaluation and recommendations that, it is hoped, will contribute in a constructive way to Egypt’s efforts to foster educational change that supports the realization of national goals and aspirations. Our study indicates that the curriculum of Islamic education in Egypt plays an important role in the government’s efforts to achieve national goals of political stability, economic development, and social harmony. As expected, the textbooks reflect an adherence to traditional methods (memorization, oral recitation), source material (Quran, Hadith, biographies of prominent Muslims, and sharia), and objectives (recitation of the Quran, ritual performances, and correct Islamic dress and behavior) in teaching Islamic religion. They also show evidence of serving the state’s purposes by inculcating a normative, pragmatic form of Islam that provides a cloak of religious legitimacy for government policy objectives. An overriding impression in the textbooks is that curriculum writers’ decisions about design, content, and illustrations were heavily influenced by the state’s ongoing struggle with Islamist groups in Egypt to win the hearts and minds of the people. As a core component of that struggle, the Ministry of Education (MOE) seeks to cultivate loyalty and construct identity around a cluster of ideals deeply rooted in Egyptian culture: national loyalty, tolerance for the “Other,” the sanctity of the family, and the preeminence of Sunni Islam. These four ideals form the organizational framework for our detailed analysis below. Though curricular change in any country lags behind current needs, the 27

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Islamic education textbooks contain ample evidence of the MOE’s steady efforts to evaluate, revise, and improve the quality of curriculum in response to the widespread public debate over changing social and political conditions. The current edition of the curriculum (2002/2003) is an edited version of a previous edition published in 1995/1996. A statement in the introduction to each of the nineteen books (grades 1–11) highlights the process of continuous review and improvement followed by the ministry: “Difficult or redundant subjects were deleted, others were modified and additional topics dealing with modern issues were added. The underlying objective is to lighten the load of ‘theoretical’ knowledge and increase practical skills.” This process has yielded some impressive results. The past fifteen years, in fact, have seen a marked increase in the quality of the materials and content of textbooks. The clarity of the printing and graphics, organization of units and lessons, and page layout have all improved significantly. We noted with some degree of surprise and admiration that the textbooks show a gradual trend toward greater boldness and candor in addressing controversial, real-life issues in contemporary Egyptian society. Evidence of this increasing commitment to transparency includes discussion of thorny questions such as family planning, female circumcision, tobacco and drug addiction, proper Islamic dress and grooming, the role of music and the arts, Western science and technology, human rights (including women’s rights, gender roles, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech), relations with the West, rationality versus superstition, and the flexible nature of sharia in meeting the changing needs of a modern world (i.e., dogs are declared ritually clean in the latest textbooks). We think that Egypt deserves praise for being among those Middle Eastern Islamic countries that are engaged in a vigorous process of educational change, intended to liberalize the school system and produce curricula that are more inclusive, relevant, balanced, and forward-looking. Despite the real progress in materials and content, there remain a number of inconsistencies in the curriculum that both fascinate and puzzle us. Among them are contradictions between the stated goals and actual content of the curriculum (e.g., regarding gender roles and relations with Jews); superficial discussion of some issues that contrasts with the complex reality in Egyptian society (e.g., freedom of speech and freedom of religion, the oneness of Sunni Islam); and the inherent tension between politically correct ideals (tolerance, inclusiveness, unity) and theologically mandated dogmas (exclusivist tendencies of monotheistic faiths). We surmise that these and other discrepancies create ambivalence among Egyptian students and are therefore counterproductive in the process of identity formation and nation building. They raise a question about the overall effectiveness of the religious education curriculum, one that we address at length.

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The National Debate over Religious Discourse in Public Life Among the challenges facing Muslims at the dawn of the twenty-first century is the need for a coherent vision of Islam’s place in modern society and a unified voice to articulate that vision persuasively. The issue of how to reconcile the traditional religious values, teachings, and practices of Islam with the requirements of an international socioeconomic order based on concepts of secularism, pluralism, and democracy is the focus of intense debate within the Muslim community. One Muslim scholar, Fazlur Rahman, framed the question this way: “The heart of the problem which a Muslim must face and resolve if he wishes to reconstruct an Islamic future on an Islamic past: how shall this past guide him and which elements of his history may he modify, emphasize or deflate? . . . [It] lies in the actual, positive formulation of Islam, of exactly spelling out what Islam has to say to the modern individual and society” (Rahman 1979: 237, 249). However, with numerous sects, ideologies, legal codes, schools of Islamic law, and political systems across the Islamic world and with no universally accepted authority to define issues, render binding interpretations, and rally support, the Islamic world faces internal conflict in its effort to arrive at acceptable, distinctive, and viable Islamic solutions to problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, unemployment, illiteracy, and national governance. This ideological conflict is played out in Egypt, as in many other Muslim countries, between political elites and Islamist elements in society who vie to control the national agenda by claiming to be the sole and rightful arbiters of Islamic orthodoxy. In Egypt political power depends on religious legitimacy, and thus the issue of what Egyptians call al-khitab aldini—“religious discourse,” or how religion is interpreted, communicated, and perceived—lies at the heart of the struggle to determine the nation’s identity and direction. In recent years Egypt has witnessed continual and often heated public discussion over this issue. In 2003 the Committee on Religious and Social Affairs in the People’s Assembly, culminating a yearlong process of formal evaluation and reflecting the wider debate in society, issued a report that blames the sermons given by imams at mosques before Friday prayers for cultivating a culture of extremism in Egypt (“Reforming the Message,” Al-Ahram Weekly, January 5, 2003). The speaker of the People’s Assembly, Fathi Surour, characterized the report as “extremely important” because of its potential to influence “the future of Arabic discourse” by promoting a pluralistic religious society, a culture of respect for the Other that avoids religious conflict, and an emphasis on the values shared by all religions (Al-Ahram, May 6, 2003). The report calls for the establishment of a new government body, the Supreme Council for Religious Discourse, to bring these goals to fruition. But perhaps the most important outcome of this official review process is the open acknowledg-

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ment of the existence of this problem and the need to take concrete measures to address it. The impetus for the report can be traced to the landmark speech that President Hosni Mubarak delivered on national television in December 2001 in celebration of Laylat al-Qadr (“Night of Power”). Addressing the events of 9/11 (three months earlier) and other incidents of religious extremism in Egypt and abroad, Mubarak urged Islamic scholars, clerics, and public preachers to reflect anew on the content of popular religious discourse in order to counteract extremist elements in society and to promote the ideas of “true Islam”: rationality, openness, freedom, religious tolerance, respect for diversity and human rights, and dialogue between civilizations (Al-Ahram, December 12, 2001). To implement the reforms called for by Mubarak, the government initiated a series of conferences and hearings involving high-ranking officials from parliament and various ministries (Religious Affairs, Education, Youth, Culture, Information, and Agriculture); religious leaders, including the mufti of Egypt and the Coptic Christian pope; presidents, deans, and faculty members from major universities; and prominent community leaders. Acting on the premise that “the traditional style of teaching about Islam is no longer appropriate for the changing conditions that the contemporary world is witnessing,” the participants discussed problems of religious discourse and recommended solutions that would foster “the correct religious vision” (Al-Ahram, December 27, 2001; January 3, 2002). These measures included greater vigilance in the selection and training of mosque preachers; closer supervision of Friday sermons; more effective use of satellite channels and other media to sponsor programs to correct erroneous ideas; and review and reform of the national school curriculum, including religious education (Al-Ahram, January 3, 14, and 17, 2002; March 7 and 21, 2002). It should come as no surprise that schools were singled out as one of the centers of religious discourse that require careful supervision. In fact, the school system today constitutes one of the main arenas of conflict between the state and the Islamist opposition. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Egyptian educational system evolved from a local kuttab (Quran school) tradition limited to teaching text-based religious knowledge into a national, centralized institution that plays a crucial role in Egyptian society as an agent of social change, political control, and identity construction. Education through the elementary level is mandatory for all citizens, and the curriculum prepared by the government is prescribed for use in all schools, whether public or private. Potentially, therefore, the vast majority of Egyptian citizens will be influenced by the ideas, attitudes, and values they encounter in the schools. Moreover, given Egypt’s historical role as an “educational qibla,” the content of Egyptian curriculum can have broader impact on identity formation in the Arab and Islamic world.1 For these rea-

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sons the curriculum—particularly the religion curriculum—is viewed by both government policymakers and Islamist advocates as an important tool to realize their competing visions of social justice, political stability, and economic prosperity. The religion books that we examined clearly reflect this ideological struggle, which has characterized Egyptian history and society for 200 years and continues to influence the content of educational curricula and public discourse. Religious education occupies a prominent but somewhat ambivalent place in the curriculum of Egyptian schools. Religion classes are mandatory for all students in every grade and take up three hours per week at the elementary level and two hours per week at the preparatory and secondary levels, out of the total class time of thirty hours per week. The amount of time assigned to religious instruction has been a focus of debate in recent years, with conservative Islamists calling for more time and government planners insisting, generally, that the allotted time is adequate. Muslim and Christian students meet separately for religion class, so that Muslims study with a Muslim teacher using the Islamic textbooks, and Christians study with a Christian teacher using the Coptic textbooks. The grade for religion is not figured into a student’s cumulative grade point average (GPA), though a student who fails the class may be denied promotion. The policy of omitting religion questions on the all-important high school exit exam (al-thanawiya al-’aama) and not counting the religion grade for university admission has bred widespread indifference among students toward the religion curriculum. Methodology Our study is based on reading the nineteen religious education textbooks (two each for grades 1–8, and one each for grades 9–11), newly published for the 2002/2003 school year, most of which are revised editions of the books issued in 1995/1996. These texts are currently the prescribed curriculum in all schools (whether classified as public, private, international, or “language”) at the elementary, preparatory, and secondary levels. In order to understand how and why the curriculum might have changed over time, we analyzed the eleven religion textbooks from the 1988/1989 school year (one text each for grades 1–11) and have compared and contrasted the contents with the current texts. To supplement these textual sources, we conducted interviews in Egypt with government officials, religious leaders, Ministry of Education employees, and private citizens. In the analysis that follows, we cite our textbook sources by referring to the grade level (1–11), the volume or semester number (if there are two) with letter “a” or “b,” and then the page number.2 For instance, the citation (8b: 20) refers to the eighth grade, second semester, page 20. Texts from the 1989 school year will be marked with the year.

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National Loyalty One of the themes that buttresses identity formation in the texts is Egypt’s role as umm al-dunya (the cradle of enlightened civilization). The texts seek to inculcate pride in and loyalty to the nation-state by invoking the ancient ties between the land of the Nile and the Egyptian people. The overarching tone in the current curriculum highlights Egyptian national identity more than the Islamic or Arab identity that prevailed in older curricula. Ideals of pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism that were propagated in past years are virtually nonexistent in the current texts. Given the recent history of violent attacks carried out by Islamist groups in Egypt, the shift in emphasis probably reflects a desire on the part of the Mubarak administration to disassociate Egyptians from divisive extremist elements, both inside and outside Egypt, and to shape a separate Egyptian Muslim identity. In other words, it is evidence of an official government policy to counteract the development of an Islamic identity that is militarized, homogenized across borders, and politically destabilizing. The emphasis on forging nationalist sentiment is evident throughout the textbooks. The introduction to each book provides a list of goals that vary somewhat in language but share the same meaning. The common denominator is mobilizing support for national concerns and local political, social, and economic issues. The introduction to the book for the first semester of the first year states: “The book focuses on concepts which students need in their society, such as steering away from violence; political education; correct Islamic behavior; national security; serving the society and treating its problems; fighting against pollution; and other concepts required by the current circumstances under which our dear Egypt is living” (1–5a/b: n.p.). The same introduction is used verbatim in the first ten books for the five grades of the elementary level. The introduction to the preparatory-level texts first lists some traditional religious goals and then the following related to national identity: •

•

Forming the human being [insan] who believes in knowledge, justice, freedom, consulting with others [shura, a word often used synonymously with democracy in Islamic discourse], and excellence in work, who is capable of translating all this into practical activity on earth. Forming the human being who rejects addiction [to drugs or intoxicants], fanaticism, extremism and anything that tears down the social structure. This is based on the belief that he is a vice-regent of God on earth in charge of inhabiting it and developing life on it according to God’s teachings and laws. (6/7a/b: n.p.)

The principle of national brotherhood is referred to as one of the fundamental ideals that Islam has established: the text cites the example of how

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Muslims and non-Muslims lived harmoniously together in Mecca after it was conquered by the Muslims (6a: 32). In many other instances the call to love the homeland, Egypt, is emphatic and religiously justified. In a family discussion dealing with Islam and the development of society, the mother reminds her children of the importance of “loving the homeland which God bestowed on us. . . . Our noble religion commands us to develop it, to work for its glory and to defend its land and people” (7b: 30). Human Rights and the Individual’s Relationship to Society The concept of huquq al-insan (human rights) is listed as one of the embedded objectives in many lessons. (See, for instance, 7a: 21, 43; and 7b: 53, along with many others.) However, the concept is used loosely and portrayed as part of the broad relationship between an individual and his or her social environment. The texts make it clear that it is the role of government—not dissident voices—to define these rights and relationships and to enforce the laws governing them. The membership of the individual in society, from an Islamic perspective, should be organic, humane, and mutually beneficial. The notion of personal social responsibility is supported by this Hadith: “The believer is neither backbiter, slanderer, foul nor shameless” (11: 40). All individuals should understand that the welfare of society is the same as their personal welfare. They should perform any job perfectly (8a: 43–44). No individual should be punished for a crime he or she has not committed. Persecuting and punishing both corrupted people and corrupters is the responsibility of the government and the citizen (9: 31). A whole lesson is dedicated to civil rights (8a: 46–50) under the title, “Islam and the Political System.” The Islamic political system is broadly defined as the system of ruling or governing on the basis of “the relationship of the individual Muslim to his Lord, to his society, to his homeland and the relation between one Muslim state and another” (8a: 46). The two main principles on which this system is based are: that (1) the nation is the source of authority, and the ruler derives his authority from it; and (2) the people rule themselves through rightful representation, open debate, and submission to the opinion of the majority. Although the above sounds very modern, the textbook stipulates that the “source for such a system is the revealed word of God, Quran. It is beyond the human mind to create and invigorate a sound political system, because man makes mistakes, God doesn’t” (8a: 48). Although there is no direct reference to the Egyptian regime per se, it is noteworthy (in light of its controversial reputation among many Muslims) that the United Nations, “which calls for freedom, fraternity and equality,” is singled out as an institution compatible with Islamic human rights (8a: 50). Political rights are to be enjoyed on an equal basis: Islam does not differentiate between people with regard to ethnicity,

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social class, religion, or gender. Muslims and non-Muslims have equal civil rights (8a: 38–39). Freedom of religion is advocated, based on the quranic verse, “There is no compulsion in religion” (Quran 2:256). To illustrate this principle, the textbook states that a Muslim husband cannot force a non-Muslim wife to convert to Islam, and he has no right to prevent her from performing her Christian religious rituals. It is recorded in Islamic history that the Prophet did not interfere in the religious affairs of the Jews in Medina. Later, the companions of the Prophet adopted the same practice when Muslim forces took over non-Muslim countries—they did not force the conquered peoples to become Muslims (8a: 36–37). But the picture is incomplete and therefore misleading because the texts avoid tackling related questions that are complex and controversial. No attempt is made, for instance, to reconcile the ideal of religious liberty with one of contemporary Islam’s most vexing issues: the so-called law of apostasy. According to the sharia, a Muslim who converts to another faith or is otherwise declared to be an apostate can be punished by losing his inheritance, having his marriage annulled, and/or being put to death with impunity. Nor do the texts address restrictions currently applied to non-Muslims in Egypt (and in many other Islamic countries), such as limitations on running for the highest elective offices, building new churches and synagogues, and publicly advocating non-Muslim religious ideas. The presence of such restrictions and draconian penalties in matters of conscience contradict the avowed commitment to freedom of religion, sows confusion and sectarian strife in society, and thus represents a continuing impediment to the realization of Egypt’s goal of national unity. In a similar vein, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are presented as basic human rights sanctioned by Islam. The following Hadith is cited: “Fear of people should not be a reason for someone not to tell the truth if he knows it” (8a: 38). The textbook goes on to give examples of situations in which this Hadith is applicable: it should guide those who write, whether they are authors or journalists, and it should be the premise for effecting freedom of the press (8a: 38, 57). Again, however, the curriculum does not try in any way to address the reality that students most certainly observe in society around them—a reality that sometimes contrasts sharply with these ideals. Recent years have witnessed a number of highly publicized cases in which journalists and authors have been declared apostates because their ideas were deemed “anti-Islamic.” In accordance with the sharia guidelines discussed above, these writers were then subjected to harassment, persecution, and even death—sometimes with the acquiescence, even complicity, of government officials.3 The contradiction inherent in the state’s policy of allowing some leeway to the Islamist opposition on

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the one hand, while seeking in public discourse (including school curricula) to undermine Islamist influence in civil society on the other hand, no doubt propagates a sense of ambiguity and cynicism about the government’s commitment to human rights. The question of why the Mubarak administration continues, whether intentionally or unwittingly, to pursue this bifurcated strategy remains something of an enigma worth exploring further. Biographies selected for inclusion in the old and new curricula give an indication of what values the government wishes to emphasize. The older curriculum introduces eight persons, four of whom lived in the time of the Prophet (Abu Bakr, Asma’, Aisha, and Ali); two heads of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence (Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Malik); and two contemporary Islamic reformers (Muhammad Abdu and Jamal al-Din alAfghani). The new curriculum includes two of those from the older books (Ali and Abdu) and introduces other persons such as Zayd ibn Harithah, Ja‘far ibn Abi Taalib, Abdullah ibn Rawaaha, and Khalid ibn al-Waleed (7b: 52–55). The introduction of these four personalities, well-known for their devotion to the Prophet, highlights the principle of obedience to the wisdom and orders of those who lead the community. They also represent the first generation of warriors in the cause of Islam. The inclusion of this new material, with its message of loyalty to political authority, sanctioned by historical precedent as a religious duty, is a response to the current social and political tensions in contemporary Egyptian society. The curriculum makes a concerted effort to foster national unity by deconstructing social biases and competing boundaries of identity, such as north versus south, urban versus rural, and upper versus lower class. The text and especially the graphics in the books seek to cultivate the ideal of a unified, egalitarian society without regard to one’s geographical or social background. Social justice is the right of all citizens, without discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion, color, or gender. When justice for all citizens prevails, people work in a safe environment, productivity increases, and prosperity for the individual and the community results (8a: 49). The Nexus Between Social Harmony, Political Stability, and Economic Prosperity A prominent theme in the textbooks is that good Muslim citizens are expected to be peaceful and work for the social and economic stability of the nation. They are not to be corrupted or to provoke any riots or social or political disturbances (8a: 44–45, citing Quran 8:25). Social justice applies equally to men, women, and children, which guarantees a healthy society. The responsibility to ensure that outcome is shared by all members of the society (8a: 34). The curriculum addresses some negative social behavior, stressing that

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“preventive values” are a part of the character of the individual Muslim. Some of those values are respecting time, proper use of the sidewalks for pedestrians (not for playing soccer), the sanctity of public property, and ethical conduct in the workplace (including a prohibition of bribery) (10a: 85–86; 10b: 93–96). Such values are embedded in the description of the character of the Muslim, who should greet others, whether known to him or not, and cooperate with others to effect good and prevent evil (8a: 22). Egyptian Islamic Culture and Western Culture The curriculum materials do not evince an attitude of confrontation or rivalry with the West; in fact, the word “West” rarely appears in the texts. Rather, students are taught an overarching principle that Muslims should derive benefit and enjoyment from any source but should also exercise caution to ensure that Islamic principles are not violated. In order to promote the Muslim Egyptian identity, students are warned against adopting some aspects of Western culture: for example, wearing jewelry around the neck and wrists is “not permissible for a Muslim man” (10b: 58–59). Egyptian Muslim cultural identity is explicitly highlighted in the curriculum. Contrary to the teachings of various conservative Islamist groups, this curriculum emphasizes the importance of culture in the life of Muslim society—culture that is not void of pleasure and enjoyment of human talent. The message in the curriculum sanctions the consumption of literature, music, fine art, and sculpture, provided that they do not associate partners with God (as implied in iconography and objects encouraging the adoration of saints) or contradict established Islamic principles. Muslims should seek knowledge that is based on belief in the oneness of God and that inspires moral characteristics as taught in the Quran and Sunna (8a: 55–56). The curriculum also presents citations from the Quran and Hadith in support of listening to music, such as one from the Quran regarding the psalms of David, who is said to have had a beautiful voice (8a: 58). According to the curriculum, enjoying “plastic art and sculpture refines the soul and elevates the conscience. Man senses the power of God through his creation and his perfection and inventiveness” (8a: 59–60). Borrowing and benefiting from modern technological advancements in the West appears as a theme at the preparatory and secondary levels. The curriculum encourages transactions between Muslims and non-Muslims in nonreligious matters, especially in the fields of modern science and technology. It states that “science has no nationality, race or gender.” Seeking technological assistance does not contradict Islamic tradition. The Prophet himself set the example when he sought the assistance of the experts from a non-Muslim tribe, the Bani Daws, “who had knowledge of using manjaniq [catapults] and attacking fortresses” during the military campaign of Hunayn (9: 57–58). The value of science in Islam is that “it helps humanity

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to facilitate its life on earth” while faith keeps humanity connected to its lord and gives life meaning, good taste, and lofty goals. Belief in God stands in the way of using science in evil acts and aggression. “Islam rejects the use of science for genocidal acts or whatever is harmful to others in their life, work, or environment” (8a: 27–28). In discussing the religious view of economic transactions in society, the textbooks touch on the topic of Islamic versus Western banks. Muslims are divided over whether Western banks are acceptable in Islamic societies, where riba (usury, or charging interest on loans) violates religious strictures. Islamic banks have proliferated in response to this opposition to the Western system, but in some instances they have created problems in the banking industry, and so the issue continues to be contentious. This sensitivity is reflected in the handling of the issue in the curriculum. Contrary to the older version of the curriculum, the new texts do not specify what type of bank is Islamically more appropriate than another. Besides addressing issues of zakat and other types of financial charity that are mandated by Islam, the current curriculum speaks only of prohibited financial behaviors, such as monopolies and excessive profits (10a: 97). A famous Hadith is quoted to emphasize the prohibition on both commercial dishonesty and riba (8a: 53). The curriculum writers chose to use the word riba with no definition and no examples, evidence of their reluctance to tackle this particular issue head-on. Students must turn to other sources for its meaning and application, an approach that leads ultimately to more confusion. On the positive side, the curriculum underscores the concepts of hard work, sincere dedication, and saving money at the personal and national levels. Tolerance for the “Other” In general, a spirit of inclusiveness characterizes Islamic educational curricula in Egypt. Textbooks reflect an admirable effort to teach students to respect all people and religions, though a few glaring exceptions to that general rule appear when the discussion moves from the domestic to the international arena. The emphasis is almost entirely on promoting tolerance and respect among Egyptians. With the increase in sectarian violence that has traumatized Egyptian society from the 1970s through the 1990s, promoting tolerance between Christians and Muslims has become an urgent priority for curriculum writers. A recurrent theme in the Islamic education textbooks is that Islam, though a universal religion, respects others regardless of their beliefs. It teaches students that Muslims should deal with other people on a basis of magnanimity, with no regard for ethnicity, race, religion, or gender. Islam enjoins Muslims to apply these principles in their daily lives. Nearly every

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lesson in the elementary religious curriculum lists “tolerance” and “peace” and “national unity” as learning objectives and provides stories and pictures to reinforce these ideals. The curriculum implies that national identity and sectarian identity are equally important, stating that the pursuit of national brotherhood is a basic Islamic duty. A symbol of friendly relations and equality between Muslims and Copts accompanies the text, stating that each person has the right to practice the ritual of his religion as faithful children of one homeland. One illustration depicts two schoolboys in a very friendly position with a mosque and a church in the background (6a: 32). The Tension Between Exclusivist and Inclusivist Language in Islam To some degree, the message of religious tolerance and respect is obscured by another theme that dominates the religious textbooks: the supremacy of Islam over all other religions. Most of the texts contain material such as the following from the 1988/1989 fifth-grade curriculum. Islam is the “seal of religions,” and Egyptians should thank God that they are Muslims because God does not accept among his servants any religion except Islam. The Quran (3:19) states: “The true religion with God is Islam” (5[1989]: 23). The implicit (and sometimes explicit) message is that Islam and Muslims are superior in God’s sight and that other religious communities have an inferior spiritual status. Since there is no discussion of how to reconcile the ambiguities between the concepts of religious exclusivism and religious tolerance, the textbooks ultimately promulgate confusion among students about what the proper attitude is toward their non-Muslim neighbors. This ambivalent tone has carried over into the current curriculum, though one notes an effort to soften the exclusivist language somewhat. The curriculum still stresses that Islam is the only religion accepted by God: “If anyone desires [seeks] a religion other than Islam [submission to God], never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have lost [all spiritual good]” (Quran 3:85). Nevertheless, it is implied in some places that the word “Islam” has broader, more inclusive connotations as well. In one text, a student who has just read Quran 3:85 asks the question: “Do we understand from this [verse] that the message that God revealed to Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus—may God’s peace be upon all of them—was Islam?” The teacher says “Yes.” Then the teacher qualifies her answer, stating that previous messages were intended to be specific to certain peoples, but the message of the Prophet Muhammad is universal, and Muhammad is the seal of the Prophets (7a: 22). Relations with Jews The religion texts in both the old and new curriculum foster a sense of awareness of national security issues related to the Arab-Israeli conflict by

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underscoring anti-Jewish sentiment in Egypt. Relations between Egypt and Israel are not dealt with per se. Jews are portrayed as uniformly duplicitous, traitorous, and antagonistic to all people, especially Muslims. Most of the material for these discussions is drawn from early Islamic history and deals with Muhammad’s efforts to ensure the security of Medina. As the textbooks from 1988/1989 tell it, the Prophet was anxious to make Medina secure and safe so that love, cooperation, and good relations would prevail. He made treaties with Jewish groups to be good neighbors and to cooperate in defense. But the Jews do not like people to live in peace. They worked at spreading enmity between the various tribes by selling them weapons and accumulating great wealth by usury. The Jews also envied the love and affection that the Muslims had for each other; they felt loneliness and weakness and worked to sow dissension among the Muslims and to organize conspiracies. But the Muslims sensed these schemes of the Jews and became wary of them, not allowing them to create obstacles, because a Muslim must always be cautious, alert, and awake. So the Muslims were victorious over the Jews and foiled their plots by means of their cooperation and alertness. Student drills include the following questions: “Why were the Jews jealous of the Muslims?” “What did the Jews do to the Muslims?” “Use the word ‘Jews’ in a sentence” (4[1989]: 103 ff.). There is a continuity of anti-Jewish sentiment from the old to the new curriculum. The relationship between Jews and Muslims is also depicted as adversarial in the 2002/2003 elementary and secondary curricula. In a discussion about Jews and Muslims in Medina, Jews are described as obstinate, greedy, backbiting, hypocritical, and deceptive. “They [the Jews] are known for certain characteristics that are typical of them throughout their generations. . . . Their wiliness and wars against Islam, however different in style and form, have had the same objectives” (10a: 39). In another location, a complete chapter is dedicated to giving the reasons leading to fighting the Jews and evacuating them from Medina and its surroundings. A list of negative characteristics describes the Jews in a historical context and confirms all the common stereotypes most Muslims have of the Jews. They are described as being “religiously and humanly racist and their racism and animosity go beyond Islam and Muslims to all other people and religions. They have no loyalty to whatever nation they live in and have no respect to its covenants and laws. Jews of yesterday are the Jews of today and tomorrow.” It is the duty of Muslims to study them and be aware of their expansionist plans (10b: 74–77). The negative depiction of Jews contradicts the curriculum’s general tone of tolerance and inclusiveness and seems curiously anachronistic in light of the relatively peaceful relations (the “cold peace”) that have existed between Egypt and Israel since the signing of the Camp David accords in 1979. This incongruity no doubt reflects the prevailing sentiment in Egypt

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and the Arab world against normalization of relations with Israel. Curriculum writers opted not to balance the picture of Muslim-Jewish relations by providing historical examples of positive interaction between Jews and Muslims. Thus the religious curriculum reinforces the sense of distrust and repugnance that Muslims generally feel for Jews because of their perceived enmity toward the Islamic community. The Sanctity of the Family and Gender Identity In secular societies, where religion and state are considered separate spheres, the home and the church assume a primary role in shaping the ethical, moral, and gender-related values of young people that lie at the core of personal and communal identity. In Muslim countries like Egypt, however, where public and religious life are considered inseparable, the school system shoulders major responsibility for instilling these values. That these issues are dealt with in religious education textbooks is another indication of the state’s need to obtain religion’s imprimatur in its struggle with Islamists over public policy and identity formation. Gender Roles The question of the roles of women and men in Egyptian society and related issues of dress, education, and work are crucial in the conflict between government and Islamist forces in Egypt. Religion texts generally depict the idealized view of family life that the government wishes to convey to the public: a nuclear family consisting of father and mother modeling traditional male-female roles and a small number of children (usually not more than two or three, though occasionally more are depicted), enjoying a prosperous, contented life. The new curriculum shows evidence of government efforts to cultivate a more liberal view of women’s rights and goes much further than the old texts did in portraying women’s role as multidimensional: women in these textbooks work at home, in schools, and in public offices and stores and wear a variety of clothing styles. Despite this progress, traditional attitudes toward gender role differentiation still persist in the curriculum. In the 1988/1989 textbooks, the firstgrade text shows a mother and daughter not wearing Islamic dress but performing traditional roles: cooking in the kitchen (1[1989]: 75). Again in grade three, students are shown pictures of work that include men performing various jobs outside the home (farmer, bus driver, office worker) and a woman sewing at home (3[1989]: 45). Differentiation of roles for fathers and mothers is reiterated in the fifth-grade religion text. “You love your mother because she carried you in her womb, gave birth to you, nursed you, stayed up evenings watching over you, works to make you comfortable, and protects you from all bad things. You love your father because he spends

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money on your behalf, takes care of all your needs, cares for you, and tires himself out working to make you happy” (5[1989]: 19). The chapter on development of noble character traits in the same text includes a section on “Helping the Weak.” Evidence of Islam’s concern for helping the weak is “its call for helping women and treating them well because woman, by her nature [bi-tabi‘atiha], needs help.” Students read a Hadith that states: “Be gentle to women.” According to the text, the intent of this Hadith is to show the “delicacy and weakness of women and their need for kind treatment.” Students then discuss these questions: “Why do women need help?” “And what kind of help?” (5[1989]: 70–72). The writers of the new curriculum have clearly taken pains to foster a broader view of women’s roles in society and to undermine the traditional notion of separate domains for men and women. References to women are generally toned with fairness and equality. Beginning in the first year of the elementary level, statements intended to promote women’s rights are included in the explicit and implicit learning objectives. Among the embedded topics in one lesson dealing with the family of the Prophet is “Woman and not discriminating against her” (1a: 25). A parable of women’s successful participation in political life is cited from the Quran in the context of the story of Prophet Solomon (10b: 46). However, societal ambivalence about women’s changing role shows in statements like these, found in the latest high school religion texts under the heading “Woman’s Work”: “It is not intended that a woman’s work be (only) in a government position, or in the public or private sector; the intention is that she should be engaged in productive work anywhere.” The text goes on to give examples of her productivity: “First of all, she must play her natural role as an excellent house wife . . . [and] give a lot of herself to her little kingdom. If any time is left, she should spend it in practicing her fruitful hobbies such as embroidery, dressmaking, making jams and sweets, drawing, small handicrafts, etc. [If she enters the job market], she has to choose a position that suits the nature of women and preserves her dignity, and stay clear from jobs where she is crowded together with men and touching them.” Regarding the appearance of women in the workplace, the text recommends that women should not wear excessive makeup. Students are reminded of countries (unspecified) that have flourished and advanced because “half of society [women] . . . took it upon themselves to work with seriousness and sincerity” (10b: 99). Proper Islamic Dress Closely related to social and individual identity is the issue of clothing. Textbooks make the assertion that Islam does not prescribe any specifics of how Muslims should be dressed, whether as individuals, a community, or as special groups. The old curriculum describes dress standards for both men

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and women in general terms, as does the new one. However, the old texts specify that dress for women must meet the prescribed definition in the Quran (24:31) and then provide the interpretation commonly held by conservatives: women must cover their whole body, except face, hands, and feet (9: 110). The new curriculum teaches that Islam gave freedom to Muslims to choose whatever is convenient for them, makes their movement in life easy, and “preserves their dignity and modesty and protects society against behavioral corruption.” The text does not address one sex in particular. The specific description of what should not be worn can be applied to both women and men: “Clothes should not be too tight so that they detail the contours of the body, nor be thin to the extent of revealing what is underneath them. Clothes should cover what is supposed to be covered.” This last statement may be interpreted in many ways and in other contexts dealing with what is considered awrah (parts of the body that must be covered) for men and women. Illustrations in the recent curriculum, although reinforcing some traditional attitudes, generally seek to enhance the image of women and to provide an expanded range of Islamically acceptable constructs that can accommodate the changing nature of gender relations and family life in Egyptian society. Examples include an urban family shown at home having breakfast, wearing Western-style dress and no hijab (“modest” or “Islamic” dress) (2a: 22). The family theme appears the same in various illustrations. A father does not wear a beard (1a: 5; 1b: 25–27), and a little boy is playing with a dog (3a: 21). These illustrations are very significant, given the traditional attitude in conservative Islamic circles that truly religious men should wear beards and that dogs are impure. In a statement implicitly refuting the stigmatization of dogs, the text says: “We should not forget that in the modern age we find many types of useful dogs. They learn digging, smelling, tracking, hunting, or guarding” (7b: 44). In one illustration, boys and girls play together in a schoolyard (1a: 6) and, in a lesson on treating others kindly, shake hands and greet one another at school (1b: 29). Head cover for girls first appears in the fifthgrade textbook, but still in a coed gathering, with some girls wearing hijab and others not (5b: 29). In an all-girls class, an illustration shows four girls (ages 13–14, according to the level of the textbook) without hijab (7a: 27). Several illustrations depict women in public life, showing women in businesses, markets, schools, offices, and mosques. Examples include women selling goods in the public market (6a: 31) and a woman in traditional rural dress and head scarf sitting in public making handicrafts (8a: 34). Other illustrations include girls without hijab in a Quran recitation class

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with a traditionally dressed male teacher (6a: 8); two women with Western dress and no hijab working in a modern office using a computer and in company with male coworkers (8a: 26); men and women sitting together in a government building (courthouse) (8a: 43); and women wearing hijab inside a mosque and sitting near men, including the imam, who are not wearing beards (8a: 63). Female Circumcision The issue of female circumcision in Islam has been hotly debated in the media, especially in Egypt. Unfortunately, the views of Muslim authorities on this issue have been contradictory at times and have only added to the dissonance of the debate. Muslim apologetic literature generally rejects the practice as un-Islamic. Yet as recently as 1996, lawmakers in Egypt refused to approve social legislation that would have banned female circumcision. Egyptian newspapers quoted the then-rector of Al-Azhar University, one of the most influential religious institutions in Sunni Islam, as saying that circumcising girls is “as much a duty for Muslims as prayer.” However, the new rector of the university, who is also a leading sharia expert, was quoted as opposing female circumcision and stating that “it is not a religious duty but merely a tradition and therefore subject to the opinion of doctors, not clerics.” The picture became even more blurred when the rector, less than a week later, reversed his position and opined that a “moderate circumcision” can be “useful” for girls: “By keeping this moderation in circumcision we avoid the ill effects that some people have called to be banned. . . . The truth is that circumcision is balanced, is a cleanliness useful for women and men.”4 In the past, religious education textbooks have avoided sensitive, realworld topics like this one and therefore exerted no influence on the public debate. But to the credit of the Ministry of Education, the 2002/2003 preparatory-level curriculum addresses the issue head-on. In a discussion entitled “Islam Is Purity and Cleanliness,” the text confirms the legality of circumcision for males but rejects any hint of Islamic sanction of the practice for females. No quranic or prophetic statements are mentioned, but the text asserts that, according to the consensus of Muslim scholars, “there is no correct legal text” that sanctions female circumcision. To buttress the argument, the opinion of a contemporary Muslim authority, the former mufti of Egypt, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi is adduced. He labels the practice a geographically based, nonreligious “custom” that is “on the verge of dying out . . . among all social classes in Egypt, but especially among the educated.” Students are told that religious opinion agrees with the views of medical specialists in affirming that female circumcision is harmful both physically and psychologically. The book states that “most Islamic countries—based on the rulings of their legal experts—have abandoned female circumcision” and

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then lists as examples Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, “and others” (6a: 24). Family Planning and Birth Control The new curriculum contains two pages under the title “Family Planning.” It lists seven points by way of providing general background on the issue. The essence of those points is that all religions aim to provide means for humanity to be happy and well-guided. Any discussion of religious issues should be based on scientific studies and sound understanding of religion and its objectives. Disagreement in religious matters that are subject to human interpretive judgment is permitted as long as the ultimate goal is to find the truth. Human beings live in an age of innovation and increasing productivity, which is not attained only by the greatness of a country’s population or the vastness of its land. Islamic divine law, or sharia, is distinguished by its flexibility, setting general rules and leaving the people to work out the details according to their specific circumstances. Family planning is one of those issues that is subject to different interpretations and opinions. Some nations need to increase their population, and that is welcomed as long as it benefits the nation’s inhabitants. Some other nations cannot afford excessive increase in population due to their limited resources and their dependence on others for their basic livelihood. For those nations, family planning is a desirable action as long as it enhances their progress and solves their problems. After explaining the difference between family planning (tandhim al-nasl) and birth control (tahdid alnasl), the text concludes that family planning does not contradict the Quran or Hadith. For authoritative sanction it refers to the views expressed by Shaikh Tantawi in his book, Tandhim al-Usrah (9: 68–69). The Preeminence of Sunni Islam The general discourse of the curriculum aims at grouping all Muslims and addressing them as umma (one nation), where every duty, emotion, cooperation, or affinity should be fashioned to suit that concept. Hence, it is a duty of any Muslim, whether at the individual or community level, to hasten to help other Muslims regardless of differences in race, color, language, or political system. The curriculum, from beginning to end, leaves Muslim students with the impression that Sunni Islam is the only and correct version of Islam in existence. It does not make any mention of other major sects like the Shi’ites, spiritually oriented groups like the Sufis, or schools of thought in Islamic history like the Kharijites. Nor does it examine the development of sharia or the scholastic study of Quran and Hadith. In this respect, there is a gap between the image cultivated in the texts and the reality experienced by

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students every day. Though there are not many Shi‘ite Muslims in Egypt, there are many mausoleums in Cairo for Shi‘ite figures such as al-Hussein, al-Sayyida Zaynab, al-Imam Ali Zayn al-Abideen, and others who are revered as Muslim saints. Hundreds and thousands of Egyptians pay visits to those mosque-shrines, and the annual festivals commemorating their birthdays are very popular among the masses. Most of the openly Shi‘ite activities in Egypt are carried out by non-Egyptians like the Agha Khan (Ismaili Shi’ites) or Ahmadis (the latter have renovated one of the great Fatimid mosques, al-Haakim, in Cairo). In another odd take on reality, material on Sufism (Islamic mysticism) is not introduced in the texts at any level, despite (1) the existence of a state-sponsored organization called Mashyakhat al-Turuq al-Sufiyya (Shaikhdom of the Sufi Brotherhoods), whose head is appointed by the government; (2) widespread Sufi presence at the popular and elite levels, along with the manifold differences and misconceptions associated with it; (3) Sufism being an integral part of the development of Islamic faith, practice, literature and music, and social life; and (4) the fact that a study of the early and medieval history of Islam cannot ignore the role of prominent Sufis who contributed significantly to Islamic culture. It would seem better to discuss issues related to Sufism openly in an educational setting rather than to allow the perpetuation of ignorance and misrepresentation of Sufism’s role in Islamic life. Reliable Authority Versus Spurious Authority in the Umma As compared to the older curriculum, the new textbooks return again and again to the theme of distinguishing true religious ideas from false religious ideas by knowing the difference between authentic Muslim teachers and erroneous Muslim teachers. This echoes the wider debate in Egyptian society about the need to bring public religious discourse under closer scrutiny by the state and to control the influence of popular, self-appointed preachers who compete with state-sponsored religious authorities. In the fifth-grade book, for example, a lengthy lesson deals with the proper method for disseminating the message of Islam. Among the learning objectives are “Tolerance and Good Etiquette for the Sake of Peace” and “Fighting Extremism and Rejecting Violence.” Muslims, according to the Quran, are to invite people to God’s path “with wisdom and beautiful preaching” and “to argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious” (Quran 16:125). To exemplify how this should be done, an illustrated story is presented that depicts religious authorities (ulama) from Al-Azhar University traveling on a boat. They have been sent around the country to teach people about Islam, “and therefore they are distinguished by abundant knowledge, exemplary morals, and ability in dialogue and persuasion.” The religious authorities explain that discourse about Islam must be characterized by gen-

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tleness, patience, and sound arguments. A question is posed to students about what they should learn from this lesson, and the answers provided in the text include • “Calling people to God must be done with a kind word and wise action.” • “Violence only begets violence; God therefore ordered Muhammad to use patience and forgiveness.” • “God makes victorious the message of truth, and he is with the pious and righteous ones, supporting them and bringing them victory.” (5a: 13–15) Islam and Terrorism In reading the textbooks, we found that terrorism is strongly condemned and tolerance is continually advocated. There is no material that justifies violence or that can be construed as an incitement to commit terrorist acts. We noted a complete absence of vitriolic rhetoric directed toward either Muslims or non-Muslims. Even in the instances where the “Other” is criticized (Jews, for example) and some exclusivist language is employed (regarding other religions and some Western practices), the texts refrain from advocating aggression of any kind. It is true, however, that the inclusion of derogatory and exclusivist language in the texts might be interpreted as implicit justification for resorting to physical violence by those who are so inclined. In this curriculum, terrorists represent extreme danger to Muslims and non-Muslim communities, but the issue is treated more as a problem that affects national security rather than one that has far-reaching international repercussions. A Hadith forbidding Muslims to be extremists and terrorists aims at protecting Muslim communities: “Whoever carries weapons against us is not one of us.” Another Hadith (“The ‘true’ believer is the one whom people can trust with their blood and money”) is more inclusive and uses the word naas (people) without specifying any other distinction. Two quranic verses provide divine sanction for the argument against terrorism: “God has placed no oppression on you in religion” (Quran 20:78) and “God wants every facility, not difficulty, for you” (Quran 2:185; 10b: 100–101). The sensitive issue of Muslim participation in terrorism is discussed in a fairly objective, balanced way. Students learn that terrorism is “among human phenomena that people of all ages have known” and that extremist tendencies have been manifested historically in all religious communities, including Christianity and Judaism. A few examples of extremism in other religions are cited. Then the text explicitly acknowledges the involvement of Muslims and admonishes students to reject terrorism because it is un-

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Islamic. “Unfortunately, extremism has been seen even among some Muslims. . . . So you must not permit yourself to engage in extremism in any situation. Avoid it through deep understanding, calm thinking, and sound behavior in all matters of life. Indeed, your religion, Islam, is one of ease and tolerance, and there is no harshness or oppression or extremism in it. . . . Islam forbids terrorism” (10b: 100–101). The curriculum makes mention of Islamic law and its rulings in fighting terrorism. It cites this quranic verse: “The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is execution, or crucifixion, the cutting off the hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world; and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter” (Quran 5:33). Examples of hiraaba, the sharia term for terrorism, are cited and include domestic criminal acts such as money-laundering, engaging in importing spoiled food, attacking innocent people in public transportation, and forming militant groups. The text provides a lengthy display of what kind of people are attracted to do such evil and who encourages them. It even goes on to say that those who are drifting in that direction are not just a threat to others but are a threat to Muslims as well. The Concept of Jihad Reference to jihad is found in the context of elaborating quranic verses from Chapter 8 dealing with the battle of Badr and the distribution of booty. The commentary in the high school textbook reflects the moderate interpretation of jihad often repeated in Islamic literature. “The Muslim, before he embarks on jihad (military struggle) should undertake the battle of the ‘greater jihad’ [al-jihad al-akbar] with his own nature and passions, his desires, and his personal and family interests” (10a: 35). Reality Check: What Is the Actual Impact of Religious Education on Identity Formation? The degree to which the government actually succeeds in shaping personal and national identity through religious education is difficult to determine. Government efforts throughout modern Egyptian history to make religion an adjunct of state ideology have given rise to public distrust and apathy toward national religious institutions, including the apparatus for teaching Islamic education in the schools. This sense of cynicism and the fact that grades for religion classes have no bearing on college entrance requirements combine to minimize the impact of these textbooks in shaping public values and attitudes. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that Islamic education classes represent only a small part of the religious socialization that a student experiences in Egypt. Even if a student seriously studies the religion

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textbooks in school, the effect of this exposure is often attenuated by other powerful factors that shape religious identity: daily discourse with teachers, friends, and family; activities sponsored by local mosques, social service agencies, and youth organizations; and ideas encountered in electronic and print media (cassettes, videos, religious magazines and newspapers, Friday sermons, Internet sites, and computer software) that are widely disseminated and consumed in Egypt. Expanding Islamist influence in the schools is another important factor that blunts the effectiveness of the state-controlled religious curriculum. Mounting evidence suggests that the Mubarak administration is gradually losing ground in its struggle with religious conservatives to define the role of religion in a modern Islamic educational system and to maintain control over school administration and curriculum. In a recent study entitled AlKhitab al-Dini fi al-Ta‘lim (Religious Discourse in Education), sponsored by the National Center for Educational Research and Development, Kamal Mughith analyzes the “conflict” between the Ministry of Education and “narrow-minded traditional religious discourse.” He states that this movement has as its goal “the inculcation of a closed-minded, extremist religious vision of knowledge and humanity and society” and that the MOE has therefore sought “to block the forces of extremism in education and to destroy their roots in the schools” by adopting a number of stringent policies. These include monitoring reading materials and removing books (such as those by Ibn Taimiya, al-Mawdudi, and Qutb) that advocate extremist views; strictly punishing teachers and administrators who promote an extremist agenda and require female students to veil; and developing the curriculum to improve the quality of educational content (Mughith 1997: 7, 11–12). Mughith concludes that the MOE, despite its jurisdiction over the official structure and content of the national school curriculum, has had only marginal success in combating the powerful influence of the “hidden curriculum”: the amalgam of ideas, attitudes, and values that students acquire from the educational process even though it is not part of the official curriculum that is taught and evaluated. “There is no doubt that the influence of the hidden curriculum remains in the souls and minds of the students a long time; some studies have indicated that this hidden curriculum has the most extensive effect on the minds of students, and it is an extremist religious curriculum in our view.” Extremist rhetoric is making subtle inroads into curriculum materials, reflecting a hostile attitude toward the law, the constitution, and civil legislation of the modern Egyptian government and displaying an antagonistic view of non-Muslim peoples and religions. Mughith’s bleak assessment is that the educational system itself “has become a source of that religious discourse” and that the result will be injurious to Egypt’s future (Mughith 1997: 24–26, 41).

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Conclusion: Balancing Acts and the Path to the Future This study yielded a number of insights about the dialectic between religion and politics in contemporary Egyptian society, specifically the question of how the state makes use of religious institutions and symbols in the nation’s schools to construct religious and national identity and to muster public support for its political, social, and economic agenda. The texts reflect an awareness on the part of government curriculum writers of the strong connection between sociopolitical development and the curriculum content in the educational system. However, because of religious sensitivities related to the Mubarak administration’s struggle to maintain credibility among Islamist segments of society, authors are often forced to walk a tightrope as they attempt to balance instruction of traditional religious values and promotion of public support for national priorities. One must therefore be cognizant of both the explicit and the implicit meanings found in curriculum materials in order to observe this subtle tension. The tension between extrinsic and intrinsic meaning is also apparent in the method adopted for dealing with the vital issue of work and education for women. The texts present Islam as encouraging equality of opportunity for men and women (thus supporting government reforms), but the intrinsic message found in the illustrations reinforces the traditional view that woman’s chief domain is still the home. One unfortunate result of this ideological balancing act, intended to accommodate both the values of traditional society and the need for modern reform, is that the texts convey some mixed messages that will ultimately foster moral and ideological confusion in the minds of young students. In some instances, the religious education textbooks exhibit serious inconsistencies. One example is the inherent contradiction in promoting tolerance and respect for other religions and at the same time including material that instills an exclusivist, triumphalist attitude by emphasizing the preeminence of the Muslim community. A glaring example of incongruity between curriculum content and government policy is the portrayal of the Jews as dirty and duplicitous, enemies of Muslims, at a time when Egypt is at peace with Israel and trying, ostensibly, to build stronger relations with Jews. Under these circumstances, one might expect a more sympathetic interpretation of the role of Jews in Islamic history in order to bring about greater understanding and more productive interaction between the two countries. Islamic history and scripture contain many examples that curriculum writers might have selected in an effort to soften public attitudes toward Israel and to instill a more positive image of Jews. But they chose to ignore this material, a reflection, no doubt, of the “cold peace” that has characterized relations between Egyptians and Israelis since Camp David. It also represents, in our view, another example of how the Mubarak adminis-

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tration chooses carefully which battles to fight: as mentioned before, the approach is to make some minor concessions to traditional Islamist thought in the schools while ignoring Islamist sentiment if necessary on matters of broader national interest.5 The religious curriculum of Egypt’s public school system has been and will continue to be a focal point of the contest between the state and Islamists to win the hearts and minds of the populace. Government officials view religious instruction as an important vehicle for shaping public opinion and national identity and therefore they appropriate the symbols and institutions of Islam in order to garner support for their political agenda and to portray an ideologically consistent image of the nation and its citizens. Their effort, however, is hampered by widespread public apathy, even disdain, for the religious curriculum and by opposition from Islamist influences that have made significant inroads into the school system. The clash between government control of religious curricula to promote political socialization and the Islamist endeavor to suffuse education with conservative religious discourse will no doubt persist for years to come. One reason that a resolution of these tensions in education will remain elusive is that it depends in large measure on how successfully the Mubarak administration can implement political, economic, and social reforms in the society at large. In reality, the core of the question is not about education per se: what children should study or how they should dress in school. These educational issues are merely ancillary to the more fundamental dispute about the role of religion in the public life of a modern Islamic state. Specifically, to what extent is sharia adequate to the demands of modern governance? Is sharia an engine or a brake in national efforts to achieve political, economic, and social progress? These questions lie at the heart of the broader Islamization debate in Egypt and reflect the ongoing dialectic in the worldwide Muslim community between forces of tradition and innovation. This debate lies at the heart of Muslim efforts to define their direction as a community and regain their preeminent position on the world stage. The ability or inability of Muslims to define a more unified voice and vision will shape their course in the twenty-first century and beyond. For students of social science, the Islamic experience is a fascinating case study of the process of ferment and evolution that all religions undergo as times and circumstances change. The daunting task for every religious community is to find creative responses to newly emerging realities and challenges without destroying its spiritual moorings, energy, identity, and unity. Doing so requires that all religions engage in self-examination and internal dialogue in order to determine what is the essential immutable core of the faith and what can be, as Fazlur Rahman said, modified, emphasized, or deflated to suit new conditions. This process is inevitable and often trau-

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matic, and its outcome is crucial in determining the direction, vitality, and longevity of the tradition. Notes 1. The term “educational qibla” is used by some Egyptian educators to describe Egypt’s traditional role as a center of religious studies in the Islamic world. Al-Azhar University, the bastion of Sunni Islamic teaching, continues to draw students from throughout the Islamic world who return to their homelands as religious scholars and mosque preachers. Since the 1970s, Egyptian teachers and curricula have also been used in many Arab-Islamic countries in the Middle East. 2. The educational reforms initiated in 1987 by then–minister of education Fathi Sorour reduced basic education from six to five years and the overall cycle from twelve to eleven years. 3. Two of the best-known cases are those of Farag Foda and Nasr Abu Zayd. A detailed discussion of these issues can be found in Starrett 1998: 207–219. 4. The two shaikhs of Al-Azhar cited here are, respectively, Gad Al-Haq Ali Gad Al-Haq and his replacement, Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi. See “Egypt Bans Adoption but Not Female Circumcision,” Jordan Times (April 4–5, 1996); “Partial Circumcision Can Be ‘Useful’—Tantawi,” Jordan Times (April 10, 1996). 5. Paul Krugman suggests that a number of Muslim states have adopted a similar strategy. Commenting on the anti-Jewish speech by Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, at a recent Islamic summit, Krugman labeled such language “rhetorical red meat” thrown to the public to placate hard-liners: “Strident rhetoric was actually part of a delicate balancing act aimed at domestic politics. . . . When times are tough . . . Mr. Mahathir thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform” (Krugman 2003).

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3 Iran: A Shi‘ite Curriculum to Serve the Islamic State Golnar Mehran RELIGION HAS A STRONG PRESENCE in Iranian education, reflecting the

command of religious ideology in the country since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The religio-political leaders of Iran have aimed at Islamizing the young mainly through the formal education system. A uniform curriculum, standard textbooks, and extensive extracurricular activities are used throughout the country to instill religious values in schoolchildren. In fact, Iran ranks fifth among fifty-four countries studied in terms of percentage of teaching time allocated to religious education during the first six years of formal schooling. Iranian schools spend an average of 13.9 percent of their time teaching religion, following Saudi Arabia (31 percent), Yemen (28.2 percent), Qatar (15.5 percent), and Libya (14.3 percent) (Rivard and Amadio 2003: 214–215). As studies show, religious instruction plays an important role in the transfer of culture and transmission of values among the youth, and Iran is no exception (Judge 2002; Bereday and Lauwerys 1966; Cummings et al. 1988; and Cha et al. 1992: 139–151; see also Wimberley 2003: 199–200; Zachariah and Mehran 1996: 1–6; Hobson and Edwards 1999; Najmi 1969: 453–468; Mueller 1980: 140–152; and Sanders 1992: 119–135). In postrevolutionary Iran, religious education is used to create a strong Shi‘ite identity and a sense of loyalty to the ruling religio-political elite in the country, along with the governance of the religious jurisprudent (velayat-e faqih). The aim, in sum, is to create a politicized Shi’ite identity among the schoolchildren. The purpose of this chapter is to reveal the contours of this identity by analyzing the goals of religious education and the main themes taught via religious instruction in schools. This chapter is based on the Islamic Republic’s religious education curriculum, including textbooks and illustrations, used for all grades (ages 6–17) during the 2003/2004 academic year. The titles of textbooks cited in this chapter are listed at the end of the chapter. Citations to these books are given in the text in parentheses, with gradelevel first, followed by page number. 53

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The Goals of State Religious Education Iranian education is openly and avowedly religious and openly linked to the country’s politics. According to the Ministry of Education in a 1987 publication, the fundamental goal of Iranian schooling is to “strengthen the spiritual beliefs of schoolchildren through the explanation and instruction of the principles . . . of Islam and Shi‘ism on the basis of reason, the Quran, and the traditions of the Innocent Ones” (Safi 2000: 36), referring to the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatimah, and the twelve Shi’ite imams. To reach this goal, Iranian schools are expected to develop moral and ethical virtues among schoolchildren and purify their souls according to the teachings of Islam; explain Islamic values and educate schoolchildren accordingly; strengthen the spirit of reliance on God along with religious devotion and obedience in undertaking Islamic commandments; and promote political insight based on the principle of velayat-e faqih in various fields, aimed at informed participation in the political destiny of the country (Hajforoosh 1998: 42). The ministry has elaborated on these goals over the ensuing years, especially in regard to reinforcing the acceptance of velayat-e faqih in society and obedience to Islamic rules (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000d: 3–4). In the year 2000, primary schoolchildren (grades 1–5) were assigned the goals of believing in Islamic principles; loving God, the five main prophets (Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and most especially Muhammad), and Shi’ite imams; reciting the Quran; believing in resurrection (ma‘ad) and human accountability; observing religious decrees, especially prayers and fasting (for girls); attending mosque; becoming familiar with religious sites; and respecting Islamic personalities, soldiers of the holy war (mujahidin), and martyrs (shuhada) (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000a: 2). For the guidance cycle (grades 6–9), to these same goals are added knowledge about the imamate (the continuation of Islam through the twelve Shi’ite imams) and its relationship with the velayat-e faqih (“the State of the Jurisprudent,” the system of government created by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) and belief in resurrection day (qiyamat), with an emphasis on jihad (holy war) and shahadat (martyrdom), introduced as the responsibility of a Muslim in order to “defend his/her religion” (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000b: 2). Secondary school students (grades 10–12) are expected to pursue all of the above goals, as well as learning to exercise the quranic imperative of recommending the good and forbidding the bad (amr beh ma‘ruf va nahy az monkar), and especially abiding by the governance of the religious jurisprudent as “a definite truth in Islam,” to having “a crusader [jihad-gari] spirit,” and to viewing martyrdom as “a bliss” (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000b: 325). Although the religious goals of education point to the Islamic nature of Iranian society and the unique blend of religion and politics in the country,

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the moral goals introduce universal values that may be taught in other countries as well. They include kindness, respect, honesty, patience, discipline, politeness, cleanliness, hard work, helpfulness, courage, obedience to one’s parents, and observance of the law. In Iranian schools their moral goals also emphasize modesty and chastity and the use of Islamic clothing, which means compulsory veiling for girls at age six (Mehran 2003a: 325), that is, covering the head and the entire body except the face and the hands. At the guidance cycle level, different values are introduced based on gender: girls are socialized to be “modest,” whereas boys are expected to be “brave” (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000c: 3). A close look at the religious goals for each cycle reveals that although the same themes are repeated at all three levels, there is a shift from familiarizing younger children with Islamic decrees from an emotional point of view, using such words as “love” and “respect” for the principles of the religion, to asking older students to “obey” and abide by them. Schoolchildren are constantly reminded that the imamate is closely linked to the religio-political concept of the jurisprudent in Shi’ism, thus justifying the rule of the velayat faqih (religious jurisprudent) in postrevolutionary Iran. Other religious concepts that have been used to serve a political cause in contemporary Iran, especially during the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, include holy war and martyrdom. In other words, although Iranian pupils are trained as Muslims, their Shi‘ite identity is continuously reinforced, as is their political devotion to the rule of the clergy and the union of religion and state in their country. In fact, in a deliberate attempt to keep the Ayatollah Khomeini’s legacy alive among a generation born after his death in 1989, pictures of the ayatollah and quotations from his speeches are placed in every single textbook, where he is represented as the pious and knowledgeable leader of Muslims during the absence of the twelfth Shi‘ite imam and is remembered as a “revolutionary, history maker, learned man of Islam, great mentor, perfect Islamic leader, great teacher of the Quran, and a sage” (5: 61; 12: 17, 24; 4: 2; 7: 32). The multifaceted goals of religious instruction in Iran are best summed up in the note to teachers in the introduction of primary cycle Religious Studies textbooks. Teachers are told that religious textbooks are compiled to bring about a “cultural revolution” in which today’s children are transformed into “competent, committed, honest, benevolent, kind, diligent, scholarly, and pious men and women of tomorrow who, filled with faith, will rise to spread the tradition of Islam and the Islamic revolution throughout the world. They will cultivate the great community of Islam, rush to assist the oppressed and struggle against the oppressors, and mobilize the weak and dispossessed peoples of the world” (5: 1). The above goal reflects the dual identity of the Iranian student. He or she is expected not only to become a pious Muslim with ideal characteristics but also an active propagator of politicized Islam with a mission that is both religious

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(disseminating the faith) and political (spreading the revolutionary spirit throughout the entire world). Good and evil appear as a black-and-white dichotomy between the oppressors and the weak, oppressed, and dispossessed, for whom the ideal Muslim is to act as a savior. All these themes are extensively discussed in the religious studies textbooks throughout all grade levels. Religious Education in Iranian Schools Shi‘ism as the Norm “The mission of education is the overall development of schoolchildren based on the teachings and orders of Islam” (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000d: 14), with the exception of officially recognized religious minorities, including Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, whose education still remains under the ultimate supervision of the government. According to Principle 13 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, religious minorities are free to compile and teach their own religious textbooks, based on their holy books, customs, and traditions, under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. According to Principle 12 of the Constitution, the Ministry of Education is obliged to ensure that the religious education of non-Shi‘ite followers of Islam is in accordance with their own jurisprudence (Hajforoosh 1998: 42). In addition, religious minorities have to pass their own religious education examinations, based on the textbooks compiled for non-Muslims, who are exempt from taking examinations on the Quran. Shi‘ite holidays determine the school calendar for minorities: the entire student population is exempt from taking exams during the times of Shi‘ite mourning, the month of Ramadan (coinciding with the martyrdom of Imam Ali) and Muharram (coinciding with the commemoration of Ashura and the martyrdom of Imam Hussain in the battle of Karbala). Armenian schools can also close during Christian holidays (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000d: 304, 336, 362, 364, 488). The Curriculum and the Textbooks Religious Studies (Ta‘limat-e Dini) is taught in second grade for three hours a week, and the hours increase to four at the elementary level as Quran is added. Two hours of Arabic, the language of the Quran, is added throughout the three years of the guidance cycle, and at the secondary level, Religion and Ethics (Din va Akhlaq) are taught together for two hours a week, and Quran is taught for one hour and Arabic for four (Islamic Republic of Iran 2000d: 545, 547, 560). The textbooks are prepared by the Religion Team of the Office of Planning and Compilation of School Textbooks and have different names at various levels: Gifts from Heaven and Religious Studies at the primary

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level; Islamic Culture and Religious Studies at the guidance cycle; and Religion and Life and Islamic Insight during the high school years. The textbooks vary tremendously in terms of their approach to teaching, outward attractiveness, and level of complexity, and range in appearance from simple printed matter with minimum color and drawings to aesthetically delightful books filled with artwork and colorful pictures. Islamic principles are taught through pictures and written text via simple stories, filled with moral messages and spiritual undertones, as well as matter-offact, dry transmission of knowledge about Islamic decrees and the dos and don’ts of religion. Classical as well as modern Persian poetry abounds in most textbooks, including spiritual poems and those with religio-political messages. A few schoolbooks are accompanied by workbooks, and teaching methods range from rote memorization and simple questions related to the lesson to exercises requiring students to reflect and research. At times, religion has a kind and gentle face, but at other times it is a strict discipline that demands unquestioning obedience. The common thread in all lessons, whether on Islamic rules for daily living, Islamic values presented through morality tales, or issues presented through in-depth philosophical debate, is the creation of a devout Muslim with a strong Shi‘ite identity. Religious studies textbooks also have a message for the teachers. Reminded that their pupils learn more from their behavior than from their words, teachers are asked to act as models of “perfection and humanity” for their students and teach them kindness, benevolence, forgiveness, discipline, fairness, self-sacrifice, a sense of duty and purpose, courage, and hard work. Teachers are held responsible for facilitating the internalization of Islamic beliefs in the “soul and spirit” of children for the sake of God and in gratitude for the “blood” of thousands of martyrs and those wounded (janbaz) in the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War (4: 2–3). Extracurricular Indoctrination, Thought Policing, and War Recruitment The Islamic Republic established a new division in the Ministry of Education in 1980, known as the Bureau of Fostering Affairs (omur-e tarbiyati), aimed at the “spiritual renovation and religious training” of students (Islamic Republic of Iran 2001: 193). Its function was, in fact, to socialize schoolchildren in the religio-political ideology of the ruling authorities and to train them to become pious and practicing Muslims and loyal followers of velayat-e faqih. The bureau played a special role in socializing young children at a time when the newly established Islamic Republic was threatened by domestic and international forces that aimed to overthrow the young regime. Among the events of the period were the armed revolt of domestic opponents, US sanctions against Iran following hostage taking at the embassy, and the Iraqi

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invasion of 1980. On the domestic front, the bureau challenged the values taught by competing socialization agents, especially the family, and acted as the religious and political arm of the regime in schools, where students were processed through strict loyalty-morality checks. One of the activities undertaken by the bureau to “revive” religious values and “purify” the students was propagating the “culture of praying” (farhang-e namaz) by building houses of prayer (namaz khaneh) in schools. During the 2000/2001 academic year, there were 27,500 houses of prayer established at educational centers throughout the country, where prayers were led by 12,281 prayer leaders (Islamic Republic of Iran 2001: 197, 199). Other activities include (1) establishing close links between schools, mosques, and religious seminaries; (2) supervising student fasting during the month of Ramadan; (3) setting up national and international competitions for the recitation of the Quran; (4) monitoring the Islamic covering (hijab) of female students and teachers; (5) screening teachers for religiopolitical attitudes and expelling those who have not been deemed “committed” (mote‘ahed), a process known as “purification” (paksazi) in postrevolutionary Iran; (6) setting up exhibitions, field trips, and camps to instill religious values in schoolchildren; (7) conducting mourning ceremonies in schools on the occasion of the martyrdom of Imam Ali, commemorating the “epic of Ashura” and the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, and mourning the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989; (8) establishing Islamic research centers in schools to study the thoughts and writings of Ayatollah Khomeini and the present leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i; and, finally, (9) taking students to holy cities and sites (approximately 3,600,000 students in 1999/2000) (Islamic Republic of Iran 2001: 208), since pilgrimages and mourning ceremonies play a key role in Shi‘ite identity. The bureau also played an important role in propagating the culture of jihad and martyrdom during the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War by inviting speakers, showing war films, revering martyrs, and enlisting young recruits in the war as voluntary forces, known as basij-e danesh amuzi (mobilization of schoolchildren). In 1999, the Ministry of Education established various centers known as the houses of Quran (dar al-Quran) to conduct intensive religious education and teach the Quran and Arabic to boys and girls in a segregated setting, beginning at age five. During the 2000/2001 academic year, 800,000 students were enrolled in 600 houses of Quran (Islamic Republic of Iran 2001: 200). The religious and political performance of students—that is, their loyalty to the ruling ideology and practical undertaking of religious decrees—has a lasting effect on their future lives. In fact, one of the criteria for entering the university, aside from passing the highly competitive entrance examination, has been passing the religio-political screening process (gozinesh).

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This means that admission to university is contingent upon evidence of praying and fasting, proper veiling for female students, and loyalty to the Islamic Republic, in particular the religious jurisprudent (i.e., Ayatollah Khomeini from 1979 to 1989 and Ayatollah Khamene’i from 1989 to the present). Textbook Islam The Ayatollah’s Two Kinds Islam is repeatedly delineated for Iranian schoolchildren through simple definitions at the primary school level and more detailed and complex explanations as the grades go up. Elementary school pupils are told that “Islam is the religion of kindness and compassion” (4: 38), teaching “us” to be honest, truthful, loyal, and kind, whose messenger is known for his “honesty and truthfulness” (5: 32). In the third year of the guidance cycle, thirteen-year-old Iranians are told that Islam is the religion of peace, tranquility, reflection, reason, and logic” (8: 67). However, secondary school students encounter a more politicized and militant Islam. There are two kinds of Islam, according to an idea introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini during his various speeches in the 1980s and presented in a lesson on “Familiarity with the Thoughts of the Founder of the Islamic Republic” (12: 25–41). One is the “pure Islam of Muhammad” (Islam-e Nab-e Muhammadi) and the other, “American Islam” (Islam-e Amrika-yi). Pure Islam is the Islam of the weak, the barefoot people of the earth, defiant mystics, and those who have suffered throughout history, and its pioneers are the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden people of the world. The enemies of pure Islam are capitalists, atheists, infidels, and those greedy for money and power, and these enemies are also the same as those who adhere to American Islam: the capitalists, oppressors, opportunists, hypocrites, the careless well-to-do, and those who seek a comfortable life (12: 30). The pure Islam of Muhammad is the one that will drive the West— headed by the United States—and the East—led by the Soviet Union—to humility and abjection. (The term “Soviet Union” has not been changed, more than a decade after the fall of the socialist state.) In other words, the message to students is that one is either with us, and our kind of Islam, or with our enemies. Jihad and the Defense of the Islamic Republic Defending the Islamic Republic is represented to students as their religious duty, an obligation that flows logically from the premise, continually repeated in the textbooks, that Islam is a way of life. Islamic teachings are thus not limited to the private realm and the personal life of individuals but rather deal with the public sphere as well, providing guidance on the moral,

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spiritual, social, economic, and political aspects of life. Schoolchildren are told that as Muslims, they are responsible for two sets of activities: the first has to do with their relationship with God, including praying and fasting, while the second is about their relationship with humans and other creatures of God, such as being just and fair, struggling against oppression, preserving the environment, and defending the regime and their Islamic country (10: 106). Thus religious fidelity and the politics of supporting the regime become inseparable. Students learn that jihad means armed struggle against the enemies of Islam and Muslims. There are three reasons for holy war: one is for God’s sake and the defense of religion; the other is to establish social justice and free the weak and poor from the “claws of oppressors”; and the third is to defend the homeland (11: 22). Guidance cycle students are reminded that the defense of one’s country from the aggression and invasion of foreigners is obligatory (vajeb) for all, young and old, men and women. They are told that according to Ayatollah Khomeini, the defense of Islam and Islamic countries is a “religious and national duty” (8: 70–71). In the textbooks, the link between Islam and defense of the homeland appears only in the context of jihad, and nowhere, even in that context, is Iranian-ness emphasized, nor are Iranians represented as distinct from the rest of the Muslim world. Although there is a deliberate attempt to emphasize Shi‘i-ness, Shi‘ism is treated as an integral part of the world Muslim community and is never linked with being Iranian. In fact, Iran is rarely mentioned in textbooks at all, except for discussions on the “oppressive and superstitious” nature of Iranian society before the advent of Islam (11: 26), how Iran was conquered by Muslims, and the mass conversion of Iranians to Islam (8: 69–70). Similarly, Iranian personalities are introduced only in the context of their relationship to Islam: Salman-e Farsi (7: 53), for example, who was a close ally of Prophet Muhammad, and famous scientists such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Abu Nasr al-Farabi, and Abu Rayhan Biruni, who lived in “Islamic Iran” (Iran-e Islami) (11: 26). In the discussion of jihad, the identity of foreign aggressors against whom Islam and Islamic countries must be defended is purposefully ambiguous, although illustrations in the textbooks evoke images of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War: a young boy reading the Quran and holding his gun in the trenches (3: 24), revolutionary guards raising their guns and the flag of the Islamic Republic (7: 60), and armed soldiers preparing to attack the enemy (5: 39). Lessons about Friday prayer in the textbooks add to the tenor of militancy toward unnamed enemies. One lesson, for example, states that the prayer leader (as if sui generis to Islam) holds a gun during his sermon to show that an Islamic society is at all times—even during prayers—prepared to declare jihad against unbelievers and defend Islam against its domestic and foreign enemies (7: 93, 5: 68).

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The concept of martyrdom, introduced as “welcoming death for the sake of God” (12: 47), adds to the militant spirit of the textbooks. Iranian students are told that martyrdom and self-sacrifice constitute a duty when Muslims realize that the continuation of life will bring about only shame and disgrace. They are taught that martyrs are highly esteemed by God and that martyrdom is an honor and carries significant social and political implications for Islam and Muslims. Students are reminded that the title of Sayyid al-Shuhada (Lord of Martyrs), is reserved for Imam Hussain, the most revered figure in Shi‘ism and the ultimate role model, who lost his life in order to fight oppression and injustice and “keep Islam alive” (3: 42). Within the contemporary religious studies textbooks, martyrs include not only the Shi‘ite imams who were killed by the “oppressive rulers” of their time, but also other Muslims who died in the “path of Islam.” Martyrdom was closely linked to jihad and used in a highly politicized context during the 1979 revolution and the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War to mobilize Iranians for battle and forge a sense of identity with the new regime of the ayatollah. At that time, the title of “martyr” was used for those killed during both conflicts. The Ayatollah Khomeini himself drew the parallel between the anciently revered martyrs of Shi‘ism and defense as a religious obligation: “The martyrdom of Imam Ali and Imam Hussain and the imprisonment, torture, exile, and poisoning of the Imams,” he wrote, “were all due to the political struggle of Shi‘ites against oppressors. Thus struggle and political activity is an important part of religious responsibilities” (11: 83; 8: 96). Ayatollah Khomeini declared military preparation to be an obligation when he ordered the formation of the “mobilization of the weak” (basij-e mostaz’afin). Known as the Basij, it provided martial training for voluntary recruits who later fought in the war. At the same time, the ayatollah also mandated military training (called “defense instruction”) for male students in schools, believing that an Islamic country must be “entirely military” and prepared for combat at all times: in a “country inhabited by 20 million young,” he said, “there must be 20 million soldiers and 20 million riflemen” (7: 60–61). Accordingly, military training for male students was added to the curriculum in the 1980s. Why do the religion textbooks persist in incorporating such militancy nearly two decades after the end of the Iran-Iraq War? The reason is that the regime of Shi‘ite clerics is still insecure, and fostering a sense of there being an existential, external threat in the face of enemies—real, past, or potential—promotes national cohesion. At the same time, framing the threat in terms of Islam and Shi‘ite-Muslim oppressed victims versus ambiguous Others directs feelings of patriotism toward the Islamic state and its clerical rulers. The insecurity of the regime is also behind Iran’s absence in the textbooks: first, because defense of the homeland, the faith, or the state of the

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jurisprudent undermines competition from the always-present sense of Iranian nationalism, in which Iran’s own cultural heritage is embedded and which is distinct from Islam and in many ways antithetical to it. Second, unlike “Iran,” whose political borders incorporate peoples of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, the Islamic Republic represents an ideological umbrella that subsumes these differences and asserts homogeneity. The Rule of the Jurisprudent A significant portion of religious studies textbooks are dedicated to the highly politicized topic of Islamic rule and leadership in Islam. Both are of crucial importance in postrevolutionary Iran, especially since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, and the onset of clerical rule has been justified in terms of implementing the principle of the governance of the religious jurisprudent. Explaining the link between religion and the state and the necessity of Islamic rule for the young is, therefore, of central importance in educating loyal followers of the regime. The socialization of schoolchildren in this realm begins as early as the third grade of elementary school and continues throughout their formal education. Young Iranians are told that establishing Islamic rule (hukumat-e Islami) is the “prerequisite for implementing Islam in society” (12: 7). They are taught that the goal of Islam is to bring about cultural, political, economic, and military independence for Muslims, but that real independence is not possible unless an Islamic state is established to protect the “interests of Muslims” and defend the “boundaries of Islam.” In a lesson titled “Imamate and Leadership in Islam,” twelve-year-old Iranians are told that social justice, order, and security is possible only in a state governed by Islamic law and led by a pious and knowledgeable Muslim (7: 70). The textbooks try to bolster the clerical regime further by claiming the theory of “Islam without governance” (secularism) is propagated by enemies of Islam, identified as colonialists, “Westoxicated” (gharbzadeh) Muslims, and mercenaries who serve the foreigners (12: 9, 18). According to the textbooks, the roots of the Islamic state go back to the Prophet Muhammad, and that Imam Ali, who attempted to bring both spiritual freedom and social justice to Muslims, was also the only Shi‘ite imam who led an Islamic state before his martyrdom (11: 22–23). The imamate and the religio-political leadership of Shi‘ite imams is then linked to the need for the governance of the jurisprudent, represented as the basic “pillar of an Islamic society,” and the “guarantor of its survival and continuity” in the struggle against infidels and oppressors during the absence of the twelfth Shi‘ite imam (11: 33). In the most direct explanation of velayat-e faqih, young Iranians learn that during the absence of the twelfth imam, the struggle against tyranny continued under the leadership of ulama (learned ones) and the deputies (nayeban) of the last imam. “The battle continued

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until our time when it succeeded in the hands of our deceased leader—the deputy of the imam—Grand Ayatollah Khomeini” (8: 96). After the ayatollah’s death, students are told, the leadership of Iran continued in the hands of Ayatollah Khamene’i, “the most competent and knowledgeable student of the Imam (Khomeini),” who was selected as the “leader of the Islamic umma” to follow the “holy objectives” of the Imam” (4: 2). What are the characteristics of the religious jurisprudent (velayat faqih) who is to lead the Islamic state? According to the textbooks, the faqih is “a perfect and capable scholar of Islam,” who knows the personal, social, political, economic, cultural, and ethical rules and regulations of religion; is able to lead people; and possesses knowledge, prudence, and courage (12: 12–15). High school students are reminded that according to the Shi‘ite faith, religious jurisprudents are the “successors of Prophet Muhammad and the innocent Imams” who must be followed and obeyed. Schoolchildren learn that prayers “should be accompanied by the acceptance of velayat and leadership” since “being a Muslim without a connection to velayat is useless” (11: 105). They also learn that obeying religious jurisprudents is “obeying God, the Prophet, and the Imams while disobedience is submission to idols” (12: 13). Muslim/Non-Muslim Identity: Both Respect and Enmity Iranian schoolchildren are introduced to a dichotomous world in which there is a clear distinction between “us” and “them.” In other words, the identity of the self is defined in relation to the Other (Tedesco 1997; UNESCO 1996; Mehran 2002). One of the most important distinctions made in religious studies textbooks is the definition of a Muslim. Eightyear-old Iranians are asked “Who is a Muslim?” and then told that a Muslim is one who believes in the one and only God and the afterlife, regards the Prophet Muhammad as God’s last prophet, obeys the orders of God and the Prophet Muhammad in all affairs, and is the friend of Muslims and the enemy of oppressors (3: 22). Students are then told that the “opposite” of being a Muslim is being an unbeliever or infidel (kafir), “one who denies God or believes that God has a partner, or does not accept the prophethood of prophets; a kafir is impure (najis)” (7: 83). It is important to note that non-Muslim believers are never introduced as the opposite of Muslims. In fact, there is constant respect for believers and their prophets. Second graders are told that “God’s major Prophets” are Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, and “we, Muslims, respect all Prophets” (2: 29). Fourth graders learn that according to the sixth Shi‘ite imam, one should “help the needy even if they are not Muslim” since God likes assisting all human beings (4: 56). A significant portion of religious studies textbooks are dedicated to the life, teachings, and miracles of other prophets, especially Moses and Jesus, and primary school textbooks contain

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moral stories that deal with the deeds of the two prophets during their lifetime. Moses is introduced as “the Prophet of God” (4: 15), and students are told that the sayings of Muhammad are the same as those of Jesus, in that “both are the words of God” (5: 34). Although Zoroastrians are officially recognized as a religious minority in Iran, the Zoroastrian prophet is never mentioned in schoolbooks designed for Muslim students. In general, religious studies textbooks in Iran aim at emphasizing the commonalities of all religions by noting that it is wrong to say the religion of Abraham, the religion of Jews, the religion of Jesus, and the religion of Islam, since “from the point of view of the Quran, the religion of God is the same from Adam to Muhammad” (11: 28). Schoolchildren are told that the foundation of the prophets’ religion is all the same, inviting humans to the same truth. All “heavenly religions” are based on three principles: faith in the one and only God (tawhid), belief in the afterlife (ma‘ad), and faith in the prophets (nabovvat) (8: 29). Prophets also share their struggle against polytheism, corruption, immorality, oppression, and social injustice in order to save the weak, oppressed, and downtrodden (7: 28–29). In spite of the emphasis on the similarity of all religions and the need to respect all prophets, there is a clear distinction between “us, Muslims” and “them, non-Muslims.” A borderline is defined without negating or shunning the Other, unless it is framed in a political context. The line of distinction is made clear when such topics as pilgrimage (hajj) and the “unity, power, and glory” of the Islamic community (umma) are mentioned. Schoolchildren learn that Muslims should unite despite differences in language, dialect, color, and race to “cut off the hands of foreigners and the enemies of Islam” (7: 101). Textbooks emphasize that geographic borders among Islamic countries should not undermine the responsibility of wealthy, free, and advanced Muslim nations toward their poor, hungry, and unemployed brothers living in Islamic countries that are “colonized and in chains.” Division and disunity in the Islamic world is identified as the biggest danger facing Muslims, who need to stand united against the common enemy of “infidelity (kufr) and global oppression.” Twelve-year-old Iranians read the following message by Ayatollah Khomeini in their religious studies textbook: “Muslims of the world, rise and save yourself from the claws of oppressors and criminals. Muslims of the universe, wake up and free Islam and Muslim countries from the colonialists and their affiliates” (7: 65). Asking Muslims to respect non-Muslims in a religious context while at the same time inviting them to unite against infidels who are political enemies of the umma is but one of the contradictions left unresolved in the textbooks. Another is the text’s advocacy of equal treatment for all religions, even as it points to the “superiority” of Muslims who are endowed with “the best and most complete religion” teaching “the best way of life.”

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In the third-grade religious studies textbook in which this lesson appears, there is also a blunt statement (mirroring the dogma of Christian evangelism), that God will not accept those who have not chosen Islam, and the ones who have accepted another religion or path will be “losers and helpless in the afterlife” (3: 22–23). Similarly, schoolchildren are also taught that Muslims will be the ultimate winners, since, according to Shi‘ite dogma reminiscent of American millennialists’ anticipation of the second coming of Christ, the twelfth imam will finally reappear and establish the “rule of Islam” throughout the world (8: 96–97). Given the rightful superiority of Muslims over non-Muslims, students learn, any transaction that results in the domination of a non-Muslim over a Muslim is null and prohibited (haram) (12: 8–9). Shi‘ite/Non-Shi‘ite Identity: Brothers in Faith The Shi‘ite/non-Shi‘ite dichotomy is introduced in the guidance cycle. Thirteen-year-old Iranians are told that Shi‘ites and Sunnis “differ on the question of succession and leadership after Prophet Muhammad and certain issues related to jurisprudence” (8: 98). They are informed that Shi‘ites, defined to mean friends and followers of the Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, believe in the imamate: the leadership of the Muslim community by the descendants of Prophet Muhammad. It began with Imam Ali, designated by the Prophet as his successor, and lasted 250 years, until the disappearance of the twelfth Imam Mahdi, who is alive but absent and will one day reappear to establish Islamic rule in the world. Sunnis, however, believe that the Prophet did not appoint a successor for himself and that the first four caliphs—Abu Bakr, Uthman, Omar, and Ali—followed him as the elected leaders of Muslims. Secondary school students are told that in the Shi‘ite school of thought, the imamate is one of the principles and pillars of Islam, along with monotheism, prophethood, and the afterlife. Imams are explained as those appointed by God and the Prophet Muhammad to guide Muslims in all their religious and worldly affairs, and students should “love the Shi‘i Imams and obey their instructions” since their orders are the orders of God (11: 44, 48–49, 52, 55). Young Iranians are told that the period during which the twelfth imam is absent is called the period of waiting (intizar). Yet waiting does not mean passive acceptance of the status quo until the appearance of the savior, but rather a time to be spent on preparing the ground for the advent of Imam Mahdi through struggle against oppression, protection of religion, and propagation of God’s instructions by following the leadership of the religiopolitical leader, while also purifying the soul and acquiring Islamic ethics. The textbook links religious faith to contemporary Iranian politics, again, when students are informed that the 1979 “Islamic revolution of our Muslim

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people is a manifestation of our faith, struggle, and preparation for the advent of Imam Mahdi during the period of waiting” (11: 92). In spite of the deliberate attempt to construct a strong Shi’ite identity through religious education, the textbook does not contain a single derogatory statement about Sunnis or Sunnism. Guidance cycle students learn that both Shi‘ites and Sunnis are Muslims “who have a single religion and Prophet and pray towards the same direction [qibla].” Their holy book is the Quran, and they are united in brotherhood, striving to bring about progress and grandeur for the community of Islam, fighting the enemies of Islam and the Quran, and ensuring the “victory of Islam over infidelity [kufr]” (8: 98–99). Religious studies textbooks in Iran are filled with illustrations related to the lives and deeds of the Shi‘ite imams and with stories about their piety, kindness, honesty, courage, sacrifice, immunity from sin, purity, and sense of social justice and the assistance to the weak and downtrodden. A special emphasis is placed on the life and martyrdom of Imam Hussain as the symbol of the Shi‘ite struggle against oppression. A second-grade textbook illustrates the martyrdom of Imam Hussain with a drawing of young children mourning his death in Karbala on the day of Ashura (2a: 45). In a fifthgrade textbook, the “epic of Ashura” is presented as a “lesson on self-sacrifice”; with the martyrs Ali (described in a first-year secondary school textbook, Religion and Life [p. 14] as “the perfect human being”), his sons Hassan and Hussain, along with the Prophet and his daughter Fatimah, representing the ultimate models for all Shi‘ites to emulate (5: 35). In the same textbook, the “holy shrines” of Imam Ali in Najaf, Imam Hussain in Karbala, and Imam Reza in Mashhad are pictured, along with descriptions of their lives and martyrdom, and the tomb of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran is also introduced as a “holy shrine,” visited by pilgrims from all over the world (5: 62). Good and Evil: A World in Black and White Religious textbooks introduce a black-and-white image of the world: a “good person” is one who is good-tempered, truthful, trustworthy, polite, and honest, whereas a “bad person” is one who is bad-tempered, abusive, oppressive, and a liar (5: 10). Those who are righteous and pious worshippers of God inhabit heaven, but sinners, who are infidels, oppressors, and evildoers, dwell in hell (8: 17–23). The world is divided into two camps: right (haqq) and wrong (batel), light (noor) and darkness (zolmat), with hoarders and hypocrites in the first and the weak and dispossessed in the second. The ultimate victory of right over wrong occurs when the twelfth imam appears (11: 88–89). Capitalists, “inhabitants of palaces,” the rich, superpowers, colonialists, the late shah and his father, “sultans of tyranny,” and “servants of foreigners” and of materialism, “Freudism,” and Marxism

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(11: 10–11), are members of the evil camp attacking the poor, dispossessed, and downtrodden who fight for independence, freedom, and social justice (12: 31, 36–37, 115). The concept of evil is closely linked to the notion of the enemy (doshman). Iranian pupils are constantly reminded of the existence of an everpresent enemy threatening Muslims. In fact, they are told that “identifying the enemy and fighting against it” are the lessons taught by Ayatollah Khomeini to all Muslims and Iranians (12: 28). The historical enemies of Islam have been introduced as the tyrannical rulers of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, who oppressed Muslims and killed the Shi‘ite imams. The modern enemy is identified as the West and Westerners who aim at dominating the Muslims, in particular British colonialism and US imperialism, in addition to enemies inside the country, those “educated in the West and the East” who serve alien interests, consolidating their cultural, economic, and military influence in Iran (12: 14–15). Ayatollah Khomeini introduces the United States as the symbol of “global infidelity” and invites the Muslims of the world to “crush the teeth of America, this oppressive and aggressive state, in her mouth” (12: 29; 7: 64–65). Yet another enemy of Islam introduced in textbooks is Israel, mentioned only in a political context as the state that trained torturers for Iran during the Pahlavi period (12: 32). It is important to emphasize that neither the West nor Israel is ever presented as the enemy based on religious affiliation; rather, hostility is derived from aggression against Muslims or Islam. Gender: Woman as Homemaker The only female role models introduced to Iranian pupils are Khadijah, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, and Fatimah, the Prophet’s daughter. Both are presented in a supportive role as wives and mothers without playing an independent social role of their own. Fatimah is introduced as the “exemplary lady of Islam,” who was the “best wife” for her husband and the “best mother” for her children. Unlike the socially active and politicized new Muslim woman of today’s Iran, Fatimah is portrayed solely in a traditional role, performing domestic chores such as cooking, cleaning, and caring for children (4: 32, 8: 83; Mehran 2003b). Religious studies textbooks also praise Fatimah for her “worship of God” and “observance of hijab.” In fact, piety and veiling are the two most important features of the ideal Muslim woman propagated in Iranian textbooks. Young pupils are told that according to Islamic instructions, women should “cover their body and hair” from the gaze of men. They are informed that veiling not only “strengthens the foundation of the family” but also “adds to the respect and value of women,” preventing them from “corruption,” as has been the fate of women in Western societies (8: 82; 12: 113).

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Schoolchildren learn that unveiling leads to sin and its implementation in Iran during the reign of Reza Shah was a British colonial plot (12: 115). Religious studies textbooks are filled with images of anonymous female role models—women with the long veil covering head to toe—who are praying, reading the Quran, attending mosque, and engaged in domestic chores (4: 70; 3: 25; 2b: 20, 40–41). Conclusion: Politicizing Shi‘ite Identity The priorities of the Iranian educational system were clearly stated by Ayatollah Khomeini during the early days of the 1979 revolution. According to the founder of the Islamic Republic, “purification is more important than education” (4: 2). Islamization and purification of the soul have thus become the primary goals of postrevolutionary Iranian education, aiming at creating pious Muslims. In addition, the religio-political nature of the state has created a link between Islamization and politicization in schools, where young Iranians are socialized as pious and politicized citizens. The result has been a highly ideological educational system, the goal of which is Islamizing and politicizing the schoolchildren through the formal curriculum and textbook content, as well as through extracurricular activities that seek to consolidate the principles of religio-political rule in Iran. The ultimate goal of Iranian education is the formation of a politicized Shi‘ite identity that requires a young pupil to actively practice his or her religion; obey the Islamic decrees on all aspects of his or her public and private life; become a firm believer in the governance of the religious jurisprudent; and struggle to defend his or her faith against an ever-present enemy that threatens Islam from inside or outside the country. The formation of the politicized Shi‘ite identity is made possible by carefully delineating the “circles of inclusion and exclusion” in the minds of young Iranians so that they can identify “insiders” and “outsiders.” In present-day Iran, religious affiliation and political loyalty determine who is included and who is excluded. The “circle of inclusion” comprises the community of believers in general and Muslims in particular. The “circle of exclusion,” however, comprises unbelievers and infidels (kuffar) and the enemies of Islam, that is, foreigners (especially the West) and “Westoxicated” nationals who serve the interests of the outsiders. The point of reference is at all times Islam, not Iran, since religious identity is represented as tied to the umma, not the nation-state. Insiders are Muslims, especially Shi‘ites. Outsiders are accepted and respected if they belong to the community of believers (including Jews and Christians), unless they act as an enemy. The criterion for an outsider to become an enemy is hostility toward Muslims through military aggression, political and economic domination, or cultural infiltration.

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The question raised at this point is whether the Islamic Republic has succeeded in socializing the young to adopt the politicized Shi‘ite identity. The answer is yes and no. Shi‘ite identity has been an integral part of Iranian identity since Shi‘ism became the state religion in the 1500s. Although state-sponsored religious education in Iran does not emphasize the nation-state or represent Shi‘ism as tied to the Iranian nation, being Shi‘ite and speaking Persian has long distinguished Iranians from the mostly Arabic-speaking Sunnis. Both the religion and the language constitute what is known as Iraniyyat (Iranian-ness). The symbols and role models of Shi‘ism discussed in textbooks—namely, Imam Ali, Imam Hussain, martyrdom, and the epic of Ashura—have long been an integral part of IranianIslamic identity. The emphasis on Shi‘ism and Shi‘ite values in schools, therefore, merely reflects what is already part of the Iranian psyche, informally taught by the majority of Iranian families and reinforced by the community. The situation differs in relation to the politicized aspect of Shi‘ite identity. The messages transmitted through competing socialization agents, including the family, peer group, and highly influential information technology (satellite television and Internet), often undermine the political values taught in school. Furthermore, the sharp contrast between preaching and practice in the larger society has led Iranian youth to question the “truth” of what is conveyed in the classroom. The majority of young Iranians do not see a dichotomized world divided into good and evil. The real world for most of them is comprised of shades of gray, characterized by an interchange of the representatives of “darkness and light.” The schoolchildren of today and the future generation of Iranians will undoubtedly question a world divided into “us” and “them” based solely on ideology. They will most likely seek to create a new society in which the constructs of inclusion and exclusion are based on universal definitions of right and wrong. Textbooks Cited 2a Hadiyehha-ye Aseman [Gifts from Heaven]. Primary cycle, grade 2. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 2b Hadiyehha-ye Aseman (Ketab-e Kar) [Gifts from Heaven (Workbook)]. Primary cycle, grade 2. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 3 Ta‘limat-e Dini. [Religious Studies]. Primary cycle, grade 3. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2002. 4 Ta‘limat-e Dini [Religious Studies]. Primary cycle, grade 4. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 5 Ta‘limat-e Dini [Religious Studies]. Primary cycle, grade 5. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 7 Farhang-e Islami va Ta‘limat-e Dini [Islamic Culture and Religious

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Studies]. Guidance cycle, second year, grade 7. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 8 Farhang-e Islami va Ta‘limat-e Dini [Islamic Culture and Religious Studies]. Guidance cycle, third year, grade 8. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 10 Din va Zendegi [Religion and Life]. Secondary cycle, first year, grade 10. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 11 Binesh-e Islami [Islamic Insight]. Secondary cycle, second year, grade 11. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003. 12 Binesh-e Islami [Islamic Insight]. Secondary cycle, third year, grade 12. Tehran: Ministry of Education, 2003.

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4 Jordan: Prescription for Obedience and Conformity Betty Anderson Islamic society is a society established on reality and rights and conviction, and not on uncertainty and doubt and suspicion. (11c: 241)

Taken together, the current generation of Islamic textbooks of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan provides students with a guide for living in a world in which every relationship is structured, categorized, and delineated, from those in the family unit to those of the many religious groups within the region to those of East and West. Within the arms of Islam, the family unit stands as the basic building block of society, and if the rules laid out in the texts are followed, women and children are protected from evil, members of the family understand the importance of their individual roles, and society remains a strong, stable whole, working together for the larger good. A perfect unitary Islam dictates the way students should understand their history, their faith, and their current socioeconomic circumstances. Islam thus protects Muslims from their own weaknesses and from the acts of any of a number of unbelievers who have attempted to destroy or weaken the Muslim world over the centuries. Because of the fear of change depicted within them and the reliance on stereotypical and biased depictions of the Other to better demand obedience to “us,” these textbooks read something like a cross between Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives (1973) and Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (1996). As a result, the “Stepford Civilization” of these textbooks fails to address most of the very real issues confronting Jordanian society in the twenty-first century. Socioeconomic change has been a hallmark of the Middle East over the last 150 years and has accelerated since the late 1980s. The spread of mass education has increased literacy for men and women, opened up new career opportunities, and subsequently generated debates about societal responsibilities. Globalization of the world economy has brought to Jordan new products, new images, and new means of communica71

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tion and transportation, furthering the debate about gender roles, state power, and economic diversification. In the last few years alone, mobile phones have revolutionized the means by which people interact. Instead of addressing these changes in a meaningful debate, these texts present them only as threats to Islamic society. In the worldview of these texts, change can only lead to alienation and social fragmentation. As evidence, the texts highlight the fact that “Western” society is marked by divorce and crime precisely because its members fail to adhere to strict rules about societal roles. The women in Jordan’s Islamic texts have only a domestic, family role and no place outside the home. On the one hand, this fixing of domestic roles mirrors the lives of the majority of Jordan’s female population. On the other hand, it denigrates the many different influences women and their families encounter in Jordan in the twenty-first century. The authors of these texts use carrots and sticks to keep the students away from these temptations: obedience brings happiness; misbehavior brings sadness. The texts themselves neither allow students to discuss the different influences affecting their lives nor grant them the power to determine their life’s role. Islam, as a perfect set of beliefs, is the voice of authority, not the combined voices or practices of Muslims. The righteousness and unity of Islam are also continually compared to the transgressions of the Christians and Jews. By so doing, the texts essentialize Christian and Jewish natures, fixing them into categories perpetually inferior and hostile to Islam. The texts do not bother to encourage students to think actively about the meaning of tolerance; they are told merely to accept the fact that Islam is inherently tolerant and those who reject this position stand as its eternal enemies. The corruptions of Christianity and Judaism are used as a means to extol the superiority of Islam as a whole. The “Stepford Civilization” thus delineates the rules required to live within Islamic society, counterpoised against the hostility and deviation existing outside its walls. The strongest messages of the texts are negative ones, illustrating the costs of misbehavior by its members and the threats of attack by its enemies. The textbooks under study include seven Islamic and three civics texts, all published between 1995 and 2002. They are designed for grades eight through twelve and were in use in Jordan’s public school system in 2003–2004. Muslim students are required to study Islam three hours a week, whereas subjects such as Arabic and mathematics are studied five hours per week. Despite the fact that Islam is taught a fewer number of hours each week than those other subjects, grades in Islam classes count equally toward a student’s annual grade point average (GPA). When graduating from high school, students take an exit exam (tawjihi) in Islam, as well as in the other subjects. Religious instruction is also not limited solely to religion class, as Islam permeates the textbooks of the other subjects.

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Arabic-language texts are replete with passages from the Quran and Hadith, and even the civics textbooks quote Islamic sources to back up their discussions of human rights and governmental structures. According to Education Minister Khalid Tuqan, all of Jordan’s textbooks were undergoing revision in preparation for the 2004/2005 academic year (“Jordan Textbooks to Explain Resistance,” Al-Jazeera online, December 30, 2003). As quoted on the Al-Jazeera website, the purpose is “reconciliation[,] focusing on values, Islamic teaching as well as Arab and Islamic heritage and international law . . . in order to increase awareness among students.” Fawwaz Jaradat, the head of school curricula at the Education Ministry, told the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour, that the material in the revamped textbooks would focus on “human rights in combating occupation, the differentiation between terrorism and legitimate resistance, the concept of terrorism.” Despite the fact that the US government has been pressuring Jordan and neighboring states to revise their textbooks, Tuqan denied that the current project was motivated by political purposes, stating it was based on a desire to modernize the curriculum. If a major revision actually takes place with an emphasis on “reconciliation,” that will be the first time the Islamic textbooks have been appreciably changed in Jordan since the 1970s. Christian students have been exempt from religion classes, but in the last few years the Jordanian public school system has started a pilot program to offer Christianity classes for them. The curriculum for that program has been brought from Syria. However, since Islam is included in many of the nonreligious textbooks, Christian students in Jordan receive a heavy dose of Islam throughout the day. Islam and the State As the quote on the first page of this chapter demonstrates—that “Islamic society is a society established on reality and rights and conviction, and not on uncertainty and doubt and suspicion”—Islam is the primary actor in these books. An omnipresent and united Islam teaches students how to conduct righteous lives within the umma (the Islamic community). The umma, not the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, provides the boundaries for the students. This is not to say that the nation of Jordan is irrelevant to the texts, for many phrases, such as “Jordanian society,” “women in Jordan today,” and “Jordanian charities,” delineate the national world of the students. The Hashemite kings appear as actors in the great march of Islamic history. The question is about the voice of authority presented to the students. The texts purport to present an Islam applicable to the universal Muslim world, not just to the small state of Jordan. Thus, the state and its monarchical family do not explicitly serve as mediators between the message of Islam and the

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students sitting in their classes. This method contrasts sharply with the history textbooks that, from the earliest days in the 1950s and 1960s, represented the Hashemite kings as the primary actors in the history of the Jordanian and Arab nations (Anderson 2001: 5–14). The Hashemite kings serve as both historical leaders and the sole providers of the largesse the Jordanian people receive. In reading these texts, students can readily identify the source of authority in the textbooks’ representation of the Jordanian historical experience. By contrast, in the Islamic textbooks, even though the state serves as mediator between the students and the information—the Ministry of Education chooses the textbook authors and publishes the texts under the imprimatur of the Hashemite Kingdom—Islam appears to be the only actor. The state accrues two benefits by appearing to transfer its authority to another entity. First, by absolving itself of responsibility for the information presented in these texts, the state guarantees that the rules and guides included within them appear unmolested by secular intervention. The divine dictates of Islam override all national and state concerns. They appear to come from that “truth” that is Islam and thus are impossible to refute. A civics textbook for the eighth grade states: “Permanent religious knowledge does not change, because it is issued from God, and it is authentic, permanent knowledge. Defamation or criticism of its authenticity is not allowed” (8: 71). The family is where this interchange between state and faith can most readily be seen. The family, and particularly women, have become the standard-bearers of what is Islamic, what is traditional, and what is nonWestern in much of the Muslim world. As Suad Joseph has found for the region in general, “Not only have the states privileged family above the individual legally, but they have engaged in discourses that represent the family as something a priori, ‘prepolitical,’ a domain so beyond current time and conditions that it is best apprehended in the domain of the divine” (Joseph 2000: 19). Because the family has a prepolitical position within Islamic society, its concerns, more than any other, have remained under the rubric of Islam. However, even though the very political nature of these texts negates the reality of the prepolitical family, the prepolitical idea becomes an opportunity for the state to take control over personal relationships. Hadith and quranic verse are chosen to support the patriarchal structure of the family unit, to the exclusion of other possibilities. For example, one text states: “It is important for the individual to consider himself part of the society and not separate from it,” so that he may protect society and it may protect him in return (11a: 91). Although obedience to the state structure is never specifically required in these texts, obedience to father, mother, family, society, and Islam serves an analogous function. “When the family is a cohesive force, the umma is an unassailable force, its glory builds, its power is assured, its Islamic message is cherished, and it takes its rightful

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place among the nations, as a respected force. No other nation is able to attack it” (12b: 78). Integral to this process of constructing a divinely ordained family is the idea that a higher, more sacred power, not the Hashemite state, is demanding this obedience. The Hashemite kings have consistently portrayed themselves as the fathers of the Jordanian family, the shaikhs of the Jordanian tribe. Discussions about obedience to father and family resonate in the many other images the Hashemites disseminate about their leadership role. No person living in Jordan today can ignore the family and tribal alliances the state has made, if only for the fact that family and tribal ties carry considerable weight in gaining access to government services and jobs. As Abla Amawi reports from her examination of Jordan’s personal status law, The image of al-usra al-wahida, or united family, is built around the articulation of a cohesive structure, of family relations based on obedience to the male head of the household (the patriarch), mutual obligations, and respect for the elderly. A very interactive symbiosis is created between the patriarchal family and the patriarchal state. The Jordanian society as a whole is depicted as a united family with all its members owing allegiance to the regime. (Amawi 2000: 184)

Discussion of the Islamic family in these textbooks can easily be transferred to one about obedience to the Hashemite state itself. The same vocabulary and themes are harnessed for identical goals. The second benefit of seeming to transfer authority to Islam is that the state, through its designated authors and committees, decides what divine dictates to include and what to leave behind in order to generate that obedience. Gregory Starrett states: “just as wild plants have to undergo systematic genetic alterations to make them useful as cultivated foods, so ‘Islam’ has to be altered to make it useful as a political instrument” (Starrett 1998: 8). “Knowing” Islam means being able to articulate the religion as a defined set of beliefs such as those set down in textbook presentations (Eickelman 1992; Starrett 1998: 9). The Jordanian Islamic textbooks exemplify this process by making irrefutable statements on every aspect of students’ lives, often presented in bullet-point lists of conclusive facts. The Hadith or verse mentioned are considered the only voices of authority on a given subject. Sentences such as, “The Prophet determined that the most important of the benefits of Muslims in religious life, after the power of God Almighty, is the righteous marriage” (11a: 43), and “The Muslim family treats its children equally and without oppression and injustice” (11a: 40), give some examples of the tone of the texts. They vacillate between strong, active subjects—the Prophet, Islam—to an almost passive acceptance of a way of life. The subject, “The Muslim family,” implicitly accepts that family members have followed the teachings laid out by Islam and these texts. At the same

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time, these texts do not encourage critical thinking by providing alternative interpretations of Hadith or quranic verse for the students to discuss. Because the source of authority presented in these texts is considered divine, students have no right to debate and question the information they receive; they are asked only to memorize the messages and occasionally to confirm the sentiments. Questions on exams do not ask the students their opinion about the stories presented, but rather ask for such trivia as how many tribes lived in Medina at the time of the Hijra.1 Two issues serve as the focus for this discussion of authority in Jordanian textbooks: obedience to the Islamic family and the threats to this family from “Others.” The first issue illustrates how textbooks are used as social control mechanisms. Everyone in Jordan is currently confronting an array of social, economic, and political forces, many of which have the potential to weaken the state structure. The advice and guidance offered to students attempt to negate these influences and to show that only the one, everlasting definition of the Islamic family will keep society strong. In other words, “The Muslim considers himself responsible for the organization of society and the rule of law in it, and for this he is commanded to have knowledge and to end transgression” (11a: 96). Students have an obligation to fulfill their designated functions. The second issue illustrates how the Hashemite state uses the degradation of “Others” to maintain obedience to its preferred social structure. Muslim students are constantly reminded that the punishments for disobedience fall on the individual and society simultaneously. On both these subjects, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (alIkhwan al-Muslimin) can be felt. The Ikhwan reached an accommodation with the Hashemite state in the 1950s. From that point, the relationship became a reciprocal one, in which the state incorporated many of the Ikhwan’s policy goals in return for peaceful relations. Ikhwan members have been particularly influential in the Ministry of Education, and for many of the last forty years, an Ikhwan leader has served as the minister or as one of his top deputies. They utilized their position to place Ikhwan members throughout the district school systems, as administrators and teachers. In Mansoor Moaddel’s analysis, “The Muslim Brothers naturally used their influence in the ministry to ensure the conformity of its policies with Islam and to restrict the cultural and educational desires of religious minorities” (Moaddel 2002: 35). To give some idea of Ikhwan influence in recent years, in 1991, an Ikhwan leader, Abdallah Akaylah, became the minister of education, while other members led the Ministries of Justice, Social Development, and Religious Affairs. As Laurie Brand reports, “In ‘Abdallah ‘Akaylah’s first meeting with ministry employees following his appointment as Minister of Education he informed women that he did not want to have them working in sensitive and important places. He also

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ordered the ‘cleansing’ of the ministry by segregating the sexes, and began firing some of the higher ranking employees and replacing them with Islamists” (Brand 1998: 156). As part of the same process, “Akaylah also introduced a series of measures to Islamicize education: he limited the freedom of schools to close on Christian holidays and set the dates for mid-term exams during them and attempted to ban books deemed incompatible with the king’s moral and religious ethics” (Brand 1998: 156–157). ‘Akaylah’s leadership of the Ministry of Education did not last long, and Islamists of all stripes encountered increasing repression from the regime, yet their influence can be felt in these textbooks. Even during periods of the harshest government repression against the Islamists in the late 1980s and the late 1990s, because of the realities of life tenure in many government posts, Ikhwan and Islamist members have been able to retain their influence in the schools and in the Ministry of Education. The authors of these Islamic texts come overwhelmingly from the Islamist organizations. Notwithstanding the influence of the Ikhwan and associated Islamists, the content of every text had to be approved by the government itself. As such, this content can be taken as government policy. The messages contained in these texts are messages the government wishes to impart to its students, and the state has exploited the influence of the Ikhwan to do so. The Family The Hashemite state is not alone in failing to address the rapid socioeconomic changes taking place within its borders. The entire region has encountered this dilemma, and it is unlikely that any of the surrounding states have done a much better job at guiding their students through the new realities. For that matter, what twenty-first-century state can effectively negotiate a comprehensive body of rules concerning such disparate issues as gender relations, drugs, alcohol, unemployment, and the like? Schools in the United States, for example, where there is an ostensible separation between church and state, have had a difficult time balancing the demands of different religious faiths, state laws, and parental concerns. The Hashemite state addresses these issues in Islamic textbooks. In the process, Islam has become the catchall subject for discussing not only religion but also history, society, and morality. At times, the Quran or Hadith lay out specific rules for relationships; at other times, very contemporary concerns are addressed with contemporary solutions, but in either instance Islam appears to be the source. No attempt is made to differentiate between the injunctions specifically mentioned in the Quran and those the state wishes to place under the Islamic rubric. For example, some of the Islamic textbooks state that smoking cigarettes and gossiping violate Islam, yet neither item is mentioned in scriptural sources.2 At no time are students asked

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to discuss the relevance of the particular Hadith or quranic verse presented to them. At no time do the texts give any indication that alternative Hadith or quranic verse might exist concerning the same topic. Islamic texts are chosen to present the patriarchal family as the sole legitimate structure for family organization. Thus, under the guise of the divinity of Islam, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan provides an all-encompassing system of social control and categorization. The family is described in textbook after textbook as the core component of the larger society. For example, The family is the first brick among the bricks of society, and the basis of its strength and its cohesion, . . . and Islam commissioned the family to utilize cooperation between man and woman, just as it made it [the family] the natural, virtuous home for the development of the true Islamic youth, and with the family the structure continues in an atmosphere of love and compassion and sympathy between the members of the family. (11a: 37)

In discussions of this family, specifically Islamic tenets are combined with contemporary solutions to modern problems, without a clear dividing line between the sources of authority. The state and the faith have melded together seamlessly to create a perfect patriarchal family structure. Many sections in these texts begin with a discussion of the equality necessary for this family harmony and cooperation. For example, “it is necessary that equity prevail in the treatment between the spouses, and between the parents and the individuals, and between the children themselves, and it is necessary that the strong and the weak cooperate, and that the children cooperate with their parents” (12b: 78). Yet such advice is drowned out by the many rules each particular member must follow in order to maintain the hierarchical unit. Barbara Ibrahim and Hind Wassef found the same phenomenon in Egypt: Despite recent reforms to official textbooks to enhance the image of women, the gender content of the basic education curriculum supports fairly traditional roles for women and men. Although paying lip service to principles of equality between the sexes in all contexts, it puts forward a discourse of equal rights in different domains, so that women’s contribution to society is in their roles as wives and mothers while the public domain is the monopoly of men. (Ibrahim and Wassef 2000: 168)

As Glenn Robinson shows, this view matches the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s platform in the mid-1990s. “While it calls for equal rights for women, endorsing the woman’s right to ‘own property, work and participate in developing the society within the limits set by Islam,’ those rights are applicable only insofar as they do not ‘overwhelm the duty of the woman toward her home, husband and children’” (Robinson 1997: 377). Thus, the

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dividing line between public and private spheres, found in Egyptian texts, also exists in the Jordanian ones. A man, for example, has a number of rights over his wife. She must obey him, maintain his house and family with honor, safeguard his children, and leave the home only with his permission (12b: 83). “The woman is conquered by love for her husband, and is monopolized by his concerns and his welfare, and, [in return,] he increases his love for her, and carries out for her the remainder of her needs” (11a: 68). As such, the man’s primary responsibility, in return for this respect and obedience, is to maintain the household financially. Although this stricture imposes responsibilities upon the man as well, the basic hierarchical and patriarchal structure of the family is not questioned. Women, in these texts, as in Jordanian law, must have a male guardian to protect them in the public and the private spheres. The rules and restrictions concerning women are much more complex in these texts, covering everything from her clothes to her choice of husband to the number of children she should produce. Students are told that Islam enjoins women to cover their private parts, or, in other words, all of their bodies except their hands and feet. In addition, males and females may interact only in designated areas, with the former controlling the latter’s access to those areas. In marriage, women hold the right to control their dowry (mahr), demand maintenance from their husbands, and more generally, have husbands who listen to their suggestions about the family. “He will support her in everything that is good for her in her religion and beliefs and inform her of what she is ignorant about in the affairs of her religion” (11a: 66). Within that home, Jordanian family law—and the Islamic texts—stress that the primary purpose for marriage is for the production of children (Sonbol 2003). The texts support large families because the umma needs sufficient numbers of people to man its armed forces and, along the way, to help the society advance economically, socially, and intellectually (12b: 121). In addition, women are cautioned that if they limit the number of children, the resulting level of anxiety might endanger their health (12b: 122).3 Again, these dictates blur the line between state and faith and contemporary and historical solutions. Statements straight from the Quran are intermingled with discussions of modern issues. These texts also present yet more contradictions for the students, who face at home any number of problems not addressed by these textbooks, problems that are sometimes in complete contradiction to their precepts. Many women, for example, must work in order to support their families or supplement their families’ income, and many women have taken on leadership roles in the family when men have left the country to work. At the same time, the debate about the veil has become more complex in Jordan because most Muslim women now wear some sort of scarf over their heads and hair, and a growing number have chosen to move to a white or black face veil.

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Although these Islamic textbooks allow for no digression from the accepted Islamic role for women, civic texts delve into a few more of the issues contemporary Jordanian women encounter. The result, however, is identical; the basic structure of the preferred family unit is the same. The same threat of societal fragmentation hangs over the heads of the women in these texts. For example, in this contemporary age, educating children is now dispersed among different institutions, such as schools, societal clubs, and learning centers, “just as women are occupied with employment outside the house. Other institutions have been found that participate in the education of children, like day-care and kindergarten, all of which lead to the weakening of the influence of the family in its guidance over children” (8: 11). The students are then asked their opinion about kindergarten, and, if they attended one themselves, how it influenced them. Most of the questions posed in these texts require regurgitation of information, but occasionally questions such as these emerge. In this case, they coax students into questioning the benefits of women working and having to place the education of their young children into the hands of others. The range of possibilities open to women is larger in these texts, but the threat of misbehavior remains the same. According to the texts, obedience is the primary value instilled in children; in return, Islam, according to the texts, grants rights to children that no modern society has ever been able to fully replicate. Children must revere their parents, speak to them humbly, and support them if needed (12b: 85–86). In a section entitled, “How to Ensure Virtue in the Devotion of Children,” children are told to treat their parents with kindness even as they age, smile at them and appear happy at all times, obey them without question, and give priority to their parents over all other concerns (11a: 71). All members of the family must honor their roles because children have the right to have parents who are righteous and who have chosen each other based on religion and morality. In this way, children can be sure of who their father is. Mothers are enjoined to treat their children with goodness and kindliness, and men are required to educate their children in the ways of Islam. “And among the duties of the parents toward their children is to implant in their hearts love of religion and its culture and work, its principles and laws, and to separate them from the consorts of evil” (11a: 78). The texts repeatedly state that all children, regardless of gender, must be treated equally. However, other passages in the texts detail the rights that older children have over their younger siblings. Older brothers, for example, must be viewed by those other siblings just as their parents are, for they are tasked with educating and protecting them. Reciprocal responsibilities are established between the parents and the children, and the children themselves, within a hierarchical structure. The texts also propose Islamic answers to the many threats directed

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against the family unit. In general, societal problems arise when people put personal desires ahead of tradition, wars or natural disasters befall a society, powerful societies impose their ideas over weaker ones, and people move away from the teachings of their faith (11c: 239). Islam treats these problems preemptively by encouraging people to think first of Islam, then of the family, and finally of the society around them, always remembering that the individual is the servant of the society (11c: 240). Of all the problems discussed, divorce looms as the largest and most threatening to the Islamic whole. The texts explain that Islam allows divorce in cases in which the two spouses are incapable of living together. To facilitate this act, Islam grants the man the right to divorce but does not allow the more emotional woman to do it for herself (12b: 98). However, the student must understand that divorce is not desirable if it can be avoided because it “leaves a negative influence on relations between the two families of the spouses,” and many studies have shown that most criminals come from broken homes (12b: 98). The ultimate solution to marital problems is to rely on the sharia of God to resolve them. In contrast to the beautiful, stable whole established within the Islamic umma, the West looms as an ever-present threat. In this depiction of good and bad, the West has become the latest in a long line of attackers who do not understand the rightness of the Islamic path. Moaddel reports of the Ikhwan that, “Admonishing the public on the Western cultural assault on women was the central feature of the Brothers’ exposé on gender relations” (Moaddel 2002: 139–140). In these texts, the West is both a physical threat to the Muslim world and a spiritual challenge to its culture. “Western imperialism began its intellectual attacks on the Islamic world, encouraging racial disputes and ethnic chauvinism” (12b: 280). The colonists and the missionaries “influenced minorities in Islamic society and aroused racial disputes among the Berbers and the Pharaohs and the Phoenicians and the Assyrians and others, and they encouraged disputes between Muslims and Christians and between Sunni and Shi‘a” (12b: 280). As a result, each of the ethnic groups set out to support their national causes by constructing mythical past histories, literature, and art to serve their goals. Divisive calls were now made in the name of communism, sectarianism, and “numerous odious factions” like that of Egyptian nationalism (12b: 280–281). The message explicitly stated is that Islam would never allow such divisions; outsiders have forced them on the Islamic world. In the Islamic Culture text for the secondary level, second year, missionary work comes under particular attack (12b: 282–284). Missionaries first arrived in the Middle East at the end of the sixteenth century, first in Malta, then in Syria, and then in the remainder of the region. They served, from the beginning, as a vanguard for the colonial occupations that occurred later. Missionaries conducted their work by erecting schools, universities,

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hospitals, scout troops, and charities. A medical missionary is quoted as saying in 1906 that doctors should remember that their job was to proselytize first and administer medical aid second (12b: 283).4 In all these institutions, missionaries worked to weaken the Islamic spirit and strengthen the ideas of the West. They participated in “slandering Islamic history and the path of the Muslim caliphs, and presented the movement of Islamic history as one of wars and struggles and rebellions” (12b: 284). By so doing, they defamed Islam and its Prophet and spoke lies about how Islam had spread by hatred and the sword (12b: 284). The means to defend society against this foreign onslaught lies in Islam. “Muslims do not lag behind the bases of the world because of their connection to religion, but they do lag behind when they are negligent about the needs and values of the religion, its tenets and its instructions, and when they allow Western civilization to attack them and the ideas to penetrate and predominate over their life” (12b: 269). The answer to this attack is to renew the Islamic way of life from the inside, working primarily through the vehicle of the family unit and then by establishing an Islamic state. By so doing, Islamic society will remain strong enough to protect itself from corrupting ideologies and the penetration of foreign cultures (12b: 270). Muslims must truly learn and understand the value of their faith and the allencompassing value of its tenets in order to make Islamic society strong. The message of the texts is that individual transgression will lead to disintegration of the society. To prevent that from happening, the texts recommend the separation of the sexes and the maintenance of a hierarchical relationship between them. The introduction of alternative modes of living can only weaken the Islamic umma. Pronouncements are made in these texts, and the students are expected to follow them without question. Not only is debate about these roles not allowed, but mention is not made about how the students need to reconcile the messages of these texts concerning gender roles and the “West” with the contradictory messages emanating from the regime in other media. The Hashemite leadership has been forthright in its support of American economic and political policies in the region. Although the “West” is never explicitly equated with the United States, students can easily trace the path from colonialism to the current penetration of American goods and ideas. The Hashemite state has also consistently presented itself, both at home and abroad, as the chief purveyor of modernity in Jordan, and to underscore its commitment to this role, it has joined various international women’s organizations and published the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its civics textbooks. The call in religion textbooks for an Islamic state challenges the state’s posturing as modernizer because the Hashemite state has made no attempt to establish such a system within its borders. The civics texts discuss, in contrast, the democratic nature of the state and the importance of

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the institutions of governing, like parliament, that the Hashemites use to rule. These contradictions bring to light real questions about authority that students should consider, given the conflicting images they receive. As Ibrahim and Wassef found in Assiut, Egypt, As education and the media penetrate to the hinterland, we have seen that they operate in complex ways upon the emerging identities of youth. Even when behavior is not immediately affected, the consciousness youth have of a wider world expresses itself in their beliefs and hopes. Gender gaps may be widening as part of this process, with as yet unknown consequences for the adult relationships that will emerge. We have also seen that within the parameters of conservative communities, rebellion is still rare, as is any overt identification with a culture of youth. Yet slowly and surely, young people are maneuvering within the spaces allowed for them and finding ways to stretch their boundaries ever further. (Ibrahim and Wassef 2000: 183)

In Jordan, rebellion is also still rare, but differences between the absolutes of Islam depicted in these texts, the complexities of students’ lives, and the disjunctions between the state’s educational and political policies must make it difficult for students to determine a path for themselves. These texts exacerbate this problem by not allowing them the right to voice their concerns. The Others To reinforce the need to be obedient to the categorized, patriarchal society depicted in these texts, inferior and hostile societies are compared to it.5 These texts simultaneously essentialize the beauties of Islamic society and its belief system just as they essentialize the deviance of the Other, the enemy. The world of these texts is one of black-and-white descriptions of cultures confronting each other, inevitably and continually. People’s natures are fixed in time as good or bad, and nothing can change that basic fact. As in the sections on family roles, Hadith and quranic verses are selectively chosen to buttress the state’s arguments about Christians and Jews. The historical relationships between these groups are ignored. Many passages in the texts discuss tolerance, saying things such as, “The characteristics of the religion do not prohibit living with non-Muslims on the basis of right and justice” (12e: 279) and supporting the view that the People of the Book have the right to worship freely without being forced to convert to Islam. These passages take as a given the generosity and tolerance of Muslims. If other groups disagree, then they are intolerant, and the blame is laid upon their shoulders. As a result, Muslims are not required to act; others must remedy their own beliefs. Instead of discussing the similarities among the People of the Book, most passages focus on the differences

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between them. Thus, tolerance toward those Others is never encouraged in these texts; rather, the lessons allow for a grudging acceptance of these groups within the Islamic world, in the case of the Christians, and establish a hostile relationship with Jews. Because of the existence of these hostile groups, the texts call on students to defend the faith by following the rules set out for the family and by physically standing up to fight on its behalf. “Muslim society is a jihadi society, defending the truth and sacrificing on behalf of it” (11a: 106). In addition, “Jihad is a necessary, indispensable part of Islamic society in any era; abandoning jihad brings to the umma weakness and disgrace” (11a: 106). To better aid the students in determining their role in this regard, the texts define the reasons for jihad and its different manifestations (12b: 237–241). A jihad can be called when an enemy attacks a Muslim country or when a Muslim sovereign calls the Muslims to arms. A jihad of the soul means going out to fight the enemy. A jihad of property involves Muslims sacrificing their property in order to allow the battle to take place. As part of this process, airports, war factories, citadels, and hospitals must be constructed. A jihad of opinion means a struggle of the tongue and the pen to combat the enemies of Islam. A personal jihad, an area where tolerance could have been the focus, is downplayed almost to nonexistence. The jihad of these texts means physical attack. Peaceful means for resolving disputes are not considered viable options by these texts. Jihad is so important to society because of the hostile relationship the Muslim world has always had with Christians and Jews. A few statements throughout the texts support people’s right to freedom of worship and religious thought, and the students are repeatedly told that Islam has generously granted those rights to the People of the Book. However, invariably those different religious beliefs are degraded by these texts and compare poorly with those of Islam. Whereas Muslims faithfully follow their Prophet and their God, Christians have strayed away from the true path and have distorted the message of God, becoming polytheists by choosing, for example, to designate Jesus as the son of God. Christians and Jews refuse to listen to not only Muhammad but their own prophets as well. As a result, “The verses [of the Quran] make clear that animosity between the bands of the People of the Book will continue until the day of judgment” (11b: 116). This discussion highlights the way these texts manipulate the documents and tenets of Islam. Assuredly, Christians and Jews did not heed the call of Muhammad. That is part of Islamic history. The texts put forward Hadith and quranic verses to prove that is the case. Yet, no other Hadith or verses are put forward to show how Christians, Jews, and Muslims successfully cooperated over the centuries. No discussion takes place about the means by which Muhammad extended his hand to these groups or how Islam was able to

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come to an accommodation with them. Instead, only the hostility is mentioned. Islam is the answer to all things; if the Christians and Jews do not understand that fact, then they are to blame for the subsequent hostilities. In 1972, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh said of the Jordanian textbooks of that era that the political opponent is depicted not only as an opponent or enemy: he is the incarnation of wickedness and baseness. This applies to every opponent, not only to the Zionists, and even to discredited Arab leaders. It determines the whole of the attitude towards the Western imperialist world (al-isti’mar), which, in the accepted Arab view, set up and supports the State of Israel, and to which atrocities are imputed that seem to have their origin in a morbid imagination, identifying the political opponent with absolute evil and projecting upon him its own aggressiveness. (LazarusYafeh 1972: 8)

That depiction did not change in the 1990s or in the first years of the twenty-first century. Of the People of the Book, the Jews come under much more scathing attack than the Christians. The Islamic Sciences text details the history of the Muslim-Jewish relationship in Medina during the era of the Prophet (12e: 308–313). In the first stage, the two groups negotiated a truce (hudna), but with cautionary elements. The Prophet trusted a few of the Jews of the town, but most of them, despite understanding the power behind the Prophethood, refused to heed his call. The Jews who lived there feared that call because they had acquired a great deal of property via monopolies, usury, and the manufacture of wine. They also held a deep-rooted belief that their existence separated them from the rest of humanity. While they publicly accepted a truce with Muhammad, they actually used this time to acquire even more property. In the second stage, the rabbis began questioning the Prophet, hoping to find fault with his message. This act highlighted the fact that Jews are known for constantly debating and questioning, even their own prophets. When this tactic failed, the Jews tried fraud and ridicule to sow doubts about Islam. In the last stage, the Jews betrayed the Medina Charter and cooperated with the Qurayshi enemies of the Muslims, inciting them to fight. In The Holy Quran and Its Sciences, the story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt shows that Jews are a people who refuse to obey their God and their prophet and show weakness in the face of danger, despite the fact that God Almighty granted them many gifts (11b: 45–49). In most areas of the texts, Jews are characterized as “immoral,” “deviant,” “greedy,” “cowardly,” and “tyrannical.” In highlighting the hostility between the Jews and the Muslims, the text states: “The Holy Quran informs us of the primary causes of this hostility, [namely] that the Jews are an obstinate people and deny the truth” (11b: 136). The lesson to be learned

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is that Muslims should be constantly wary of the deceitful Jews and that only their faith will protect them from harm. The only modern political event discussed in these texts is the history of Palestine. This example is presented as just the latest manifestation of Jewish hostility toward Muslims. In the middle of the story about Moses, students are asked: “What are the characteristics of the Jews?” and “How do these characteristics relate to their existence in Palestine today?” (11b: 47). In other sections, the Zionist movement is considered a component of the larger imperialistic attack against the Muslim world, with the text focusing particularly on the role the British government played in the establishment of Israel: “The desires of the Jews in Palestine were based on their religious beliefs, which portrayed Palestine as the promised land granted to them by God. These beliefs remained a hidden treasure in the souls of the Jews until the nineteenth century, when competition between the imperialist states emerged over the division of the Islamic world and the British government embraced the idea of dividing the Arab nation and consuming its strengths” (12b: 275). Because of the interconnection between religion and politics, Muslim opposition to the Jews is a jihad. For example, Shaikh Izz al-Din alQassam announced a jihad and attacked Britain’s plan to Judaize Palestine. Jihadi Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini opposed the Jewish occupation of Palestine in 1947. The Jordanian forces embarked on a jihad to keep the Old City of Jerusalem from falling under Jewish control in 1948. Palestinian history stops in 1988, the year King Hussein ended Jordan’s administration of the West Bank. No mention is made of the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, despite the active campaign for normalization of relations with Israel the Hashemite regime has waged since then. Scholars have studied earlier generations of Jordanian textbooks and have found similar attitudes toward Jews. In 1972, Lazarus-Yafeh noted the following generalizations: “Jews love only Jews; they are traitorous and mendacious. They were afraid of the strength of the Muslims and said: Islam does not permit us to cheat people or steal their property. Therefore we must ally ourselves with the enemies of Islam and the Muslims and get rid of Muhammad” (Lazarus-Yafeh 1972: 18–19). In a study of Jordanian textbooks, Michael Winter concluded: “Modern European imperialism is regarded as the source of all evil and the direct cause of all the disasters in recent Arab history as well as of present Arab weakness. The West aims to exploit and plunder the Arab world, seeking to humiliate the Arabs and to devastate their culture and religion” (Winter 1995: 214). The textbooks in this study have all been written or rewritten after 1994. Yet they repeat the same messages and stories used in the 1970s, almost to a word. Negative messages of threat outside and punishments for deviation inside far outweigh any positive messages these textbooks present.

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Conclusion: The Clash of Image and Reality All faiths establish absolutes by which their followers should abide. Textbooks present an idealized image of life within their nation. Every state employs school curricula to generate obedience for its leadership or its value system, and no state can avoid the inherent problems of defining an entire society and its history within the pages of a book. Jordanian Islamic textbooks encounter these same problems. Yet the Hashemite regime appears to be creating too great a disjunction between image and reality. Socioeconomic change has impinged upon most students’ lives, yet these texts ignore or denigrate the bulk of them. The state pushes normalization with Israel but encourages hatred toward Jews in its schools. It supports US economic and political policies in the region but attacks Western cultural intrusions. It conducts sweeping arrests of Islamists in the US war on terror while extolling their basic beliefs in government schools. Conflicts have already arisen between the Hashemite regime and the “street” over the regime’s economic and political stance toward Israel and the United States. The most vivid images the texts reveal are negative ones, admonishing students to obey commands or suffer the consequences. Students can rightfully ask: What voice of authority should we obey? Do students assimilate the message of obedience in these texts or do they question whom to obey? Textbooks Cited 8 al-Tarbiyah al-Wataniyah wa-al-Madaniyah [National and Civic Education]. Part 2, grade 8. By Thuqan Abdullah Obeidat, Abdullah Muhammad Awda, Muntaha Atiyat, Musa Abd al-Karim Abu Sel, Nawaf Ababna, and Fatima al-Hamud. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 2001. 10 al-Tarbiyah al-Wataniyah wa-al-Madaniyah [National and Civic Education]. Grade 10. By Thuqan Abdullah Obeidat, Nada Talib Balawi, Mahmoud Husni Abu Khadijah, Asma Farhan as-Sharab, and Ahlam Uthman al-Jilani. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim alUrduniyah, 1999. 11a al-Thaqafah al-Islamiyah [Islamic Culture]. Secondary level, first year, grade 11. By Shawkat al-Umari, Muhammad Amr al-Shami, Sa‘di Jabr, and Yahyah al-Aqtash. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim alUrduniyah, 1998. 11b al-Quran al-Karim wa ‘Ulumuhu [The Holy Quran and Its Sciences]. Secondary level, first year, grade 11. By Ibrahim Zayd al-Kilani, Ahmad Farid, Ahmad Nawfal, and Ghazi Hamdan Bakr. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 1995.

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11c al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyah [Islamic Education]. Literary secondary level, first year, grade 11. By Muhammad Rakan al-Daghmi, Muhammad Nabil Tahir, Ibrahim Taha al-Qaysi, and Said Muhammad al-Ruqab. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 1991. 12a al-Thaqafah al-Ama (Al-Alam) [General Culture (The World)]. Secondary level, second year, grade 12. By Mahmoud Ahmad alMasad, Mustafa Talal al-Jilabna, and Musa Abd al-Karim Abu Sel. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 2001. 12b al-Thaqafah al-Islamiyah [Islamic Culture]. Secondary level, second year, grade 12. By Sa‘di Hussein Jabr, Muhammad Amr al-Shami, Shawkat Muhammad al-Umari, and Yahyah Salim al-Aqtash. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 2002. 12c al-Hadith al-Nabawi al-Sharif [The Sacred Hadith of the Prophet]. Second secondary level. By Hamam Sa‘id, Sa‘di Jabr, Ibrahim alQaysi, and Shahadah al-Mumni. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-alTa‘lim al-Urduniyah, 1996. 12d al-Quran al-Karim [The Holy Quran]. Second secondary level. By Ibrahim Zayd al-Kilani, Sa‘di Jabr, Salah al-Khalidi, and Ibrahim alNajar. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 1996. 12e al-Ulum al-Islamiyah [The Islamic Sciences]. Literary secondary level, second year. 12th grade. By Ali Muhammad al-Sawa, Muhammad Ahmad al-Khatib, Muhammad Ali al-Hawwari, Muhammad Uthman Ashbair, Sharaf Muhammad al-Quthat, and Mamduh Tawfiq al-Aqil. Amman: Wizarat al-Tarbiyah wa-al-Ta‘lim al-Urduniyah, 2001. Notes 1. I would like to thank Abla Amawi for pointing out this fact to me. 2. Again, I would like to thank Abla Amawi for discussing this topic with me. 3. Civics textbooks offer the opposite advice. For example, see 8: 15–16. 4. The textbook does not cite the source of this quote. 5. I would like to express my thanks to Shakir Mustafa for giving me valuable help in analyzing these texts.

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5 Kuwait: Striving to Align Islam with Western Values Taghreed Alqudsi-ghabra KUWAIT’S MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEM DEVELOPED in the aftermath

of independence from Britain in 1961, the explosive growth in the oil industry, and the inclusion of freedom of religious belief in the constitution (Article 35). Education at all levels is free for Kuwaiti citizens, and since the passage of a compulsory education law in 1965, students are required to attend school until age fourteen, through the intermediate level. Statistics from the Ministry of Education for the year 1999/2000 show that about 60 percent of students in Kuwait attend public schools, with the other 40 percent attending private schools. The latter are divided into foreign schools (British, American, Indian, Pakistani) that follow their own curricula and private Arabic schools that cater to Arabic-speaking children who cannot attend public schools and that employ the public school curriculum using textbooks provided by the government. All schools are required by the Ministry of Education to teach Arabic and religion courses for Arab Muslim students, although these courses are voluntary for non-Muslim Arabs and foreigners. The religious and political context in which Kuwait’s modern education system developed and now is situated—one in which religious tolerance is a policy objective and the Iraqi occupation of 1990–1991 is still a major issue—makes an examination of the way education addresses and informs notions of difference and conceptions of the self and “Other” particularly compelling. This chapter explores these identity issues through a content analysis of Kuwait’s secondary school textbooks, all of which were produced after the 1991 Gulf War. By examining the different units, subjects within the units, and emphasized themes, I hope to determine whether the current curriculum encourages liberalism or religious conservatism. How is Arab self-identity conceived, and how are conceptions of Others presented? Does the curriculum promote “civic intelligence,” also known as “Islamic civic virtue,” which encourages students to learn the values of modern soci89

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ety, to “recognize [their] personal stake in public problems [global and domestic], respect for tolerance, [and] the rights of others” (United Nations Development Program 2000:1)? Throughout this analysis, I pay close attention to the concept of jihad and to any mention of the West, Israel, Jews, and Christians and ask how the new values embedded in Islamic civic virtue are presented among, or reconciled with, Islamic principles that prioritize Muslim solidarity over multicultural integration. The goal is to understand whether the values promoted in the Kuwaiti curriculum encourage attitudes of inclusiveness or exclusiveness. With the exception of math and science, all the subjects taught in Kuwaiti schools incorporate religious instruction, and therefore the books reviewed for this chapter include social studies and Arabic language and literature as well as religious studies. It is important to note that in any textbook, the presence of the Arabic language, the sacred language of the Quran, inevitably links its content to religion, and that all of the language and literature books include works that expressly serve the purpose of presenting moral lessons. In addition, the eleventh- and twelfth-grade curricula are divided into two tracks, science and liberal arts, with a different religion course in each: in the former, religion is addressed in terms of general spirituality, and in the latter, religion is emphasized in depth. Finally, because all the textbooks examined were written after the liberation of Kuwait, a tone of gratefulness and indebtedness to the world, especially to the allied forces that participated in liberating Kuwait, is present. The texts were read in ascending order, from the ninth grade to the twelfth grade, in order to see how the curriculum builds on previous concepts from year to year, but for clarity my observations are presented here thematically. Inclusions and Exclusions: Islam in Relation to Non-Muslim Others The theme of Muslim identity in relation to the West runs throughout the whole curriculum, whatever the ostensible subject at hand. The ninth-grade religion textbook addresses concepts such as the unity of God, permitted and prohibited behaviors, and the benefits of worship, but the textbook also addresses distinctions between Islam and other religions. One lesson, for example, explains religious difference in a way that can be interpreted as either liberal or conservative: no one chooses his or her own religion, the lesson says, because it is actually one’s parents who decide whether a person will be raised Jewish, Christian, or other (9d: 13). Elsewhere, the same text addresses proper relations between Muslim and foreign countries, explaining that trade and other relations with atheistic countries, those who

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are not People of the Book (Christians, Jews, and Muslims), are prohibited (9d: 79). Thus the circle of inclusion incorporates Jews and Christians, but theoretically, Buddhists and Hindus, among others, should be excluded. However, Kuwait in practice buys goods and sells oil to any and all on the world market, and the text does not acknowledge the contradictions inherent in such prohibitions, nor does it ask how the Islamic ideal of excluding those who are not People of the Book can be accommodated in a modern international system. In contrast to the ninth-grade religion textbook’s disapproval of relations with countries whose people are not “of the Book,” a lesson in the tenthgrade religion textbook places Kuwait as a player in the international community. Quoting directly from a speech given by the emir (10a: 17), the lesson combines promotion of the work ethic with the value of supporting and protecting a new world order that extends beyond the Muslim community. The idea of tolerance toward those who are not Muslims resonates throughout the textbooks, which are patently attempting to reposition Islamic values of Muslim separateness to suit the contemporary context. For example, the same ninth-grade religion textbook cautions students against divisiveness; instead they are encouraged to embrace universal human values of cooperation and understanding (9d: 59). Although still encouraging the spread of Islam, the textbook cites a passage from the Quran stating that Islam is a religion of the “middle way” (Quran 2:143). Students are taught to view the Muslim community as moderate, a nation of tolerance and modernization, not one of extreme conservatism, and the textbook warns against excess in rituals of worship (9d: 148). There is a repeated theme in the textbooks, however, that the Muslim world accepts the West, but the West does not understand the true essence of Islam. The ninth-grade Arabic-language textbook includes a story about an American, Muhammad Taher, who, after discovering that Muhammad and Jesus were God’s prophets, not his children, converted to Islam (9a: 78). Afterward, he championed Muslim causes in a regular column in the American press, challenging Zionist claims and confirming for Kuwaiti students the importance of spreading Islam and defending the Islamic community. The issue of the rights of non-Muslims in Muslim lands features prominently in the textbooks. One unit of the tenth-grade religious studies textbook is devoted entirely to the rights of non-Muslims in Muslim lands (10c: 158). Consistent with the Kuwaiti constitution’s concept of religious tolerance, the textbook asserts that non-Muslims are equal under the law in rights and duties, nor should they be summoned to courts on their own holidays. The textbook is also respectful of Judaism in discussing the times of fasting, mentioning the Prophet’s dislike of fasting on Friday, the Muslim

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holiday, as well as on Saturday, the Jewish holiday, except during Ramadan (10c: 91). In addition, the sons of Israel are mentioned in a positive light in the context of God helping Moses against the Pharaoh (10c: 48). Kuwaiti education is concerned with issues of religious tolerance, not only for non-Muslims in their own country but also for the Muslim community in non-Muslim countries. The last unit in the eleventh-grade Islamic history text discusses problems that Muslim populations face living under non-Muslim rule. The Palestine-Israel example is cited again, as well as Kashmir and India (11d: 221). Although this topic is mentioned in less than three lines, it is a recurrent theme that has been built on each year. Jihad and the Dangers of Colonialism In the Kuwaiti textbooks, just as in the textbooks of all other countries reviewed in this volume, the idea of jihad is predicated on the imperative of defense. First introduced in the ninth-grade religion textbook, jihad is explained as a concept that gives Muslims the strength to defend their religion (9d: 159). Although presented as a means to attain power, jihad is also necessary for deterrence, says the text, and although not necessarily a goal in itself, it is a means by which Muslims and the Islamic state can be protected against aggression by outsiders: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power” (Quran 8:60). In the tenth-grade Arabic-language textbook (10b: 9), jihad is again portrayed as a method of defending Islam against aggressors: “Allah has purchased from the believers their persons and their goods, for theirs (in return) is the Garden. They fight in his cause, and slay and are slain: A promise binding on Him in truth, through the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran. And who is more faithful to His covenant than Allah?” (Quran 9:111). Why the concern for jihad and the defense of Muslims? As in all the other textbooks reviewed in this book, Kuwaiti schoolbooks present a historical narrative in which Islam is always on the defensive. The eleventhgrade Islamic history textbook, for example, chronicles the appearance of Islam and the Islamic state from its expansion to its deterioration, representing Muhammad and other historical figures as archetypal models for emulation who rose in response to non-Muslim challenges to the new religion. According to this textbook, two main threats confront Muslims at the present time—colonization and Zionism—and the text emphasizes the importance of confronting these threats by all means possible (11d: 7). Later in the textbook, in a reference to Mecca and Muhammad’s refuge in Medina, jihad is again acknowledged as a legitimate means to protect the Islamic state and empower Muslims to fight those who pushed them out of their homes (11d: 28). Despite the text’s criticism of Zionism, references to Jews and Christians are always coupled with the promotion of religious tol-

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erance. In one story about the Prophet’s migration to Medina, his tolerance and fairness toward the Jews and Christians is emphasized, and the ability of his community to organize despite heterogeneity is also pointed out. The role of the Jews of Khaybar, an area of agricultural villages near Medina, is well documented in the history of Islam: although Muhammad defeated them, he also “tolerated them” (11d: 27). Colonial dangers reappear as a motivating force for Muslim unity in the eleventh-grade Islamic history textbook. It explores movements aimed at unifying Muslims, such as the Wahhabiyyah puritan revival in the Arabian Peninsula, the Sannusiyyah against Italian occupation in Libya, and the Mahdiyyah, which arose in reaction to British colonial ambitions in Sudan (11d: 232). It also mentions reformers concerned with Muslim solidarity, such as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, assembled in Rabat after the burning of the al-Aqsa mosque in 1969 to coordinate responses to ongoing challenges to Islam in Palestine/Israel. The twelfth-grade Arabic literature and poetry textbook does not shy away from the possibilities of intercultural and political conflict. A speech by the now-deceased emir of Kuwait identifies conflicts confronting Islamic states, including those with the state of Israel, whose control of land and holy places is an obstacle to peace. His speech also encourages the idea of rule by Islamic sharia and the establishment of an Islamic court for all Muslims. Literary works in the twelfth-grade text more specifically address the state of Israel. A piece written by the Kuwaiti novelist Laila al-Othman (12a: 79) entitled “The Blond Ants,” for example, is intended to symbolize the creation of the state of Israel through the colonization and destruction of the Arab homeland. The book focuses on Arab national figures and their contributions to modern Arabic literature, such as al-Barudi, a poet known by his last name, who champions the renewal of ancient Arabic literary forms for modern times (12a: 95). A poem by the Arab poet Muhammad Abd al-Mutalleb makes an analogy between Imam Ali’s battle with the Jews of Khaybar and modern Israel’s arrogance and power (12a: 110). Additional poems criticizing Western influence and colonization also appear in this textbook. The great Arab poet Ahmad Shawqi points to Western double standards in espousing human rights at home yet violating those same rights abroad (12a: 121). Abu al-Qasem al-Shabbi’s poems reveal more examples of the struggle against colonization and the ability of the weak to recover and fight for freedom (12a: 150). The modern poet Abu Reesha presents an analogy for the lack of freedom in his poem about two imprisoned birds in a cage. These symbols, both implicit and explicit, show the precarious balance between accepting Western culture and criticizing its politics and policies. A section on independence and liberation movements

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describes the role that modern literature plays in revealing the challenges of colonization and Zionism, citing the Balfour Declaration and the Palestinian problem. Arab, Muslim, and Kuwaiti Identity Promoting Kuwaiti national identity is a central theme of Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf, a ninth-grade text on Kuwaiti history and society. The book addresses the state’s political origins, the Iraqi aggression in 1990, economic expansion from oil, and the changing Kuwaiti society and the citizen’s role in building it. Although the sections on Kuwait emphasize the importance of nationalism and national unity, the textbook also admits, unlike most other curricula reviewed in this volume, that homogeneous populations rarely exist and that differences must be transcended to accomplish national unity. The textbook goes on to cite American society as a model of attaining national unity in spite of and in response to the presence of a diverse population (9c: 122). However, although the lesson acknowledges the heterogeneity of the Kuwaiti population, like other curricula reviewed in this volume, it also avoids mentioning a single sect or ethnic difference by name. The textbook extends students’ circle of inclusion by promoting the unity of all the Arabian Gulf states and also situates the individual Kuwaiti citizen as simultaneously part of the wider Arab world, whose future collective prosperity is assured by virtue of the unity and prosperity of individual states. The Arabian Gulf is especially strongly represented as a unit within the Arab homeland: “Gulf Cooperation Council members are linked to the Arab World historically, culturally, traditionally, politically, in addition to economically” (9c: 122), sharing a unity of religion, language, customs, traditions, sufferings, and hopes (9c: 199). In addition, Articles 1 and 3 of the Kuwaiti Constitution are cited to promote a sense of belonging to the wider Arab world: “Kuwait is an independent Arab state . . . and the Kuwaiti people are part of the Arab people.” Although tolerance of others is encouraged, the transnational Muslim community is portrayed as central to self-identity, with these feelings of identity exemplified in common concerns for the Palestinian-Israeli situation (9c: 200). The treatment of the Iraqi invasion in this textbook suggests the importance its authors attach to Arab/Muslim unity. Even though the text says that the invasion of Kuwait will never be forgotten (9c: 187), the entire topic is covered in less than half a page and is absorbed into a more general discussion about the border problem in history (9c: 57). In an interview in May 2003, an official at the Ministry of Education indicated that the topic will be dropped from new textbook editions, and if mentioned at all, a distinction will be made between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Iraqi people.

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Islamic Civic Virtue and New Values for a Globalizing Society As mentioned above, a tension persists throughout the textbooks between values and concepts considered to be traditionally Islamic and those necessary to suit contemporary interests. The ninth-grade religion textbook, for example, emphasizes the value of knowledge and humanity’s ability to make choices, which represents a departure from the Islamic tendency to view predestination as a force overriding free will. God distinguishes human beings from other creatures by providing them with the ability to think, says the text, and to have and make choices and be accountable for them (9d: 51): “The Truth is from your Lord, let him who will, believe and let him who will, reject” (Quran 18:29). Citing examples from Quran and Hadith, the text also elevates science and the benefits people derive from it as religiously validated values (9d: 57): “Allah will raise up, to (suitable) ranks (and degrees), those of you who believe and who have been granted knowledge” (Quran 58: 11). Similarly, the ninth-grade Arabic-language textbook promotes selective virtues through lessons incorporating speeches by the emir and topics such as the Gulf War, an American convert to Islam, a Muslim scientist, and the cultural heritage of the Persian Gulf. The beginning lessons revisit religious language as the basis for national unity, since the Arabic language is the language not only of the nation but also of the sacred Quran. Important virtues believers share, the textbook says, come from the Quran: Muslims are humble, worship God, are moderate in spending, do not kill, do not commit adultery, and do not testify falsely. Spirituality and balance in social behavior is promoted: “And the servants of the Beneficent God are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, ‘Peace.’ Those who spend the night in Adoration of their Lord . . . , those who when they spend, are not extravagant and not niggardly, but hold a just (balance) between those (extremes)” (Quran 25:63–67). In addition, in another of the emir’s speeches, honesty, the work ethic, privatization, and economic productivity are represented as Islamic values and their values are again asserted through repetition in a later lesson (9a: 29). Part 2 of the same textbook furthers the incorporation of new values to meet changing times. A story about the Prophet, for example, is told to illustrate the importance of tolerance and the capacity to forgive in the face of intolerance (9b: 36), and another story about Mohandas Gandhi’s practice of civil disobedience and his use of the boycott is presented as a model of nonviolent resistance. Similarly, the tenth-grade Arabic-language textbook includes stories about the scientist Louis Pasteur and the inventor Louis Braille as models of emulation. The same textbook then presents a new value of personal development for women through the story of a young

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woman who achieves a balance in her life between her career and marriage (10b: 34). Building on lower-level books containing lessons on forgiveness, nonviolence, and tolerance, the twelfth-grade Islamic studies textbook promotes new values of civic responsibility to the self, the nation, and the world. The authors assert, for example, that only by exemplifying good behavior and taking the “middle way” can a Muslim participate in society (12c: 84): the “middle way” includes the path of nonviolence in response to any attack on Islam. The unit also boasts of Islam’s lack of aggression, citing references from the Quran. The statement that Islam is “human in essence, global in goal and mission” (12c: 164) is coupled with another lesson on tolerance and forgiveness based on the life of Salah al-Din, the Muslim Kurdish leader who successfully challenged European crusaders in the twelfth century. The book concludes with a criticism of “inauthentic” Muslim practice. The Islamic world today, according to this text, suffers from a lack of economic unity, fear, and insecurity, with leaders making decisions in ways that are not truly Islamic (12c: 181). It is only through balance that correct practice can be restored, as the Quran says: “Thus have we made you an Umma justly balanced” (Quran 2:143). The twelfth-grade textbook, History of the Modern World, tries to position Kuwait as a country that shares Western legal sensibilities: a lesson on the United Nations draws an analogy between international standards of human rights and those guaranteed by the Kuwaiti Constitution (12e: 178) and also makes reference to Arab human rights organizations. In the context of human rights, the Organization of the Islamic Conference is mentioned again, and again with reference to its purpose of offering “support for the Palestinian problem and support for world peace and cooperation” (12e: 188). The textbooks attempt to position Kuwait as a modern, Westward-looking country in opposition to the religiously conservative movements that are currently hegemonic in the Gulf. The conclusion to the same textbook says there is a mode of Islamic thought that is modernist, presumably exemplified by the liberalism and respect for Western values shown throughout the textbooks, and there is another, the Salafi mode of thinking, which calls for true believers to follow the way of the Prophet exactly, from the most lofty actions to the minutest detail of personal life (a way of thinking that became popular in reaction to the overwhelming presence of Western influences and widespread infatuation with the Western way of life) (12e: 21). Salvaging Muslim Identity Salvaging Muslim identity in the face of Western influences is a recurrent theme, but one that is dealt with in most of the textbooks with practicality

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rather than rancor. For example, the eleventh-grade religion textbook for the science track addresses problems that have arisen in Kuwait as a result of Western influences, especially since 1991, and then makes a virtue out of necessity. The author asserts that there is an inherent conflict between Islam and some European social practices, which Muslims should not adopt blindly (11c: 105). Muslims should, however, act with complete religious tolerance toward them, and the text reminds students that it is unacceptable in Islam to infringe on other people’s freedom of religious choice (11c: 119). After addressing Muslim family law, the textbook talks about conflict and difference as characteristics of modern society resulting from social change. Using passages from the Quran, the unit shows how social change proves humankind’s adaptability, which is a good thing in Islam (11c: 101), because, as the Quran says, “God will never change the blessings with which He has graced a people unless they change their inner selves” (Quran 8:53). Similarly, the eleventh-grade Arabic-language books discuss divorce and the difficulties resulting from a Kuwaiti male marrying a foreign woman. Although this marriage would not be prohibited or heavily criticized, says the text, the children of such a marriage would be socialized by the mother to a foreign culture, despite being granted Kuwaiti nationality. (There is no discussion of a Kuwaiti woman marrying a non-Kuwaiti, which is a far more contentious legal and religious issue.) Despite this criticism of mixed marriage, the twelfth-grade Islamic studies textbook actually cites the Quran’s promotion of mixing with and marrying from other cultures. The verse states, “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made you into Nations and tribes that ye may know each other (not that you may despise each other)” (Quran 49:13). Muslim behavior under foreign influences arises again in the twelfthgrade Islamic studies textbook and also in the twelfth-grade Arabic literature and poetry textbook, which also encourages the study of foreign languages: Muslims are encouraged to pursue education outside their own countries, as long as they maintain their true Muslim character (12c: 31). Acknowledging that foreign cultural influences can pose an intellectual and behavioral problem to Muslims (12c: 64), the text reaffirms the importance of preserving the Muslim self and community while still repeating the theme of tolerance for those who are different. Conclusion: Reconciling Values and Reforming the Curriculum Islam is at the center of the curriculum of the secondary school. Every subject in the textbooks is ultimately framed in terms of Islam and Islamic values, even books on geography and the sciences. Islam, furthermore, is rep-

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resented as the paramount factor in the construction of the self, whether in relation to itself, to others in society, to the wider Muslim community, or to all others. At the same time, notions about Islamic values appear to be shifting across the curriculum. The Kuwaiti curriculum has attempted to balance traditional representations of Islamic values while introducing new ones and emphasizing in particular the idea of Islam as a religion of tolerance and moderation. For example, the texts reveal a pervasive concern to protect the Muslim community against ever-present threats, which take the form of a cultural invasion from the West, as well as current and historical political and military interventions. Instead of describing the power of jihad alone as a response to military and political threats, the textbooks introduce Gandhi and his methods of peaceful civil disobedience. In the cause of cultural preservation, instead of placing an emphasis on disengagement from those who are not People of the Book, the Kuwaiti textbooks highlight the importance of modernization, travel, and translating books and articles from other countries. The texts promote the idea of tolerance as a Muslim value, especially tolerance on the part of Muslims toward outsiders and tolerance on the part of non-Muslims toward Muslims. The authors are careful not to make generalizations about “foreigners,” and when it comes to “Orientalists” (Western scholars who study the Middle East), students are cautioned not to tar them all with the same brush, but to distinguish between those who are sympathetic and those who are unsympathetic toward their subjects. Furthermore, the work ethic and excellence in achievement are encouraged as Islamic values, along with new values of inclusiveness as expressed in the desirability of being part of the new world order, an objective especially emphasized in the tenth-grade Arabic-language book. Similarly, even as unity based on Kuwaiti nationalism is given high priority, the textbooks also include global responsibility as a Muslim value. The struggle between traditional Islam and new modern values is reflected in the many contradictions that appear in the texts. The persistent references to the Palestinian situation and to Zionism as a threat, for example, present a problematic message to students who must reconcile the encouragement to embrace non-Muslim Others with fear of the threat these Others may pose. Moderation is encouraged often in the text, especially in reference to religious rituals, as in the ninth-grade religion book that states it is not God’s order to overdo worship at the expense of other important aspects of life. Yet this advice is being heard by students living in a cultural environment that is steeped in religiosity and values ritual observance highly. The curriculum as a whole attempts to build the kind of values needed for “civic intelligence.” At the same time, however, it is overloaded with values, morals, and social mores at the expense of information and the

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building of critical thinking skills. Controversial and modern ideas are barely noted and, at best, are followed by unguided discussion questions. An exercise in a ninth-grade book asking students to investigate and write about the meaning of democracy, for example, comes in the absence of any meaningful information about democracy in the preceding lessons. The discussion of trade that prohibits business with atheists has no relevance for Kuwait’s trade relations in the modern world. Nor is there sufficient information on the 1990 Iraqi invasion or Salafi thought for students to debate, let alone understand, these contemporary issues. Raising such issues in a vacuum of knowledge may set up a confusing exercise, in which students fill in the gaps with whatever information and opinion are available to them. When it comes to identity formation, how much weight should be given to academic texts? Teaching the texts requires that a great deal of responsibility be laid on the teachers, who come with their own background, training, and biases and so can as easily strengthen and support a given value as oppose it (see Chapter 10 by Ozlem Altan in this book). As Manuel Castells points out in his book, The Power of Identity, the construction of identity is an active process in all societies, and to know the process, one must ask “from what, by whom, and for what” identity is being formed (Castells 1997: 461). In Information and the Muslim World, Ziauddin Sardar provides a framework for answering these questions. He includes first the spiritual outlook that links religion to ethics; then adds emotions associated with nationalism, political loyalty, and ethnic pride; follows them up with institutions such as the family; and ends with each individual’s personal philosophy (Sardar 1988: 186). Given everything that goes into constructing personal identity, the mosque and the family can be seen as no less effective or important than the formal system of education found in public education. The influence of the media in generating an ethical framework must also be considered. Scenes from Iraq and the Palestinian territories are broadcast live nightly and seen as contemporary manifestations of the same kind of colonialism that is discussed over and over in the textbooks. Moreover, awareness of the plight of fellow Muslims as produced by the media increases the perception that Western countries are indifferent to the sufferings of Arabs and Muslims. People in the Arab Middle East are calling for reform, and Kuwait is no exception. In Kuwait, there is currently a plan to revisit all elementary school curricula and omit anything related to the Iraqi invasion and to differentiate between the Iraqis and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, there has been an attempt to contract the middle school social studies texts to an international publishing company. Embedded in this very effort for reform, however, lie complex national and international interests. Readily apparent is the need to emphasize an agenda by and for the Arab

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community, but so too is Arab sensitivity to the belief that often this agenda is imposed by outsiders. Out of this sensitivity has come a trend to voice concern and support for the national homeland as a step toward building a bigger Arab homeland. As Mohammed Jaber al-Ansari notes, “each Arab individual establishes a semi-illegal relationship with the new small homeland that is identified in terms of big national conflicts and holistic religious ones. This small homeland remains a temporary one awaiting the big homeland” (al-Ansari 2003: 7). Questions about education reform and identity formation are linked to this larger discussion about the Arab community, a community envisioned as independent from the West yet deliberately conscious of it. At this juncture in world and Arab history, some would argue that “political, economic, educational and social reform must now be independent of American and international pressures” and look to a “developmental progressive agenda” (al-Ansari 2003: 6). The precarious tension between new values, or Islamic civic values, and more traditional values apparent in the public secondary schools of Kuwait arise out of these ongoing tensions in society and are played out against the backdrop of this emerging movement for reform. Textbooks Cited 9a Arabic Language (part 1). 1998–1999. Secondary level, first year, grade 9. Muhammad Salah al-Din Mujawer, Fathi Ali Yunis, Salah al-Din Muhammad Braiqe, Awni Khalil Qaddura, Abu al-Futooh Salman Muhammad, and Abdullah Ahmad al-Khudari. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 9b Arabic Language (part 2). 2000–2001. Secondary level, first year, grade 9. Muhammad Salah al-Din Mujawer, Fathi Ali Yunis, Salah al-Din Muhammad Braiqe, Awni Khaleel Qaddora, Abu al-Futuh Salman Muhammad, and Abdullah Ahmad al-Khudari. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 9c Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf. 1998–1999. Secondary level, first year, grade 9. Muhammad Sulaiman al-Haddad, Zein al-Din Abd al-Maqsud, and Fathiya Hamad al-Mahdi. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 9d Islamic Religion. 2002–2003. Secondary level, first year, grade 9. Fahad Abd al-Rahman al-Kindari, al-Sayyed al-Adawi, Haya al-Fahad, Abbas Hamza, and Sha‘aban Mustafa. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 10a Arabic Language (part 1). 2001–2002. Secondary level, second year, grade 10. Muhammad Futuh Ahmad, Mostafa al-Nahhas, Salahudeen Muhammad Braiqe, Muhammad Khattab al-Zaini, Abu al-Futuh Salman Muhammad, and Abdullah al-Khudari. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 10b Arabic Language (part 2). 2001–2002. Secondary level, second year,

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grade 10. Muhammad Futuh Ahmad, Mustafa al-Nahhas, Salahudeen Muhammad Braiqe, Muhammad Khattab al-Zaini, Abu al-Futuh Salman Muhammad, and Abdullah al-Khudari. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 10c Islamic Religion. 2002–2003. Secondary level, second year, grade 10. Ahmad Abdul Ghani al-Jamal, Basam Khudur al-Shati, Jasem Muhammad al-Misbah, Adiba Khalid al-Dayel, and Shukriyya alSaeedi. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 11a Arabic Language (part 1). 2002–2003. Secondary level, third year, grade 11. Abdullah al-Qutum, Muhammad al-Tunaji, Abdellateef Alkhateeb, Abu Alfutooh Salman Muhammad, Abdullah al-Khudari, and Mariam al-Rujaib. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 11b Arabic Language (part 2). 2000–2001. Secondary level, third year, grade 11. Abdullah al-Qutum, Muhammad al-Tunaji, Abdellateef alKhateeb, Abu al-Futuh Salman, Abdullah al-Khudari, and Mariam alRujaib. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 11c Islamic Religion. 2002–2003. Secondary level, third year, grade 11. Khaled Ali al-Qattan, Muhammad Nasr Mustafa Nimra, Yahya Salem Awwad, Ibrahim Abdelwahid Khaleel, and Safa Zeid Jawhar. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 11d Islamic History (Art Section). 2002–2003. Secondary level, third year, grade 11. Ahmad Mukhtar al-Abadi, Fu’ad Atiyya Hammad, Munira Ali al-Sane, and Muhammad Taleb Ismail. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 12a Literature and Poetry. 2001–2002. Secondary level, fourth year, grade 12. Composed by Ibrahim Abdin, Ibrahim Abdelrahman, Muhammad Ali Hussain, and Abu Alaineen Muhammad Abu Alaineen. Kuwait: Ministry of Education 12b Arabic Reading. 2001–2002. Secondary level, fourth year, grade 12. Composed by Ibrahim Abu Alaineen Abdeen, Taha taha al-Hilali, Basyoni Abu Zeid, and Safiya al-Sahen. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 12c Islamic Religion. 2002–2003. Secondary level, fourth year, grade 12. Ajil Jasem al-Nashmi, al-Sayyid Muhammad Nouh, Mubarak Saif alHajeri, Ahmad Saad al-Munaifi, and Khalid Abd al-Latif Alyain. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 12d Contemporary Geographic Issues. 2000–2001. Secondary level, fourth year, grade 12. Ibrahim Muhammad al-Shati, Salah Hassan Baakat, Ghassan Wasfi al-Khateeb, and Ali Muhammad al-Kut. Kuwait: Ministry of Education. 12e History of the Modern World. 2002–2003. Secondary level, fourth year, grade 12. Ahmad Abd al-Rahim Mustafa, Muhammad Yusef Khalil, and Ahmad Rafeeq Barqawi. Kuwait: Ministry of Education.

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6 Oman: Cultivating Good Citizens and Religious Virtue Mandana E. Limbert Surely thou art upon a mighty morality. (Quran 68:4)

The cultivation of Omani citizenship is, not surprisingly, one of the founding principles of the nation’s education system. What makes this task unquestionably complex, of course, is that religious identity both aids and undermines national distinctiveness. As in Iran, Omani identity both contends with and is bolstered by sectarian association. Unlike Iran, however, the Omani state is more ambivalent about highlighting its distinctive sectarian history. The nation’s almost equally divided religious demography and the potential revival of an autonomous theocratic region have made the central government both wary about seeming to favor explicitly one sect above others and reluctant to remind its population about its regional and religious autonomies. Oman’s religious studies textbooks and their important counterparts—classrooms, officially recognized study circles, and private study groups—navigate through the pitfalls and dangers of these contesting and overlapping identity politics. How, then, does the Omani state manage national sentiments that must attend to religious identities and histories and that span local, regional, and international disputes and controversies? First, until the sixth grade especially, religious education focuses on harnessing good acts such as compassion, kindness, good neighborliness, and charity for the poor, legitimized as piety, in the production of good citizens. Religious studies texts are as much about cultivating civic values as they are about promoting religious identity. Second, religious studies classes avoid explicit sectarian debates, defining instead a generic Islam whose limit is an equally generic “unbeliever.” However, as Dale Eickelman (1989) has illustrated, this objectification and propagation of a generic Islam has produced interest in defining sectarian differences. Third, whatever distinctiveness Ibadism affords Oman, it is translated in the textbooks and classrooms as personal piety and seriousness of pur103

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pose. Attempts by the Omani state to curtail and contain religious discourse, identity, and comportment do not always produce the intended results. Theocratic Region, Unified Nation Ibadism, a third distinct branch of Islam after Sunnism and Shi‘ism, gives the Sultanate of Oman its distinctiveness. Although the exact percentage of Ibadis, Sunnis, and Shi‘as in Oman today is not known (and the numbers fluctuate depending on who one asks), it is generally assumed that the population is divided between about 50–55 percent Ibadi, 40–45 percent Sunni, and 3–5 percent Shi‘ite. This particular breakdown of the population has been translated into a general understanding that Oman is predominantly Ibadi, with large Sunni and much smaller Shi‘ite minorities. Without using the language of majority and minority, the state promotes this sentiment: the national mufti, for example, is an Ibadi, and most of the religious texts published by the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture and the Ministry of Religious Affairs pertain to Ibadi history, doctrine, and theology. Similarly, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Bu Saidi is an Ibadi. Although Ibadism helps construct Oman’s national distinctiveness, this identity has also been problematic for the state. Ibadism—unlike Sunnism and Shi‘ism—allows for an imam who is neither a member of the Quraysh tribe, as in Sunnism, nor a direct descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, as in Shi‘ism. Because of its particular political philosophy, Ibadism has quite readily provided for theocratic governance in the form of an imamate and might, for better or worse, depending on a person’s religio-political leanings, do so again. More specifically, according to Ibadi doctrine, imamate states exist in one of four possible stages (masâlik al-Dîn): manifestation (zuhûr), defense (difâ‘), secrecy (kitmân), and martyrdom (shirâ‘) (Ennami 1972: 229). Although over the centuries, North African Ibadis have entered ages of secrecy, in Oman, the imamate has generally been considered to be either in a state of manifestation or defense (Abulrahman al-Salimi, personal communication).1 Indeed, there is some discussion today as to what stage Oman is in since the last imam, Ghalib bin Ali al-Hinai, is said to have abdicated his position before his departure from Oman in the mid-1950s (Ghassany 1995). Whatever stage Oman is in currently, Ibadi doctrine and the history of its incarnation as a (separate) theocratic state readily provide for the potential re-entrance into the stage of manifestation, a concern of the Omani state. For Oman, the Ibadi tradition has, therefore, meant in practice that the interior region, where the vast majority of the population is Ibadi, was at times a quasi-autonomous theocratic state with its own administration (usually centered in the town of Nizwa). The last imamate state lasted from 1913 to 1955, spanned three imams, and finally collapsed (or left the stage

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of manifestation) when towns in the interior region surrendered to British troops sent to “protect” oil exploration teams in the mid-1950s and Imam Ghalib fled to Saudi Arabia. Fighting recurred in the Jebel Akhdar war several years later, in which supporters of the imam continued to fight against the sultan’s “army” and British troops. The imamate, however, did not return. Tensions between the theocratic state and a unified sultanate under the al-Bu Saidi dynasty spanned much of the early twentieth century and is still remembered by elder townspeople in the interior region and Jebel Akhdar. Whether these people want to return to a theocratic state depends, among other factors, on family and personal politico-religious positions and histories. Nevertheless, the history of that imamate is rarely far from some people’s political imaginings about the future, especially in the interior region. And as the Omani state draws on its Ibadi history to mark its distinctiveness from other Arabian Peninsula states, it confronts and perpetuates a tension that becomes evident in the absences and allusions of the religious studies textbooks. Oman’s Modern Religious Education System Approximately fifteen years after the collapse of the imamate state and the region’s further bureaucratic integration into the Muscat administration, Oman witnessed another transformation in bureaucratic organization. The 1970 coup d’état in which Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Bu Saidi replaced his father marked the accelerated incorporation of imamate territory and the proliferation of engines of state that have promoted the notion and sentiments of a national identity, with its legitimately religious component. The rapid expansion (from three schools in 1970 to 363 in 1980) of a mass, “modern” (nonquranic), national education system has become one of the hallmarks of this regime. Although the history of this system is not the focus of this chapter, a brief discussion of the structure of the education system is necessary for a better understanding of the place of religious studies within it (see al-Dhahab 1987). From the 1970s, the education system in Oman has been divided into twelve grades: six elementary (ibtidâ’î), three intermediate or middle school (i‘dâdî), and three secondary or high school (thanâwî). In the last two years of secondary education, students are divided into arts or science groupings, but the same number of classroom hours of Islamic studies remain mandatory for all students throughout the twelve grades: six weekly periods in the first three years of school, five in the next three years, and then four through the end of the twelfth year. Today discussions about introducing a new structure for the educational system are taking place, but the number of weekly periods set aside for Islamic education has been proposed to remain the same.

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In addition to the “regular” elementary, intermediate, and secondary education system, the Omani state has established parallel religious elementary and secondary schools, as well as Islamic institutes and colleges. The town of Bahla in the interior region of Oman, where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in 1996 and 1997, for example, had one such religious elementary school. This school, along with all the other religious schools under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, as well as all the religious studies institutes that were not under the jurisdiction of the Royal Diwan, were closed in the wake of the arrests in 1995 of about 200 government officials, university professors, and students, who were accused of plotting against the government and spreading “fundamentalist” literature.2 At the time the school was closed, it had classes in six subjects: Islamic studies and English, which were taught by Omani teachers; and Arabic, mathematics, science, and social studies, which included geography and history and were taught by Egyptians and a Tunisian. Unlike the “regular” schools, each of the five main Islamic studies subjects—Quran, fiqh (jurisprudence), tafsîr (quranic commentary), sirah (Prophetic biography), and Hadith (canonical narratives of the Prophet and his companions)—had its own textbook, and the three grades were taught simultaneously in different corners of the mosque.3 Other than its placement in the mosque and its religious content, most people I spoke to said it was structured and pedagogically organized like the regular schools, with their emphasis on direct question-and-answer, recitation, and the memorization of texts. Despite the 1995 closures, religious studies institutes that were and are under the jurisdiction of the Royal Diwan remain open, and since the late 1990s more institutes, including an Institute of Sharia Sciences, have opened.4 Religious Studies Teachers in State Schools and Religious Institutes In Bahla, some religious studies teachers, especially women, hold a fair amount of respect in town. In general, however, state religious studies teachers do not garner the same respect as either elderly quranic teachers or devout men and women with other careers who lecture part-time on religious topics. This is especially the case with male instructors in state schools, who are often seen as not quite “bright enough” to be teaching history, language, or sciences or are suspect because they have been deemed acceptable as teachers by the state. The teachers in the now-closed specialized religious school in Bahla maintained a fair amount of religious authority: people in my neighborhood, for example, would ask their opinions on religious matters and would also ask them to write amulets to ward off evil. Although religious studies classes and the influence of the teachers are certainly formative in Oman, the places that attract students and adults with

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more ambitious religious aims are mosques and privately run study circles and classes. When it comes to quranic classes, attitudes vary. The more religious-minded of my own neighborhood, for example, considered the quranic teacher there not to be “a good role model for the children” and suggested that his appointment was an example of the state’s lack of care and seriousness about religious matters. One man in the neighborhood, who was one of the town’s most vigilant enforcers of “morality,” opened his own private religious school. At the same time, more advanced private classes and study groups for students, as well as informal gatherings for adults, were increasingly being established. Official concern about the content of these classes has meant that those who want to open such private classes must get state approval for their endeavors. Over the summer of 1997, I attended an informal women’s summer study group that was unregulated but had official recognition, and found that, although many of the students who attended did not share the same strict views on religious practice as the teachers, they did share the notion that “true” knowledge of Islam and Ibadism had to be pursued outside the confines of the state-regulated public schools. Despite the ambiguous position and authority of religious studies teachers in Bahla, they are, nonetheless, the vehicles (along with the textbooks) for the dissemination of religious knowledge to the youth. Their own training, therefore, is also important in a discussion of the cultivation of religious identity: in the eight semesters at the four-year Teacher Training College, those specializing in religious studies learn, among other topics, the Arabic language, Islamic history, jurisprudence, and the doctrine and biography of the Prophet.5 Of the required texts used in the religious studies classes in Nizwa in the 1990s, forty-five were published in Cairo, Kuwait, Beirut, Tunis, Rabat, or Damascus, eighteen indicated no place of publication, and eighteen were published in Oman. One of the texts without a place of publication, however, was Mohammad bin Ali al-Siyabi’s popular text on Ibadism, which was used in the first semester in the Introduction to Islamic Jurisprudence course.6 Of the texts published in Oman, three were by Nur al-Din al-Salimi, the most important Ibadi theologian of the twentieth century, and one was by Ahmed al-Khalili, the current national mufti. Ibadi history and doctrine, although not specified as a special class in the college, were clearly being taught and discussed. The Organization of the Textbooks Before analyzing in more detail how the textbooks aim to cultivate good citizenship and behavior as well as to explore the differences among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims, it is important to describe the structure of the textbooks. 7 The religious studies textbooks at the state schools are divided into six units, which remain mostly the same throughout

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the twelve years: Quran; Hadith; doctrine (aqîdah); acts of worship (abâdât) or, after the third grade, jurisprudence (fiqh); the biography of the Prophet; and, finally, character and culture (al-akhlâq wa al-tahdhîb). In the first and second intermediate years, this last unit becomes Islamic studies (al-abhâth al-Islâmî), and, finally, in the third intermediate year, this last unit is dropped and students study only the first five units: Quran, Hadith, doctrine, jurisprudence, and biography, until the first secondary year (tenth grade), when the sixth unit becomes rotating topics such as the Education System in Islam, the Political System in Islam, and Economic and Social Systems in Islam. Other than these slight variations, the organization of the textbooks throughout the twelve years remains quite consistent, beginning with the most authoritative, the Quran, and descending from Hadith to biography and “character.” However, each aspect of the religion could be understood as equally important. Either way, the effects of this structure are that students learn that each unit is a distinct facet of the religion, and that, as Dale Eickelman (1989) has illustrated, Islam has, relatively recently in Oman, become understood as an integrated system of belief and ritual. It should also be noted, however, that although the textbooks are organized into sequential units, in the classes, teachers do not teach these units sequentially. In the classes I attended in Bahla in 1996 and 1997, teachers taught the various chapters within the units sequentially but could jump around between units. Structurally, the Hadith and doctrine units of the textbooks are the most consistent. Hadith are all from Muslim, Bukhari, and, in the Ibadi tradition, Imam al-Rabi‘ as published by the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture. From the first to the third elementary grades, although Hadith from all three sources are used, only the Hadith from Imam al-Rabi‘ are noted, but from the fourth elementary grade onward, the sources of all the Hadith are noted. Hadith from Imam al-Rabi‘ are not, however, qualified as “Ibadi.” The topics of the various Hadith, which I examine below, focus on good deeds such as being compassionate and helping the poor and the elderly. Similar topics are covered throughout the years, mostly repeating the same themes with added detail and expanded reach. The units on doctrine, similarly, cover the same topics—the basic pillars of belief—with increased depth over the years and make reference to the Quran. Those references provide both the “proof” for the particular doctrine, as well as quotes for students when they come to speak about doctrine in other contexts. A tenet of belief, therefore, comes to be understood as that which requires “proof” and that which can be proven. Indeed, one does not simply believe; one has to learn the source of why one believes, as a Muslim. This difference is evident in intergenerational relations and the ways in which different generations relate to non-Muslims. During fieldwork, I often found that elderly

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people would either assume that everyone in the world believed certain facts of the universe (such as the existence of angels) or would associate different “beliefs” with different nationalities, whereas younger people would be curious as to what “non-Muslims believed.” This emphasis on defining belief and providing proof, opens, I would suggest, the possibility of doubt. The Content of the Textbooks Avoiding Sectarian Distinctions As Eickelman (1989) has argued, Islamic studies in Oman is “a scrupulously non-sectarian subject.” Despite this avoidance of sectarian identity, questions about self-definition and thus sectarian concerns have nevertheless become unintended consequences of modern education. This avoidance is so stark in the Omani religious studies textbooks that even when a discussion of the various collections of Hadith is presented in the second volume of the eleventh-grade textbook, no mention is made that Imam al-Rabi‘, whose collection of Hadith is often used in the textbooks, is an “Ibadi” imam. He is, instead, described—through his nisba (a naming form indicating his place of origin)—as an Omani whose Hadith are, along with the Hadith collections of Muslim and Bukhari, sound (11: 57–58). What it means that Imam al-Rabi‘ is called “imam” at all is also not discussed. At the same time, however, certain key—albeit unidentified—practices raise questions for the boundaries of Oman’s sectarian inclusiveness and history: methods of prayer and the gathering of Friday congregations are two of the most basic and iconic examples. One of the few ritualistic differences between Sunnis, Shi‘as, and Ibadis is the form of prayer. In particular, when standing during prayer, Ibadis keep their arms and hands to their sides, rather than raised in front of them. Although there is no mention of this difference in the textbooks, only the Ibadi prayer style is described and illustrated. Omanis are, today, well aware that this form only applies to Ibadis. Although it may seem to be a minor point of difference, form of prayer has become iconic of the distinction between Ibadis and other Muslims. Indeed, the gesture often used in Bahla for indicating that someone is Muslim but not Ibadi involved raising one’s hands in front of oneself. Another, more direct (although equally unidentified) indication of sectarian difference is evident in the recounting of the biography of the Prophet. Specifically, although Sunni representations may speak of the tensions between the Prophet and his Quraysh tribesmen, for Sunnis, the Quraysh ultimately form the legitimate and blessed community of potential scholarly leaders. For Ibadis, who hold that any scholarly qualified male, irrespective of descent, can become the imam, the Quraysh do not maintain,

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by default, a particularly special place of respect. That is quite evident in the school textbook accounts of the Prophet’s biography, in which much attention is given to the conflicts and troubles that the Prophet had with his own tribe (3: 121). The inclusion (or appropriation) of what could be understood as Sunni and Shi‘ite practices is also evident in the textbooks, however. Iconic and perhaps seemingly minor differences between Sunnis, Shi‘as, and Ibadis, such as the image of mosques with minarets and representations and discussions of the holding of Friday congregational prayer, might be indicative of such inclusions. People in Bahla would often comment on the problems with the construction of the new mosques with minarets, an architectural practice that Ibadis have not traditionally maintained. Some men refused to attend Friday prayers, not because they did not like going, but because they argued that there could only be Friday prayers during a manifested imamate. The importance of proving the obligation of Friday prayer is evident in the use of a quranic quote in defining this prayer in, for example, the second-grade elementary textbook. O believers, when proclamation is made for prayer on the Day of Congregation, hasten to God’s remembrance and leave trafficking aside; that is better for you, did you but know. Then, when the prayer is finished, scatter in the land and seek God’s bounty, and remember God frequently; haply you will prosper. (Quran 62:9–10) (2: 83).

Thus, the images of mosques in the textbooks—all with minarets—and the religious obligation for men to attend Friday prayers stands in opposition to how some Ibadis have come to define what separates their religious identity from that of Sunnis and Shi‘as. Most people who noted these differences to me would draw on them to indicate their displeasure with the policies of the current state, rather than with their sectarian differences with Sunnis and Shi‘as. Thus, although the textbooks avoid discussion of politics and identity, especially through the intermediate years, powerful icons of sectarian difference are evident throughout. For Ibadis with whom I spoke, the inclusion of what have become understood as non-Ibadi icons in school textbooks provoked objections because they were indicative of the state’s inappropriate attitude toward its Ibadi tradition. Furthermore, although sectarian differences are avoided, differences between Muslims and nonMuslims emerge, initially in discussions of the Quran and doctrine on judgment day and then, regarding Jews, in the unit on the biography of the Prophet. Christians as well as Jews are, however, discussed in Chapter 4 of the eleventh-grade textbook in the Quran unit, in which prohibitions on friendships with non-Muslims are described, which I will return to below.

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Forging Virtuous Individuals and Civic Virtues for a Muslim Society Religious studies textbooks focus much of their attention on cultivating “good behavior” and, by extension, good citizenship. It must be noted that the emphasis on good behavior in the religious studies textbooks does not emerge in a vacuum. Indeed, discussions on behavior and social etiquette in Islam, as in other religions, form an integral part of religious teaching. The references in the textbooks to Quran and Hadith, furthermore, not only provide legitimacy to the behavioral qualities selected for inclusion in the textbooks but also testify to a mandate within the Islamic tradition for grounding moral prescriptions in scripture. Omani religious studies textbooks, especially in the first six years of school, harness good behavior toward the cultivation of a civic good. That is certainly not unique to Oman: as Gregory Starrett has illustrated, religious education in Egypt also combines moral teachings and national sentiment in the context of a systematized course of study (Starrett 1998; also see Eickelman 1989, 1992). Especially at the elementary level, the Omani education system emphasizes purity, compassion, respect, and proper manners in ritual and in everyday life. Indeed, “good behavior”—in the forms of cleanliness, respect, and adherence to the formalities of bodily control— dominates the religious studies textbooks and is the focal point around which other matters of identity rotate. For example, the Hadith units in the first six years, for the most part, focus on compassion, love, study, respect for the old, and helping the poor and neighbors. Similarly, unit six of the first-grade to sixth-grade elementary years, entitled “Character and Culture,” emphasizes kindness, generosity, obedience, cooperation, and honesty. Students are also told that good Muslims are “clean,” for ritual purity as well as in general. Muslims, the students learn, do not throw trash on the ground, and Muslims visit their neighbors and ask about them, help them if they are sick, and give them an interest-free loan if they need it (3: 147–149).8 In the first six years of religious studies, Muslims are described as those who perform good acts. For example, beginning in the first grade, students are presented with Hadith that convey messages such as “the Muslim loves his brother,” “the Muslim is compassionate,” and “the Muslim obeys the Prophet.” The unit “Acts of Worship” describes how certain types of water are pure, how the Muslim loves cleanliness, and good manners in performing bodily functions. The “Character and Culture” unit begins with a verse from the Quran, “surely thou art upon a mighty morality” (Quran 68:4), and highlights how the Muslims greet their Muslim brothers and sisters, are wellbehaved when walking in the street, throw away their trash, obey their parents, are sincere and honest, and use good manners when eating.9

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In the fourth-grade elementary textbook, the Hadith unit covers how the young respect the old, how they who are “right” in battle will be rewarded,10 how Muslims visit the sick, and how study leads to knowledge.11 Similarly, the unit on “Character and Culture” in the fourth-grade elementary textbook highlights charity; assistance for the weak; good behavior at work; kindness to animals; altruism; Islam as a religion of unity; Islam’s calls for goodness; and what is prohibited in Islam, like mockery, contempt, and insults. In this unit, quranic verses are presented to validate these behaviors: Children of Adam! Wear your adornment at every place of worship; and eat and drink, but be you not prodigal; He loves not the prodigal. (Quran 7: 31)12 Be kind to parents, and the near kinsman, and to orphans, and to the needy, and to the neighbour who is of kin, and to the neighbour who is a stranger, and to the companion at your side, and to the traveller. (Quran 4: 36)13 Who is he that will lend to God a good loan, and He will multiply it for him, and this shall be a generous wage? (Quran 57:11)

Although much attention is given to being good individuals, little mention is made directly in the textbooks of the “public good,” or even of “society.” The logic of the textbooks, however, presumes that good behavior, stemming from proper religious values, will produce a peaceful, mutually supportive, and obedient society. 14 That society is, furthermore, Muslim, since even where personal virtues are not validated through Hadith or quranic verses, the well-behaved actors, coming together to construct a respectful and virtuous Omani public, are expressly Muslim. Civic Virtue as a Cultural Trait The process of educating students in the virtues of good citizenship and public morality has gained more systematic attention in the textbooks used in the new state schools and is distinguished from other forms of moral instruction in that virtue and morality are placed within a “system,” that is, Islam. For example, references to neighbors appear throughout the textbooks, and the third-grade elementary textbook devotes an entire chapter to the rules of neighborliness, supported by Hadith. Included are ten points of neighborly responsibility, such as visiting them and asking about them, helping them when they are sick, and giving them a loan if they need it. One illustration in the chapter is of a man knocking on a door to show that one is supposed to announce one’s arrival rather than walk right into a house. The other is of a young boy visiting his male neighbor, who is in bed and presumably sick. Historically, the established tradition of discourse on the rights of neighbors focuses on the religio-legal obligations that individuals have to

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those who live in a certain proximity to them. In these textbooks, however, the student is presented with the quality of good neighborliness as a cultural trait, not as a potential basis of dispute or even a legal persona from which complaints can be raised. Instead of representing the neighbor as a purveyor of potential legal disputes, the textbook casts the neighbor as one who carries social and personal responsibilities toward others, based simply on individual morality and a sense of civic virtue. Similar images accompanying these chapters not only illustrate the moral values of good Muslims but also place individuals in relationship to each other in ways that show how the society can be harmonious because of these moral values. A chapter on helping the weak, for example, begins with an image of a bus in which we see a male driver, dressed in a white dishdasha and white turban, and then rows of men and boys, also dressed in white. There is one woman on the bus, sitting in the middle, dressed in a yellow-and-orange dress and hair covering. The picture shows a man, who is either old or blind (since he has black hair and dark glasses), and a child next to him getting on the bus. A young man is helping the old blind man get on. Behind the young man is a woman waiting to ascend the steps. Underneath the picture, we read: “God commands us to help the weak, among whom are the elderly, young children and women, and we give them priority for the help they need. And the Muslim, when he sees an elderly man wanting to climb into a car, he gives priority over himself in helping, and on seeing another man standing in a bus, he gives him his seat” (4: 215–216). Similarly, the fifth-grade elementary textbook includes sections specifically on “peacemaking between people” and “good social behavior” (âdâb ijtimâ‘îya), and these lessons are reinforced with “proof texts” from the Quran: O believers, eschew much suspicion; some suspicion is a sin. And do not spy, neither backbite one another; would any of you like to eat the flesh of his brother dead? You would abominate it. (Quran 12:49) O mankind, We have created you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that you may know one another. (Quran 13:49)

The interpretation of the verses presented to students is that in Islam people love others as they love themselves, an interpretation that affirms the purpose of the lessons, which is to cultivate moral individuals and a moral society and possibly to promote a politics of inclusion. In the textbooks, however, these moral lessons also operate within a project to construct a “system of belief” that is Islam. At the same time, and however paradoxically, the idealized behaviors and broad moral values promoted in the textbooks resemble what Talal Asad has called “a private religion of sentimental sociability” (Asad 1993).

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Jihad and al-Walâya wa al-Barâ’a (Loyalty and Enmity) What complicates these civic values in Oman, as elsewhere, is that they are inflected, even if only obliquely, with national sentiment. National sentiments, unlike civic values, are often defined by forms and boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and, indeed, after the first intermediate year, the textbooks focus more attention on these boundaries. Civic values, however, also contain an implicit ordering of the social world. These values are, in fact, predicated upon the ordering of society into categories of persons who are more or less powerful and more or less wealthy: those who are able to help and those who require help, not to mention those who perform their civic responsibilities and those who do not.15 Although the religious studies textbooks do promote civic values, they also contend with—often in the process of defining these values—forging a particular identity, the Omani-Muslim. This identity, like all identities, is constructed through practices and discourses of inclusion and exclusion. As described at the beginning of this chapter, Oman’s sectarian history has provided a source for the distinction of this identity as well as potential anxiety for the state. The forging of this identity emerges in both subtle forms of distinction, such as the uses of the pronoun “we,” to more explicit references to unbelievers, hypocrites, Jews, and Christians. The connotations associated with these identities are not always consistent, however: sometimes they seem to be identities in history, and sometimes they seem to be identities that students might encounter in contemporary life, either in their hometowns or on the news. Jews, for example, appear quite regularly in the textbooks as those who lied and cheated Muhammad in Medina. In addition to associating Jews with the past, the textbooks also make explicit or implicit remarks about Jews today. In the discussion of the Jewish community of Medina in the context of the revelation of “The Ranks” (Quran 69:1–9), the first-year intermediate textbook states under the headline, “The Nature of Jews and Their Character”: “Then, the verses about the words of Jesus, peace be upon him, exposed the nature of the Jews and their character and their position towards the messengers, and they constantly deceive the messengers and they charge them with the false accusations” (7: 81). The shifting back and forth between historical events, no matter how represented, and the essential characteristics of Jews throughout the ages, as well as the significant use of the present tense, has the effect of vilifying them and essentializing Jewish identity. Connecting these historical events and contemporary Palestine, as in the first volume of the eleventh-grade textbook in a discussion of the quranic verse “The Battlements” (Quran 7: 164–170), compounds this negative construction of Jewish identity. Although notions of jihad and al-walâya wa al-barâ’a also play a cen-

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tral role in Islamic political philosophy in general, their contours are particularly salient for Ibadis. As Amr K. Ennami has noted, “the concepts of alWalâya and al-Barâ’a form one of the main themes of Ibadi doctrine” (Ennami 1972: 195). As an offshoot of the Kharijites, Ibadis have, from their beginning, contended with these notions directly, as Patricia Crone and Fritz Zimmerman’s (2001) recent analysis of an early Ibadi epistle illustrates. The textbooks, however, do not mention Ibadism, the Kharijites, or any sectarian history, for that matter. The subject of “fighting for Islam,” an especially salient concern of Ibadism, is certainly present, beginning in the second grade. In the unit on doctrine (as opposed to units on acts of worship or jurisprudence), in a chapter entitled “God Rewards the Believers,” the student comes across an image of a man in military fatigues, holding a rifle in his left hand, holding his right arm up, and moving toward a flag on which it is written, “God Is Great” (2: 52–53). The chapter begins with three other illustrations, however, which show that the Muslim is kind to animals, helps the weak, and worships God alone. The fourth act to be rewarded is that the Muslim battles for the cause of God and fights against the enemy. The enemy remains unnamed, and jihad is often described in the textbooks in just such a context—fighting an unnamed enemy, often in defense of the religion. Throughout the textbooks, students also become accustomed to reading about unbelievers and hypocrites. Students are first introduced to these categories of people in the doctrinal chapters on judgment day, beginning in the third grade. After reading about the pillars of belief in Islam, students learn that those who believe will go to heaven and those who do not will go to hell (3: 40–41). Similar basic discussions of judgment day appear in the next several years, but unbelief and hypocrisy are discussed more directly in the doctrinal unit of the sixth-grade elementary textbook. Unbelief (al-kufr) is associated, in the chapter, with those who reject (aba) and deny (ankar) God, his message, and his messenger Muhammad. It is also, interestingly, associated with those who say they believe, but who pray to, befriend, or perform pilgrimages or fast in honor of someone or something other than God. That is understood as a “lie” and defined as unbelief. The textbook distinguishes between unbelievers and hypocrites by saying that those who pray to or perform pilgrimages for someone or something other than God are unbelievers (even if they state that they believe in God, his message, and his messenger Muhammad), whereas those who say they believe, but in their hearts do so for ends other than true belief, are hypocrites. Thus someone who claims to believe but does so because he is greedy or even afraid of Muslims is a hypocrite. Unbelief extends to include those who claim they believe but who actually act in ways that illustrate their unbelief (6: 136–138). This extension, therefore, could be interpreted to apply the category of “unbelief” to activities

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such as saint worship or any form of worship that is considered beyond the bounds of a strictly unitarian understanding of proper Islamic practice. Discussions of jihad in the textbooks are also interesting. Jihad is not divided into or presented as “personal” or “societal” struggle, but rather is defined as the physical or monetary support, in quite abstract terms, of Islam or Islamic territories. This approach to the concept of “struggle” is evident in the quranic unit (chapter 19) of the first-year intermediate textbook (grade 7) on “The Ranks” (Quran 61:10–14), in which students learn that “Jihad in the cause of God with possessions or with themselves is the road to heaven,” “Cowardice and weakness for jihad deserve God’s anger and the exclusion from heaven and the disgrace in life in this world,” “Because of the destruction and abandonment of some Muslim countries like Palestine, jihad [becomes] a duty,” “God does not approve of any work whatsoever [even] when excellent by anyone unless his follower is a believer,” and “Verily, God provides support for his friends and helps them when they support and help him” (7: 86). The just jihad, it is also noted in the chapter, is the objective that is among the loftiest of God’s words and the spreading of his religion and the application of his law. As for the murderous who dissimulated and loved notoriety and fanatical devotion [al-ta’assub] to the tribe and the acquisition of loot: this is not jihad in God’s path and His followers do not demand pay and clothing, and death at the appointed time [in] this insignificant way is not martyrdom. (7: 85)

Violent struggle, when dealt with directly in the textbooks, is often portrayed in this somewhat negative light. The message seems to be that although jihad is important, it is often used in negative ways and for disingenuous ends. Similarly, chapter 21 of the first-year intermediate textbook, in the Hadith unit entitled “The True or Just Jihad,” begins with the following Hadith: “Abi Musa Abdullah bin Qays al-Asha‘ari said: ‘the Prophet— peace be upon him—was asked about the man who fought bravely and with pride, against dissimulation, and whether that was in the path of God?’ And the Prophet—peace be upon him—said: ‘he who fights for the word of God, the Highest, is in the path of God.’” Much of the discussion of jihad in the textbooks is careful to recognize its potential for righteous violence, yet allows for opposition to it when it is understood as fanaticism. This balance is also evident in the chapter on martyrdom in the Hadith unit of the second volume of the eleventh-grade textbook. The issue of jihad touches, of course, on the notion of al-walâya wa albarâ’a. Only one chapter in all the textbooks focuses on this topic directly. It begins with this introduction:

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Among the attributes of the Muslim is to love God and his Prophet, and to love the lovers of God and the lovers of the Prophet, to protect them and to help them, and to attack the enemies of God and the enemies of the Prophet who hold back the people from the religion of God and who fight them. And this was [like] the companion of the Prophet when he professes [his faith] to Islam. He gives his loyalty to God and his Prophet and Muslim society, and his separation from the unbelief and his people and the time of ignorance and its blackness becomes known. And God made this clear in his Quran when he said: “Serve you God, and eschew idols” (Quran 16: 36). Since among the benefits of the belief are to love the believer of God and his Prophet and the believers, and to attack the enemies of God and his Prophet and to battle them and to abstain from giving friendship to them. And while it is near our conversations, the issue of al-Walâya wa alBarâ’a is part of the important and central issues of Islamic doctrine.

After this introduction, the chapter gives the meanings of al-walâya as “he who is close and supportive” and of al-barâ’a as “he who is distant from something and extricated from it.” The textbook explains that al-walâya can be used to refer to an unbeliever in the sense that he is both a friend of idols and the devil, as well as close to the devil. However, the textbook also indicates that “the hatred and the cursing of the unbeliever because of his unbelief” is part of the concept of al-barâ’a. Interestingly, this interpretation is accredited to Nur al-Din al-Salimi, the twentieth-century Ibadi theologian. The textbooks also quote quranic verses in support of these interpretations. For al-walâya, among other verses, students read: Those who believe, and have emigrated and struggled with their possessions and their selves in the way of God and those [who] have given refuge and help—those are friends one of another. And those who believe, but have not emigrated—you have no duty of friendship towards them till they emigrate; yet if they ask you for help, for religion’s sake, it is your duty to help them. (Quran 8:72)

and, for al-barâ’a, among other verses, students read: You have had a good example in Abraham, and those with him, when they said to their people, “We are quit of you, and that you serve, apart from God. We disbelieve in you, and between us and you enmity has shown itself, and hatred for ever, until you believe in God alone.” (Quran 60:4) Those—their recompense is that there shall rest on them the curse of God and of the angels and of men, altogether. (Quran 3:87).16

The chapter then lists some aspects of al-walâya that “make the Muslim a hypocrite and consequently [bring about] his departure from Islam” (10: 102). They are (1) love and friendship for unbelievers; (2) silence, instead

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of speaking the truth, in the meetings of unbelievers; (3) help for unbelievers and attaching their fate to the fate of Muslims; (4) cooperation with polytheists in a manner that harms Muslims; and (5) obedience to unbelievers in a way that excludes believers. In other words, since unbelievers can be friends of the devil and hypocrites can cooperate with unbelievers, alwalâya, in itself, is not necessarily positive. The textbook then notes that “the Muslim who gives friendship to the unbelievers exits the circle of Islam” (10: 104). The chapter ends with another list, this time of the Muslim’s obligations to give his friendship to God, his Prophet, and the believers by supporting them, showing love to them, not obeying unbelievers, exposing the plans of unbelievers, and imitating believers. Similarly, in the first volume of the eleventh-grade textbook, a chapter in the quranic unit discusses the following verse, interpreting it as illustrating the prohibition on friendships with Jews and Christians: O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Whoso of you makes them his friends is one of them. God guides not the people of the evildoers. Yet thou seest those in whose hearts is sickness vying with one another to come to them, saying, “We fear lest a turn of fortune should smite us.” But it may be that God will bring the victory, or some commandment from Him, and they will find themselves, for that they kept secret within them, remorseful, and the believers will say, “What, are these the ones who swore by God most earnest oaths that they were with you? Their works have failed; now they are losers.” (Quran 5: 51–53)17

Conclusion: Highlighting and Obscuring Sectarianism One day, a young woman I came to know in Bahla came to visit me because, she said, she wanted to listen to a tape recording I had made of her grandmother. The young woman was home on her first break from the university, and when she came to my room, I asked whether she was enjoying university. “It’s wonderful,” she said, “there are people from all over”—and she named several towns in Oman—“and from all types of backgrounds.” Then she fell silent and, after a minute or so, suddenly said in a low voice, “But, I have a couple questions. What is an imamate and is Ali the Prophet of the Shi‘a?” In response to the first question, I answered that she should ask her grandmother, and to the second, I said, no, he is not their Prophet; Muhammad is also the Prophet of the Shi‘a. Although I was shocked at this young university student’s questions (How could she not know what an imamate is? How could she imagine that the Shi‘a believe Ali to be the Prophet?), it also occurred to me that she had both suddenly become interested in who she was and was understanding that what she had been taught all those years in school was only part of this story. She knew she was a Muslim, as opposed to an unbeliever, but beyond that, how was she a partic-

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ular kind of Muslim, one connected to an imamate? (She had, after all, studied the textbooks very hard to gain admission to the university, not an easy task in Oman, especially for girls. Girls must achieve higher entrance grades to enter the university in order to keep the male-female ratio at the university at about 50–50.) The silence about sectarian identities in schools leaves, for some people in towns like Bahla, a sense that knowledge about “their” Islam must be sought elsewhere, though usually not from a visiting anthropologist. And in searching for this truth elsewhere, in revising and altering this information and knowledge, students are also propelled by and are carrying some of what they have already learned in the schools, from the form of instruction and their understanding of what knowledge is to the powerful sense that religion’s boundaries should be identified and defined and, finally, that the disciplining and management of proper public comportment and values are central to Islamic piety. Mass religious education in Oman, in contending with how to produce good Omanis, not only avoids sectarian identities but also defines the boundaries and relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. Although the contents of religious studies textbooks, especially after the first intermediate year, represent a somewhat antagonistic relationship between believers and unbelievers and hypocrites, religious studies classes and textbooks in Oman are not the most important sites for the articulation of religious identity and difference. Just as sectarian identity is sought elsewhere, “legitimate” discussions of religious identity in general are for some also taking place outside of and in opposition to the school environment. Similarly, religious studies teachers in the state schools are not often considered the most authoritative sources of religious knowledge. Students with concern for proper religiosity in Oman—as throughout the Middle East—learn about “true” Islam elsewhere, at times in study groups, where they listen to recordings and talk about recent political events, doctrine, and religious precepts that govern individual behavior, as well as their concerns about the state and even its education policies (see Limbert forthcoming). (It should also be noted that compared to some of the discussions taking place in study groups and on the Internet, the representations of and advice on relations with non-Muslims in the textbooks are extremely contained.) Non-Muslims are to be tolerated, although not necessarily befriended. Muslims are often represented as more righteous or, at its most extreme, as victims of aggression or hostility by others. In addition to the silences about sectarian identities and differences with “unbelievers,” the textbooks also encourage (in the first six years of mass schooling especially) personal comportment, purity, kindness, respect, and good behavior. Thus religion is not only a system with a set of beliefs and rituals but also is the reason for having good manners and behaving well at home with family and in public. This emphasis on personal values

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and bodily comportment and purity not only aid in the cultivation of a good citizenry but also can create tension between them. Indeed, a few weeks after the questioning about the imamate and Shi‘ism, the same young woman returned to Bahla. During the course of our afternoon neighborly coffee and dates on her visit, she reprimanded her mother and grandmother for having bathed with their neighbors in the neighborhood bathing room. It is forbidden, she announced, for adult women who are not kin to bathe together; neighborliness, she was suggesting, has its limits too. Religious identity, as well as civic and personal virtues, become entangled, both in relation to and in tension with mass education, propelling both a concern about self-identification and an anxiety about the management of individual and public morality. In this preliminary examination of religious studies textbooks in Oman, a number of themes have emerged. First, as stated above, the textbooks avoid direct discussion of sectarian identity. That is not to say, of course, that Ibadism is avoided in other official discourses in Oman. On television, in the newspapers, and in statements by and publications of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ibadism is clearly central to national representations of Omani identity. Ibadism is what distinguishes Oman from other states on the Arabian Peninsula, and Oman’s distinct asceticism, seriousness, and scholarly tradition is often attributed to it. At the same time, although explicit references are avoided in the textbooks, implicit references to sectarian identity are evident, such as mosque construction and forms of prayer, which are simple and yet generally popularly recognizable symbols of Ibadism and its transformations. This skirting around distinctiveness and yet trying to forge a sense of it is, it seems, a way of quelling potential sectarian conflicts. Paradoxically, perhaps, the textbooks avoid direct discussion of national identity as well as sectarian identity. It is almost as though gravity about “religion” should not be too muddied with either direct references to other national discourses or seen to be obviously serving the nation or, more accurately, the al-Bu Saidi nation. Again, this is not to say that national identity is absent from the textbooks. Images certainly “place” this discussion of religion in Oman: all textbooks have a picture of the sultan on the first page; images of people show them wearing “Omani” dress; and the landscape images are “typical” Omani landscapes. This silence about the Omani state or nation works to reinforce whatever legitimacy the textbooks might have. Both textual avoidances bolster the legitimacy and unification of the nation-state: one attempts to minimize sectarian divisions, and the other gives a sense of appropriate deference to religion. The desire for and projection of a respectful, peaceful, and obedient society, as well as the discrepancies between the representations of Omani society and how Omanis actually live, reveal how these textbooks are offi-

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cial wish-images. The textbooks represent Omanis in middle-class, Muscat environments: sitting at a table to eat and using, as they are called in Oman sometimes, “English”-style bathrooms. They show people using a public bus, which, although not necessarily a middle-class activity, certainly is something that Omani women would very rarely do, especially alone. During the first six years of school, religious studies textbooks focus on appropriate behavior. Learning the basic pillars of faith and practice, learning that God created everything, is accompanied by lessons on bodily control and comportment in both ritual activity and individual behavior. It would be a mistake to assume, however, that this attention to behavior simply functions to produce a kind and considerate nation. Discussions of visiting and neighborliness are part of older discourses in Oman and intersect with transformed and highly gendered daily practice. In reality, the emphasis on appropriate behavior, individually acted and witnessed, can be understood to serve in the production of an obedient and respectful society. Discrepancies and tensions are evident not only in the relationship between the wish-images and everyday life but also in the relationship between the desire to produce an obedient, tolerant, and respectful nation and the list of repercussions of improper Islamic behavior and belief. Thus attention is given both to the sometimes difficult relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Islamic history and in contemporary political arrangements, as well as to the limits of acceptable behavior and belief. One of the methods of balancing this tension is by making “historical” the difficult relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. Another method of managing the tensions between being compassionate, caring for neighbors, and “fighting” is to present images together, without real explanation or captions. Similarly, discussions of jihad are often tempered by admonitions not to be fanatical or self-serving. Finally, the textbooks encourage a particular understanding of “religious knowledge,” as a system of defined beliefs and practices distinct from other forms of knowledge. The textbooks illustrate how different facets of religion (the word of God, the practices of the Prophet, doctrine, jurisprudence, biography, and, in these textbooks, character) make up this system. Religion is neither something that one is born with nor simply part of being human, but is a system, with its component parts, that needs to be learned, studied, and memorized. Thus, although the emphasis on individually displayed virtues benefits the Omani state, by presenting religion as a public system of moral display, the textbooks inadvertently draw attention to the very identity boundaries the state would normally seek to downplay. More than anything, then, national textbooks reveal quite a bit about states: that they are processes that continually need to be made and remade; that they are not monolithic, since within and between religious studies textbooks and other subjects, students are exposed to a variety of sometimes

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conflicting messages; and that they produce wish-images or policy statements, which are both projected into the future and often function alongside what is actually happening in society. And, finally, states also have to contend with multiple audiences, domestic and international. Textbooks, however, are only one discourse, functioning in relation to others, some of which bolster their messages and some of which seem to exist, if not in opposition to, at least in tension with them. Similarly, the legitimacy of the textbooks is not transparent: as official voices, some students—although not all—either disregard or suspect their messages, and religious studies teachers are often not the most authoritative. Nevertheless, they not only tell us quite a bit about particular states and their conflicted ideologies, but they can also be both a source of information for students and, perhaps more important, provide a particular relationship to knowledge. Omani Government Documents Cited Manhaj al-‘Ulûm al-Shar‘îya wa al-Lughat al-‘Arabîya [Curriculum of Sharia Sciences and the Arabic Language]. n.d. Talaqat al-Ma‘had al-Rîyad fî al-Madhab al-Ibâdi [The Ibadi Way (School of Law) for the Teacher-Training Level]. n.d. Textbooks Cited 2 Religious Studies. 1995. Elementary level, grade 2. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education, 10th ed. 3 Religious Studies. 1995. Elementary level, grade 3. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education, 8th ed. 4 Religious Studies. 1995. Elementary level, grade 4. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education, 9th ed. 6 Religious Studies. 1995. Elementary level, grade 6. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education, 9th ed. 7 Religious Studies. 1993. Intermediate level, first year, grade 7. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education, 8th ed. 10 Religious Studies. 1993. Secondary level, grade 10. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education, 6th ed. 11 Religious Studies. n.d. Secondary level, grade 11. Muscat, Oman: Ministry of Education. Notes 1. Abdulrahman al-Salimi has pointed out to me how in the classic Omani works, such as al-Musannaf by Ahmad al-Kindi (d. 1162), al-Dîyâ’ by Salma alAwtabi (d. early twelfth century), Bayân al-Sharia by Muhammad al-Kindi (d.

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1115), and the much later Qâmûs al-Sharia by Jumayyil al-Sadi (d. first half of the nineteenth century), the authors focus on the categories of zuhûr and difâ‘ and hardly discuss the state of kitmân. See al-Awatabi n.d; al-Kindi n.d., Kitâb al-Musannaf Kitâb; al-Kindi n.d., Bayân al-Shar‘; and al-Sadi n.d. 2. Similar schools in Dakhiliya had existed and were closed, as in Nizwa and Samail. Nizwa, unlike Bahla and Samail, also had a religious secondary school. While students in Bahla and Samail were expected to return to the regular secondary schools once they graduated from the specialized elementary system, students in Nizwa could continue with their religious studies specialties through the secondary level. 3. A guide for the teaching of religious studies in these elementary and secondary specialized schools was published by the Ministry of Education and Youth. See Manhaj al-‘Ulûm al-Shar‘îya wa al-Lughat al-Arabîya. I found a copy of this publication in one of Bahla’s neighborhood libraries and suspect that a former teacher at the specialized school had donated it to the library. 4. Private and state-run quranic schools also operate throughout Oman. Although the state quranic schools often function as kindergartens, the private quranic schools—at least the ones I knew in Bahla—catered to boys through the secondary school years. Unfortunately, unlike the state quranic classes, I was unable to attend the private quranic boys’ school. 5. The curriculum of the religious studies specialization was different from the actual courses taught. Here, I am focusing on the actual courses taught and the texts that the professors used in their classes. I was kindly given a copy of the curriculum and lists of texts used for all the courses in religious studies. 6. Talaqat al-Ma‘had al-Rîyad fî al-Madhab al-Ibâdi. 7. During fieldwork I was able to acquire a complete set of the religious studies textbooks, except for the first volume of the second intermediate year and the first volume of the first secondary year. My study of the textbooks is based on this set of textbooks. 8. The subject of ritual purity is, of course, a classic one in Islam, but one that has not received much attention among non-Ibadi scholars of Ibadism, except Roberto Rubinacci’s important 1957 article, “La purità rituale secondo gli Ibaditi.” 9. No mention is made here about men greeting women or vice versa. 10. This and other references to battle will be discussed below. 11. This concept of knowledge, of course, is complex and cannot be addressed here. 12. In Arberry (1955), this is verse 29. 13. The last phrase of the verse, translated by Arberry (1955) as “and to that your right hand owns” but translated by N. J. Dawood as “and to the slaves who you own,” is omitted in the textbook. Also, in Arberry, this verse is 40. 14. It should be noted that although, in these interpersonal encounters of good relations, the textbooks hint at the production of an Omani public sphere, this public sphere is hardly synonymous with a classic liberal Habermasian one. The textbooks, in other words, do not promote or convey images and discussions of individuals engaged in rational (and secular) debate—either literary and apolitical or political— outside state contexts (since these are state schools). At the same time, however, one could argue that the good values that are clearly marked as “religious” in the Omani textbook context are much like the virtues and morality often associated with secular liberal values of individual responsibility toward other individuals. 15. Some of these values are those that, in other contexts, might be provided by an ideal (welfare) state: taking care of the sick and giving loans to the poor, for

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example. In this context, however, the state—it seems—does reserve for itself the responsibility of providing other services to the needy and yet leaves open the possibility that individuals will also carry some of the burden of social welfare, at least on a small scale. 16. In Arberry (1955), this is verse 81, sura 11; verse 18 is also cited. 17. In Arberry (1955), this is verse 56–58.

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7 The Palestinian National Authority: The Politics of Writing and Interpreting Curricula 7.1 Genesis of a New Curriculum Nathan Brown IN 1994, THE NEWLY CREATED Palestinian National Authority (PNA)

assumed control of the education of Palestinian students in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. For the first time, a Palestinian political entity was to administer the education of Palestinian schoolchildren (see Brown 2003). The assumption of control occasioned a comprehensive effort to write the first Palestinian curriculum. This section is the first of two on Palestinian textbooks. Whereas Seif Da‘Na will analyze older textbooks used in the secondary school curriculum, this section explores the new textbooks designed for grades one through eight in a variety of subjects, including Islamic education, civics, and language. After exploring the background behind this effort, I focus on three aspects of the curriculum: its construction of Palestinian identity, how it posited relations between Palestinians and non-Palestinians, and how religion was integrated into identity. In all three sections, the focus will not simply be on the content of the curriculum; it will also be on the competing and often conflicting voices that were expressed in the process of developing the curriculum—and sometimes in the curriculum itself. Actors in Constructing the New Curriculum The PNA’s sudden assumption of control of education came with little preparation. Since 1967, schools in the area had been administered by Israeli occupation authorities. The curriculum and the textbooks were imported from neighboring Jordan and Egypt (subject to Israeli censorship; see Chapter 7.2), and there was only a rudimentary administrative infrastructure to hand from Israeli to Palestinian control. A Ministry of 125

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Education was hastily established; that body worked quickly to establish its control over a wide and overtaxed network of schools and teachers. The new ministry signed agreements with Jordan and Egypt to continue importation of their books but also hastily produced its own series, National Education, to impart at least a modest amount of specifically Palestinian material to the students. Yet the ministry was not operating in a total vacuum: in 1990 and 1993, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had sponsored conferences outlining plans for a Palestinian curriculum center. The project was immediately transferred to the PNA in 1994, and external funding was secured. In 1996, a new autonomous body, the Curriculum Development Center (CDC), was established, led by a returning political scientist, Ibrahim Abu Lughod, with the participation of leading educators. The CDC worked for a year, preparing its comprehensive review of the existing curriculum and its far-reaching plan for reform (CDC 1997). The CDC combined merciless criticism of prevailing educational practices as stale, authoritarian, and based on rote memorization with a radical proposal for an integrated, “student-centered” curriculum that fostered “creativity,” “critical thought,” and “empowerment.” Only on one subject— religion—was the CDC too deeply divided to endorse a specific reform. The Ministry of Education received the proposal, toned down its language, and drew back from some of the more radical proposals (such as abolition of the tawjihi, the secondary school matriculation examination). It submitted its proposal to the PNA cabinet, which approved it for submission to the Palestinian Legislative Council. In 1998, the council approved the curriculum, referring it back to the ministry for implementation. The ministry then established a new body, also called the Curriculum Development Center, to put the new curriculum into practice. The new CDC commissioned teams for each of the various subjects to be addressed. The first textbooks (for grades 1 and 6) were introduced in 2000. Grades two and seven followed in 2001; grades three and eight received their books in 2002. The new texts are used in all Palestinian schools in the West Bank and Gaza, whether administered by the PNA, the Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem, the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA), religious organizations, or other private groups. Palestinian secondary schools will not be converted fully to the new curriculum for several years (for an analysis of the secondary school Islamic studies books still in use as of 2004, see Chapter 7.2). It is important to bear in mind in any discussion of these texts that those produced thus far are for elementary and middle school students. Palestinians confront vexatious issues involving their history, territory, identity, and neighbors; there is simply no consensus among adults about how to understand any of these matters. Yet the books are called upon to communicate them to children.

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Palestinian Identity In one sense, there is a deeply felt, common understanding among almost all Palestinians about the elements of Palestinian national identity: Palestinians form a distinct national group but also belong to a broader Arab nation; they are predominantly Muslim; and they are closely tied to the territory of Palestine, as defined by the borders from the mandate period. In a deeper sense, however, Palestinians were very much divided about how to stress, combine, and supplement these various elements. These differences became particularly acute in curriculum development, due not only to differences over the content of Palestinian identity but also to subtle but profound conflicts about the relationship between individual and nation. For some Palestinians, the opportunity of creating a Palestinian state opened the possibility to create a new and more critical kind of citizenship, one based as much on individuality and democratic values as on national identity. A study of Palestinian educational leaders in the mid-1990s found a very strong interest in such ideas of citizenship and a particular concern that, even though “nationalism is a primary building block for the Palestinian state,” there was a need to guard against “the tendency to develop an overzealous attitude about nationalism. Such attitudes could lead to a fragmented rather than a unified society” (Van Dyke 1997: 163–165). This orientation was particularly strong among members of the first CDC team working in 1996 and 1997. They settled on an approach that defined Palestinian identity as composed of three elements (CDC 1997: 61–67). The first related to the homeland (the watani dimension); Palestine was defined in this respect in both historical and cosmopolitan terms. It was the land where three continents met; where the Palestinian people built their civilization and cultures, old and new; and where the three heavenly religions originated. Casting Palestine in this way was designed to foster appreciation of pluralism and variety while simultaneously developing a spirit of mutual accommodation and belonging. The second dimension was the national (qawmi), in which Palestinian identity was given Arab and Islamic dimensions—they were portrayed as aiding historically in deepening and preserving Palestinian identity. The third dimension was to be international (duwali), stressing the contributions Palestine has made to the world, but also the influence of the world on Palestine. This last dimension was particularly complex, with the report noting immigration over the ages, the Palestinian discovery of the Western world, Palestinian migration (both voluntary and forced through the 1948 nakba, or catastrophe), and the existence of large diaspora communities. The CDC’s approach was notable for its decision not to emphasize two aspects of Palestinian identity. First, religion was merely a part of the qawmi dimension, which constituted a very secular approach to religious identity.

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Second, the committee seemed to take pains to avoid defining Palestinian national identity in terms that emphasized the Otherness of non-Palestinians. Although the report made reference to the difficulties Palestinians had experienced—and noted in passing that the international context had both positive and negative impacts on Palestinians—the CDC proposal still stressed connections and linkages far more and avoided any concentration on the distinctiveness of Palestinian identity or enmity with other nationalities. This approach proved too radical for the Ministry of Education, which reworked the proposed conception of identity, emphasizing religion in particular. The plan as modified by the ministry also greatly increased the emphasis on religion, proclaiming that the “intellectual basis” of the entire curriculum is said to be faith in God (CDC 1998: 7). Authoritative structures (such as family) were treated with far greater respect. And although the CDC committee presented Palestinian identity as consisting of Palestinian, Arab, and international dimensions, the Ministry of Education plan paid far less attention to the international dimension and designated the Islamic dimension as distinct (rather than combined with the Arab) (CDC 1998: 26). When the Palestinian Legislative Council approved the plan, its education committee paid close attention to such issues, suggesting some minor changes in wording to emphasize religious and national elements.1 Self and Other: Conflict and Difference As modified, the officially sanctioned version of Palestinian identity has abandoned much of the original CDC’s reluctance to define national identity in contradistinction to a non-Palestinian Other. There are clear nonPalestinians in the textbooks produced by the second CDC, and they tend to fall into one of two categories: Western outsiders and Israelis. Where nonPalestinians appear in the text, they do so in ways that mark their sharp distinction from Palestinians. The original CDC’s approach of emphasizing connections between Palestinians and the rest of the world was eschewed; it likely proved too ambiguous to those writing a curriculum that stressed national identity so strongly. Sometimes the contrast between Palestinians and non-Palestinians appears quite sharply and antagonistically. Israelis appear in the book (generally unlabeled but clearly identifiable as such; see Figure 7.1), almost exclusively as soldiers. One illustration, for example, shows Israeli soldiers supervising the demolition of a Palestinian home. Non-Israelis can also be portrayed in a vague but negative manner. Sixth graders are taught as part of their “national education” that imitating a teacher is good but imitating youth in things “not appropriate for our genuine Arab culture and our traditions and customs” can be bad—and they are treated to an illustration of two punks, boys with shaved heads, beads, and sloppy shirts (see Figure 7.2) (N6, unit III).

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Figure 7.1

Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3

Figure 7.4 Illustrations in this chapter courtesy Palestinian Curriculum Development Center, Palestinian Ministry of Education.

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All such images draw a sharp boundary between Palestinians and Israeli and Western Others, but not all are negative. In one book, an Israeli settlement (easily identifiable with its red roofs, fence, and Israeli flag) sits perched on a hilltop overlooking a Palestinian village: no conflict is implied, and no explanation is given (see Figure 7.3). But Westerners appear not only as punks but also as tourists who should be treated warmly and helped: in this context, they are dressed in shorts, eying trinkets and photographing the sites—appearing not at all hostile but merely incongruous (see Figure 7.4). The books do attempt to develop a spirit of tolerance. The practice of designating teams for each subject (and the apparent weakness of coordination among the teams) led to subtle but marked differences among the books. Civic Education texts are especially insistent on the value of tolerance within Palestinian society, with illustrations and texts encouraging an inclusive approach regarding religion, dress, the disabled, and place of residence (city, camp, village, or desert). The books even raise difficult social issues connected with gender and domestic violence. The books on religious education emphasize such values less, and when they do so, their approach shows some ambivalence. For instance, in discussing Muslim-Jewish relations at the dawn of Islam, students are instructed that Jews broke early agreements with Muslims but that Muslims are bound to keep agreements as long as the other side observes them as well. The analogy between Islam in the seventh century and the current conflict is made fairly directly at one point: students are instructed to mention incidents of violence that “our people” have been exposed to from enemies and then asked how the enemies and occupiers have dealt with the inhabitants of occupied countries. The following question asks how Muslims dealt with those countries that they conquered—implicitly condemning Israeli and European imperial practices but still holding up tolerance and coexistence as an Islamic norm (I6, part II: 84). Indeed, a similar ambivalence about relations with non-Palestinians runs throughout the texts. In one sense, the books are remarkable in that the sharp, incendiary messages of the earlier Jordanian and Egyptian books have been removed. But the new books are not completely bashful in confronting the more conflictual aspects of recent Palestinian history. Western imperialism is described in unfavorable terms, and the conflict with Israel intrudes at numerous places (though not in a sustained way). In short, the new curriculum marks Palestinians off from nonPalestinians but gives a series of different messages about the relationship between them, each amenable to a different understanding of the nature of the conflicts embedded in the Palestinian past and present. Students, however, are given little guidance on how to sort out these various messages. Even while the curriculum was being designed and the new texts written, several international actors began to weigh in. Relying on the content of

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the older Jordanian and Egyptian books, Israeli opponents of the Oslo Accords claimed that Palestinians were teaching their children to hate Israel and Jews. Seeking to secure the removal of such passages from the new books that were being produced, some political groups worked to sway governments in Europe, Israel, and the United States. Much of the evidence adduced was false or misleading, but the effect was to add to the pressures on those producing the new books (Brown 2003). The books actually displayed more awkwardness and ambivalence than hostility, largely because of the writers’ inability to develop a clear, coherent, and direct approach to the difficult questions involving the conflict with Israel. When confronted with the most difficult political issues, the original CDC report of 1997 had called for the curriculum to teach the “facts,” a vague solution, especially since the committee did not specify what the facts were and indeed criticized existing educational practices for their focus on numbing inculcation of facts. The committee did seem to believe that its emphasis on relative truth and critical thought would ultimately allow students to confront such questions on their own. Ali Jarbawi, a committee member, recalls: We were asked, how do you define Palestine? What are the boundaries? We were asked this over and over. Is Haifa a Palestinian city? This was on the surface, but the more sophisticated question was: What are you going to do about history? We accept peace. But are you going to say Haifa was not Arab? We said we did not want to falsify history. . . . But we were introducing a method that would allow people to think about these issues. We couldn’t put much in the report because people would take the few sentences and then say, “That’s why you’re doing the whole report.” You can’t impose normalization by a committee that looks for offending sentences. You need a new way of looking at things. (Personal communication, January 2000)

In a sense, two different approaches were suggested in 1997. The shortterm proposed solution was to rely on a supposedly neutral factual narrative. The longer-term proposed solution was to develop democratic citizens able to confront complex identity questions in a critical and sophisticated way. The first approach relied on adults to come to a consensus on the facts; the second would have left it to the children. Neither approach proved viable in the highly charged political context of the late 1990s. Marking off Palestinians from non-Palestinians may have been designed to help students understand who they were not. But it did little to help resolve the question of who they were. Emphasizing religious and national identity raised the awkward question of the relationship between the two: Were all Palestinians to be religious Muslims? Was there any place for Christians or for secularists? How was the Palestinian nation forged: Was it a timeless inheritance from the long-forgotten past or the product of

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more recent struggles? What was the latitude to be given to individuals to sort out multiple claims on their identity? What was the appropriate relationship between Palestinians and non-Palestinians? Such questions became particularly acute when integrating religious themes into the curriculum. Islam and National Identity For the new textbook writers, the curriculum plan developed by the Ministry of Education and approved by the cabinet and the Legislative Council gave them some clear guidance on the relationship between religion and Palestinian identity. Faith in God was mandated as the basis for the entire curriculum, and religious instruction was to be a mandatory subject. That meant that an entire set of books would be developed for Muslim students. It also meant that religious education for Christian students, which had always been decentralized because of the diversity of Christian denominations and the private nature of the network of Christian schools, would also come under direct supervision of the Ministry of Education. Under the PNA, writing curricula was to be a central national function. Indeed, the committee drafting a constitution for statehood explicitly gave the state the task of overseeing curricula in both public and private schools, even though it recognized that the latter had an unspecified measure of independence. The committee’s draft constitution stipulated: “The law shall regulate the manner of the state’s supervision of the performance of education and curricula” and “Private education shall be free and independent, and the law shall regulate the oversight of the state over its organization and curricula.”2 Making religion the foundation of the curriculum implied a sense of national identity that explicitly incorporated religious elements. That was accomplished by defining any complications out of existence. The sixthgrade Islamic Education curriculum explicitly diagrammed Muslim “belonging” as a series of concentric circles: individual, family, town, governorate, state, Islamic world (see Figure 7.5) (I6, part I: 69). This general message was communicated directly and consistently throughout all the textbooks: religion, family, school, and nation were portrayed as mutually reinforcing authorities. Being a good student, son or daughter, Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim were identical. The first-grade Islamic Education book displayed correct practice in praying, making ablutions, donating to charity, washing dishes, crossing in the crosswalk, and cleaning the yard of a school decorated with the Palestinian flag (see Figures 7.6 and 7.7) (I1). Although the various subjects sometimes take different approaches, they speak with one voice on the integration of religion into all spheres of life. Moral lessons intrude on virtually every subject, sometimes supported by a quranic verse. First graders studying Arabic language are taught a story of an honest boy who returns some money dropped by a vendor at school;

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Figure 7.5

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Figure 7.6

Figure 7.7

Figure 7.8

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the story is followed with a quranic verse to memorize and further lessons on the value of cleanliness (L1, part II, unit VI). Sixth-grade Arabic education begins by warning students that the best gift bestowed by God is the mind, but that those who do not use it will turn toward evil and destruction (L6, part I: 4). A sixth-grade science book uses verses from the Quran to buttress its teachings on human races and natural forces (such as wind); it adduces a scientific justification for neat and proper behavior (such as sitting up straight) (S6, part I: 10–11). Despite the attempt to portray Palestinian society as a seamless fabric of family, nation, and religion, the textbooks obliquely acknowledge possible tensions in Palestinian society: between Christians and Muslims, among family members (especially between generations and genders), and between citizen and society. First, the place of Christian Palestinians is handled most directly and consistently: they are explicitly included in the nation, even as the Muslim nature of Palestinian society is constantly affirmed. As part of their national education, sixth graders are taught that Islam and the Arabic language unify the Arab homeland (even including Christians who live together with Muslims under the banner of Islam) (N6, unit I, part I). Indeed, the textbooks insist on national unity, especially among Muslims and Christians. The importance of tolerance and unity are stressed almost too insistently; one might suspect that sectarian tensions are quite strong. Tolerance is described not simply as necessary for national unity but also as a religious injunction for both Muslims and Christians (see Figure 7.8) (N6, unit III). Although the curriculum includes instruction in Arab and Islamic history, treating the two as virtually coterminous, some concessions are made to Christians. In covering the Middle Ages, for instance, the term “Crusades” is rarely used. Instead, the invading armies are simply identified as “Franks,” presumably because use of the term “crusaders,” in Arabic as in English, is derived from the word for “cross” and might be seen to implicate Palestinian Christians by framing the conflict in religious rather than national terms. Second, issues involving family and gender were clearly more difficult for the writers to resolve, though the textbooks have shown growing boldness in this regard. Many of the books attempt to use subtle means to communicate diversity in gender: men are often shown involved in household tasks; women are shown both with uncovered and covered hair. Indeed, often a single illustration shows women wearing a variety of head coverings (see Figure 7.9). More pointedly, the books affirm girls’ rights to be educated and to participate in sports. Eighth-grade students of civic education are told to “choose a case of family violence from a story we heard, read about, or lived” and then “select a judge, a prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney, and a jury” in order to hold a fair trial (C8: 58). They are asked to con-

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Figure 7.9

Figure 7.10

sider whether a woman prevented from working outside the home by her husband is a victim of violence (C8: 46). Students are also told to write out three clauses that might be used in a draft Palestinian family law (C8: 59). The Islamic education books come closest to communicating a patriarchal vision of Palestinian society, but even they betray evidence of contestation and prod students with difficult family situations. In the sixth grade, a lesson is introduced by Salih, a righteous Muslim who instructs his family on religious matters each day after evening prayers (see Figure 7.10). But the same unit also asks students to confront a situation in which parents instruct their children to do something wrong. (Salih explains that children are required to obey their parents except in such circumstances.) This lesson is followed by a discussion of the rights of children in Islam and an invitation for students to give their opinions on some difficult situations (such as one in which a father forbids his son from continuing his studies or his daughter from playing sports because she is a girl) (I6: 45–61). Third, and perhaps most subtly, all the books show signs of a battle within Palestinian society on the relationship between individual and

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nation. The primary field for this battle concerns pedagogy more than content: since the original CDC report was written in 1996 and 1997, those intent on reforming Palestinian education have generally focused far more on how Palestinian schoolchildren should be taught than what they should be taught. The stress on “critical thought,” “creativity,” and “empowerment,” which is very much centered on the individual and devoted to cultivating skills of democratic citizenship, was intended to supplant the authoritative (and, for the reformers, authoritarian) presentation of reality. In designing the new curriculum, this battle was fought partly among different subject teams. Civic Education books are the most daring and provocative in adopting critical pedagogy. Religion is generally the last frontier for the newer approaches—those responsible for teaching students Islam show few signs of enthusiasm for individuality and creativity among elementary and intermediate school students. In a sense, this struggle is not new. Islamic religious education has been criticized (at least since the colonial era) as arid, authoritarian, and based on memorization and obedience rather than individuality and creativity (see Eickelman 1978). Such criticisms might be miscast, in that religious education has often focused on close textual study and interpretation; it is far more likely that modern states, with their passion for uniformity, especially in education, are responsible for the insistence on inculcating Islamic religion as a specific set of truths rather than introducing students to a tradition of study and learning. Whatever the origins of the link between pedagogy and religion, however, reformers felt from the beginning that they had to tread more carefully around religion than any other subject material. The original CDC failed to develop any recommendations on religious education. It is therefore remarkable that Islamic education books—while largely based on more authority-centered approaches—do make some concessions to the reformers. That is partly because Islamic religious educators find the focus on practical applications attractive. One member of the textbook-writing team publicly stated in 1999: We had an expert to the curriculum center a few weeks ago. He asked a good question. Why do the students not behave in the end with the proper Islamic values that they are taught? In my opinion the teacher is a cause but not the cause. It is not simply a question of morals but also of building a complete person. Islamic education is not something to store in the head; it is about how to lead a life. (Mustafa 1999)

Yet some were willing to go farther than simply encouraging a more practical approach, urging the adoption of the reformist pedagogy even in religious instruction. In a 2002 conference on religious education, one participant insisted on distinguishing “what comes from religion and what

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comes from tradition, saying that the two are at times confused.” He went on to criticize “the dictation and memorization method of teaching,” stressing instead the desirability of “encouraging students to engage in lively discussions” (Awda 2002). Such voices did not dominate in writing the religious curriculum, but they were heard and made their presence felt on religious topics on occasion. The most striking example, mentioned above, is the attempt to confront directly situations in which parental and religious authority make conflicting demands. In a history book, students are asked to evaluate the policies used by Mu‘awiyya (the fifth caliph and founder of the Umayyad dynasty) in solidifying his authority and building his state. They are then asked to consider the hereditary method for selecting rulers—an assignment that is likely to lead some to question not only the politics of early Muslims, but also current political practices in some Arab countries (IH6). Conclusion: Negotiating Identity The Palestinian curriculum is the product not of a single, comprehensive view of Palestinian identity but of competing (and sometimes conflicting) views. Much international attention has focused on the treatment of Israelis and Jews in the curriculum, but domestically the nature of the debate has been far different. A reformist vision—articulated most fully by the original CDC report—suffered some setbacks in the first text produced, but with each passing year (and the conversion of two grades to the new curriculum), its approach seems to be gaining ground. Willing to confront students with difficult questions about family, nation, and religion—and willing to countenance different answers—the reformist vision has probably made the fewest inroads in Islamic education. Yet the model it presents—based not simply on different content but on a sharply different pedagogy—is not wholly out of line with older methods of religious instruction. Textbooks Cited C8 Civic Education [Al-Tarbiyya al-Madaniyya], Grade 8. 2002. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. I1 Islamic Education [Al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya], Grade 1. 2000. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. I6 Islamic Education [Al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya], Grade 6. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. IH6 Arab and Islamic History [Tarikh al-‘Arabi wa-l-Islami], Grade 6. 2000. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. L1 Our Beautiful Language [Lughatuna al-Jamila], Grade 1. 2000. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center.

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L6 Our Beautiful Language [Lughatuna al-Jamila], Grade 6. 2000. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. N6 National Education [Al-Tarbiyya al-Wataniyya], Grade 6. 2000. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. S6 General Science [Al-Ilm al-Amm], Grade 6. 2000. Ramallah: Curriculum Development Center. Notes 1. For instance, in one place, it requested that the phrase “Palestinian and Arab” be changed to “Palestinian, Arab, Islamic, and humanitarian”; in another place, it suggested “Arab world” should be changed to “Arab homeland [watan].” Palestinian Legislative Council, Education Committee report, March 31, 1998. 2. Articles 42 and 43 of the draft constitution for a Palestinian state, May 4, 2003. http://www.mofa.gov.ps/arabic/key_documents/constitution_new2.asp (accessed on July 14, 2003).

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7.2 A Conflict of Historical Narratives Seif Da‘Na

AS NATHAN BROWN INDICATED IN the previous section, during the

decade following its 1994 assumption of responsibility for Palestinian education, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) had not developed new Islamic Education texts for its high schools (grades 10, 11, and 12). This section reviews the Islamic Education and Islamic Culture textbooks in use for these grades as of 2004, as well as the sixth-grade National Education text. It is important to note that the three Islamic Education/Islamic Culture texts reviewed in this section of Chapter 7, reproduced and taught in the Palestinian schools, are Jordanian texts, and as such were not part of the comprehensive Palestinian curriculum revision discussed by Nathan Brown in the previous section. By reviewing these texts, I hope to address the way that religion is used as a vehicle for identity formation. How does religion inform notions of the Other, namely non-Muslims? What does it say about jihad? Religion permeates other course books, such as history, national education, and Arabic language. That is partially due to the role of religious identity in shaping the political contours of Palestinian history and the nature of the dominant national narrative included in these texts. An additional factor that contributes to the religious aspect of identity is the biblical discourse that informs the historical narrative dominant in Israeli schoolbooks, as well as in Israeli political culture. Such a discourse led, among many things, to the development of a corresponding Palestinian historical narrative that is influenced by religion. The resulting Palestinian narrative expressed in the textbooks has been the subject of immense debate initiated by Israeli interest groups, which are concerned not only with the curriculum in the Occupied Territories per se but with the possible outcome of the now-failed Oslo peace process of 1993–2000 and how the textbooks might affect future relations between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. Because of the role that religion plays in constructing this narrative, I address religion and identity from two direc139

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tions: first, I consider how religion in school texts informs notions of gender, violence, and nation building; second, I examine how critics of the texts, as well as the texts’ supporters, interpret the Palestinian narrative. I argue that Israeli criticism stems from an assumption that the history of Palestine is exclusively a history of the Jewish people, and therefore any historical narrative that includes others who live or have lived in Palestine is biased and inaccurate. The unrevised Palestinian curriculum tells a history that is Arab and Islamic, reflecting Palestinian self-perception and experience, but it is hardly exclusionary. This section thus examines both the way religion is used to form identity and the way that outside critics view this formation. Religious Studies in the Curriculum One of the issues relevant to understanding the extent to which religion plays a role in the Palestinian curriculum is the grade and time distribution of the different classes. Not only are religious studies classes devalued in terms of time vis-à-vis other classes (e.g., mathematics, English, Arabic, physics), but they are also allocated significantly less points out of the total score in the high school standardized test (tawjihi) than other courses. Table 7.1 shows both the grade distribution and status of each class included in the high school standardized test. The status might be either primary, which means that the student must pass the test and the score will be included in the student’s grade point average (GPA), or secondary, which means that the student must pass the test, but the score might not be included in the student’s GPA. The student’s GPA is calculated by including the score of all primary classes in addition to one secondary class. In other words, the students can eliminate the two courses with the lowest score from the GPA

Table 7.1

Grade Distribution and Course Status in the High School Standardized Test in Palestine

Course Arabic Language English Language Mathematics Physics Chemistry Biology History Religious Studies Geography Science Total

Scientific Stream

Art Stream

200 200 240 160 100 100

300 280 100

100 1,100

120 100 100 100 1,100

Status Primary Primary Primary Primary Secondary Secondary Primary Secondary Secondary Secondary

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on two conditions. First, these two courses must be secondary-level courses. Second, the student must pass the test for the courses eliminated.1 In both the scientific and art streams, religious studies are considered secondary—in the sense that educators debate eliminating religion courses altogether—and are allocated fewer points than all the primary courses (e.g., one-third and one-half the score allocated to Arabic language for the art and scientific streams, respectively). The time allocated to religious studies indicates the devaluing of religious studies in the Palestinian curriculum. The class time is approximately two hours weekly for every 100 points. Therefore, while religious studies classes meet two hours a week, Arabic and English classes meet six hours a week for the art stream, and four hours a week for the scientific stream. Religion and the Palestinian Master Narrative The subject matter of Palestinian historiography is a product of the dialectic between hegemonic claims of Zionism to the land and Palestinian perceptions of their own historical experience. In the 1950s and 1960s, the discourse about Palestine was an Arab nationalist discourse that had been consciously developed as a means of unifying the people of the region ideologically during an era of colonial occupation and the division of territories into nation-states. “Arab unity,” the idea that all people who speak the Arabic language and identify with the glories of the Arab-Muslim past constitute a single nation, appeared to be empowering and a compelling antidote to the new political realities that were tearing apart personal, economic, and geographic ties. To Zionist ideologues, Arab unity was also a compelling idea that could be turned against the Palestinians because it allowed them to claim that there were no such people as Palestinians, who were really just part of the larger Arab nation and could therefore easily be removed and absorbed into neighboring Arab countries. Consequently, Palestinian discourse shifted to defending the particularity of Palestinians, whose history became the history of the Palestinian cause, beginning in the early twentieth century with Jewish immigration to Palestine, leaving ancient history to the Bible. As Maher al-Sharif wrote regarding Emile Toma’s massive history of the Palestinian people: The aim of Toma’s fourteen-volume work was to offer an alternative to the Zionist interpretation of history and thereby demonstrate the continued presence of the Palestinian people on their land, their Arab affiliation and the legitimacy of their cause. Simultaneously, he also sought to refute the customary Zionist myths and clichés, such as “Palestine being a land without people,” the “eternal” history of Zionism, and the notion that “the resurrection of the Jewish nation on the land of Israel is what created the Palestinian nation.” (al-Sharif 1998)

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The imperative to prove their own historical existence, while at the same time avoiding controversial and unresolved political issues, has produced a narrative in the textbooks that is marked by gaps in information and time periods, as well as contradictory viewpoints on the geography of the conflict. For example, in the curriculum there are two Palestines: the historical Palestine along the lines of the mandate, and the future Palestine, referred to as the homeland, that is geographically limited to the 1967 borders of the West Bank and Gaza (Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information 2003). Such a distinction between the homeland and historical Palestine is intended to politically socialize students to accept the outcomes of the political process but is historically confusing to them. In this context, it’s worth noting that a comparison between the historical model explaining political borders included in the Palestinian curriculum and the model drawn out by Israel’s New Historians shows that the Israeli model is more generous to Palestinian claims to territory than is the Palestinian curriculum itself.2 Islam in the Textbooks and Conceptions of the Other The Islam in the textbooks is Sunni Islam, represented as though no sectarian differences exist. Although there is nothing in these schoolbooks that could be described as fundamentalist, in the sense of prescribing a state ruled by Islamic law or a literalist interpretation of sacred text, the schoolbooks present Islam as having something to say about mundane matters as well as matters historical, spiritual, and political. The eleventh-grade Islamic Culture text, for example, includes the following topics: “Humans in Islamic Perception,” “The Family in Islam,” “Society and the Islamic Regime,” “The Life of the Prophet and Islamic Civilization,” “Jihad,” “The Contemporary Islamic World,” and “The Noble Quran.” The subjects actually discussed under these headings are very diverse, and a few appear almost random, as if an attempt were being made to assign Islamic relevance to new issues of contemporary concern. In the discussion of “Islamic Civilization” (unit four), for example, the lessons discuss scientific methodology, educational and cultural institutions, architecture, medicine and pharmacology, and astronomy, but the environment and the protection of trees are also included. The version of Islam included in the Palestinian texts is friendly to nonMuslims (ahl al-dhimma). The eleventh-grade Islamic Culture text discusses the rights of non-Muslims in Muslim society, urging the protection of rights and equal treatment. The Prophet Muhammad and Caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar are cited, urging respect for other religions and the rights of nonMuslims. The Prophet Muhammad is even cited in the same text as saying, “Whoever oppresses a non-Muslim with whom we have a contract, violates

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his rights, or asks him more than he can bear, or takes anything from him without his consent, I will be his adversary in the Day of Judgment” (11: 123). The twelfth-grade Islamic Culture text opens with four chapters addressing the “the human in Islamic perception” (12: 1–23). The text lists some of the qualifications for a Muslim ruler who would rule on behalf of God: that person should not oppress his or her fellow man and must rule justly between all people as God orders (12: 12). The first four chapters put forth a humanist view in a discussion on the “wisdom of choosing humans as God’s inheritor on earth,” calling for, first, brotherhood among all human beings because they belong to one father and one mother. Thus, says the text, “Islam prohibits torturing fellow humans. The Prophet Muhammad said, ‘God will torture those who torture others.’” Second, the lesson calls for “equality” between all human beings. There are no differences between people based on race, sex, or color. For God, differentiation between humans is solely based on virtue. Third, the text prescribes “respect for other people’s rights. Since God dignified humans and distinguished them from all other creatures, humans must also respect other humans’ rights.” Finally, the lesson calls for human beings to feel responsible “towards themselves, towards others, towards society, towards the rulers, and God” (12: 13). Religion and Violence: The Defensive Call for Jihad The discussion of jihad is situated within historical and religious contexts discussing the concept itself, the types of jihad, and its goals and legitimacy. It begins by providing both a linguistic/literal and a jurisprudent/legal definition of the concept. The former refers to “exhausting every effort.” The latter refers to “exhausting the efforts to defend Islam directly through fighting the enemy, providing financial support, and helping with logistics.” The text clearly refers to other nations’ definitions of legitimate war and argues: “Jihad is a form of legitimate war that has noble goals and incentives” (12: 208). The discussion of jihad in the text is situated historically in accordance with the definition of “legitimate war.” The jihad experiences mentioned in the text are the wars of Prophet Muhammad’s successors, the Crusades, the Mongol invasion of Baghdad, the Italian colonization of Libya, the French colonization of Algeria, and the Zionist colonization of Palestine. In all these cases, jihad seems to be a defensive war in which Muslims are defending their homeland and lives. In the last three experiences (Libya, Algeria, and Palestine), the text’s employment of the term “jihad” stresses an anticolonization character. In the case of Palestine, for example, the text makes a clear reference to the Balfour Declaration and the role of Britain in

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the establishment of Israel (12: 233). “As the competition between the Imperialist countries to divide the Muslim world gained strength, Britain adopted the notion of establishing an entity that divides the Arab homeland and exploits its resources” (12: 245). By discussing jihad mainly in the context of countering colonization, the text transfers the concept from the religious to the secular domain. Jihad, in effect, is in these texts synonymous with such terms as “national liberation” or “national resistance.” Religion and Nation Building The tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade religious education texts adopted by the Palestinian National Authority employ an Arab-nationalist view of national identity, with the history of Muslims and Islam melded into the history of the Arab peoples. As religious studies texts, they stress the Islamic character of identity, but then when it comes to differentiations among people, distinctions are based solely on virtue and not on any kind of sectarian affiliation. The twelfth-grade Islamic Culture text, for example, cites the Quran (49:13): “O mankind! We created you from a single [pair] of male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other [not that ye may despise each other]. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is [he who is] the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted [with all things]” (12: 13). Nonetheless, the borders between religious and nationalist identities are unclear. The history of Muslims and/or Islam is not distinguished from the history of Arabs. The sixth and seventh lessons of unit five in the twelfthgrade Islamic Culture text are titled “Jihad Experiences.” They tell the story of “Muslims facing the colonial challenge.” The stories told are those of the Abd al-Qader of Algeria, Omar al-Mukhtar of Libya, Iz ad-Din al-Kassam, and Abd al-Kader al-Husseini of Palestine. Lesson two of the seventh unit of the same textbook deals with the “Jewish invasion of Palestine” and the “resistance of the Palestinian people.” There is no non-Arab Muslim anticolonization experience included in the three texts. The modern history of Islam, as included in these texts, is actually the modern history of the Arab world, not the Muslim world. NonArab Muslim countries are included once when colonization is discussed and are clearly distinguished from Arab countries: “After the First World War, the foreign [European] companies dominated the oil production in the Arab countries, Nigeria, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, and Iran” (12: 258). It would be expected that a religion text would say “Islamic countries” and list some of them. Instead, the twelfth-grade Islamic Culture text lumps all Arab countries together and distinguishes them from the other Muslim countries. In its discussion of the components of Islamic society, the eleventh-

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grade Islamic Culture text includes the Arabic language, along with Islamic law and a common history (11: 97). Non-Arab Muslims might not speak or know Arabic and would appear to be excluded from Islamic society by this definition, but the text seems to argue that anyone who is Muslim ought to have some knowledge of the language: [The] Arabic language is the language of the Quran, which contains the belief system (aqeeda), common thoughts and feelings, and the justice system aspects necessary for the making of Islamic society. It is the language of the Prophet and his companions. It is the language of Islamic Jurisprudence. It is the language that Muslims use to know their religion, worship, perform their religious ceremonies, and read the noble Quran. (11: 97)

Muslims were not the only ones who understood the importance of the Arabic language, states the text. In a reference to the reemergence of local dialects and languages that accompanied the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the introduction of foreign educational missions, the text says, “The enemies of Islam also understood the importance of Arabic language to the unity of the Islamic society, and attempted, in their attacks, to eliminate formal Arabic language in Islamic societies. This is when the destructive calls for differentiating between the members of the one nation appeared through calling for reviving the local dialects, old languages, or writing with Latin Alphabets” (11: 97). Although the text stresses the importance of Arabic because it is the language of religion, the issue runs much deeper than that. Historically, the Arabic language was a symbol of Arab hegemony in the Islamic state, and so it also represents a focus of identity with the goals of Arab nationalism and the re-empowerment of the Arab nation (Da‘Na and Khoury 2003). Gender The texts reviewed are male-oriented. Not only do they advocate allocating more power to men, but they make it clear that men are the leaders of the family (the right of Quwama) (11: 67). For example, in a discussion of the rights of husbands and wives, a woman’s rights are summarized as dowry, expenses, and good treatment by her husband, and her duties consist of housework and child care. Men, however, are allocated the right of Quwama and obedience from their wives (11: 67–70). Gender bias in favor of men also appears in history lessons in these texts, where men are the only active agents. Whenever women are mentioned and commended for their particularity, it is always in connection to their relationship to a famous man: for example, the story of Sukeina Bint al-Hussain, the only woman discussed in

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all three texts, includes significant information about her grandfather Ali, her father Hussain, her brother, and her three husbands (11: 195–197). The texts do support the legal prerogatives of women in family law, however. For example, the twelfth-grade Islamic Culture textbook gives a very liberal interpretation of the conditions under which women may initiate and receive a divorce: when the husband cannot pay household expenses; when he causes verbal or physical harm to his wife; when he is absent or in detention; if he becomes disabled, whether physically, mentally, or sexually; and if he accuses his wife of adultery without any proof (11: 57–65). Curriculum Controversy: A Conflict of Master Narratives The representation of religion in the texts reviewed in this section contributes to an identity formation that does not reflect fundamentalist Islam but rather espouses a tolerant conception of non-Muslims and a defenseonly policy for jihad. It is couched, however, in a larger debate imposed by the hegemonic narrative in Israeli school texts and in Israeli public discourse. Underlying the dispute regarding the Palestinian curriculum is a dispute of master narratives and historical accounts. Palestinian historiography in the texts ignores the Palestinian past and focuses instead on the twentieth century and the Arab-Israeli conflict. At the same time, the placement of Islam in the Palestinian curriculum is a product of the hegemonic Western biblical scholarship that informs the history of Palestine in Zionist discourse and transforms the land to the exclusive occupancy of Jews by divine right from time immemorial till now. The debate over master narratives is, therefore, a debate about the language, historical accuracy, and political motivations of the retelling of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite its failure to address the full past and present Palestinian history, the Palestinian master narrative does present an unsettling challenge to the Zionist narrative. The Palestinian narrative portrays Palestinians as victims of Israeli persecution, thereby undermining the Zionist narrative’s claim that Israelis are the only victims and suggesting that the cultural symbols of Zionism are actually describing the conditions of the Palestinians (see Shohat 2001; Said 1979; Kanafani 1999, 2000). In addition, biblical sources are insufficient to write the history of Palestine. The argument that the roots of the history of Palestine might not be found in biblical sources, as put forward by some biblical scholars and archaeologists (Thompson 2001), undermines the authority of the Zionist narrative and challenges the legitimacy of Israeli claims in Palestine. But at the same time, the insufficiency of biblical sources to tell the history of Palestine is compatible with the historiography in the Palestinian curriculum, which addresses pre-Israelite history in a few sentences and concentrates instead on Arab-Islamic civilization from the seventh century to the present time (Said et al. 1988).

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Israel demands that the Palestinian curriculum teach acceptance of the principles of the Zionist narrative. The inclusion of this narrative is intended to internalize defeat among and control over the Palestinians. By looking at this master narrative debate, I hope to explore not only what the curriculum says, but also the context in which it exists. Criticism of the Curriculum In the negotiations leading to the Oslo Accords and eventually to a series of letters written between Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the language used to debate the existence of Israel and Palestine as states emerges as an important tool to construct identity. The debate about language is integral to understanding criticisms of and recommendations for the Palestinian curriculum. In this debate, Israel rejected the recognition of “the existence of Israel” and the “right of Israel to exist in peace”; instead it demanded Palestinian recognition of Israel’s “right to exist” as a “Jewish state,” despite the fact that 20 percent of Israel’s current population are Arabs. Underlying this demand is the expectation that the Palestinians accept the Israeli historical narrative. To recognize Israel’s right to exist would require a complete revision of the Palestinian account of the 1948 war—the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe) becomes an Israeli war of independence, the refugee question becomes voluntary migration, and the subsequent ArabIsraeli wars become Israeli defensive wars. Underlying this curriculum dispute, then, is the attempt to unwrite Palestinians from the history of Palestine. Criticisms of the Palestinian curriculum have come primarily from the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), an Israeli-American nonprofit organization established in 1998 that publishes reports and newsletters reviewing different Arab countries’ curricula.3 After reviewing almost every Palestinian textbook and teacher guide, the CMIP condemned them because of controversy surrounding the Palestinian historical account of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel does not simply demand reform of the curriculum; it wants the Palestinians to actually adopt the Zionist narrative.4 The CMIP and Israeli Army criticize historical, political, and linguistic inaccuracies in the Palestinian narrative. According to their criticisms, the existence of a Palestinian narrative represents the existence of a Palestinian national resistance movement. The CMIP states that the historical retelling of Palestinian resistance to both British and Israeli colonization, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the refugee situation need revision. The Palestinian curriculum is accused of delegitimizing Israel by mentioning Israel in the colonization

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section of the sixth-grade National Education text, by discussing the expulsion of the Palestinians, by not recognizing the borders resulting from the 1967 War, and by presenting its own definition of Zionism (CMIP 2000a, 2000b). What actually concerns the CMIP, however, is not the accuracy of what is being said, but who has the right to say it and to whom, as the following example of the group’s critique illustrates. CMIP’s publication, “The Palestinian Authority School Textbooks for the Year 2000,” criticized the sixth-grade Human Geography and sixthgrade National Education textbooks for mentioning the expulsion and killing of refugees, on the grounds that it “breed[s] contempt” (CMIP 2000c, 2003).5 However, that such events occurred are well-established facts. As Yitzhak Rabin wrote in his memoir of the period, when he was in command of Operation Dani in 1948, he issued the following order: The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age. They should be directed towards Beit Nabala. Yiftah [Brigade HQ] must determine the method and inform operation Dani HQ and Eighth Brigade HQ 2. Implement immediately. A similar order, [so goes the story], was issued at the same time to the Kiryati Brigade concerning the inhabitants of the neighboring Arab town of Ramle. On July 12 and July 13, the Yiftah and Kiryati Brigades carried out their orders, expelling the fifty to sixty thousand inhabitants of the two towns. (Morris 1987: 19–23, 99–102; see also Morris 1988)

What the textbooks say about the expulsion and killings of Palestinians is actually quite limited in proportion to the tragedy that occurred, as described not only in Israeli accounts but in standard histories used internationally on the subject. So, what is CMIP really concerned about? The answer becomes clearer if we look at the CMIP’s claim that the sixth-grade National Education textbook contests the very existence of Israel. The CMIP argues that “contempt expressed for Israeli ‘settlements’ and “occupation’ is not directed at the areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but to Israeli ‘settlements’ and ‘occupation’ since 1948. In the PA education,” the CMIP report says, “Israel’s de-legitimization does not contest the lands under Israel administration since the 1967 Six-Day War, but contests the very existence of the State of Israel” (CMIP 2000c). However, the map of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza to which the CMIP report refers actually shows the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza only. The map, reproduced below (see Map 7.1), does not include any area of mandate Palestine outside the territories occupied since 1967, which makes it impossible to argue that all of Israel is shown as illegal settlements. The irony of CMIP’s issuing such false claims is that Israeli textbook maps erase the Palestinian presence, continuing “to show the land of Israel as extending from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, with the West

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Israeli Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza

Source: National Education. Palestinian National Authority, p. 15.

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Bank and Gaza Strip showing only Israeli Jewish settlements and no Palestinian villages or towns” (Moughrabi 2001). To these examples we can also add CMIP’s argument that the Palestinian sixth-grade National Education textbook inaccurately “identifies Israeli cities as Palestinian” (CMIP 2000a: 7). In the case of Jerusalem, Israel and Palestine are supposed to determine its status in final negotiations; however, Israel has already claimed it as its capital. Why can the Israelis claim Jerusalem as an Israeli capital, when the Palestinians are criticized for doing the same? Furthermore, Jerusalem is still a city of Palestinians, in spite of Israeli attempts to eliminate their presence. So what we’re seeing in these criticisms is not a debate about accuracy or about curricular “reform,” but bold-faced demands that the Palestinians adopt the Zionist narrative.6 The curriculum dispute is intended to silence the Palestinian narrative in order to dictate the construction of Palestinian nationalism and identity and in the process to put an end to Palestinian desires for national liberation and to force them to internalize defeat. De-Reifying the Curriculum Despite these criticisms, based on the belief that the inclusion of Zionism in Palestinian written history will manifest itself in a socialized real-life feeling of internalized defeat, it is important to question how much influence ideas really have over sociopolitical structures. I would argue that Palestinian resistance stems from real-life conditions, not from ideas contained within the curriculum (Da‘Na and Khoury 2001). The experience and issues of the 1950s Palestinian resistance movement, for example, are only thinly addressed in the curriculum. The curriculum, as a result, is not necessarily an independent conditioning force for society. It has often been employed as an instrument of political socialization, but its censoring and manipulation has not yielded the results for which its authors had hoped. For example, the severe Israeli censorship of the Palestinian curriculum, since 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza and since 1948 inside Israel, did not lead to the expected political socialization. When the Jordanian textbooks used in the West Bank and the Egyptian texts used in the Gaza Strip were rigorously censored by the Israeli occupation, the Palestinian response was not to submit but to stage the first intifada in 1987.7 Even the Palestinians inside the green line, who are forced to sing the Israeli national anthem each school day and learn from textbooks written by the Israeli Ministry of Education (Abunimah 2002), were responsible for another central event in Palestine history: Land Day. As a result, the actions of the Israeli army and state have clearly proven to be the catalyst behind Palestinian ideas and actions, rather than the curriculum, as Israelis had intended.

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Conclusion: Lives Under Pressure, Narrative Under Scrutiny The Palestinian curriculum narrates a Palestinian account of history that contributes to identity formation for Palestinian pupils. Underdevelopment of Palestinian historiography in the curriculum leads, among many things, to a religiously oriented curriculum, but one that espouses tolerance and emphasizes a popular version of Islam that is in opposition to fundamentalist claims about gender and jihad. The religion-infused content of the Palestinian curriculum itself, however, holds little weight in terms of its ability to inform acts of resistance. The personal experiences of Palestinians against Israeli forces are effective enough. The content of Palestinian textbooks, however, has come under great scrutiny. Despite the CMIP’s claims, its assessment of the Palestinian curriculum is not guided by either an educational theory or a scientific methodology. Like the Israeli Army study, the CMIP reports and newsletters simply identify specific statements, take them out of context, and then compare them against the Zionist narrative of the conflict to argue against them. In this sense, the Zionist discourse is the standard by which the Palestinian curriculum is assessed in the reports of both the CMIP and the Israeli Army. In some cases, the CMIP made false claims, criticizing the texts for mentioning Hamas and mentioning massacres committed by the Israelis. An assessment of any curriculum should use educational theory, evaluating its ability to serve as an educational tool and dictate a process of learning. However, it is obvious from the debate of master narratives that the Palestinian texts were criticized not on educational grounds, but rather by the extent to which they conformed to Israeli standards and expectations. As a result, it is important to view the Palestinian curriculum from the perception of those whose story it tells. The textbooks reveal a Palestinian narrative that fosters a tolerant ideology toward non-Muslims, presents jihad in a defensive framework, and tells a history of colonization and oppression that, like most Middle Eastern texts, conflates Islam and nationalism; at worst, the texts are male-centric, but they hardly contain the exclusionism and historical inaccuracies that they are accused of containing. If Palestinian resistance results from anything, it is the real-life experiences of Israeli hegemony and oppression, not its curriculum. The IsraeliArab master narrative debate, then, provokes questions not only about the extent to which texts actually inform action, but also about the context and way in which texts are criticized. Textbooks Cited 6 Palestinian National Authority. 2000. National Education [Tarbiyya Wataniyya]. Grade 6.

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10 Palestinian National Authority. 2002–2003. Islamic Education [Tarbiyya Islamiya]. Grade 10. 11 Palestinian National Authority. 2003–2004. Islamic Culture [Thakafa Islamiyya]. Grade 11. 12 Palestinian National Authority. 2003–2004. Islamic Culture [Thakafa Islamiyya]. Grade 12. Notes 1. This information is based on the Grade Report of the High School Standardized Test, issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Education. 2. The New Historians were Israeli academic writers who introduced the Arab experience into the dominant historical narrative of Israel, which focused on Jewish exclusivity. 3. The CMIP defines itself on the web as follows: “The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established in 1998 under the Not-For-Profit Corporation Law of the State of New York. Its purpose is to encourage the development and fostering of peaceful relations between peoples and nations, by establishing a climate of tolerance and mutual respect founded on the rejection of violence as a means to resolving conflicts.” 4. The Israeli Foreign Ministry protested the mention in the textbooks of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of November 10, 1975, in which the UN “determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The alternative, of course, is teaching that Zionism is a national liberation movement, as the official Israeli account and curriculum teaches. See the Israeli Foreign Ministry official website: http://www.israel.org/mfa/; http://www.mfa/gov/il/MFA/ M F A A r c h i v e / 2 0 0 _ 2 0 0 9 / 2 0 0 1 / 1 1 / S P O T L I G H T- % 2 0 I n c i t e m e n t %20Antisemitism%20and%20Hatred%20of. 5. In September 2000 the PNA Ministry of Education issued fourteen new textbooks for grades one through six, written by the Center for Developing the Palestinian Curricula. 6. See note 4 above. 7. During this time, “the word ‘Palestine’ was removed, maps were deleted, and anything Israeli censors deemed nationalist was excised” (Moughrabi 2001).

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8 Saudi Arabia: From “Wahhabi” Roots to Contemporary Revisionism Eleanor Abdella Doumato THE SAUDI EDUCATION SYSTEM IS at the center of a national debate. Buffeted by the fallout from September 11, the Saudi curriculum has been accused by media pundits and US government agencies of encouraging political violence and has been a concern for local education reformers and conservative defenders alike. Reformers have focused for many years not so much on the content of the religion curriculum, but on its monopoly on students’ time and the general curriculum’s dearth of useful information for success in a globalized economy. In this, they are supported by the reformminded Prince Abdullah, who has supported curricular revision and improvements in teacher quality. Curriculum defenders include its authors, Saudi Arabia’s state-funded ulama, who have made religious ideologies integral to the kingdom’s identity but don’t want to bite the royal hand that feeds them. At the same time, neither the ulama nor the Saudi royals can afford to ignore radical jihadists, who are probably the product of Saudi public schools and a mortal threat to both. Out of this national stalemate, a quick fix of the religion textbooks came at the opening of the 2003 school year. Notable was an extensive revision of a tenth-grade textbook, Tawhid, that had attracted particular criticism (Doumato 2003; Prokop 2003). More changes have been promised by the Minister of Education as part of a comprehensive reordering of educational priorities. Official state ideologies of Muslim identity and criteria for community belonging have shaped Saudi society since the introduction of mass education during the development boom of the 1970s, but competing voices have also claimed an interest in what gets included in schoolbooks. Revisions in the current curriculum not only show us where compromises have been made and who is making them but also anticipate the direction of future change.

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Saudi Arabia’s Religion: One Islam The Saudi curriculum is designed to homogenize the population and instill loyalty to the state. At every grade level the books assert that there is one Islam, that all Muslims are united in one umma (community of believers), that Saudi Arabia holds a special and sacred place in the Muslim world, and that its royal family fulfills the necessary requirements of legitimate Muslim rulers. Schoolbooks condition students to respect authority, to confuse opinion with fact, and to see ethical questions in black and white, as if Islam were a single, stagnant body of knowledge with obvious and immutable answers to all life’s questions. At the same time, the kingdom, like the rest of the Muslim world, is ethnically diverse and divided by sectarian orientations. Although an estimated 10 percent of its population is Shi‘ite, Saudi Arabia is also home to Sunni Muslims whose religious practices, such as Sufi mysticism, shrine visitation, and veneration of saints, are condemned as polytheism in the schoolbooks. The authoritarian model of politics and culture in the textbooks is not only at odds with the social realities of the kingdom but is being further undermined by economic realities and new information technologies. As the moral posturing embedded in Saudi Arabia’s political culture grows ever more distant from the world into which the country has emerged, the schoolbooks become sites that create and fuel these contradictions, as well as mirror them in society at large. If Islam is one, what kind of Islam is it? What are its ethics and its sources? How do the texts deal with heterodox Islam and non-Muslims? What are the inclusions and exclusions that define belonging, and how do the texts reconcile belonging to the umma as well as to the nation-state? Although the texts claim authenticity in ancient roots, they espouse an Islam that is a modern amalgamation of home-grown Wahhabism, the Salafism of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a pan-Islamic agenda that inhabits the texts along with the Saudis’ own state-building agenda.1 The Texts and Religion in the Curriculum The texts reviewed in this chapter are the books of Fiqh (jurisprudence), Hadith (authoritative anecdotes from the life of the Prophet), and Tawhid (Islamic monotheism) for grades nine through twelve, which were used in the school years 2001/2002 and 2003/2004, and the Tawhid texts for elementary grades three, five, and six and intermediate grades seven, eight, and nine, used in the 2003/2004 school year. In addition, the 2003/2004 texts for courses that incorporate religion into the subject matter have been reviewed: Civics for grades four through six and eight through twelve and The Life of the Prophet and the History of the Islamic State for the tenth grade. The high school religion textbooks include versions produced by both the Ministry of Education and the General Presidency for Girls’

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Education, but the other books were produced under the aegis of the Ministry of Education.2 Since at least the 1960s, religion courses have been at the center of the curriculum, occupying more than one-third of students’ weekly classroom hours in elementary and middle school and at least four hours a week in high school (al-Abdel 1988). For purposes of grade promotion, religion courses are given more weight than secular subjects. In practice, religious instruction occupies a great deal more of students’ classroom time because books on history are almost exclusively Islamic history, and books on Arabic language, literature, and rhetoric deal with religious literature, religious figures, and religious themes. Even the course on civics is couched in the language of religious affiliation and values.3 One Islam: Pure Faith, a Patron Saint, Nation, and Ruling Family The schoolbooks proclaim the message that there is only one Islam for all Muslims, and the Arabian Peninsula has a special place in Islam, preserved and defended by God’s grace and the ruling family. The “One Islam–Saudi nation” message begins at the elementary level but is most forcefully presented in the tenth-grade Tawhid text (10b: 13–14), where Islam is conflated with the word “Salafi.” Correct belief is the way of the “worthy ancestors” who lived at the time of the Prophet and in the centuries after his death. Following them means eliminating reason and drawing only on the Quran and Sunna: The established creed stands firm only according to the proofs of the lawgiver, and there is no place in it for opinion [al-ra’y] or individual reasoning [al-ijtihad]. Therefore, its sources are confined to what comes from the Book and the Sunna, because nothing offers more knowledge of God and what is owed to Him and what to refrain from. And God alone knows best, and after God then the messenger of God, and thus it was the way of our worthy ancestors [al-salaf al-salih] and those who followed them and pursued knowledge of the creed, to confine themselves to the Book and the Sunna.

Why ignore the scholarly tradition of Islamic jurisprudence in favor of just the Book and Sunna? Unity of thinking and avoidance of communal strife is the goal: Whenever the Book and Sunna give guidance . . . they have faith in it, and they hold to it, and they act according to it. And whatever was not proved in either the Book of God or the Sunna of his messenger, was repudiated and rejected. And therefore there was never among them differences in religious doctrine; on the contrary, their creed was one, and their commu-

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Philosophy and logic lead to schism, and are therefore especially to be avoided. [W]hen some people built their creed . . . from metaphysical speculation [ilm al-kilaam] and systematic logic [quwaa‘ad al-mantiq] inherited from Greek and Roman philosophy, they produced deviations and divisions in the creed, and there resulted arguments and divisions in the community and cleavages in building Islamic society. (10b: 14)

“Deviation from the correct creed,” indeed, spells “disaster [mahlikah] and perdition [dayaa‘]” (10b: 15).5 The message is that intellectual debate and individual reasoning must be sacrificed on the altar of communal harmony and political unity. The lesson is literally a textbook illustration of what Khaled Abou El Fadl describes as the anti-intellectualism of contemporary Saudi Islam’s “supremacist, puritanical orientation,” which retreats to the “secure haven of the text,” where it can safely dissociate itself from critical historical inquiry (El Fadl 2003). The name he gives to this supremacist, puritanical orientation is “Salafabism,” a combination of the words “Salafi” and “Wahhabism,” the homegrown Najdi version of Islam that the schoolbook employs to locate the one Islam in Saudi Arabia and legitimize its present rulers. One chapter, in the tenth-grade Tawhid textbook (the unrevised edition), titled the “Call [da‘wa] of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab,” describes the progenitor of Najdi Islam as the historical rectifier of deviations in the peninsula, drawing a parallel between al-Shaikh, as he is known in Saudi Arabia, and the Prophet Muhammad.6 The lesson explains that Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (hereafter MIAW) came as a mercy from God to renew the religion of this umma, his call for renewal fitting an established pattern: the Prophet Muhammad was sent by God to renew for mankind the creed that had been altered by deviations and innovations over time. Although Muhammad is the final prophet, God produces from time to time individuals from the ulama to renew the struggle against innovation, to rectify the creed and protect the sharia from change, and to “bring the light of God to people of blindness” (10b: 19). Such a person appeared in the twelfth century of the hijra (the eighteenth century of the Common Era); he was al-Shaikh al-Islam, al-Imam the Renewer (al-mujaddid) Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and he appeared in Arabia when it was steeped in ignorance and practicing greater and lesser kinds of polytheistic practices (shirk).

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Awakened to the evils of polytheism, MIAW, like the Prophet, pursued his teaching with patience and persistence in the face of hostility and, like the Prophet, triumphed in the end because he possessed the truth and was doing God’s will. MIAW is thus a sort of patron saint of Najd, who preached the Salafi creed first to his fellow scholars in Najd, and then traveled to Mecca, Medina, al-Ahsa [Hasa] and Basra and acquired knowledge of the sciences of Hadith and Tafsir and Fiqh and languages and recitation of Salafi books, especially those of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qiyyam, and he . . . sent out missionaries to other territories. He realized that in his own land . . . there were people of differing ideas about religious doctrine, ignorant of the Sunna, practicing innovations and committing greater shirk around graves and tombs and placing faith in stones and trees. . . . His call spread, and . . . those who sought guidance in caves became hostile to him . . . but the Shaikh persevered . . . giving sincere advice and teaching students the true faith and writing useful treatises and books and sending them around the country, and he patiently issued legal opinions . . . on the basis of what seemed to him right and correct. (10b: 20–21)

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab reflected God’s light onto the al-Sa‘ud family, for Muhammad ibn Sa‘ud, the ancestor of the present rulers of Saudi Arabia, became his patron and the means of expanding the call: [T]he Amir of Dir‘iyah, Imam Muhammad bin Sa‘ud . . . accepted the truth of his call and the peacefulness of his goal of pursuing God in the heart. So he admitted the Shaikh . . . and an agreement was sealed between the Shaikh and the Amir on the basis of this blessed call, and the power of religious knowledge [ilm] and evidence was joined with the power of political rule [sultah] and execution.

In the narrative, violence is defensive, and parallels are drawn between the Prophet Muhammad, who returned triumphant to Mecca after having been forced out by enemies, and both MIAW, whose call meets success after facing resistance, and ibn Sa‘ud, who is his enabler: Ibn Sa‘ud became the defender of the da‘wa of truth, and in the ensuing struggle between the armies of truth and the armies of falsehood, God fore-ordained that victory would come to those who stand for truth. And the armies of tawhid gained victory over the surrounding lands and the state of tawhid [ad-dawlah at-tawhid] was established in the Arabian peninsula, and, at the hand of the Shaikh, polytheism [shirk] and innovation [bida‘] and superstition ceased to be.7 (10b: 21)

To ensure that no student misses the spiritual genealogy linking the current rulers of Saudi Arabia to the reforming Shaikh and back to the Prophet Muhammad, the lesson lists manifestations of the Blessed Da‘wa (al-da’wa al-mubaaraka) in the world today. The first is the revitalization of the

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Sunna and the suppression of innovation and superstition through the spread of Salafi doctrine. This point is important because it rewards conformity while validating the suppression of noncomformists, turning this suppression into a positive attribute of the state. Second on the list is the production of Islamic scholars and libraries, reminding students that the Saudi government has invested heavily in Islamic education. Third is the founding of an Islamic state that rules by the Book of God and the Sunna of his prophet, establishing God’s da‘wa as an eternal model of emulation for Muslims around the world, an example of faith and constancy. In other words, the accomplishments of the Shaikh are carried forward by the present rulers. The list concludes by highlighting the mass marketing of religious publications and the establishment of highly endowed Islamic institutions at home and abroad, central components of the Saudi agenda to wield influence internationally in the Muslim world. One Islam: Under Siege by Insiders and Outsiders from the Beginning Until Now Abou El Fadl describes the Salafi-Wahhabi combination as one that shapes “Islam into the antithesis of the West” (2003: 15), adopting “third world nationalistic ideologies of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism” (p. 20), and one that has “searched Islam for black and white,” which is, in his view, the antithesis of the Islamic tradition. El Fadl could have drawn these conclusions from reading the Saudi curriculum alone. A history text for the tenth grade, titled The Life of the Prophet and the History of the Islamic State, contains a section titled “Waves of Enemies Against the Islamic World,” warning that the solidarity of the umma depends on unity of doctrine, firmness of character and values, and unity in foreign policy and civilization. Without these the Islamic umma will grow weak and fall into decay (10c: 69–71). The chapter presents a Manichaean view of Islam versus the world, as if Islam were a single entity besieged over the centuries by internal and external enemies both ideological and military. The book’s introduction for the teacher explains that the chapter is designed to allow the student to see that the enemies the Muslim world faces today are really extensions of the enmity they faced historically, and it encourages students to understand how religious sectarianism and deviant beliefs have always served Islam’s enemies (10c: 5).8 The “Waves of Enemies” chapter expands the enemies list that appears in the high school Fiqh and Hadith texts (Doumato 2003). Among the deviants who have assaulted Islam are the Sabeans (a Saudi reference to Shi‘a), Kharijites, Qarmatians, Zanj, and Ismailis; tribal group spirit (asabiyya) of the age of ignorance (jahiliyya); the Shu‘ubiyya controversy during the age of the Ummayyads; atheism (zandaqa); and heretical Sufism

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(10c: 74–84). Then there are outsiders like the crusaders and Mongols, the adherents of Mazdaism, and idolators. In the contemporary age, there is the aggression and malice of colonialism and “its willing tool Zionism” (10c: 73). There are modern revivals of tribal ‘asabiyya in the form of nationalism, especially Turkish and Arab nationalism, and socialism, as well as Orientalism (Western scholarship on Islam) and the magic arts (10c: 74). To counter their enemies, Muslims must not sink into extravagance or greed or imitate the character or behavior of their opponents. Ideas that run counter to Salafi-Wahhabi orthodoxy are not interpretations and modes of thought to debate and consider, but are unacceptable, deviant, and heretical, promulgated by people who are not real Muslims and who therefore must be denounced. Admonitions against heresy are sprinkled throughout the high school Fiqh and Hadith texts. In the eleventhgrade Fiqh text, for example, heretical thought can easily turn a believer into an apostate: the top crime is shirk, associating others with God and denying his unity, which is readily associated with Shi’a beliefs and rituals. One can also be labeled an apostate for denying any of God’s attributes, books, or messages; cursing God or his messenger; mocking religion; placing a copy of the Quran in an unclean place; or doubting, “as when one doubts anything of the requirements of religion.” “The apostate is a person who denies his religion,” says the text, “and when someone denies his religion he strikes a blow to the solidarity of the community.” The evidence lies in the Hadith, “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.” But first the apostate should be put in jail and questioned, and if he repents, he will be freed (11: 67–69; Doumato 2003). Those on the enemies list have no redeeming features, even if they are Muslim, and the conflict between Islam and the enemy is unidirectional. A chapter called, “The Mongol Enemies Against the Islamic world,” for example, traces the Mongol onslaught from central Asia to the fall of Samarqand and Tashkent, to the end of the Abbasid Caliphate with the fall of Baghdad (11: 103). But that is the end of the story. None of the textbooks discusses Moghul civilization, which inaugurated a great age of Islamic art, architecture, and astronomy. There is no Iranian or Turkish civilization; there are no variant schools of Islamic law worth discussing. Anything that is not subsumed under Salafi-Wahhabi orthodoxy is either to be denounced or does not exist at all. Showing Loyalty and Bearing Enmity, the Sine Qua Non of Wahhabism The concept of al-walaa‘ wa al-baraa‘ (showing loyalty and bearing enmity), has resonance in every school of Islamic thought but was foregrounded in the Arabian Peninsula under Wahhabi influence in the eighteenth century.

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The hostility toward the outsider expressed through al-walaa’ wa al-baraa’ has a history, and the recipients of Wahhabi enmity shift over time.9 For example, David Commins (2002) shows that the duty to bear enmity was used to rally resentment against the Ottoman Turks in the 1880s. In contemporary Saudi Tawhid schoolbooks, the objects of enmity range from Jews to non-Wahhabi Muslims to Western civilization in general. In the eighthgrade Tawhid text, for example, the concept is presented as showing love and friendship to right-thinking Muslims and enmity toward (or breaking off relations with) those who disagree with correct faith. The tenth-grade Tawhid textbook uses its chapter on “showing loyalty and bearing enmity” to name the outsiders, delineating the thoughts and actions that separate true believers from their enemies. The chapter, reminiscent of a sermon given by St. Augustine on the importance of cutting off relations with non-Christians (Augustine 2002), was excised from the 2003/2004 edition of the tenthgrade text. The textbook used in 2002 explains that anyone who practices nonconformist thought or action among Muslims should not only be corrected but also despised. Non-Muslims are not to be befriended or tolerated; nor can they be simply ignored. They are to be hated. “It is a law of tawhid that one should show loyalty to the Unitarian Muslim and bear enmity toward his polytheist enemies,” says the text. Only God is your Wali and His Apostle and those who believe, those who keep up prayers and pay the poor-rate while they bow. And whoever takes God and His Apostle and those who believe for a guardian, then surely they are the party of God and shall triumph. (Quran 5:55–56) You shall not find a people who believe in God and the last day befriending those who act in opposition to God and his Messenger, even though they were their own fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their kinsfolk. (Quran 58:22).

Additional proof texts (evidence from quranic verse or Hadith to prove a point) refer to specific events during the Mecca wars but are presented without historical context to show that disassociation between Muslims and nonMuslims is a universal and eternal condition set forth by God (10b: 109–110). 10 “The place of al-walaa‘ wa al-baraa‘ has great standing in Islam,” the lesson says, “as the Prophet said: ‘The strongest bond of belief is loving what God loves and hating what God hates,’ and with these two one gains the loyalty [wilaayya] of God’” (10b: 110). The lesson elevates enmity for the sake of God above the pillars of Islam: “[T]he Prophet said: ‘Whoever loves for the sake of God and hates for the sake of God and shows loyalty for the sake of God and enmity for the sake of God, he will achieve the loyalty of God by that, and unless he does so, no worshipper will ever

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find the taste of faith even if he is excessive in prayer or fasting’” (10b: 110). Who are the polytheist enemies against whom the monotheist Muslim must bear enmity? To MIAW, polytheist enemies were other Muslims, especially the Ottoman Turks, Shi‘a, Sufis, and anyone who wore amulets or practiced magic. The school text specifies new ways to become an enemy, explaining why Muslims must be alert to show hostility toward the offender. Students should recognize hypocrisy (al-mudaahana) when they see it. If a person socializes with moral deviants but thinks himself immune to their deviancy, he’s being hypocritical, and by not breaking off relations with them and showing them hatred, he’s showing disloyalty to God (10b: 111). The proof text is the story of Abraham, who broke off from those who did not believe in the one God but instead worshipped idols.11 In the Fiqh and Hadith texts, imitating the kuffar (unbelievers) is presented as morally corrupting. Women who dress like foreigners, for example, invite temptation and corruption, so the fabric of Muslim women’s dress must be thick enough not to show any skin and wide enough to conceal the contours of the body, and the face must be covered to protect her personality. Imitating the kuffar is an insult to God because Muslims are supposed to love what God loves and hate what God hates. If a Muslim joins in holiday celebrations with the kuffar or shares with them their joys and sorrows, he is showing them loyalty (10b: 118). To say id mubarak (happy holiday) to the kuffar is as bad as worshipping the cross; it’s a worse sin against God than offering a toast with liquor; it’s worse than suicide and worse that having forbidden sex (artikab al-farj al-haram); and many people do it without realizing what they have done (10b: 118). Imitating the kuffar by using the calendrical designation “A.D.” instead of the hijra year is another problem, because A.D. evokes the date of Jesus’ birth and shows an affinity with unbelievers. At Christmastime, Muslims are not to dress like the kuffar or exchange gifts or attend a feast or display ornaments. The holidays of the kuffar should be like any other day for a Muslim. As Ibn Taimiyya said, “Agreeing with the Ahl al-kitab (People of the Book) on things that are not in our religion and that are not the customs of our ancestors is corruption. By avoiding these things, you cease supporting them.” Some even say, the lesson warns, that if you perform a ritual slaughter on their day, it’s as if you slaughtered a pig. The textbooks evoke the past as a warning for the present. A section of the chapter called “Judgment About Making Use of the Kuffar in Employment and Fighting and Things Like That” quotes Ibn Taimiyya as saying, “‘Knowledgeable people know that the protected people among the Jews and Christians (ahl dhimma min yahood wa nasara) wrote to people of their own religion giving secret information about the Muslims’” (10b: 119). The principle is to not cooperate with or trust the kuffar: “O you who

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believe! Do not take for intimate friends those other than your own people; they do not fall short of inflicting loss upon you; they love what distresses you; vehement hatred has already appeared from out of their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater still” (Quran 3:118). One should not employ an unbeliever if there is a Muslim who can do the job, and if they’re not needed, one should never hire them because the kuffar can never be trusted (10b: 121). Nor should a Muslim accept employment from an unbeliever, for a Muslim should never be in a position of subservience to the kuffar, who would surely show him disrespect. Nor should he be put in a position requiring him to deny his religion. A Muslim should not live permanently among kuffar because his faith will be compromised, and that is why God required Muslims to migrate from a land of unbelief (bilad al-kufr) to a land of belief (bilad al-islam). As for those who would rather work for the kuffar and live among them, this is the same as showing loyalty to them and agreeing with them. This is . . . apostasy from Islam. And whether one were there out of greed or for comfort, even were he to hate their religion and protect his own, it is not allowed. Beware of the worst punishment. (10b: 121)

The chapter warns against music, laughter, and singing, the proscription of which, under the Al Sa‘ud, led nineteenth-century commentators to liken the Wahhabis to Calvinists. Proscriptions on joyous behaviors, according to the text, are meant to encourage Muslims to invest all their being in thoughts of God and not expend energy in frivolous activities. However, the significance of such proscriptions shifts to contemporary concerns about the new enemy, the cultural invasion from the West. The “worst kind of imitating the kuffar” is becoming so preoccupied with the unimportant things the kuffar have promoted in their own societies that Muslims neglect to remember God and to do good works, for God says: “Oh you who believe! Let not your wealth, or your children, divert you from the remembrance of God” (Quran 63:9; 10b: 124). The lesson explains that the kuffar assign value to unimportant things because, absent religious faith, their lives are empty. What are these unimportant things? First, there are the performing arts, such as singing and playing instruments, dancing, and theater and cinema, which are visited by people who are lost from the truth. Then, there are the fine arts (al-funun al-jamila), such as painting, drawing, and sculpture. (Despite the prohibition on art, some schools in the kingdom do offer art classes.) Then there are sports, which are sometimes more important to youth than remembering God and obeying him; sports cause youth to miss prayers and ignore school and household obligations. Whether such behaviors are permitted or not, the Muslim nation today should save its energy for dealing with challenges from its enemies: “Muslims have no time to waste on insignificant activities” (10b: 124–125).

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Forbidding celebrations of birthdays, especially the birthday of the Prophet, and prohibitions against fine and performing arts are all part of the modern fabric and the historical legacy of Wahhabi culture. “Its hostility to any human practice that would excite the imagination or bolster creativity,” says El Fadl (2003), is “perhaps the most stultifying, and even deadly, characteristic of Wahhabism.” Anything that suggests a step toward creativity,” he says, “constitutes a step toward kufr [infidelity].” Tawhid Revised In the 2003/2004 curriculum, the tenth-grade Tawhid textbook was extensively revised, and the lessons on “showing loyalty and bearing enmity” are gone. Instead, there is a new text that is as far removed from “Othering” non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi Muslims as could be without negating tenets that are bedrock Sunni Islam. Introductory chapters focus on situating Islam theologically in the chain of God’s revelations—first Judaism, then Christianity, and then Islam—and emphasizing what the three religions share in common (10a). In the first lesson, the meaning of Islam is “submitting to God in monotheism [tawhid], and in obedience to him, and breaking away from polytheism and its people. It is the religion of all prophets.” The quranic proof texts that follow invoke Noah, who claimed “to be among those who submit” (that is, who are Muslims) (Quran 10:72); Abraham, to whom God spoke, saying “‘submit’ [be a Muslim] and he said, ‘I submit to the Lord of the Worlds’” (Quran 2:131); and Moses, who told his people to put their trust in God, “[for] you are among those who have submitted [are Muslims]” (Quran 10:84). The roots of the Muslim creed are “faith in God and his angels and his books and his messengers and the day of judgment, and belief in predestination for good or evil,” confirmed in the verses 2:177 and 2:285 of the Quran, where God says, “We make no distinction among any of his messengers” (10a: 9). But here the text separates Muslims from adherents of the other two monotheistic religions because all the pillars of the creed must be accepted: “Whoever denies any of these pillars . . . is an unbeliever [kafir].” To be a true believer, one must also adhere to the “visible” pillars: “the testimony that there is one God and Muhammad is his Prophet, performing prayer, giving alms, fasting during Ramadan, and making the hajj to the sacred house if able,” and “none of these can be avoided” (10a: 11). So the inclusiveness claimed by Islam becomes less ambiguous as the text moves to the required acts of devotion and adherence to the teachings of divine books (10a: 15). “We believe in all the books God has named, the Torah and the Gospels and the Book of Psalms and the Quran” (10a: 15). “God says, ‘the apostle believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the believers; they all believe in God and his angels and his

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books and his messengers; we make no distinction between any of his apostles’” (Quran 2:285). But then, the lesson explains, atheists and polytheists would deny them all, and there are some who “believe in some of the books and disbelieve in others, and they are the Jews and Christians and whoever goes along their way” (10a: 15). There are also those who believe in all the books but pick and choose from them, which is another form of unbelief (10a: 16), for the true believer believes in them all. How is the true believer to believe in all the books, when the books say different things and contradict each other? It was God’s judgment, says the Tawhid textbook, that the earlier books would be for a limited time, and their preservation, entrusted to priests and learned men, resulted in changes and deviations. As for the Quran, however, “God sent it down for all generations in all nations to last until Judgment Day, and He guaranteed its preservation” intact, “because the standing of this Book will not end until the end of the life of mankind on earth” (10a: 16). The believer should have respect for all three books because they are divinely inspired, but the only book with currency is the one that is preserved as God intended, the Quran. Shifts from ambiguous claims of inclusiveness to decisive borders of exclusion in the new tenth-grade Tawhid textbook are very different from the kind of exclusionary devices scattered throughout the religion curriculum. There is no gratuitous condemnation of non-Muslims in the new textbook, and even where the central tenet of tawhid, the imperative to worship God alone, is discussed, the names of offenders are not delineated. What the new text does is represent the way Sunni orthodoxy has historically situated itself in relation to the two earlier monotheistic religions: the recipient of the last and most perfect in a chain of revelations sent from the same God. Islam’s dilemma in superseding both Judaism and Christianity is the same as Christianity’s dilemma in relating to Judaism. By adopting Judaism’s covenant with God and its scripture, and at the same time embracing a new revelation claiming to supersede Jewish scripture and requiring faith in Jesus as son of God for the attainment of salvation, Christianity does to Judaism what Islam does to both, implicitly, at least, declaring them “void.” The revised tenth-grade textbook, however, manages to affirm Islam’s sense of itself without negating unbelievers who adhere to earlier revelations.12 Islam as Civic Virtue: New Religious Values Outside the Religion Curriculum A course on civics (al-Tarbiyya al-Wataniyya) runs from elementary through high school, for boys only. It was introduced before the events of September 11, and is designed to foster identity with the Saudi homeland (watan) and its rulers. “The homeland is the land in which our fathers and forefathers lived, and they preserved it for us and we live today in it. . . .

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Our country [baladna] is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the place of inspiration, and it is the Islamic holy land for in it is the sanctuary [harem] of noble Mecca and the Kaaba, and the Prophet’s Mosque” (6: 31]. The sixthgrade civics text validates the leadership role of the kingdom in the Muslim world, with chapters titled “My Country and the Islamic Holy Places,” and “My Country and the Gulf Cooperation Council” (6: 20). Additional topics include the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Islamic Bank for Development, organizations that “our government supports at all times.” A chapter called “My Country: Guarding Justice and Truth of Islam,” is illustrated with a photo of the al-Aqsa mosque (6: 29), and is accompanied by a lesson called “My Country Supports the Arab Cause.” Since there are few institutions for exercising the rights and duties of citizens in Saudi Arabia, these “civics” texts focus on highlighting the accomplishments of Saudi leadership and the benefits to be derived from these accomplishments by citizenship holders. An eighth-grade text, for example, briefly explains the system of government (8: 19), including the ministries and agencies that offer important public services, such as education, security, health care, recreation, social services, and economic planning. The text explains that the system of government is a king with a council of ministers, who are specialists in the areas they oversee, and a shura (consultative) council, which is an Islamic tradition. The government ensures that the rights of individuals, derived from sharia, are upheld (8: 10). The tenth-grade text focuses on the themes of Islamic unity, peace and security for the kingdom, and the goal of peaceful relations among all nations. The civics books introduce values that can be described as civic virtues but present them as if they were values inherent in Islam. Instead of emphasizing correct forms of worship, behavior, and obedience, the civics course represents Islam as a template for human decency, tolerance, inclusiveness, economic prosperity, individual achievement, and civic harmony. The series discusses how to tell time, for example, and the importance of keeping appointments, and addresses the kingdom’s low-skill, high-unemployment problem by representing manual labor in a positive light. Lessons discuss electrical, fire, and traffic safety and avoiding drugs. There are also lessons on cooperative behavior, such as keeping public spaces like the mosque and classroom clean, and on personal cleanliness, table manners, and care for the environment. In the civics texts the Islamic family is the building block of society to which each person turns for support and in which each person is part of a hierarchy of authority (presented as a model for society as a whole) in which the older are over the younger. Children are encouraged to be helpful not only because it is obligatory, but because it is the right thing to do and

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because family members should care for each other. In one lesson, a boy tells his mother he’s too busy playing to help her, and in response, the grandfather puts his arm gently on the boy’s shoulder and reminds him how hard his mother works and how much she loves him. The story is illustrated with a photo of a smiling boy serving fruit as his mother had asked (4: 18). In another lesson, the boy offers to help with the housework, and an illustration shows him pushing a vacuum cleaner (4: 25–26). A lesson on correct greetings in the fifth-grade text is especially noteworthy because it contrasts with a lesson on correct Islamic greetings that appears in a high school Hadith text. The high school Hadith lesson explains that a Muslim should not initiate a greeting of “Salaam alaikum” (peace be upon you) to the kuffar, because that is a greeting only for Muslims. However, says the lesson, if a kafir should speak first with a greeting of “Salaam alaikum,” it is permissible to respond with the words, “Wa alaik” (and upon you). The same textbook includes a Hadith in which the Prophet advises anyone who encounters a kafir in the street to force him aside and not to offer the full Islamic greeting, “Wa rahmat allahi wa barakaatu” (The mercy and blessings of God be upon you). Given this context, the lesson in the Civics text is remarkable. A little boy named Ahmad goes to the store to buy school supplies with his father, who greets the clerk with the words, “Salaam alaikum wa rahmat allahi wa barakaatu” (Peace be upon you, and may God be merciful and bestow blessings upon you). The clerk replies, “Wa alaikum as-sallam wa rahmat allahi wa barakaatu” (and upon you be peace, and may God be merciful and bestow blessings upon you). “Father,” says Ahmad, “do you know this man?” The father responds that he doesn’t know him but that whenever you meet people you always greet them with that phrase. The assumption behind the dialogue is that all the actors are Muslim, but what distinguishes the story from lessons on the same subject in the religion texts is that correct Islamic behavior is explained as an act that has value in and of itself, not as something that gains meaning by virtue of being denied to the outsider or explained in opposition to something else. The civics texts assign new values to Islam in a way similar to the introduction of new values in the Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Omani, and Palestinian (see Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7.1, and 7.2 in this book), illustrating the way particular moral lessons can be extracted from scripture by selective use of passages from Quran and Hadith. No doubt the impetus to incorporate these values comes from national development goals, and attaching these values to Islam occurs because Islam is the vocabulary in which all school subjects are framed. At the same time, however, since these newly framed values are foreign to the religion curriculum, the effect of the civics courses is to create a back-door opening to revisionism.

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Salafism, Wahhabism, and the Role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Saudi Curriculum The Salafi-Wahhabi version of Islam is represented in the school texts as Islam pure and simple, the Islam of the pious ancestors of real Muslims today. For many conservative and radical religious people in the Middle East today, Salafi-Wahhabi Islam has in fact transcended its schoolbook self-image to become just that. Yet the religion preached by MIAW and adopted by successive governments in Najd was always, until the late twentieth century, considered oddball Islam. With its simplistic and parochial interpretations of Hadith, its dislike of art or music, film or drama, its call for total segregation of women, its validation of a religious police force, and most of all its unapologetic contempt for outsiders and encouragement of rude behavior toward them, Wahhabi Islam was disparaged by Arab Muslims everywhere outside the peninsula, as well as everywhere inside it except Najd. Even Ahmad Abd al-Ghafour Attar, the twentieth-century biographer and panegyrist of MIAW, admits that in the 1930s, when he was a student of religious sciences in Mecca, MIAW was held in very low esteem by all his fellow students, and Wahhabism was considered something primitive and unique to Najd (Attar 1979: 117). So how did Wahhabism become fused with Salafism, and how did this fusion get included in the schoolbooks? Attar says that Wahhabism began to gain respectability outside Najd in 1933, when the famous Egyptian writer, Taha Hussein, mistakenly claimed to see in Wahhabism a vehicle for Arab nationalism, arguing that a pure Islam could be used to unite an Arab nation that was fractured and broken under the heel of colonialism (Attar 1979: 167). A reformed Islam as the answer to colonialism resonated with the ideas of Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood (alIkhwan al-Muslimin) as the “call of Salafiyya, the return of Islam to its pure sources,” with the goal of living according to the Prophet’s custom “in all life’s activities, in creed and worship” (Roald 1994: 14). During the 1930s and 1940s, al-Banna developed a theory of Islamic training later brought into the Saudi education system. This theory called forth what was an innovation in his time, the notion that Islam is a complete system of life (nizam shamil). Al-Banna’s ideas meshed with Wahhabi ideals of the unity of religion, spirituality, politics, and everyday behavior, ideals embedded in Saudi education policy (Roald 1994: 141–142, 146). The radicalization of the brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s brought the organization ideologically closer to Wahhabism, as exemplified in the ideas of Sayyid Qutb and his brother Muhammad, who became a teacher in Saudi Arabia (see Qutb 1964). In Milestones, his last book before he was executed, Sayyid Qutb articulated a concept of tawhid that implies “a rejection of any man-made system and total subservience to God and His revelation, which

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are the Quran and His words to man and the Prophet’s Sunna as the human manifestation of the Divine Will” (Roald 1994: 127). Qutb’s argument that the Muslim world was in a state of jahiliyya (ignorance), whose remedy lay in the destruction of repressive secular regimes, made the Muslim Brotherhood supportive of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family, who validated a role for the ulama in government and claimed the Quran as constitution. The Muslim Brotherhood came to influence the Saudi education system in the 1960s, when large numbers of Muslim Brothers from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq were given political asylum in Saudi Arabia (Algar 2002: 48). Fearing Arab nationalism’s revolutionary activities against Arab monarchies, the Sa‘ud family saw the brotherhood as natural allies in their proxy war in Yemen against Egypt and the Arab nationalism propounded by Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser (Rouleau 2002).13 Because the Saudi public school system was then in its infancy and the majority of its teachers were being hired from abroad, Muslim Brothers who came to Saudi Arabia obtained positions as teachers in schools and universities and as officials in the Ministry of Education, where they designed curricula, wrote textbooks (see Chapter 4 by Betty Anderson in this book), and forged ties with Saudi ulama. Saudi education policy, first formulated in the late 1960s, clearly exhibits the fusion of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Salafism, Najdi Wahhabism, and the legitimacy concerns of the royal family. Islam, in this policy, is a complete way of life, and therefore instilling faith is the fundamental purpose of education. Along with that comes instilling a commitment to the Islamic nation and a sense of solidarity with Muslims the world over; instilling a commitment to Islamic proselytizing and eternal jihad against Islam’s enemies; training students physically so they can pursue jihad and fulfill their obligations to society (an echo of al-Banna); teaching them to denounce any system that conflicts with Islam; and teaching them the rationale for legitimacy of the ruler: “reciprocal consultation between the ruler and the ruled is what ensures right and duties and promotes loyalty and allegiance” and “teaching students that Saudi Arabia has a special place and great responsibility in leading humanity to Islam” (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 1995b). Textbook Islam’s Incarnation as Authoritative Islam The Salafi-Wahhabi version of Islam as represented in the textbooks has gained a regional following, especially since the Gulf War (1990–1991) and the region’s increased access to the Internet.14 Even though the new Salafi movement in the Persian Gulf has taken a position decidedly opposed to the Saudi regime, exporting Salafi-Wahhabi Islam was a deliberate policy on the part of the regime in order to shore up its legitimacy at home and in the

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wider Muslim world. Given Wahhabism’s incompatibility with mainstream Islamic practices such as shrine visitation, poetry reading, and processionals, its hostility toward minorities within the kingdom, and its attempt to snuff out traditional rituals associated with the pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia had a serious image problem in trying to lay claim to leadership in the Islamic world, let alone be taken seriously as protector of the holy places. The Saudis, as El Fadl puts it, “either had to alter their own system of belief to make it more consistent with the convictions of other Muslims, or they had to aggressively spread their convictions to the rest of the Muslim world.” “The first,” he says, “would have required the Saudi regime to reinvent itself, but in many ways it was easier to attempt to reinvent the Muslim world, and that is the option they chose” (El Fadl 2003). What the Saudis have done to reinvent the Muslim world is laid out in the civics course books that praise the Saudis’ leadership role in proselytizing and pursuing the interests of Muslims internationally. The textbooks say, for example, that the Islamic universities in the kingdom welcome substantial numbers of foreign students on scholarship, who receive an education they could never afford at home. The World Assembly of Muslim Youth organizes conferences and Quran competitions, publishes religious tracts, and sponsors missionary activities abroad. The Organization of the Islamic Conference, heavily supported by Saudi Arabia, operates on the political and head-of-state level to promote cooperation among Muslim nations. A lesson titled “Connections of My Country to the Islamic World” for the sixth grade says, “Our country strives to spread the book of God, so King Fahd has established a publishing house in Medina . . . so that the Book of God may circulate [in] . . . Islamic countries, and our king, Custodian of the Two Holy Places, gives guidance by reproducing the noble Quran for all Islamic countries and for Islamic minorities in other states” (6: 30). The pilgrimage is included in the civics course as evidence of Saudi leadership. The Saudis have used the pilgrimage as a platform for proselytizing, having turned it into a vastly expanded tourist industry with luxury hotels, air-conditioned buses, a tent city for poor pilgrims, a mechanized slaughterhouse to handle animal sacrifice at the end of the pilgrimage, and “travelers’ aid” offices. Especially effective in promoting a single version of Islam are pilgrim-tourist agencies abroad that conduct guidance programs on the rites of pilgrimage according to the Saudi way and the orchestration of the rites as they occur. Inviting celebrities to make the hajj as guests of the government helps too. The goodwill derived from hosting Malcolm X in 1964 must be inspirational: in his autobiography, Malcolm X describes the pilgrimage as a revelatory experience in human brotherhood and attributes his turning from the path of violence to his conversion to mainstream Islam (Malcolm X 1992).

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Other reasons for the success of Salafi-Wahhabi Islam in the wider Muslim world include the adoption of the Salafi name, which evokes the piety of the Prophet’s companions and obfuscates unflattering associations attached to the name “Wahhabi,” a name that is never used by Saudi writers and never occurs in the school texts (al-Semmari 2002). Another reason is the appeal of its empowering simplicity. As El Fadl observes, by limiting the sources of Islam to Quran and Sunna and undermining traditional sources of authority based on scholarship in jurisprudence, “anyone who could cite foundational sources could claim to speak for the will of God” (El Fadl 2003). When viewed through the high school textbooks, one might even say the new Salafi-Wahhabi combination represents a dumbing-down of Islam, to the extent that today, potentially anyone with access to an online Quran and Hadith browser might claim authority in interpretation. It is this characteristic, the “dumbing-down of Islam,” that renders it politically utilitarian for those who would rationalize acts of violence. If the text stands alone, without historical or scriptural context, without attention to Hadith verification or variant interpretations of quranic passages, and is used selectively, the text can be deployed to mean whatever the user wants it to mean. As illustrated in the schoolbooks, scriptural texts can be simplified to claim that the good Muslim should not imitate foreigners and in fact should maintain enmity toward them. From there, the slippery slope toward prescribing violence is not far away. Reform of the Saudi Textbooks The Saudi Ministry of Education has formulated a ten-year plan for reforming the system of public education in the kingdom. It calls for retraining educators and introducing new textbooks and teaching methods, as well as removing intolerant material or materials that advocate violence from textbooks currently in use. From 1984 until 2003, the religion textbooks had remained unchanged (al-Salloom 1995: 99–100). Now, however, extensive reforms in the textbooks are occurring. The plan’s principal aims are to provide the kind of education necessary for successful participation in a modern globalized economy and to “prevent our children from being influenced by extremism and intolerance, which has corrupted our Islamic faith” (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Royal Embassy 2005). According to a Ministry of Education publication, the new curriculum will allow students a choice of subject concentrations and courses and require the study of English (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education 2004). However, as this report indicates, except for science and math concentrations, the study of Islam will still occupy the largest block of students’ time. A look at the “Summary of Saudi Arabia’s Comprehensive Program to Revise the Kingdom’s National Educational Curricula” (Kingdom of Saudi

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Arabia, Royal Embassy 2005) reveals that the main targets of textbook revision are passages relating to the obligation to show loyalty to Muslims and enmity toward unbelievers. These passages are sprinkled, quite gratuitously and in various incarnations, throughout the religious studies textbooks, but most especially in the Hadith and Tawhid books, and the revisions thus far are aimed primarily at reinterpreting rather than removing them. For example, in both the revised and unrevised editions of the eleventhgrade Hadith and Islamic Culture textbooks, at the end of a chapter explicating a saying of the Prophet on attaining “the sweetness of faith,”15 a seeming non sequitur intrudes: “Let not the believers take unbelievers as supporters instead of believers” (Quran 3:28). In the original, the verse is interpreted as a command to eschew friendships of any kind with unbelievers. In the revised edition, the verse is reinterpreted to allow ethical treatment of unbelievers generally and to sanction business relationships with them (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Royal Embassy 2005: 6). In other editions of the Tawhid textbooks, Hadith and quranic passages are marshaled to explain that cordial relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are encouraged, that business relationships are permitted, that neighborliness extends to non-Muslims, and that there is no compulsion in religion (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Royal Embassy 2005: 7–8). However, the verse itself remains, as if the principle of group solidarity and exclusion of the outsider were so paramount to Muslim identity that tolerance of the Other within prescribed boundaries should be seen as the ultimate liberal behavioral value to which one should aspire. Similarly, there are passages in the various Tawhid editions stating that the blood and property of polytheists may be taken by Muslims, and these passages have been contextualized but not removed. One instance, for example, says that the general rule applies only to the case in which a non-Muslim initiates a fight against Muslims (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Royal Embassy 2005: 10, 13). What remains, then, is a principle of behavior sanctioning the murder of those with whom one disagrees. Why are passages that “Other” heterodox Muslims and non-Muslim “polytheists” and prescribe less-than-amiable relations with them not simply excised from the textbooks altogether? Could education reformers, if so inclined, just make them go away? On the one hand, on the level of doctrinal belief, influential Saudi scholars and Ministry of Education bureaucrats recognize such passages as integral to Islam. Since exclusivism and “othering” are contained within the scriptural and interpretative texts of all three monotheistic religions, we might ask whether evangelical Christians could be expected to renounce Christ as the exclusive pathway to heaven or messianic Christians to renounce the “conversion or death” scenario for Jews that is to follow the Second Coming. Or we could also ask whether fundamentalist West Bank settlers could be expected to renounce the Halakhah

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command to preserve the land of Israel “free of idolatrous contamination” by “corpse-unclean gentiles” (Neusner 2002: 34; Shahak and Mezvinsky 1999). On the other hand, religion as represented in public school textbooks is a choice made by states. None of the religion curricula of other Middle Eastern countries studied in this volume, except Oman, introduces “showing loyalty and bearing enmity.” None of them emphasize keeping separate or maintaining behaviors distinct from non-right-thinking Muslims, nor do they seek to sensitize students to the warning signs of apostasy. What that contrast brings out is the uniqueness of Saudi-sponsored Islam. What it also shows, and what this volume as a whole shows, is that Islam is open to a broad range of interpretative meanings, and that regionwide, public school religion curricula are in fact adapted to reflect the policies and interests of individual states. So if reform of the religion textbooks is in the interest of the Saudi rulers, why have more aggressive changes not taken place? The answer is that curricular reform is the object of competing forces, including progressive educators within the kingdom and outside forces such as the United States, which claims an interest in Saudi textbooks because of the events of September 11, 2001. Against those forces are the ruling family’s conservative religious supporters who are responsible for the content of the religion textbooks and resent US interference, as well as their radically conservative enemies, products of their own school system, who use violence in the name of religion to undermine the regime. The general public would appear to favor textbook reform. A poll of nearly 5,500 Saudi citizens taken by Nawaf Obaid in 2003 shows that there is considerable dissonance between the rules-based Islam of the older textbooks and the way Saudi people want to live their lives. Eighty-five percent of Saudis thought that political reform would be beneficial for the country, even though the textbooks put forward the vertical hierarchy of the Saudi regime and its association with the ulama as the correct system for an Islamic government. Over 90 percent wanted to grant women more rights, and 63 percent thought women should be allowed to drive, even though the physical separation of women from men in all public spaces as a bedrock religious value is repeated throughout the religion course books. In addition, the poll shows that, despite the textbooks’ “Othering” of non-Muslims and validation of jihad in defense of the nation, there is no propensity in the public at large to see violence as a solution to political problems. Almost 96 percent in the poll reject Osama bin Laden as a leader because they reject the violence against innocent people that is the product of his methods (Obaid 2004). At the same time, the poll shows considerable support for the establishment ulama (59 percent), which can only mean support for the clergy’s conservative social agenda.

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However, opposition to changing the curriculum has been expressed by radical ulama, including Abdullah bin Jibrin and Safar al-Hawali, who circulated a petition in January 2004 complaining that curricular changes were the product of US pressure aimed at “taking the kingdom along the path of infidels” and undermining “national unity based on our religious creed” (“Saudis Warned Not to Alter Textbooks,” Al-Jazeera, aljazeera.net, January 3, 2004). The petition may have been rejected by the regime, but the sentiments embedded in it reflect the sentiments of the religion curriculum’s original authors and others in the Education Ministry, and their views cannot be slighted, as the Obaid poll’s measurement of the ulama’s popularity suggests. The content of the revised textbooks confirms that establishment ulama are willing to accommodate the regime when necessary, just as they have done repeatedly in the past when it comes to policy objectives of the state (al-Fahad 2004), but that the regime accommodates them as well. The author of the revised 2003 tenth-grade Tawhid textbook is Shaikh Saleh Ibn Fawzan Ibn Abdullah al-Fawzan, schooled in ultraconservative Burayda, a graduate of the Faculty of Sharia at the Imam Muhammad bin Sa’ud University in Riyadh, and a member of the Council of Senior Scholars and the Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Fataawa, the organization that issues official religious decrees on behalf of the state.16 All other past and current Tawhid textbooks attribute authorship to the Ministry of Education or the General Presidency for Girls’ Education, rather than any specific individual. Shaikh al-Fawzan’s name, printed in bold across the title page, is meant to send a message: the establishment ulama are not only on board with curricular change, they are an active part of it, and they stand behind the regime. At the same time, the content of the revised curriculum sends another message: accommodation is a two-way street, and all revisions will be measured, gingerly, against what the other side is willing to tolerate. Textbooks Cited 6 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education. 2003. al-Tarbiyya AlWataniyya [Civics]. Grade 6. 8 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education. 2003. al-Tarbiyya alWataniyya [Civics]. Grade 8. 10a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education. 2003/2004. Tawhid [Monotheism]. Grade 10. 10b Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, General Presidency for Girls’ Education. 1996/1997. Tawhid [Monotheism]. Grade 10. 10c Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education. 2003. The Life of the Prophet and the History of the Islamic State. Grade 10.

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10d Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Education. 2003. al-Tarbiyya alWataniyya [Civics]. Grades 8 and 10. 11 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, General Presidency for Girls’ Education. 2001. Fiqh [Jurisprudence]. Notes Portions of an earlier version of this chapter appeared in Doumato 2003. 1. The word “Salafi” is derived from al-salaf al-salih, the “worthy ancestors” who lived at the time of the Prophet or during the three generations after. Those who identify themselves as Salafi usually claim to be following in their path. The name has been appropriated repeatedly over the centuries for different ideological and political purposes, in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere. For a discussion of Salafism in Jordan, see Roald 1994 and Algar 2002. 2. Even though the General Presidency was placed under the stewardship of the Ministry of Education in 2002 after a deadly fire in a girls’ school in Mecca evoked widespread criticism of the presidency and its director, Dr. Murshid Murshid, the agency continued as of 2004 to publish its own textbooks for the girls’ schools. The books for 2001/2002 (religion texts only, grades 9–12) were all collected by the author from a boys’ school and a girls’ school where they were currently being used, and the following year, the author obtained a full run of books for grades 1–12 used in 2003/2004, which include books published by both the Ministry of Education and the General Presidency for Girls’ Education. 3. Examples of titles of these subjects are “Recitation and Language,” “Stories from the Lives of the Companions,” “Stories from the Lives of the Followers [of the Companions],” and “Recitation and Memorization.” Historical themes in the religious studies textbooks discussed here are repeated in the kingdom’s history textbooks (see al-Rasheed 1999). 4. Two proof texts follow: “God says: and hold fast by the covenant of God all together and be not disunited” (Quran 3:103); “So there will surely come to you guidance from Me, then whoever follows my guidance, he shall not go astray nor be unhappy” (Quran 20:123). 5. In his biography of MIAW, Ahmad Attar says that ‘ilm al-kalaam is a “science of theology known as ‘scholasticism,’ which is the science which makes it possible to prove religious dogmatics by sound arguments” and “deals with the essence and qualities of God” (Attar 1979: 116). 6. Al-Shaikh is the family name of MIAW’s descendants. 7. The proof text says: “As for the scum it passes away as a worthless thing and as for that which profits the people, it tarries on earth” (Quran 13:17). 8. “The goal in making the student aware of all this is so that he will have knowledge of the circumstances of the Islamic faith which will fortify him against sectarianism and deviance” (10c: 5). 9. Examples of acts of hostility toward nonconforming Muslims include the destruction of tombs and sacred places of Shi‘a in Iraq during the Wahhabi expansion at the opening of the nineteenth century, the leveling of the saints’ cemetery in Medina, the beating of people in Hufuf in the 1920s for wearing gold, or the prohibition on the musical processional that once inaugurated the annual pilgrimage. 10. The proof texts are as follows: Quran 5:51: “Do not take the Jews and Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them.” Quran 60:1: “Do not take my

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enemy and your enemy for friends. Would you offer them love while they deny what has come to you of the truth, driving out the Messenger and yourselves because you believe in God?” Quran 8:73: “As for those who disbelieve, some of them are the guardians of others; if you will not do it, there will be in the land persecution and great mischief.” 11. The proof text is from Quran 60:4: “Indeed, there is for you a good example in Ibrahim and those with him when they said to their people: surely we are clear of you and of what you serve besides Allah; we declare ourselves to be clear of you, and enmity and hatred have appeared between us and you forever until you believe in Allah alone.” 12. The borders of exclusivity defined in Islam and detailed in the Saudi textbooks have their counterpart in Judaism. According to Jacob Neusner, in the Halakhah, the “legal system of scripture as extended and realized in the law books of formative Judaism, scripture as amplified by the Rabbinic writings of the first six centuries CE” (2002: 11), non-Jews “form an undifferentiated realm of idolatry and uncleanness” (p. 29). Gentiles are always idolaters and are not entitled to enter heaven, whereas Israelites are defined as worshippers of the one God, alone entitled to resurrection from the grave and eternal life (p. 31). In the land of Israel, there should be no coexistence (p. 32), and the Halakhah makes a statement of Israel’s freedom to “preserve a territory free of idolatrous contamination” by corpse-unclean gentiles (p. 34). Gentiles are to be hated for their idolatry, and the Halakhah, Neusner explains, is concerned to realize the theological principle that “those who hate Israel hate God, those who hate God hate Israel, and God will ultimately vanquish Israel’s enemies as His own” (p. 33). The Halakhah addresses the practical problem stemming from the fact that even though gentiles have no business in the land of Israel, gentiles in fact live there. Hence rules are devised for engaging the outsider, and these rules are focused on terms of engagement that are strikingly similar to those appearing in Islamic law and in the Saudi Tawhid textbooks: trade, for example, and possession or use of representational objects (p. 32). 13. Brotherhood members in Saudi Arabia were also in a position to support the ruling family in their attempts to challenge secular nationalism in the Arab states and assume a leadership role for themselves. In 1962, in an attempt to cultivate allies under the guise of Islamic solidarity and to create a leadership position for themselves in the Muslim world, the Saudis created the Muslim World League, led by prominent members of the Brotherhood and religious leaders of Saudi Arabia. According to Hamid Algar (2002: 49), the Wahhabi-Salafi stamp on the league was evident by the composition of its leadership: the league was headed by the mufti of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al al-Shaikh, a descendent of MIAW, and eight other members, among whom were a son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna and the two most prominent Muslim statesmen and brotherhood proponents of the time, Maulana Abul-A‘la Maududi, leader of the Pakistani Jama’at-I Islami, and Maulana Abul-Hasan Navdi of India. The work of each of these men is recommended for inclusion in a model Islamic curriculum for North American Islamic schools published in 1992 by Umm al-Qura University in Mecca. 14. For example, al-Minhaj.com is the website of the Salafi Society of North America, which lists the now-deceased and once powerful Saudi shaikh Muhammad al-Uthaimin among its sponsors. Similarly, the website www.salaf.com is clearly a Saudi site, including as it does MIAW, along with Ibn Taymiyya, among the pious ancestors of today’s Salafi adherents. 15. The Prophet said, “Whoever possesses the following three qualities will have the sweetness of faith: The one to whom Allah and His Apostle becomes dearer than anything else; who loves a person and he loves him only for Allah’s sake; who

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would hate to revert to unbelief as much as he would hate to be thrown into the fire.” Eleventh grade Hadith and Islamic Culture textbook for the Sharia and Arabic Sciences track (Summary, p. 6) 16. Meet the Legends of the World: http://www.famousmuslims.com/.

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9 Syria: Secularism, Arabism, and Sunni Orthodoxy Joshua Landis ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN SYRIAN SCHOOLS is traditional, rigid, and Sunni. The Ministry of Education makes little attempt to inculcate notions of tolerance for religious traditions other than Sunni Islam and Christianity. Members of other religions are excluded from heaven and must be converted or fought against. In effect, the Syrian government teaches that over half of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants—those who are not Christians or Muslims—will go to hell. In some respects this is an enlightened view, for no monotheistic tradition commonly admits the members of another faith into heaven. Quite possibly, Syria is the only Arab country that explicitly states in its Islamic school texts that Christians are admitted to paradise. Jews are not so fortunate. Although the Jewish religion—the Torah and the Jewish prophets—are considered divine, the Jewish people are condemned to God’s tortures because, it is said, they deny their prophets. Furthermore, because they are at war with Islam, they must be pushed out of the Islamic world altogether. At first view, one might expect Syria to promote greater liberalism in its religious instruction, particularly as concerns the many different sects and traditions within Islam itself. The reasons for this are many. Since the 1960s, Syria has been ruled by leaders belonging to a religious minority, the Muslim Alawi sect, who have vigorously suppressed Islamic fundamentalist movements and promoted the notion of ta‘ayyush or convivienda (live and let live) among Syria’s religious communities. Syria is home to many religious minorities, both Christian and Muslim. Moreover, until April 2005 it played a commanding role in the politics of Lebanon, a country in which no more than 20 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim. Most important, however, is the fact that Syria has been good to its minorities. No other Arab country offers its Christian and Muslim minorities greater security and equality than Syria.1 Nevertheless, Syria has chosen not to follow a path of religious liberal-

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ism but has instead for more than thirty-five years pursued an integralist policy of nation building under the Ba‘th Party, enlisting the education system in this project. Since coming to power in 2000, Bashar al-Asad has made a number of important educational reforms, including opening four private universities, the first in Syria’s history, and reducing the influence of Ba‘thism and military training in the educational system. So far, however, the Islamic textbooks used in Syrian schools have changed little. The Syrian School System and the Religion Curriculum Although religion class is an essential part of the Syrian curriculum throughout the twelve years of elementary and secondary school training, many students consider it the least important of their classes and claim to remember little of the actual content. Every student studies either Christianity or Islam for two to three hours a week, usually as the last subject in the school day, from the first grade to the twelfth.2 The grade, however, is not calculated in the students’ main annual grade point average. If a student fails religion class (saff al-diyana), he is not prevented from passing into the next year, as he would be if he failed one of the core subjects, such as Arabic or math. If, however, the student fails two classes, including religion, he or she is held back a year. When applying to university, a student’s grade point average is calculated without the inclusion of his grade for religion class. Even sports classes and military training (futuwwa) are given more importance than religion class, in that grades for these classes are factored into the student’s average. Consequently, students may stop studying for religion classes by their senior year, knowing that a low or failing grade will not prevent their getting into top university programs. I asked some twenty Syrians to describe the content of their religion classes in an attempt to gain an anecdotal idea of what Syrians remember studying. All described having to memorize verses from the Quran and Hadith; they all recalled learning about the five pillars of Islam and how to pray. All claimed to have learned general values, such as obeying parents and teachers and the importance of honesty and respect for other people. When asked about their instruction in jihad and how subjects such as Israel, Jews, and the West were treated, none could recall such matters being discussed in religion class—and doubted that they were part of the curriculum—even though they are, in fact, subjects included in the textbooks. One Syrian explained this collective amnesia by claiming, “It’s true. The textbooks are medieval and political, but at the end of the day everyone knows in these countries that you don’t pay attention to such classes.” Syrian students at the university level were dismissive of the thaqafa al-amma (general culture class), in which students learned Ba‘thist ideology. When I was

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a student at the University of Damascus in the 1980s, this class was universally referred to as sakhafa (silliness class). Bashar al-Asad did away with this subject in 2003 as part of his education reforms. All the same, the material taught in religion classes represent a worldview that is widespread in Syria, particularly among the ulama and religious classes, that Islam is the true religion that has made the Arabs great through history, a view that is reinforced on television and in other media.3 The Genesis of Arabist and Sunni Islamic Orthodoxy in Education The present school system was established in 1967, when Syria signed the Arab Cultural Unity Agreement with Jordan and Egypt. It introduced a uniform school ladder in the three countries—six years of primary, three years of lower secondary, or middle school, and three years of higher secondary schooling. It also established norms for universal curricula, examination procedures, and teacher training requirements for each level (“Education in Syria” 2003). Many textbooks printed in Egypt were used for years in Jordanian and Syrian schools, establishing an academic orthodoxy that guides textbook production today. The genesis of this Arab nationalist school system during the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser helps explain much of the pan-Arab and Sunni rigidity in the Syrian curriculum. In order to promote cultural and political unity among Arab peoples, Nasser’s academics hewed to a narrow and integralist vision of Arabism, just as they reduced Islam to the simple and rigid prescriptions of Sunni orthodoxy. They believed that to discuss the regional differences between Arabs and the sectarian differences between Muslims would open the door to internecine squabbling and discrimination, rather than promote tolerance and cohesion. Since 1967, the pan-Arab nationalist and Sunni Islamic orthodoxy in Arab pedagogy have remained a barrier to liberalism and the open discussion of religious and national diversity. For Syria’s Alawi leaders to back away from this orthodoxy would be politically dangerous and would cast doubt on their nationalist and Islamic credentials. The al-Asads have sought to conform to majority Sunni notions of Islam, rather than to enforce secularism or Western notions of separation between religion and state. Public and Private Schools Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Salah Jadid’s government nationalized over 300 Christian schools and seventy-five private Muslim schools (Mason 2003), which was a major blow to elite families and in particular to the Christian community. Private schools were of a superior standard, largely based on a Western model and often set up by foreign missions. Their nationalization left all schools under the control of the state, contributed to the near extinction of foreign-language fluency among a generation of

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Syrian schoolchildren, and contributed to the emigration of a great number of Christian families (Mouawad 2001). When Hafiz al-Asad took power in 1970, he moved to patch up relations with the Christian community and Sunni elite by relaxing the laws forbidding private education. Christians were quick to respond by reopening many of their private schools, and by 1978, some 10,000 students in Damascus, where the Christian population was roughly 200,000, were attending Christian schools (Kutschera 1978). This new attitude toward Christian schools was no doubt spurred by the president’s personal appreciation for them, for his wife, Anisa, had attended a Maronite school in Latakia run by nuns, and she sent her children, including Bashar, to the School of Lazarist Brothers in the same town. Since the early 1990s, wealthy Syrians of all confessions have been building private schools to accommodate the growing demand for superior education, and today, some 10 percent of secondary schools are privately funded (CMIP 2002a). When it comes to religious education, however, all students follow the same national curriculum whether attending a public or private school (Dina Kashour, personal communication 2004). The Syrian government is among the best in the Arab world at providing basic education to its citizens, and today, most Syrians are literate and go to school for more years than they have at any time in their history. According to World Bank statistics, some 93 percent of Syrian children enroll in primary school, although only 38 percent continue on through secondary school (World Bank 2003). In 2002, the government extended mandatory school attendance from the sixth to the ninth grade and also undertook an ambitious plan, backed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to extend preschooling into the countryside. That will inevitably reduce the illiteracy rate of Syrians, which in 2002 stood at 24 percent for men and women over fifteen years of age, and at 37 percent for women alone. The only religions taught in the Syrian school system are Islam and Christianity, and all students except Christians, who comprise between 10 percent and 14 percent of the population, receive formal training in Islam. All Muslim students use the same textbooks, whether they are Sunni or members of Syria’s Islamic minorities—Alawis (12 percent), Druze (3 percent), and Ismailis (1 percent)—whereas Christian students are divided into their own religion classes by church affiliation. Islamic Versus Arab Identity As a nation, Syria is not mentioned in the Islamic Education textbooks, as it is in the Syrian Constitution—although even there, it is not considered a distinct nation in its own right but is designated the “Syrian region” of the

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Arab nation. In Syria’s Islamic curriculum, only Arab and Islamic identities are evoked, and the two are intimately linked. Syria is far from being a secular state, even though Ba‘thism is often referred to, mistakenly, as a secular movement and a nonreligious version of Arab nationalism. Both founders of Ba‘thist thought, Michel Aflaq, a Christian, and Zaki al-Arsuzi, a Muslim, saw the necessity of appealing to the Islamic worldview of most Syrians. In 1940, Aflaq synthesized nationalism with religion, writing, “There is no fear that nationalism will clash with religion, for, like religion, it flows from the heart and issues from the will of God; they walk arm in arm” (Aflaq, quoted in Haim 1962: 243). In one of his more famous essays, published in 1943 to mark the Prophet’s birthday, Aflaq called for non-Muslim Arabs to “attach themselves to Islam and to the most precious element of their Arabness, the Prophet Muhammad,” for he was the greatest Arab nationalist (Carré 1993: 42–46).4 The eternal message of Arabism, he insisted, is identical to that of Islam. Both issue from the same divine source and creator and point in the same direction. Islam went into decline when non-Arabs were brought into the umma and corrupted its true meaning. Like the Salafis, the early Ba‘thists argued that to revive the eternal spirit of the Arab world, Arabs had to return to their roots, which he insisted were located in an Arab-Islamic message (Aflaq 1977: 55–56; Abu Jaber 1966: 129). Hence, Michel Aflaq did not try to take Islam out of Arabism; he sought to make Arabism the central tenet of Islam. Both Aflaq and Arsuzi stressed that the umma arabiyya, or Arab community, was the proper unit of analysis; both called for struggle against outsiders and alien influences; and both stressed that their message was the eternal message of the Arab nation, which was no different in its values and divine inspiration from that of Islam. Unlike Western secularism, Ba‘thism accepts the idea of politics as an arena that exists by virtue of a divinely ordained morality. The close identity between Arabism and Islam in Ba‘thist thought helps to explain why the two so easily coexist in the Syrian schoolbooks, where Islam is given primacy over Arabism as the engine of Arab greatness and virtue. The twelfth-grade text, for example, explains, “The revelation of Islamic principles transformed the Arabs into a unified community [umma] possessing a high human civilization which it spread to all people” (12: 149). Arabs, we learn, had many bad qualities before being reformed by Islam. They fought among themselves, drank alcohol, killed female babies, married many wives, were tribal and discriminatory, and worshiped idols. These bad traits were ended by Islam. Pre-Islamic Arabs were not all bad, however. Much of their morality was good. We are told that even before Muhammad revealed Islam, Arabs had superior moral qualities, such as “bravery, manliness, generosity, patience, abstinence, and the honoring of

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agreements, love of freedom and hospitality,” qualities that “run in their veins with their blood” (12: 149–152). Islam transformed Arabs from being a generous but divided group of sinners into a virtuous and unified people with a divine mission, which was to carry the Islamic message to other peoples so they might be elevated by Islam as well. Today, it is the responsibility of “the Arabs to carry the Islamic message to the entire world” because it is the highest form of humanity. This mission is more important today than ever before, the twelfth-grade text explains, because the world is now in a crisis of “complete materialism” and faces many “disasters, catastrophes and problems.” Chief among them is the evil of nuclear destruction (12: 156). These dangers threaten to destroy human values, but they can be turned back if people embrace the “spiritual and human values of Islam” (12: 156). “It is the duty of the Arab World to save humanity and human values” (12: 156). Thus, Syria’s Islamic textbooks teach that to be an Arab is good, but to be a Muslim is better, and being both is the highest form of humanity. Islam and Arabism are further linked, we find out, because to become Muslim is to become Arab. The spread of Islam and knowledge of the Quran, readers are told, “is the best way to Arabize non-Arabs and spread Arab thought and culture to hundreds of millions of non-Arabs,” because all Muslims feel that the Arabic language is “their language” (10: 211). Syrian children learn that not only should Islamic culture be spread to the rest of the world, but Arab culture and language should be spread as well, because the values of Islam and Arabism are inextricably linked and should serve as a model for others. The message for non-Muslims in these texts is that they cannot be the best Arabs. The Foundations of Islamic Government The government is to be an Islamic state without separation between religion and state. The student is constantly reminded that the Islamic state is a divine order whose wisdom, justice, and laws bear the “imprint of God” (12: 173). Although the texts make no mention of “democracy” or “republicanism,” they do insist on consultation and popular participation in government. All the same, when faced with the ultimate question of who should rule—man or God—God wins out. The Islamic ruler must confer with and be guided by a shura, or advisory council, as well as by the people (12: 168–171; 9: 130). We are told that “the Islamic community implements its power to choose its leader by voting and the free expression of opinion,” but the consultative process is not described in detail (12: 170). The ruler’s term of office is not limited to a defined period but can be extended indefinitely, so long as the people support the ruler. An Islamic ruler should take advice from his advisory council, which should be made up of “men of reli-

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gion and fiqh [jurisprudence] and of people who have specialties in all different walks of life” (12: 171). The primary duty of the ruler is to “follow the book of Allah and the Sunna of his Messenger by implementing Islamic life in all different fields, and he must protect Islam from its internal and external enemies” (12: 171). Though the ruler must be a Muslim and must know “the aims and judgments of sharia [Islamic law],” the texts do not explicitly state that he must have formally studied Islam or be an imam (12: 170–171). All the same, knowledge of Islam and its laws is the major qualification for all politicians and state employees. It is incumbent on citizens of the Islamic state to advise the ruler and show him the right path. Their responsibility is to observe his behavior and actions in order to direct him. If he persists in going astray and loses his qualification to rule entirely, the people are to “withdraw their trust from him” (12: 173). The ruler can be removed if Muslims agree unanimously to do so when he loses his ability to carry out his duties (12: 170). How this is to be accomplished is not explained, and no defined powers to limit the executive are given. The power and form of the legislative council is also not spelled out. A constitution giving defined power and sovereignty to the people is something the authors of these texts are unwilling to advocate. No doubt, the authors are circumspect about opposing the practices of the ruler in Syria, but more important, they are clear that sovereignty does not belong to the people but to God. Again and again the text repeats, “He made everything and acts in the affairs of his creation as He wishes. Man must accept what Allah has chosen for him” (12: 160). Consultation, not democracy, is the ideal of Islamic government according to the Syrian texts, because with consultation, Islamic government will be more perfect. If people feel responsible for government policies and laws, they will carry them out more carefully and happily. The point is not that citizens actually have power or that the ruler is their servant, but that if they are consulted by the ruler, they will be less likely to feel that they are his servants and will carry out the injunctions of God’s rule more willingly. The authors of the texts are bolder in discussing the judiciary. “Justice in Islamic government,” the authors proclaim, “is completely independent from the power of the ruler.” The judge is to rule according to sharia. “No one can change or manipulate this. The ruler, the judge, and the people are equal in submitting to the law of God” (12: 166). Although there is a place for ijtihad (independent judgment in theological or legal questions), it is limited (12: 167). The overriding principle of Islam is justice, we are told. “Neither emotions, family relations, friendship, wealth, poverty nor the power of the ruler should influence the court’s decision” (12: 167). Equally, Islam brings justice to all humankind. There is to be no favoritism of “the Arab over the foreigner, white people over blacks, the rich over the poor,”

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and “there is to be no discrimination based on religious sect (tawa’if) or social class in terms of rights and duties.” “All people are equal before the law” (12: 66). Christians and Jews as Protected Communities As members of a dhimma (protected community), Christian and Jewish citizens of the Islamic state enjoy certain rights equal to those of Muslims. In a section entitled, “The Rights of Non-Muslim Citizens,” the authors explain that non-Muslim minorities are called “ahl al-dhimma for whom Islam has organized many rights in addition to general human rights.” The most important of these are “equality between them and Muslims in terms of protection of life, money, and honor; freedom of religious belief, worship, and practice; and the freedom to apply personal law according to their beliefs.” These rights cannot be taken away from them so long as they are “within the framework of the dhimma of the Islamic state and under its protection” (12: 162). Syrian students in these passages are instructed that Islam advocates equality among all the People of the Book. Equal political rights, as opposed to civil and religious rights, are not extended to dhimma, however, as Muslims are to rule. The executive and the judicial branches of government should be staffed by Muslims. The legislature is not forbidden to dhimma, for the shura is to be open to people of diverse qualifications in order to represent the needs and experience of the community. All the same, because the leading qualification for a deputy is knowledge of Islam and fiqh, non-Muslims are put at a distinct disadvantage. Quite clearly, the notion of an Islamic state implies that non-Muslims are second-class citizens, who participate only tangentially in directing and carrying out the affairs of state. Although protected, they cannot lead. Heaven is accessible to Christians but denied to Jews. We are told that the first people to cross into heaven on the Day of Judgment are “Muhammad and his people.” They are succeeded by “the prophets and their followers” (10: 153). That means the followers of Moses and Jesus and indicates that all People of the Book—Christians and Jews—can go to heaven. However, in an earlier section of the tenth-grade text, we are told that the tribe of Israel “does not respect prophets for they killed some of them and maligned others, such as when they accused Moses of killing Aaron, committing adultery, and of having defects of the body.” Because of these sins, we are told, “the tribe of Israel deserves God’s tortures” (10: 82–83). Thus, Jews do not go to heaven, even if their prophets do. The texts deal with religious sectarianism as every literalist must—by blaming bad blood and squabbling between the sects on the nonbelievers for failing to recognize the true faith. The Syrian texts decry sectarianism (ta’i-

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fiyya) and the spirit of chauvinism it produces, yet they also insist that Islam is the best and most complete religion, a contradiction the ninth-grade text tries to resolve. God, students are instructed, intended all humanity to accept each new wave of religious revelation as it came down from heaven. God did not intend for the people of the world to resist each new phase of revelation and get mired in the earlier and more primitive phases of revelation, such as Judaism and Christianity. The resistance of Christians and Jews to embracing God’s final revelation and “all his prophets” makes them responsible for sectarianism. The reason God did not reveal Islam in one original revelation, we are told, as opposed to having sent down first the Torah and then the Gospels, is that humans needed to be gradually prepared and educated to recognize the full truth of Islam (9: 110). The Old and New Testaments are viewed as the prolegomena to the real thing, the spiritually advanced Quran. Thus, in line with classical Sunni views of revelation, a firm hierarchy of religions is established: Jewish scripture is the most primitive of the three revealed texts, Christianity is an incomplete advance on Judaism, and Islam is the final and complete message. Clearly, the difference in the treatment between Christians and Jews is a product of political circumstance. Because the Christian population of Syria has supported the state and is important in size (in 1947 it was estimated at 14 percent of the total, and today it is not less than 6.5 percent; see Fargues 1997) it is favored with entrance to heaven. The Jews are reviled and excluded from heaven in the Islamic textbooks because of Syria’s bitter war with Israel. To Syria’s credit, it expressly states in its Islamic classes that Christians will go to heaven. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, condemns Christians to damnation and categorizes them as unbelievers (kuffar) (CMIP 2002b). Atheists and Pagans At the very bottom of the hierarchy, beneath the revealed religions of the People of the Book, are the belief systems of the rest of humanity, who are categorized as “atheists and pagans.” Only one paragraph is devoted to them in the twelve years of Syrian schooling, and it is tucked away in six sentences in the ninth-grade text, apparently purposefully hidden under the subtitle, “Islam Fights Paganism and Atheism.” It explains that “pagans are those who worship something other than God, and atheists are those who deny the existence of God.” Islam must fight these two belief systems because they “are an assault to both instinct and truth.” We are told that these belief systems “contradict the principle of freedom of belief,” because “Islam gives freedom of belief only within the limits of the divine path,” which is defined as “a religion descended from heaven.” Because pagan

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religions were not revealed by God, they are considered an “inferior” form of belief that reflects an “animal consciousness.” How should Muslims deal with these peoples, who comprise half of humanity? Students are instructed that “Islam accepts only two choices for Pagans: that they convert to Islam or be killed” (9: 128). The reason for the burial of these lines in six sentences in the middle of one textbook is probably self-explanatory. Jihad and Israel The notion of jihad is explicitly linked to the struggle against Israel in most of the Syrian texts. In the chapter entitled, “Jihad in the Name of God,” in the ninth-grade textbook, students are taught the difference between jihad that is a fard kifayya (general duty), when only some Muslims from society are needed to fight the enemy (those serving in the military), and a fard ayn, when every Muslim—soldier and civilian—must engage in the struggle, whether by offering money for the war effort or by actually engaging in battle personally. Students are taught that at the present time, jihad is a fard ayn and imposed on everyone. The text explains: “Our jihad duty today is a fard ayn because our countries have been exposed to enemy attack and because part of our land has been occupied by Zionist gangs which threaten our very existence. It is therefore the duty of every Muslim to unite in one rank to take back his land and honor by every means possible” (9: 166). Schoolchildren are told that to be martyred while fighting for their country and faith is a privilege that will be rewarded not only in the next life but also in this life, because the families of those who have given their lives to defend the homeland and compatriots are rewarded by the state. Even if Syria as a nation is not referred to, the president makes cameo appearances from time to time, as in the following paragraph in the ninthgrade text. “The president-leader takes unlimited care of the families of martyrs in order to guarantee a life of freedom and honor for them, both financially and socially. The children of martyrs are provided with special care, education, and upbringing. The children of martyrs are given special schools with the most modern methods and ways of teaching. Last but not least, their residences are provided free” (9: 79). Although Asadism is manifest in the Syrian religious texts, references to the president are infrequent and have no comparison with Iraqi schoolbooks, in which Saddam Hussein was featured even in the most mundane exercises (Tierney 2003). In some Syrian texts, particularly during the early years of schooling, jihad is hardly mentioned. For example, the fifth-grade textbook, which was newly written in 2001—a year after Bashar al-Asad came to power—mentions jihad only twice and then only in passing. Moreover, it contains no mention of Israel and discusses the Jews, their prophets, and the Torah in a respectful manner (5: 20). It contains three chapters on the prophet Moses,

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which describe how he helped his people (banu Isra’il) escape from Pharaoh’s Egypt and which stress how Muslims must have faith in all the prophets equally without discriminating between them (5: 59). It must be added that the text does not explain that Moses took his people to the Promised Land and makes no link between the Israelites and Israel. All the same, the Jews are described as an unfairly oppressed people whom God has chosen for salvation and honored with a great prophet. By contrast, in the ninth-grade textbook originally written in 1969 and last revised in 1986, jihad is mentioned on twenty-two pages out of 200, and Israel is defined as an expansionist and colonialist enemy that is not only trying to take Arab and Islamic land but is also threatening the very existence of Islam. Because of this existential threat, war is the only solution, and a peace agreement is tantamount to surrender. “Our youth should ignore those traitors who encourage them to surrender to Israel. They should know that our conflict with our enemy is a conflict for existence, not for borders. Israel is an expansionist, colonialist enemy, which will not give up its colonialist plans unless forced to do so by the will of our people, who believe that martyrdom is the way to victory and liberation” (9: 66–67). Although some Syrians are careful to draw a distinction between Zionism and Jews, it is not a distinction made in Syria’s school texts. Israel is not a danger only because it is a powerful and expansionist state in the Islamic heartland, but because it is inhabited by Jews, who are a wicked and treasonous people. The following passage from the tenth-grade text explains why it is a danger to live with or near Jews. The Jews took advantage of Muhammad’s forgiveness in the old days. They exploited his forgiveness in order to deceive the Muslims and this is a characteristic of traitors and betrayers in every time and place. This is an indication of the evil enemy characteristics that are imbedded in the personality of the Jews. This confirms that it is dangerous to live with or near them. This danger threatens the existence of the Arab and Islamic world with destruction and disappearance. (10: 78)

Because the Jews seek to destroy the Islamic world, the only proper response for Muslims is to “eliminate” the Jews from their midst. That is stated unequivocally in the tenth-grade text: “The logic of justice requires the application of a single inescapable verdict on the Jews; namely, that their criminal intentions be turned against them and that they be eliminated [isti’salihim]. The duty of Muslims of our time is to pull together, to unite their ranks, and to wage war on their enemy until Allah hands down his judgment on them and on us” (10: 79). It is clear that political context provides the stimulus for the textbooks’ expressed antipathy toward Israel and the Jews, as well as for the continuity of this antipathy over time as the conflict remains unresolved.

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Sunni Islam and Excluded Others: Alawis, Druze, and Ismailis Over 16 percent of Syrians are heterodox Muslims, yet no mention of the different sects of Islam is made in the textbooks. Not only are Alawis, Druze, and Ismailis not mentioned, but no mention is made of Shi‘a Islam as a whole. Islam is presented as a monolithic religion, and Sunni Islam is it. Sunni children are given no guidance on how they should relate to or think of Muslims whose ritual practices and interpretation of the Quran differ from their own. Even more troubling, perhaps, is that heterodox Muslim children are given no explanation for why their communities practice Islam differently than the instructions provided in their school texts. Because of the narrow Sunni definition of Islam given in the texts, non-Sunni Muslims are forced to either deny their communal differences or to avow that they belong to a religion that is not considered Islam. It is quite common in Syria to hear Sunnis claim that heterodox Muslims, whether Druze, Ismailis, or Alawis, are ghulat (theological extremists) or arfad (apostates), not Muslims, because they do not perform the five pillars of Islam and because they are abadat albashar (worshipers of humans). That is a reference to the Druze deification of al-Hakim, the Alawi veneration of Ali, and the Ismaili reverence for the Agha Khan—all of whom are considered purely mortal by Sunnis, just as Christ is. The accusation that heterodox Muslims are polytheists and enemies of Islam is an old one, but not yet a wholly academic issue. The Muslim Brotherhood made these accusations a central justification for their uprising against the al-Asad regime in 1981–1982, and such accusations remain potentially explosive should political instability return to Syria. Identity and Self-Identification When I asked Druze friends and acquaintances what percentage of Syrians accepted the notion that the Druze are Muslims, the unanimous answer was “3 percent”—the percentage of Druze in Syria. Although Druze in Syria define themselves as Muslims and are officially categorized as such, they are not viewed as Muslims by many Syrians. They are also set apart by having their own Druze religious courts (madhhabi), granted them under the French and officially recognized by the Syrian government in 1948 following the 1947 Druze uprising (Landis 1998). Evidently, the Druze were also offered the opportunity to have their own religion classes taught in schools in the Druze Mountains, but refused because Druze shaikhs wished to preserve the traditional secrecy of their religion (Ihsan Janbay, personal communication, 2003). All other Muslims, including the heterodox sects, were grouped together under the Law of Personal Status passed in 1953 under President Adib alShishakli. Based on the Egyptian example, this law integrated all Muslims,

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except the Druze, into one synthetic court system based on Hanafi law (one of the four schools of Islamic law) and makes no distinction among them (Landis 1998). Alawis, who insisted they belong to the Jaafari Shi‘a mathhab (Twelver Shi‘a Islam) as early as 1920, despite French attempts to encourage them to define themselves as a separate religion, have persisted in their drive to be recognized as mainstream Muslims ever since (Ihsan Janbay, personal communication, 2003). This insistence has brought rich political rewards—Alawis enjoy all the rights of Muslims and can hold the office of president, which must be filled by a Muslim, according to the constitution. Nevertheless, Alawis have paid a steep price for political success by denying their distinct religious tradition. In essence, they have given up their religion for political power and equality. The Alawis I asked to speculate on the success of this bargain were considerably more optimistic about the percentage of Syrians who considered them Muslim than were their Druze counterparts. Several claimed that 50 percent of Syrians or more accepted them as Muslims. The reason Alawis give for their success is that they try harder than the Druze to be like Sunni Muslims and to assimilate to the textbook version of Islam. One native of Latakia, an Alawi woman who is in her thirties and has an advanced degree, gave the following explanation: We are accepted as Muslims because we have worked hard to be accepted. We have copied the Sunnis. Some Alawis cover their hair and wear hijab, either for personal reasons or when they marry Sunnis. We don’t eat ham, and even when we do, we don’t eat it in front of people. We fast—or we pretend to fast out of respect for others; we don’t eat in front of them during Ramadan. We have built mosques in our major towns. Some Alawis go to Friday prayer and to the hajj. My grandfather was a modern shaikh who encouraged everyone to pray at the mosque in Jable. The charitable foundation established and run by Jamil al-Asad [the brother of former president Hafiz al-Asad] finances hundreds of Alawis to go on hajj, and the women working for the organization have to wear the hijab. Hafiz al-Asad prayed in the mosque and fasted. When his mother and son died, he prayed for them in the mosque. He built the Na’isa mosque in Qardaha, his home town, in the name of his mother. All these things are proof to Sunnis that we try hard to be part of Islam and be like Sunnis. They accept it. We have succeeded.

The Muslim identity of Alawis in Syria is practically impossible to define because open debate about sectarian questions is discouraged. Alawi scholars claim publicly that differences between their practices and those of Twelver Shi‘ites are due to ignorance on the part of some Alawis after long years of oppression (Anderson 1955). The attempt at religious conformity by Alawis raises the question of how the socialization process, of which the religious curriculum is a part, actually works.

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When I asked my Alawi informant if the Druze were accepted as Muslims, she answered: They have their identity. They don’t pretend that they are Muslims. Of course, I don’t know a lot about them because we don’t have any in Latakia. I think they are classified as non-Arab in the minds of most people. They are separate and a small group; most live in Suwayda. Our Sunni Damascene friends always talk about them as strange and different. “Ya latif! Shoo byakaloo!” they would say, as if they eat horrible things. Of course it isn’t only their food they are talking about. And they say these things about the Druze to us without hesitation, and don’t consider that we [the Alawis] are like the Druze. The Druze don’t pretend to be part of Islam. I never saw a mosque in Suwayda. There is only Islam and Christianity in Syria. Those are the only two legal definitions of religion. There are no others: no Druze, no Alawi, and no Ismaili.

When I asked the Alawi if she had made a mistake in suggesting that people classified the Druze as “non-Arabs” rather than as “non-Muslims,” she said, “no,” and explained: To be Arab, in the end, you have to be Muslim; everything else is not that important. Ultimately, Islam is the measurement of ‘Aruba (Arabism). A big part of the rejection of the Christians as Arabs is their feeling of belonging (intima’), which is not Arab. Their blood isn’t Arab; their religion isn’t Arab. They feel connected to Europe and France. Why do they immigrate to Canada, America, and Europe? Muslims get rejected for immigration because they aren’t part of the West, but Christians are part of it. Ninety percent of the immigrants from Latakia that I know are Christians. It is their big ambition to go to America. And they are Easterners like us. Why? They live very well in Syria. They are better off than most of us. It’s not because of economic need. Also, the names of their children—they are all Western: Joan, Andrew, Charles, Lara, George, Hanna. . . . None of these names are Arab. They used to name their kids Khalil, Abdullah, Hasiiba, etc. This is an indication that they don’t feel Arab. What is the meaning of these names? They have no meaning in Arabic. They wear gold chains around their necks and wrists. They say, “merci, bonjour, bonsoir, and bonne fête.” I used to tell my Christian boyfriend that everyone would know he wasn’t Arab if he said these things, but he didn’t care. The Christians criticize the Sunna [short for the ahl al-Sunna, meaning Sunni Muslims] in a terrible way—how they are religious and how they treat their women. They are embarrassed by Islam and don’t defend the Arabs. In the end, the Sunna are the Arabs. We [the Alawis] don’t speak about Islam like the Christians do. We are Arab.

The identification of Arabness and Islam was total for my Alawi informant. She insisted that because Christians believe in the trinity, they cannot be real Arabs. “Because Christians cross themselves and say, ‘the Father, the

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Son, and the Holy Ghost,’” she argued, “they deny Islam.” The first thing “we had learned in Islam class is that ‘God has no equal and never gave birth.’” Because the Christian espousal of the trinity denies this Islamic injunction, she claimed, “they cannot feel Arab and be Arab.” That an Alawi would internalize this association between Sunni Islam and Arabness so completely could be seen as testament to the effectiveness of Islamic education in Syrian schools. When I remarked that Christians are just as Arab as Muslims and constituted the majority in the Arab world before the Islamic conquest, I elicited a laugh. “Try to convince Muslims of that,” my Alawi informant responded. The socialization process in Syria is tipped firmly in favor of a religious rather than secular notion of ethnicity and identity. The pressure on Alawis to conform to a Sunni religious norm is tremendous. Because Christians are explained as “bad” or incomplete Muslims in Syrian textbooks, they also become bad Arabs. Nowhere do Syria’s Islamic textbooks explain that Christians are Arabs equal to Muslims. The Syrian government and the Ba‘th Party ostensibly espouse secularism and equality between all Arabs regardless of their religion. This message of equality is directly undermined by the state Islamic curriculum. By teaching that Muslims should rule over non-Muslims and that they are the best Arabs as measured by their faith in God, the government contradicts the message that Christian and Muslim Arabs are equal (11: 227). The Politics of Sectarian Integration Can the hyperconformism of Syria’s nation-building project actually work? All nations have pursued “melting pot” strategies of one fashion or another to create a unified citizenry, but Syria’s effort to redefine religion is more ambitious than most. One can argue that such a project is necessary because sectarianism poses such an important threat to unity and has been a major cause of national fragmentation and weakness in the region, as the cases of Lebanon and Iraq have made plain. Syrian religious education may serve to narrow sectarian differences and help avoid the religious strife that threatens open political systems in the region. In short, it can be argued that Syria’s illiberalism is good for national cohesion. There are indications that at some level, religious redefinition is taking place in Syria. Many Alawis and Druze today define themselves as Muslims first and Alawis and Druze second. That would not have been the case sixty years ago. Today Alawi and Druze youth know almost nothing about the historical origins and philosophical richness of their own religions, but they do know quite a bit about Sunni Islam, thanks to the national Islamic education. Their knowledge of the Quran gives them a common religious language with Sunnis that did not previously exist. The profound impact of religious education on identity is readily apparent when one considers the dramatic change in reli-

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gious attitudes within the al-Asad family itself. Hafiz al-Asad’s father, Sulayman, did not believe that the Alawis would ever be accepted in Muslim Syria, and so in the 1930s he signed, along with five other Alawi notables, a letter to the French asking that the Alawi territory be attached to Lebanon and not to Syria. The petition argued that: The Alawis refuse to be annexed to Muslim Syria because, in Syria, the official religion of the state is Islam, and according to Islam, the Alawis are considered infidels. . . . The spirit of hatred and fanaticism imbedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion. There is no hope that the situation will ever change. Therefore, the abolition of the Mandate will expose the minorities in Syria to the dangers of death and annihilation, not to mention that it will annihilate the freedom of thought and belief.5

Sulayman al-Asad’s anxiety about being forced into a state of Muslim Arabs is palpable in his petition to the French. When the quasi-independent state of the Alawis was united with the rest of Syria in 1946, Sulayman’s heirs had little choice but to reverse course and struggle to win acceptance for Alawis among Sunnis as Muslims and as Arabs. That has been their national strategy since. Another case in point is the contrast between Israeli and Syrian Druze; the former do not identify as Muslims, whereas the latter do. In Israel, the Druze are not officially defined as Muslim and accept their status as a separate religion, which affords them greater rights and national benefits than Muslims. By any measure, Syria has made great strides in bringing the heterodox sects into the Muslim fold since independence. The process may not be complete, but it is far from what it was in the 1940s and has greatly assisted the sense of common community among Syrians. All the same, Syria’s drive to integration leaves little room for discussing differences between religious groups. The straightjacket of orthodoxy may eventually produce a backlash. Will the Islamic minorities really abandon their traditional religions and embrace official Islam? Liberalism rather than denial and enforced assimilation may ultimately prove to be a necessary strategy for coexistence. Conclusion: Textbooks, Nation Building, and the Ba‘th Syria’s Islamic education, mandatory in all grades of primary and secondary education, is part of the government’s larger strategy of nation building. Since the Ba’th Party came to power in the 1960s at the height of the region’s pan-Arab nationalist ascendancy, its members have committed the government to a policy of eliminating all subnational differences among Syrians, whether they spring from regionalism, economic class, tribalism,

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or religion. Islamic instruction in Syrian schools serves this integralist agenda by inculcating a narrow brand of Sunni Islam in all Syrian Muslims, regardless of sect. Though many of the textbooks have been rewritten since the 1960s, and all have undergone revisions, the main thrust of Syria’s educational project has changed little since it was first established in 1967. The religion curriculum, however, contradicts the Ba‘th Party’s original impetus to secularism. By setting out a clear hierarchy of virtue among peoples, with Muslims at the top of the scale as God’s preferred people and Christians, Jews, polytheists, and atheists falling below them in descending order, Syria’s Islamic texts undercut the notion that Syrian citizens are equal. Non-Muslims are defined as strangers to the Arabo-Islamic project, who enjoy rights so long as they are “under Muslim protection.” Indeed, the Arab and Islamic missions as described in the texts are so closely identified with each other that schoolchildren may easily confuse ethnicity with religion to assume that heterodox Muslims are lesser Arabs and Christians hardly Arab at all. The politics behind Syria’s Islamic education have been guided by a delicate sectarian compromise. Pressure from the Sunni majority to include Islam in the curriculum as a defining characteristic of national identity has been overwhelming. In 1973 Hafiz al-Asad was forced to give Islam an integral place in the new Syrian constitution. Pressured by widespread popular protests, the government included the controversial article that the president of the republic had to be a Muslim. Hafiz al-Asad conceded to the majority demand to enshrine Islam in the nation’s schools and constitution, but he did so while pursuing an aggressive policy of redefining the Alawis legally and socially as Muslims. In essence, Alawis have sacrificed their religion, or perhaps more correctly, they have converted to mainstream Islam as the price for political power and full inclusion in the nation. Syrian Christians have paid a heavier price for this Islamic compromise. Even though they have full national and legal rights in Syria, they have been excluded from the Islamized spirit of Syrian Arabism. They have not been left out completely, however. The Syrian texts teach that the Christians will go to heaven, and they draw a clear distinction between Christians, who have been faithful to the nation, and Jews, who have not. Many Syrian Christians, having lost the battle over secularism following al-Asad’s retreat from Salah Jadid’s radicalism, have given up trying to conform to an Arab identity and instead have sought refuge in the notion of being Syrian. Because Islam has compromised their hope of assimilating to an ideal Arab nationality, they adopt a Syrian civic spirit that eschews religio-ethnic boundaries for geographical boundaries. It should be noted that Syria has not ceded the Ministry of Education to extremist clerics, as have some other Middle Eastern countries. The textbooks espouse an Islam that is traditional and Sunni but not “fundamental-

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ist.” The government killed close to 20,000 in its campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and has since pursued an unwavering policy of stamping out fundamentalist opposition, at times working closely with the United States. A clear sign that radical Islamists have not had a hand in defining the curriculum is the absence of notions of takfir, or declaring others to be unbelievers, as expressed by radicals such as Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden. Jihad, though widely discussed and advocated in the texts, is limited to Israel, Syria’s national enemy. The West is not singled out for jihad or described as unbelieving. That being said, Syria’s drive to suppress open discussion of religious diversity and to promote Islamic conformism is anything but liberal. Diversity within Islam does not exist within the world of Syrian textbooks. The anti-Israeli sentiment prevalent in the textbooks is not limited to Zionists or Israelis but is generalized to include all Jews. The texts frequently repeat that Islam supports human rights and human equality and forbids all forms of discrimination, but at the same time, in line with quranic injunction, religious difference is singled out as the appropriate indicator for distinguishing good people from bad. The effect of such mixed, and not-so-mixed, textbook messages on the thinking of Syrians is open to question. Meyrav Wurmser, in her study of Syrian textbooks, concludes that the Ba‘thist government in Syria will have a very hard time making peace with Israel because recognizing the Jewish state will shake the ideological and structural “foundations of Syria’s Ba‘thist regime.” Peace would call into doubt emergency rule and notions of perpetual revolution and sacrifice that bolster Ba‘thist rule, not to mention the many injunctions against trusting Jews and allowing them to continue their occupation of Islamic lands (Wurmser 2000: 54). Many Arabs argue against this dire interpretation. Munthar Haddadin, a former Jordanian minister who was a leading negotiator of the Jordanian peace agreement with Israel, insisted to me that Wurmser’s argument was wrong. “It is all political,” he said. “Once the leaders decide they want peace and negotiate with Israel, they will rip up the textbooks and write new ones. We used to have the same anti-Semitism in our textbooks before peace. Did it stop us?” (Personal communication, 2003). Supporting this point of view is the fact that Egypt and Jordan, if only on the government-to-government level, have made peace with Israel, despite textbooks that were much the same as Syria’s, textbooks that, incidentally, were not changed afterward. Keeping in mind the minimal time spent on religious instruction in schools and the lack of importance credited to religion in the overall curriculum, what textbooks say may have only limited influence in shaping public attitudes. Bashar al-Asad has called for reform of Syria’s Islamic curriculum, but since his accession to the presidency, few changes have been made. The

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irony in Syria is that so long as minorities have the upper hand in politics, reform of the religious curriculum is unlikely. The political arrangement in Syria, as it now stands, is for the Alawi president to mollify the Sunni population and the ulama (religious authorities) by allowing them a free hand in public instruction while curtailing their political influence. The insecurity of the Alawi community’s own Islamic identity severely limits the president’s ability to tinker with Islamic instruction. In fact, it creates a dynamic in which the ulama who cooperate with the government feel compelled to conservatism in order to preserve their dignity in front of a public that questions the Islamic status of the Alawis. In keeping with the “Nixon-going-toChina” principle, Syria may have to wait for a Sunni president before greater liberalization of its religion curriculum is possible. That, of course, is the rosy prediction. Due to the rise of political Islam in the Islamic world, liberalization seems a distant possibility. Other “secular” states in the region, such as Egypt, have ceded greater influence to conservative Muslims in education, despite having Sunni rulers. The future likelihood in Syria is that nonMuslims will continue to immigrate to countries that offer them citizenship with equality, as they are doing throughout the region (Sennott 2002). Textbooks Cited This study is based on seven school texts, all titled Islamic Education, for the fourth, fifth, seventh, and ninth to twelfth grades, prepared for the 2002/2003 school year by the Ministry of Education. The textbooks are long, ranging from 150 pages in the fourth-grade text up to 240 pages in the twelfth-grade text, and have no illustrations of any kind. There has been little change in the content of the Islamic Education textbooks over the years; the average text has not been revised for about ten years. The seventh-grade text, for example, was written in 1967 and last revised in 1981, and the twelfth-grade text was written in 1969 and last revised in 1997. The fifthgrade text, written in 2001, is the only text among these seven that has been rewritten under Bashar al-Asad. Notes I would like to thank my wife, Manar Kachour Landis, for explaining the Syrian education system to me and for assisting in the research for this chapter 1. Syrian Jews are an exception to this rule. Almost all have left Syria since 1947. For a spirited defense of Syria’s treatment of Christians, see Glen Chancy, “Leave Syria Alone,” April 2, 2004, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/ chancy4.html. 2. Before 1952, instruction in the Islamic faith was compulsory in all schools, even those of other creeds. President Adib Shishakli modified this rule by making

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religious instruction compulsory only in the faith to which the individual student subscribed, which was “an important concession to the Christian sects and a step towards genuine religious toleration.” Public Record Office, “Suppression of Muslim Brotherhood 1952,” Pollock to Anthony Eden, 22 January 1952, Foreign Office, 98916 EY1016/2. 3. Two recent examples of this are the anti-Semitic book about the famous Jewish blood libel case in Damascus in the 1840s, written by the Syrian minister of defense, Mustafa Talas, Fatir Sihyun [The Matzah of Zion], Damascus: Dar Talas, 1986; and Al-Shatat (The Diaspora), the Syrian-produced Ramadan TV special that aired in twenty-nine parts during October–November 2003 on the Lebanese Hizbullah-affiliated Al-Manar television station. See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 432, “Al-Hayat Highlights Large Popularity of Syrian Defense Minister’s Blood Libel Book at Syrian International Book Fair,” http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?. 4. On Aflaq’s attempts to deal with Islam, see Farah 1984, Babikian 1977, Lavan 1967, and Haim 1962. 5. On the Alawis under the French, see Landis 1997, Chap. 2. On the effort of Alawis to gain recognition as Twelver Shi‘ites, see Batatu 1999 and Kramer 1987.

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10 Turkey: Sanctifying a Secular State Ozlem Altan

IN THE SUMMER OF 1999, one of the ways I was getting ready to start a

Ph.D. program in New York was by obsessively taking pictures of everyone I loved and knew that I would miss. One of the inevitable models was my grandmother, who was extremely reluctant to pose for a camera. When she finally agreed to take part in a picture and came into the garden, where I had my camera set on a tripod, she had one of her biggest surprises in store for me: she was not wearing her headscarf, which had always seemed to me an inseparable part of her. Without my having to ask, she explained why: “Foreigners will see this picture, isn’t that so? Let them see we are laik, not bigoted.” There are many complicated facets to this statement, uttered by a woman in her late seventies. Laik, the Turkish synonym for the French term laique, usually denotes secularism but is also equivalent to “modern.” The opposite of laik is not nonsecular or religious but bigoted: a totalizing statement that puts into question even her own simple act of religiosity. Yet, the same person would put on her scarf, once more, after her picture was taken. So it is a momentary awareness that the headscarf represents bigotry in the eye of the foreigner that prompted my grandmother to take it off. Entangled in one trivial moment were notions of modernity and secularism, both personal and political, and official discourse. The picture is on my wall right now, and as I glimpse it over my computer, I try to form a mental map of the road between an official discourse of secularism and religion as the pillars of the republic, and a personal statement seemingly so far away from the politics of running a country. A relatively less studied aspect of the relationship between Islam and the state in Turkey is the universal religious education in schools to which every Turkish citizen is exposed for at least five and up to eight years. The literature usually discusses contemporary religion classes in two ways: On the one hand, their introduction into the curricula is seen as a major com197

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promise from Kemalist secularism. That is to say, it is discussed as a radical shift from the secular ideals of the early republican period, a shift occurring as a result of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis adopted in the 1980s. On the other hand, it has been argued that compulsory religion classes, together with other legal and institutional practices such as the Directorate of Religious Affairs, represent the state exercising control over religion. My aim in this chapter is to move beyond these explanations through an analysis of religion classes and the texts taught in them. I contend that describing the secular practice in Turkey as state control over the religious sphere and universal schooling in religion as a manifestation of this phenomenon is a correct but insufficient observation. A thorough analysis of various aspects of public religious education allows us to address the following questions: What implications do secularism and Islam have in the Turkish context? What is the state’s role in the creation, reproduction, and transformation of their content? How do other actors—teachers and students—participate in this process? What do the particulars of this education tell us about interpretations of official Islam and about the more general project of molding an evolving national identity? In doing so, I argue the following: First, not only are these classes sites in which a coherent and synthetic official religious knowledge is transmitted, but the texts are rigged with tensions and contradictions that specifically have to do with questions of what secularism and Islam entail. Second, the books take up ideas of nationhood, militarism, and solidarity as much as, and sometimes more than, the pillars of Islam and religious belief. The overwhelming presence of these themes prompts us to seek explanations beyond a mere transmission of controlled knowledge about Islam and to be cognizant of a larger process of socialization that functionalizes religion and attempts to use it to legitimize official ideologies of nationhood. Third, the way these issues are taken up, both in religion textbooks and supplementary materials provided for teachers, in particular the material on nationalism, militarism, and capitalism, engage contemporary issues in which there is an official interest. Fourth, on the receiving end, the specific design of textbooks, their place in the overall curriculum, and the mutually alienating relationship of students with their teachers lead students to see what is taught in religion classes as either trivial or obvious. Methods and Design The material that is analyzed in this chapter comes from sources that were explored over the course of six months in 2001. First, I analyzed textbooks that are currently used in the religion classes of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Although they are not the only set in use, the very strict supervision of the content of books by the Ministry of Education ren-

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ders different sets of textbooks interchangeable. In order to understand the official objectives of religious education, I also analyzed government publications housed in the archives of the ministry in Ankara, as well as periodicals that took up broader issues related to the Turkish education system. Finally, I conducted a series of ten interviews with former students from urban middle-class families who had gone through the Turkish education system, purposefully excluding students in religious-track high schools because my objective was to understand the meanings and impact of religious education in lay institutions. In addition, I also interviewed fifteen religion teachers and visited a variety of schools in Istanbul that would correspond to those of students I interviewed. My objective was to place religion textbooks in dialogue with teachers and students, allowing me to establish a comparative framework where the text, its transmitters, and recipients talk about the same thing. The Origins of Secularism in Turkey Turkey has long been viewed as a country where the establishment of the nation-state was accompanied by a secularization process in the 1920s and 1930s, as part of a modernization program aiming to restructure the state on a Western model. The period that followed would be one of struggle between Kemalist builders of Turkish nationalism and religious conservatives and liberal Westernists who both sought to restore the sultanate. The new government introduced secularizing changes in the structure of government in order to assert its legitimacy and suppress challenges from political rivals. In 1924, just after the Agha Khan of British India moved to support the conservatives by stressing the importance of the caliphate for the Islamic world, and the last sultan, Abdülmejit, insisted on assuming the title of caliph and activating the authority of his position, the National Assembly deposed him, abolished the caliphate, and banished the Ottoman dynasty from Turkey. At the same time, a constitutional amendment abolished the Ministry of Religious Law and Foundations and established the Directorate of Religious Affairs to “enlighten” the public with the “right” religion: religious officiants were to confine their services within the boundaries of Kemalist laicism, and these officiants were rendered employees of the state (Ozankaya 1993: 215, Tarhanli 1993: 76, 167). Thus the directorate was not necessarily designed to drive religion out of the public realm but rather to articulate the kind of religiosity considered publicly acceptable. Following the 1925 Kurdish rebellion, an extraordinary Maintenance of Order regime was established that remained in force until 1929, giving the Kemalists free rein to make sweeping legal and social changes: in order to obfuscate visible social and religious distinctions, all men were compelled

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to abandon the fez in favor of hats with brims; institutions of popular Islam, such as Sufi Brotherhoods and visitation to saints’ tombs, which had even greater influence over the masses than orthodox Islam, were abolished; the Gregorian calendar replaced the Muslim calendar, which is based on the year of the hijra and the lunar cycle; Greenwich Mean Time became the basis for setting the clock; and a new Turkish alphabet with Latin script replaced the Arabic-Persian script. In 1928, the explicit recognition of Islam as the state religion and the mandate to implement the divine law of Islam were removed from the constitution. In 1937, secularism was included in the constitution as one of the founding principles of the republic, meaning, in the words of Minister of Internal Affairs Sükrü Kaya, that the state does not aim to interfere with the individual’s freedom of conscience, but only to prevent “religion from interfering in the affairs of the state” (Özek 1962: 483; translations are mine unless otherwise noted). Secularization entailed the abolition of the Islamic family code and Islamic courts and the establishment of the Turkish family code, along with new civil, criminal, and commercial codes based on Swiss and Italian legislation. The goal was for Turkey to be counted among the Western nations, in line with nationalist discourse that was attempting to redefine Turkish identity in Western terms, distanced from its Ottoman legacy. Modernization at all costs was the objective of Kemalist secularism, and religion, as Minister of Justice Mahmut Esat Bozkurt wrote in his “Justification” for the new Turkish civil code, is a force that is always abused by those who would oppose reform and progress. “The Turkish nation,” he wrote, “whose sole aim is to adopt the standards of modern civilization, should conform to the rules of the West no matter what the cost” (Bozkurt 1970: 28). The objective of Kemalist secularism was to modernize at all costs, and history was perceived to be full of groups abusing religion in order to prevent progress. In this context, laicism emerged as the precautionary principle against those who would “abuse” religion for their private motives and threaten the newly established political order. In other words, laicism was adopted as “the principle that would provide the dynamism of the targeted changes” (Özek 1962: 508). In Kemal Atatürk’s words, “Religion is a necessary institution. It is impossible for nations to continue their existence without religion. Yet religion is nothing more than the tie between the human being and God. Therefore, the bigoted classes should not be allowed to abuse religion. Those who profit out of religion are abominable. This is what we are against and will not let happen” (quoted in Kislali 1997: 32). From his own words, Atatürk is understood to be against religion polluted with unwarranted and “wrong” interpretations, not the “right” Islam (Parla 1992a: 288). The “right” religion is said to be the one purified of all

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kinds of superstitions and detrimental traditions that have the potential to curb modernization, and this cleansing would naturally be carried out by the state. Nevertheless, Kemalist laicism did not mean being without religion or morality based on Islam. The “right” Islam, assumed to be in harmony with science, would continue to exist, but under the custody of the state (Parla 1992a: 276). Religion in School Textbooks in Secular Turkey How did Islam under state custody come to be a compulsory subject in Turkish schools? Early republican political history has been usually discussed in terms of a radical secularization effort that drove religion out of the public sphere (Özek 1962; Madan 1997: 154–155; Göle 1996; Esposito 2000). At the same time, however, “popular” Islam continued to function as a political rival, prompting authoritarian attempts to define and control the definition of “right” and “rational” Islam through various legal and institutional changes (Özek 1962; Kiran-Thebaut 1998: 69, 75–76; Parla and Davison 1998; Tarhanli 1993; Ahmad 1996: 53–82). Since the 1950s, a politics of inclusion in the face of rising discontent has evolved, coming to a head in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup, when military leaders and the politicians under their wings saw the leftist political organizations as the main culprits for the civil disturbances that had escalated before the intervention. As a result, a new national identity known as the Turkish-Islamic synthesis was formulated, and its most eminent feature was the introduction of compulsory, standardized religion classes in primary, middle, and high schools. Religion classes, which had been removed from the public school curricula in 1940, only to be reintroduced in 1949 as electives, were being made compulsory for the first time. This attempt to reconcile Islamic sentiment with Turkish nationalism is popularly seen as a sea change for Kemalist secularism. In 1996, the armed forces first declared that Islamic fundamentalism was becoming a serious threat to national security, and the ideological controversy around women’s Islamic attire was one manifestation. A year later, the National Security Council (NSC) asked Necmettin Erbakan, the prime minister and head of the Welfare Party, to take action to protect the secular pillar of the republic. Ultimately, however, Erbakan, pressured by the military, was forced to resign, and two political parties that placed a return to Islamic morals and practice at the core of their agenda were shut down. Furthermore, education policies were once more changed, resulting in the extension of universal education to eight years (thereby closing down the middle sections of imam-hatip [prayer-leader and preacher] schools). The texts I have studied are the ones revised in that period.

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Textbook Islam: Secularized, Functionalized, and Turkish The power of these books stem from the fact that they are able to fix a certain truth and transmit it to the majority of the population. They are marred, however, by contradictions and omissions that undermine their aura of factuality. Thus it is revealing to look at what is included and what is not, the specific way in which issues are placed in the curriculum, and the ways in which knowledge is simplified for popular consumption. One such issue is how the official ideology of secularism and the fact that the state provides compulsory religious education are reconciled. For this purpose, Islamic knowledge is reformulated and presented in a way that functionalizes Islam, equating religious study with any other subject that “helps the students acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and perceptions and develop their personalities” (Selcuk 2000b: 207).1 In this context certain aspects of religion are rationalized extensively: for example, ablution helps one keep sufficiently clean (6: 45–47), daily prayers require discipline, helping one to become organized (6: 56), and fasting is good for one’s health (6: 70). By the same token, religious instruction is represented as necessary because a correct teaching of Islam makes it “practically useful” (Starrett 1998: 9) as the source of socially acceptable morality and spirituality that is supposed to help students resolve everyday difficulties. Precisely because religious instruction is transformed into a set of ordered knowledge that requires specialization, it is easier for the state to justify the teaching of Islam because “not all parents, not all families, can do this, or know enough themselves about religion” (an Egyptian schoolteacher, quoted in Starrett 1998: 104). Hence mastering the subject on the part of students requires the guidance of teachers (state employees) who already have sufficient expertise. The teaching of religion is also useful for controlling the kind of Islam to which students are exposed. One of the arguments justifying religious education presented in a 2000 Ministry of Education publication is that if teaching religion is neglected, there is the danger of “others” “brainwashing” the students (Selcuk 2000b: 211). Religious education “enables students to contemplate” these “others” through its provision of the “correct” information about religion and its ability to raise the consciousness of students (Selcuk 2000a: 11). At the same time, the ministry anticipates potential accusations of brainwashing on the part of the state itself. One way this ministry publication attempts to head off such accusations is by arguing that religious training is not indoctrination because the aim is “not to decree what is to be chosen but rather to teach the act of choosing” (Selcuk 2000b: 215). However, religious studies are being presented at a time in which a highly articulate group of Islamist intellectuals are voicing alternative visions of modernity and gaining a significant following among the people.

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That presents an unsolvable dilemma for the ministry, in that once “the person learns the ability to think on his/her own, there is always the chance that he/she will not think the way he has been taught” (Selcuk 2000b: 213). Another point stressed in this curriculum is the compatibility between Islam and secularism: Islam promotes free will, protects the freedom of conscience of non-Muslims, and does not have a priesthood like Christianity that could exercise restrictions on the state, sciences, and arts in the name of religion (8: 53–54). Moreover, secularism is described as something that Islam promotes as well. Because secularism is a principle that guarantees freedom of belief and rationality in dealing with daily affairs and sees religion as private, the history of Islam is depicted in a way that proves Islam’s endorsement of secular principles as well (7b: 102–103; 8: 53–56). Thus secularism and Islam are discursively interpreted in such a way that they complement each other. Because secularism is not atheism, it cannot be against Islam, and because Islam is a rational religion with a commitment to freedom, it embodies the principles of secularism anyway. At the same time, because it does not mean atheism, it is a principle that guarantees the protection of pure piety in the face of bigotry (6: 100).2 The religion textbooks not only discuss Islam as a rational religion that is perfectly in line with modernity (taken as a desirable given) but also cover secularism extensively as one of the indispensable pillars of the republic. Secularism is repeatedly explained as separation of religious affairs from state affairs, the state’s equal distance from all belief systems, protection of people’s religious and moral freedoms, prevention of abuse of religion in political affairs, and a prerequisite of modernization/ Westernization (5: 68–69; 6: 99–100; 8: 51–52). Yet the same texts avoid dealing with the existence of a directorate of religious affairs within the state or the obligation of students to attend the religion classes, suggesting that children are not “expected to question the incongruity between freedom of conscience and mandatory religion lessons in primary and secondary school” (Kaplan 1996: 76–77). Islam as a Turkish Religion, Excluding Others Absent in the schoolbooks is the general Middle Eastern social and historical context, as well as an attempt to situate contemporary meanings and practices of Islam in history. Instead, the textbooks concentrate on binding Turkishness and Islam by including pictures of mosques and holy shrines in Turkey and redefining all Muslim scholars as Turkish, while giving only an abbreviated account of Islamic history that stops at the Turks’ accepting Islam.3 They also evade discussing political movements, intellectual trends, and divisions in Islam that could raise questions as to the status of minorities within Turkey or Turkey’s historical connectedness to its wider Muslim neighborhood. The purposeful representation of a single generic and specif-

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ically Turkish Islam also implicitly validates the Turkish-Muslim practices and values promoted as correct because there are no alternatives presented. How is the exclusion of minorities handled by teachers and received by students? One of the former students I interviewed admitted never having thought about non-Sunnis in class, such as the Alevis, who are ethnic Turks adhering to a branch of Shi‘ism and constituting possibly 20 percent of Turkey’s population.4 She didn’t know what her Alevi friends might have thought, adding, “But I took those classes without really knowing these differences. Or maybe our religion teachers never reflected these differences in class? In fact they should not have done anyway.” A teacher recalled having refrained from discussing Alevis when prompted by a student. She told the student that it was not their topic, that he should do research in his free time if he wanted to learn. The teacher was relieved to have evaded the question. “Perhaps he asked the question to try me.” Reflecting the power of government oversight in schools, she added, “I am a cautious person.” At stake in the exclusionary redefining of Islam is the power of standardized education to advocate a certain definition of normal. It not only makes possible a homogeneous society, which is the state’s intention, but also makes it easier to talk in terms of deviations whenever the standards of this normal are violated (Foucault 1980: 184). As suggested by the informants’ responses, the denial of difference in the textbooks reflects students’ and teachers’ indifference to the existence of minority religions and likely facilitates the perception of difference as a stigma. Islam Sacralizing the Nation and the State Being focused on religion, the content of these books seem pedagogically to represent absolute truths that are unbounded by time, yet these same books incorporate ideas of nationhood and citizenship that are far from static and respond to changing circumstances. In fact, in the textbooks, writings on nationalism, militarism, and capitalism are intertwined with sacred text and religious moralities, ensuring mutual reinforcement of sacred and republican themes. To give a very crude numeric example, the 100-page fifth-grade primer has twenty pages on love of homeland, in addition to six pages on Atatürk’s ideas on secularism and Islam, whereas the next-longest chapter, on belief in prophets, is only twelve pages long. All the textbooks have similar degrees of emphasis. Since the texts ignore the broader Middle Eastern context, and given the absence of Arabic script and pictures and stories that depict Islam as crossing national boundaries, the sacralization of the Turkish nation is rendered an easier task. In the textbooks, moreover, the Turks are shown to be the saviors of Islam: whenever the Arabic origins of Islam are mentioned, it is in chapters that discuss how Turks came to accept Islam and served to invigorate it thereafter. The message is that if it were not for Turks, Islam

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would have disintegrated a long time ago (7b: 78–82). In this context, Atatürk emerges as the venerated figure who competes with the Prophet Mohammad in terms of coverage. As the eighth-grade textbook says, “When one thinks of Atatürk, one is reminded of vatan [the nation]; when one thinks of vatan, one is reminded of Atatürk” (8: 88). In these religion textbooks, the protection of the homeland is sanctified and conscription is emphasized as the beloved duty of every Turkish citizen (8: 95). That subject finds its way into many seemingly irrelevant sections, such as “Nice Habits” or “Social Responsibilities,” as well as more overt topics such as the homeland, patriotism, and the history of wars. Martyrdom is generally defined as dying while fighting for a sacred value, homeland, nation, flag, honor, or belief. Building on this definition, battles and wars sanctioned by God are defined to be those that are defensive in purpose (4b: 100), and homeland and the Turkish flag are frequently associated with the blood of soldiers who died in wars against enemies (8: 30, 87–88, 90; 5: 98–101). The death of soldiers, then, is tied into the sacredness of universal conscription (7b: 93–94; 8: 97), because “protecting the homeland from all kinds of attacks is a sacred responsibility,” and “it is improper for a Turkish man to evade conscription or avoid joining the army using various excuses” (8: 97). Yet the climax comes when the military and the army banners are listed among the “sacred values” that require reverence (8: 95). The military starts off as an institution that is given the venerable responsibility of protecting the homeland against enemies, yet the texts go on to transform the army into a sacred value that is fought for: “the Turkish army is our most valuable wealth, composed of the sons of this homeland, enabling our nation to live in security. Our army is the insurmountable guard of our state, flag, independence” (8: 95). Hence an organization that could conventionally be seen as part of a secular nation-state framework is turned into a holy institution that protects venerable assets and therefore is one itself. “[T]he state from the religious point of view is an institution that Allah created for mankind’s benefit” (eighth-grade text, quoted in Kaplan 1996: 368). Maintaining Peace and Social Order Societal peace and order is a major preoccupation of these books, especially so in a context where ethnic and socioeconomic conflicts are increasingly part of the agenda. Samuel Kaplan argues that to the Turkish state pedagogue, education is the means to inculcate a national culture that can ensure social stability, and the religion texts are no exception (Kaplan 1996: 85). For example, a section in the sixth-grade textbook following a chapter on the pillars of Islam (testimony of faith, pilgrimage, prayer, fasting, giving charity), discusses the concept of happiness, beginning with an explanation of how one can attain happiness by believing in and performing the acts

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required by these pillars. But then students are introduced to the concept of happiness as something that is beyond material well-being. “[A] poor person may look for happiness in material wealth because he or she assumes misery is a result of material deficiency. . . . If a poor person reaches material relief and if his or her material needs are met, he or she may be happy. Yet, this happiness eventually fades away” (6: 33). A discussion of jealousy follows, which is described in terms of coveting the more prosperous, the more successful, and the more beautiful. The moral is that one has to try to imitate and learn from those one envies instead of wrongly craving what they possess (6: 103). If it is possible to instruct children into thinking “one needs to work very hard to become rich” (5: 61), as the textbook suggests, then it might also be possible to sustain the number one illusion in capitalism, that “anyone can make it” and that if you can’t, it is your own personal fault. Given the increasing income inequalities in Turkey, exacerbated by frequent economic and political crises, this moral advice aims to mitigate the possibility of social upheaval or discontent with government. Similarly, the textbook addresses social harmony in a section that identifies “good habits” as modesty and tolerance, diligence and honesty, undertaking the responsibilities of one’s duties and job, and avoiding luxury and extravagance. Modest people are defined as those who “do not descend to becoming spoiled because of their social position and prosperity. . . . God does not like people who are arrogant and haughty. He does not like people who make fun of those that are poor or without high social rank” (7b: 45). Thus the circuit is closed: the impoverished ones are not to covet the riches of the affluent because jealousy is a major vice, and the latter should be modest enough to be respectful of the less lucky ones. Another textbook talks about how diligence is one of the most valued virtues: “Yet some people remain poor despite all their well-intended hard work.” Hence the giving of alms is once more promoted (4a: 104–105). In both cases, the roots of this inequality are not made the concern of religion or social morality. Instead, practices that allow inequality to persist are encouraged: “Giving of alms is the bridge that connects the rich and the poor with love” (4a: 105). The same thing is true for the way justice is conceptualized: “In the implementation of rights and justice, people should not be discriminated against with respect to their religion, language, mezheb [school of Islamic law], race, wealth, or poverty” (7b: 55). Thus justice does not mean the eradication of wealth differentials but “equal” treatment of people without reference to their level of material well-being. In promoting social order and peace, the textbooks advocate for a naturalized, Platonic division of labor: “the peace and safety of a society depend on the harmonious work of people—who perform service in different institutions and organizations of the society—within the division of labor. If people do not undertake their share of the responsibilities in a consistent

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manner, the order of society will be disrupted” (7b: 47). The groups cited as forming integral parts of this totality are women as mothers; men as fathers; children as helpers of mothers and fathers; factory workers, who are to complete their work in the best way possible; state officials, who have to work in a timely fashion and in harmony with their managers; entrepreneurs and traders, who are supposed to earn money and spend it through halal (religiously proper) means; and soldiers and police, who are responsible for protecting the country’s “indivisible wholeness” (7b: 47; 8: 47–48). Textbooks and Teachers: Their Impact on Students How are these conflicting statements, absences, and irrelevant discussions of blatant official ideology received in classes? What do students retain in their memory? In order to suggest answers to these questions, I will first situate these texts with regard to the general curriculum and to the availability of Islamic knowledge in society generally. The Power of the Written Word/The Power of the State to Stay on Message The Turkish alphabet reform, which romanized the Arabic-Persian script in 1928, changed the meaning of written knowledge and literacy. As Benedict Anderson observes, “a particular script-language offered access to ontological truth, precisely because it was an inseparable part of that truth” (Anderson 1991: 36); when the Turkish state severed the link between the old script and its writers, it also severed the link with Ottoman versions of religious “Truth.” Once citizens’ ties to the Ottoman script and Arabic were severed, the accumulated writings of this era, as well as others that were to be produced thereafter, were rendered inaccessible to the country’s population. Hence, the literacy of those educated after 1928 is defined solely in terms of knowledge of the Latin script; related literature on Islam produced in Arabic and Persian, as well as the Quran itself, is equally unavailable to them. Along with the loss of access to the written record came the loss of respect for oral traditions as a source of historical truth, because in modernist thought, the oral is malleable and therefore not trustworthy. As a result of these two losses, textbooks that are mandatory and universally used in schools assume a dominant place in the field of accessible information on religion. Sameness and State Control over Textbook Production The limited access to religious literature is not an accidental product of a script change that took place more than seventy years ago, but is a policy that is advocated and secured by political processes as well. The Ministry of Education practices strict surveillance of textbook writing, production, and

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usage. Specifically, people interested in writing a textbook first fill out a petition that includes a professional biography (Tebligler Dergisi [Communications Journal], July 2000 [2514]: 639). After the petition is accepted, the writer follows obligatory guidelines that prescribe the unit and chapter headings of the book, what specifically may be discussed under each, and the total number of pages. Also in the guidelines, writers are obliged to exclude information that is “irrelevant to the subject, that could potentially induce doubt on the part of the student, or that could be misunderstood” (Tebligler Dergisi, April 2001 [2523]: 282). The writer’s draft is then evaluated with respect to loyalty criteria policies specified in the national education law. These include raising citizens who are loyal to the Atatürk principles and reforms and the Atatürk nationalism as articulated in the constitution; who identify with, protect, and advance the national, ethical, humane, spiritual, and cultural values of the Turkish nation; who love and always work to exalt his or her family, homeland, and nation; who is aware of his or her duties and responsibilities toward the Republic of Turkey, which is a democratic, secular, social, and lawful state based on human rights and principles as specified at the beginning of the constitution; and who internalizes these principles in his or her conduct (Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Education 2000a: 3)

As a result, the books produced and accepted by the ministry are, as several of the teachers I conversed with confirmed, almost identical. One of my informants was the writer of a book that is currently awaiting approval. He talked enthusiastically about his innovations, in contrast to the “dogmatic, unhealthy” books of the past that were “based on memorization.” I asked him about the kinds of changes he introduced. The first thing he mentioned was how he reformulated the idea of fate in a way to encourage people to take responsibility for their actions. Another was the compatibility of scientific research with religion. Moreover, he discussed the Alevi position as one possible reading of the Quran, unlike the majority of the books that are mostly silent when it comes to diversity of interpretations of Islam. Yet except for the last point, the other two do not seem to be path-breaking shifts. The discourse of rationality and scientism is already present in all the books. Thus it is apparent that even attempts at innovation are strictly disciplined, so that even though teachers and/or school principals are given the option of choosing the books they want to use, there is no real choice because the books are almost identical. An intentional byproduct of this strict surveillance is also the compatibility between textbooks used in religion classes and textbooks produced for other classes in the curricula. The rhetoric of nationalism, the duties of citizens, the importance of Atatürk, military accomplishments throughout history, the glory of the Ottoman Empire and the celebrated rise of the republic

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from its remnants, and the contrast between modernity and “West” on the one hand and backwardness and “East” on the other are themes repeated in all the textbooks. In fact, the Ministry of Education publishes periodicals that explicitly spell out ways in which such themes are to be integrated into classes as seemingly unrelated to each other as art, sports, and mathematics (Tebligler Dergisi, September 1999 [2504]). In addition to these repetitive themes, the textbooks are marked by significant omissions. Turkish students do not study history prior to the 1940s and have no way of situating Islam in a more contemporary, international context. Nor do they study conflicts beyond Turkey’s borders, and conflicts within Turkey’s borders that have occurred during both the imperial and republican periods are either ignored altogether or explained in cursory form as the fight of the enlightened state against the bigoted groups who were deceived by their leaders. Textbooks and Teachers: Religion Classes Trivialized The repetition of the same limited themes in all classes contributes to the view expressed by my informants that religion classes are trivial and have not left much of an impact. So does the size and quality of the textbooks: they are all around 100–120 pages, much slimmer than books used in other classes, and are printed on lower-quality paper. Furthermore, the effect of grades in religion on students’ grade point average (GPA) is marginal, and, according to my informants, students almost always got 10s (the equivalent of an “A” in the Turkish grading system) because teachers would not give low grades as a policy; one teacher said that when he did he was admonished by the school administration, prodded by angry parents. Teachers trivialize religion classes in other ways too: at times, teachers admitted, class hours officially allocated to religion get absorbed by “more important” topics such as math, science, or Turkish. Added to this mutual perception of the triviality of the subject matter is the students’ disparagement of teachers who are graduates of “religiontrack” schools. These teachers, who often come from the rural underclass, are perceived as being less intellectually endowed, incompetent, and guilty of bringing lower-class views on religious affairs to the classroom. One former student, for example, dismissed his religion teachers, saying that they never really could answer questions coming from students. One of his teachers had even composed a line of poetry in answer to questions that students asked in class: “Don’t think that deeply; you will lose your sanity.” When the educational background of these teachers and their socioeconomic status is distinguished by the students, they do not see their future in the teacher standing before them. This ascribed difference means that students are inclined to distance themselves from these teachers and dismiss what they have to say in class. The tension between the text, the students, and the teachers can be seen

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in the highly contested topic of hijab (Islamic covering). In the books currently used in the public school system, there is minimal reference to muchcontested gender issues in Islam, and hijab is completely ignored in the texts. The only reference to it is in pictures, which show some young female students reading the Quran with their heads covered, with the implicit message that “there is a place and time for everything.” One of the teachers I interviewed wore her hijab outside school but replaced it with a wig during school hours because wearing it in government-connected workplaces is prohibited by law. Everybody knows that, and it is one of the main reasons why she feels and is probably made to feel an outsider. The relative absence of gender in texts, however, does not necessarily mean these issues are not brought up in classes. One of my informants, who went to an all-girls private school, remembered numerous clashes that took place between the students and the religion teacher on matters pertaining to women. She talked extensively about how the teacher’s responses revolving around the “vulnerable and sensitive nature of the female” in comparison with that of the male induced highly vocal disputations from a group of budding feminists who saw in front of them a man whose educational credentials they did not respect that much anyway. How could one, after all, “take seriously” a person who talked about “flies falling in soup, the trees and railroads hissing the name of Allah”? Another remembered how they assessed all teachers with respect to a dichotomy of “Kemalists” versus “Islamists.” Some teachers, for example, skipped the textbook sections on secularism and Atatürk in class. Those who were reluctant to be explicit about their position implied that they were not free to say all they wanted to. When I asked what purpose this assessment served, he laughed and said “nothing really,” but then remembered instances when they used to complain about the “Islamist” teachers to the “Kemalist” ones. Yet as he talked more about how they responded as a group to different teachers, a pattern emerged: the more the students felt the teacher was contradicting their initial socializations, or that he was not capable of answering their questions in a “rational” manner, the more likely they were to dismiss what they had to say as nonsensical, bigoted, and so on. There was considerably less reaction against the textbooks themselves. In a sense, the material in the textbooks was unexpectedly being reinforced through their contrast with what the teachers said or chose not to say. Official Knowledge Internalized If students look upon religion classes as unimportant and hold their teachers in low esteem or resist their attempts to insert their own religious biases into the classroom, what can be said about the influence of these classes on students’ thinking? The interviews with former students suggest a strong and enduring influence. All those interviewed admitted that they did not remem-

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ber much from the books, yet their own personal opinions seemed to parallel the content of the textbooks. When asked to give a personal definition of being a good Muslim, for example, one limited it to being a good person Another talked about belief in God, not categorizing himself as a Muslim because he did not adhere to the rituals and tenets of Islam. An informant who described himself as a religious person said he believed in the necessity of carrying out the five pillars, yet admitted he did not follow them, which he rationalized by differentiating between sins that had an impact on other people and those that involved only him and God. The latter, he argued, could be forgiven. So again, the definition of a good Muslim was some form of “good person.” In another example, secularism was favored by all informants, who used almost identical phrases that they said were their personal thoughts but that had a striking resemblance to what the textbooks have been saying all along.5 It was especially remarkable to see that all who were asked to define secularism used the phrase, frequently repeated in all sorts of textbook contexts, “separation of mundane affairs from religious affairs.” Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron argue that pedagogical work has the function of making the dominated groups internalize values that best serve the interests of the dominant groups (1977: 40–41). I argue that formation of what people call personal opinions is highly influenced by their school experiences, and the extent to which opinions are not actively connected with school may reflect the degree of internalization that Bourdieu and Passeron write about. As Gregory Starrett also reminds us, “the most useful communication is that whose source is forgotten, so that it becomes something one feels one has always known, something pointless, trite, and annoying to restate” (Starrett 1998: 117). As a result, resistance in religion classes seems to operate in a complicated way.6 The indifference or resistance students display can be directed toward the religion teacher whose certain characteristics mark him or her as a clear Other. In this process, the larger context in which the state creates an official Islamic knowledge imbued with nationalism is more likely to go relatively unquestioned. Students implicitly differentiate between the written word in the texts and the teacher’s departures that “do not make any sense.” Hence the actual schooling offers competing versions of “the Truth,” rather than a systematically worked out, monolithic knowledge. In this context, the students’ perception of the teacher as the Other has the potential to steer the classroom resistance toward reproduction of official knowledge. Conclusion: Rationalization and Resistance Universal religion classes, which have been offered in one form or another for most of Turkey’s republican history, are a peculiar aspect of the alleged

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“secular” nature of the state. In this chapter I have analyzed these classes within a framework that compares the nature of Islam in religion textbooks, teachers’ attitudes toward their subject and classroom presentation, and students’ remembrance. The relationship between the state and religion in Turkey can be more accurately defined as state control of Islam rather than secularism. In the textbooks, we can see that the state attempts to rationalize a particular kind of Islamic knowledge, whereby Islam is functionalized in the interests of the state: Islamic tenets and moral values are transformed into general ideals of behavior to encourage the maintenance of peace, social order, and existing hierarchies. Islam becomes a Turkish religion, existing in a vacuum apart from its Middle Eastern context, oblivious to existing sectarian or minority differences, and serving as a locus of identity for feelings of Turkish nationalism. Indeed, the nation itself emerges as one of the most pronounced topics in religion textbooks. Nationalism and militarism are intertwined, as the religion textbooks extol the contribution of Atatürk to Turkish nation building: conscription, the importance of the army for the safety of the country, and the religious significance of martyrdom are frequent themes. In effect, the reproduction of these ideologies in connection with Islamic premises provides them with a sanctity and operates as a divine legitimization for the pillars of the official ideology of the “secular” state. Yet this rationalization for Islam in the public school setting is not able to escape contradictions, in particular, the existence of mandatory, noninclusive religion classes in a state that advocates freedom of conscience. The exclusions and contradictions in the religion curricula are tempered, from the viewpoint of students, in that these classes are not very important for them: the requirements are substantially less than for many other classes they are taking at the same time. Student tend not to dwell on the class material because they are not required to, which is likely to end up reducing awareness of textual contradiction even more. Student resistance to the texts, when it occurs, is usually directed against the teacher and shaped along socioeconomic differences, which lends the textbooks a certain authority in the eyes of students that they might not otherwise deserve. As a result, religious education in Turkey provides us with another ironic case of how resistance can feed back into the reproduction of the main pillars of the Turkish nation-state system. In other words, teaching Islam in lay schools in an officially secular country provides us with a fertile context to study channels of knowledge transmission and their meaning for the project of the nation-state. In the Turkish case, it allows us to suggest ways in which contradictory ideologies coexist and aim to support a particular notion of the state and national identity vis-à-vis certain articulated Others, as well as the discursive absence of certain alternative histories and interpretations.

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Textbooks Cited 4a Ünver Günay and Kerim Yavuz. 1998. Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 4, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 4. Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu. 4b Ömer Yilmaz, Hasan Sarisoy, and Vehbi Vakkasoglu. 1998. Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 4, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 4. Istanbul: Kaan Yayincilik. 5 Ömer Yilmaz,, Hasan Sarisoy, and Vehbi Vakkasoglu. 1998. Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 5, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 5. Istanbul: Kaan Yayincilik. 6 Ömer Yilmaz; Hasan Sarisoy, and Vehbi Vakkasoglu. 1997. Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 6, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 6. Istanbul: Kaan Yayincilik. 7a Mustafa Unal, Nadi Cakir, and Ilhan Ozkan. 1999. Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 7, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 7. Istanbul: Uygun Yayincilik. 7b Ömer Yilmaz, Hasan Sarisoy, and Vehbi Vakkasoglu. 1998. Din Kulturu ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 7, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 7. Istanbul: Kaan Yayincilik. 8 Ömer Yilmaz, Hasan Sarisoy, and Vehbi Vakkasoglu. 1998. Din Kulturu ve Ahlak Bilgisi, 8, sinif [Culture of Religion and Knowledge of Morality]. Grade 8. Istanbul: Kaan Yayincilik. Notes 1. Relevantly, Gregory Starrett discusses how Islam in the Egyptian context was “domesticated” by “secularizing” religious instruction: “just as wild plants have to undergo systematic genetic alterations to make them useful as cultivated foods, so ‘Islam’ has to be altered to make it useful as a political instrument” (Starrett 1998: 8). 2. This tension is very similar to Albert Hourani’s discussion of how Arabic thought strained to “gradual[ly] reinterpret . . . Islamic concepts so as to make them equivalent to the guiding principles of European thought of the time” (Hourani 1983: 343–344). 3. This is an observation Samuel Kaplan makes about a previous set of books as well (Kaplan: 1996: 64, 65, 69). 4. This brings into focus the variety of schools the Ministry of Education administers as well as class issues that are implicitly reflected in the allocation of students. The private schools—divided into foreign and domestic among themselves—are seen not only as a place where students from richer families get educated but also as a more alien context. The absence of people belonging to religious minorities in the informant’s life is generalized into their possible presence somewhere else. Issues of religious belief, ethnicity, and class are enmeshed in each other, and the conclusion reached is that “they don’t go through the education that we go through anyway.” Although this statement is true, especially in language instruction and prospects upon graduation, what the informant is missing here is that these schools are tightly inspected by the ministry, and the curricula of social sci-

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ence classes, including Turkish-language studies and religion, are exactly the same as in the schools that he or she attends. 5. Similarly, Samuel Kaplan repeated the classical definition of laicism that all Turkish students can chant after a couple of years in primary school: “separation of mundane affairs from religious affairs without questioning even by [those] whom he sees to be very pious villagers” (Kaplan 1996: 78). 6. Similar arguments are made in other studies on schools. Paul Willis’s brilliant Learning to Labour (1977) is a comprehensive ethnographic study on how working-class male students end up becoming manual workers as a result of their interaction with the educational system. One of his main arguments is that these students consent to the capitalist production system that places them into the working class, ironically, by “defeating the dominant ideology” “informally” at school. That is to say, by rejecting the teachings of capitalism that penetrate into the framework of school, they end up reducing their chances of moving beyond manual labor. Michael Apple also explores this phenomenon in his study of the way various patterns of student indifference and resistance may end up reproducing the very institutions and ideologies that they take a position against in the first place (Apple 1979: 191–192). Thus the conventional understanding of (or aim of) resistance may be in almost total contradiction with its outcome.

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11 Textbook Meanings and the Power of Interpretation Gregory Starrett

We demand something impossible from education as a whole—to redeem society from the consequences of our quite deliberate plans for it. (Basney 2001: 83)

When Oprah Winfrey asked presidential candidate Albert Gore, Jr., about his favorite book in October 2000, he replied, “In addition to the Bible— everybody has to say that—maybe [Stendahl’s] The Red and the Black.” He avoided an actual eye roll, but you could hear in the weary and half-conspiratorial tone his recognition that public necessity sometimes trumps personal taste. Gore’s mention of the Bible, even in the self-conscious way it was done, served to legitimate his mention of a different book. His statement shows not only how we might use one text or action as the alibi for another, but demonstrates, in Gore’s own clumsy way, how we sound when we are speaking to multiple audiences and trying to declare ourselves simultaneously to be members of them all. No audience emerges quite satisfied with our sincerity. When we ask what textbooks and curricula do, we need to keep issues of context and strategy in mind. The complexities of textbook form and content speak not only of multiple authors and bureaucratic interests but of the simultaneous existence of multiple audiences. And here I mean not only different audiences of students, teachers, parents, and politicians, but of international aid agencies, foreign legislators, and the global world of professional educators and academic conferees. Understanding what texts and curricula do requires us to ask not only how Egyptians or Turks or Syrians use them, but how and why we use those same texts to construct regimes of inclusion and exclusion. Because the internationalized culture of textbook form rests on a number of assumptions about human learning and development, economic progress, political identity, and even modernity itself, we bring to the discussion of textbook content the idea that it affects powerfully

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the mental constitution and political proclivities of the educated individual. Exposure seems equivalent to influence.1 I would argue, however, for a much more complicated set of processes. My own experience with Egyptian school textbooks is a case in point. The research on which this chapter is based was conducted in 2002 for another international workshop on how American and Middle Eastern middle and high school texts teach the Other. When I sent the organizers my abstract shortly before the conference, there was some talk of disinviting me (something I discovered by means of a misforwarded internal e-mail). There had apparently been an informal agreement among the organizers that Middle Eastern and Muslim scholars would analyze Middle Eastern and Muslim texts and that Americans would analyze American textbooks. That way, each set of texts could be subjected to a critical reading without the possibility of bias claims. Here the assumption is that the identity of the reader affects the potential legitimacy of an interpretation. The play of identities is interesting because the Americans analyzing American textbooks turned out to be white American Muslim converts. The implicit assumption of the workshop organizers was that American Muslims can be framed as Americans first, even though they were critiquing American textbooks from a Muslim perspective. And most of the Middle Easterners and Muslims critiquing the Middle Eastern and Muslim texts did so largely from liberal or feminist perspectives. At least one Middle Eastern scholar was Christian, but national origin trumped confession in legitimizing his analysis of texts produced by countries where Islam is the state religion. He and some of the other “Middle Eastern” scholars live and work in—and are citizens of—the United States. In a different context, I’ve found that selective citation of these texts is often the best way to open to American audiences the possibility that words like “jihad” are not necessarily as scary as they think. When Muslim spokesmen say to American church or corporate audiences that jihad is primarily about internal struggle, audiences assume they are lying, in the face of apparently overwhelming empirical evidence that jihad is really about blowing things up. But then I read to those same audiences a passage on jihad from an Egyptian religion textbook: As for jihad, effort was expended in fighting against the unbelievers who committed aggression [against the Muslims], but it refers also to the struggle against the self and against Satan and against the unrighteous. As for the struggle against the self, it is against the sins and evils that come to you; and as for the struggle against Satan, it’s about defending yourself against the doubts he throws at you and the desires that he makes so attractive. (12: 101)

I am able to frame this as what Egyptians tell each other when outsiders aren’t around to listen, and therefore the claim that jihad is an authentically

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spiritual concept might not be mere window dressing. Here the context and language in which a communication is made is assumed to say something about its truth value. I also realize, however, that this definition of jihad appeals to me and my audience partly because our interests match the interests of the Egyptian government that issues that text. Since none of us wishes to be the target of Islamist violence, we might logically favor a quietist and internalized interpretation of the concept of jihad. Here the writer’s common relationship with an audience relative to a third party influences the audience’s willingness to accept the writer’s argument. Other individuals and institutions have other interests in various sorts of Muslim texts. Professors at Georgetown University (founded by Jesuits) and at Hartford Theological Seminary (founded by Congregationalists) use them in courses on Islam as a basis for Christian-Muslim dialogue (and, at Hartford, in its program for training Muslim chaplains). The Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte uses Muslim texts in its summer Institute in Islamic Studies to illustrate that “violence is the logical outworking of Islam and the illogical outworking of Christianity” (Potter 2001), and Columbia International University in South Carolina uses them in programs designed to aid Christian missionary work in the Middle East (Yeoman 2002). In the summer of 2002, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used assigned readings from a book of selections from the Quran as a way to inform students about Islam but also as a statement about multicultural sensitivity that then—when a few students found lawyers and complained—turned into a debate about academic freedom. The fact that college freshmen could be expected to highlight, annotate, and then scrunch the speech of almighty God down into their backpacks next to strip-bar ads on the back of the local alternative newspaper does not seem to have raised many scruples among faculty about the cultural sensitivity of the assignment from a Muslim perspective. One of my Muslim friends remarked that she resented having her Quran batted around as a free speech issue. In the mid-1990s, the US Central Intelligence Agency completed a content analysis of religious studies textbooks from Middle Eastern countries. Its findings—and even the questions it was designed to ask—are classified as US state secrets (personal communication with the report’s author, 1995). The difficulty most participants in this conference faced in acquiring school textbooks for analysis may indicate that many Middle Easterners approach their schools’ texts with a similar protectiveness. The Federation of American Scientists devotes a section of its website to Islamic radical texts like the “al-Qaeda Training Manual” and the ritual hijacking instructions written by Muhammad Atta, as do the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and thousands of other groups and individuals, including Jewish, Christian, and atheist websites. Each of these organiza-

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tions uses a highly selective set of Muslim texts for specific purposes. Faced with this stunning diversity of perspectives and problems, in reaching for an understanding of the meaning of the texts we study, we need to keep in clear sight our purpose in approaching those texts in the first place. Of all the things textbooks do to communicate about the world around us—its form, its workings, its secrets and trivialities—one of the most engaging is their depiction of other people. The books I’ve examined do not purport to survey the histories or cultures of other nations as a geography or world history text might. Instead, they focus on a single community and its dealings with others, largely though not exclusively during a period early in the seventh century. Because they do not need to compete for market share, their use being mandated by the Egyptian state, they do not need to appeal to any political constituency but their sponsor. And because they are explicitly hortatory, they are unconcerned with balance, fairness, or multiple points of view. They are concerned with a synoptic truth that is important not so much because it teaches children about Others, but because it is meant to teach children about themselves. But if the presentation of Others is a means through which young Muslims can come to know themselves, it is also the case that the construction and dissemination of these texts is a window onto processes of national self-construction. How authors are selected and charged with their tasks, whether there is public debate about textbook content, and how authority relations within the classroom shape the use of those texts—none of which we know very much about—are perhaps more important than their actual content. Despite all efforts, the moral principles of chastity and temperance outlined in religion books do not prevent Cairo’s bars and brothels from being patronized by educated Muslims, nor do their calls to spiritual calm and political cooperation prevent Christian shops from being vandalized or police from being shot by Islamist militants. These texts need to be read as symptoms, rather than causes. They are symptoms of a political order whose reformist modernism proclaims that the future can be shaped through the personal transformation formal education brings, at the same time that it hedges its bets, as all states do, by deploying the ancient and indispensable troika of police, patronage, and propaganda that shapes people’s interpretation of the books they read in school. Taken altogether, the legal prosecution of homosexuals in Egypt or state-sanctioned beatings by religious police in Riyadh or Israeli destruction in Lebanon may be of far more significance for understanding the formation of culture and personality than the images of Jews or Christians in schoolbooks. Nevertheless, these books are significant for what they show about the way Muslim regimes frame human differences and similarities. The texts I’ve examined are the preparatory school religious studies texts—those for seventh, eighth, and ninth grade—used during the 1988/1989 school year in Egypt. The children who used them at that time are now adults, beginning

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to marry and start families of their own. These texts discuss Others in two separate contexts. The first is the context of history. In that context the Other is the pagan and the Jew, the first significant because of his brutal but ultimately promising ignorance, the second troublesome because of the jealous obstructionism born of his partial enlightenment. In its early history of being surrounded with hostile forces, the Muslim relationship with the Other was often one of conflict. The Muslims found themselves in situations of constant unsettledness, fighting a series of battles with enemies both without and within. The second context is that of the modern Egyptian and international polity. In this context, the duty of the Muslim is not military struggle against Others but peaceful coexistence with them, along with a protection of their rights, lives, and property. The classical Muslim notion of dhimma (protected communities) is one of the sources of this content. The other source is the historical and political background to which these texts respond: the growth of occasionally violent Muslim activism in Egypt since the 1970s, in which indigenous Christians, foreigners, and sometimes other Muslims have been denounced and attacked for violating Islamic precepts. History Middle school textbooks treat Islamic history in three parts. The texts for grades one through five discussed Muhammad’s life from birth through the revelation of the Quran in his fortieth year and the subsequent persecution of his small community at Mecca. The seventh-grade text picks up with the Prophet’s emigration from Mecca and details his first four years in Medina. The eighth-grade text takes the story through the conquest of Mecca in 630 CE, and then the ninth-grade text treats the two final years of his life and some of the subsequent development of the Islamic community. The seventh-grade text’s section on history and prophetic biography begins, as most sections of these texts begin, with a passage from the Quran that describes the hijra, the movement of the Prophet Muhammad and his Meccan followers to a new city, Yathrib (later to be known as Medina, for madinat al-nabi, “city of the Prophet”): “Those who accepted the faith and set out of their homes, and fought in the way of God wealth and soul, and those who gave them shelter and helped them, are friends of one another (Quran 8:72). . . . Those who are infidels aid one another. Unless you do the same there will be discord on the earth and great wickedness” (Quran 8:73). The non-Muslims at this point are the kuffar (infidels, unbelievers), also called mushrikin (polytheists), among whom are specific Arab tribes, including the Quraysh of Mecca and the Khazraj and the Aws of Yathrib; and various Jewish tribes, particularly the Quraydha, the Banu Nadir, and the Banu Qaynuqa of Yathrib.

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In the year 620 the Prophet met with a delegation from Yathrib consisting of 6 men from the Khazraj [tribe]. He welcomed them and asked about their condition, and they mentioned to him the situation of bad blood and war that they had not been able to end, between themselves and their neighbors from the Aws. So he told them about Islam and recited the Quran to them, and perhaps they showed interest in it because the idea of monotheism wasn’t strange to them, for they had learned much about it from their neighbors the Jews. And by the time the Prophet finished his speech, they were convinced that they would work to spread this message among their people (qawm). In the following year, the twelfth since the revelation, 621 CE, during the pilgrimage season these men returned with some others, twelve altogether, ten from the Khazraj and two from the Aws. And the Prophet met with them secretly at Aqaba near Mecca and made a contract with them that they would have faith in the existence of God and employ themselves in good works. They returned to Yathrib with Mus‘ab ibn Umayr as a delegate of the Prophet to teach them Islam and recite the Quran to them. Shortly before the pilgrimage season, trouble returned to Mecca. News came to the Prophet of the Muslims in Yathrib and of their strength, and how they would show up in Mecca that year greater in both number and in faith. The Prophet thought long and hard. For his following in Yathrib was growing day by day, and they didn’t seem to be experiencing the kind of persecution from the Jews and polytheists that their colleagues in Mecca were experiencing. It appeared good [for them] to migrate to Yathrib, which had such ample benefits, to experience security and peace with their brothers. (7: 101)

As in European history, Jews represented a theological problem for the early Muslims. For European Christians, Jews were God’s original chosen people, but as Christians also associated them with the betrayal and death of Christ, their status was deeply anomalous. Protected by European royalty as professionals, merchants, and moneylenders, Jews were nevertheless objects of discrimination, extortion, and violence by local elites and commoners all over Europe. In the Egyptian textbooks, the Jewish communities of Arabia represent both a spiritual resource and a source of religious and political competition. Yathrib seemed a good destination because of the “spiritual effects” the Jews had had on the polytheistic Khazraj and Aws (7: 103). As People of the Book, recipients of an earlier revelation from God, the Jews had prepared the ground for Muhammad’s mission, making the local Arabs more receptive to the message of Islam than other Arab tribes. After the hijra, Muhammad began establishing the foundations of an Islamic society in Medina and made a tripartite agreement among the Muslims, the Jews, and the polytheist Arabs. But at this point in the books, the dynamics change, and the stifling threat that had emanated from the

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Quraysh, which surrounded the Muslims in Mecca like an impenetrable sandstorm, was transferred to the Jewish tribes in and around Medina. Whereas the pagan Quraysh represented an external enemy, the Jews, many of whom had been incorporated into the Medinan community as mu‘ahidin (signatories to an agreement), raised concern as a possible internal foe. Although the stories here make no use of the information in furthering or explaining the action to follow, they describe the Jewish tribes as holding all the economic, agricultural, manufacturing, and trade interests of the city. Each group of them, the books say, consisted of a feudal monopoly on agriculture and trade (7: 109), a distorting and possibly sinister situation in a region dependent on the movement of goods. In Medina, Muhammad established freedom of conscience, leaving each community responsible for its internal affairs. All residents of Medina were to cooperate in responding to any attack on their city, and the Prophet was the arbiter of any disputes between the groups. “It wasn’t long, though, before the Jews began to conspire against the Prophet, along with the polytheists who joined them in violation of their pact with the Prophet, earning them the label munafiqun (hypocrites). The conspiracy was secret at first but came out once the Muslims had triumphed over the Quraysh at the battle of Badr, leading the fence-sitters and fearful among the Quraysh to enter Islam in droves” (8: 82).2 Because of the direct threat that these conspiracies posed, “It became necessary to punish (daraba ala idayhim) the Banu Qaynuqa and the Banu Nadir before their plans got out of control” (7: 112). The Banu Qaynuqa lived in Medina with everyone else who enjoyed the same rights as the Muslims as a result of the pact between them and the Prophet. But they began to harass the Prophet and his companions in their poetry and in their gatherings. The Prophet asked them to honor the pact that had been made between them, but they continued to insult and conspire against him. So the Prophet decided to fight them as a warning to others. He blockaded them for fifteen days, which terrified them, as they could not resist. They asked the Prophet to let them leave Medina with their women and children. The Prophet had mercy on them and granted them three nights. They left and went to Syria. And by this the Prophet proved that Islam is a religion of tolerance and forgiveness, even in responding strongly to aggressors. (7: 113)

For their part, The Banu Nadir planned to kill the Prophet while he was visiting them [and talking with them] about some matters, but God informed him of what they intended and ordered him to respond immediately. The Prophet sent one of his men to inform them that they were to leave Medina over the next ten nights after they had broken their pact with the Prophet. Despite that, they had not left Medina during that time, and the Prophet surrounded their fortresses. When they saw victory was impossible, they

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Teaching Islam pleaded with the Prophet to promise them security in their wealth and women and children if they could leave Medina. The Prophet was merciful with them and gave them camels to carry their possessions. Some of them went to Khaybar and some to Syria. (7: 114)

But all did not go well for the Muslims. They lost a battle with the Quraysh at Uhud, “to the malicious joy of the Jews and the delight of the hypocrites” (8: 90). Muhammad, seeking a way to regain the influence of the Muslims, led another successful campaign against the Quraysh in order to quiet the lies and the doubts about himself and his message spread by the hypocrites and the Jews and to show their strength to the Quraysh (8: 91). Significantly, the visceral emotional reactions of non-Muslims, rather than their verbal or written agreements with the Prophet, are taken as the most reliable gauges of their true sympathies and group allegiances. Just as Americans quizzed each other and members of foreign communities about how they felt about the terrorist attacks in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., in the autumn of 2001 to determine where they really stood with respect to the United States, so these texts examine the emotions of nonMuslims to determine their underlying intentions with respect to the Prophet and his community.3 In an exercise at the end of the history section of the eighth-grade textbook is a discussion question that asks the student, “Were the Jews and the hypocrites saddened by the Muslim defeat [at Uhud]?” (8: 93). In 626, the remainder of the Banu Qaynuqa and the Banu Nadir, remembering their expulsion from Medina and fearing the increasing power of the Muslims, worked with the “Jewish men of religion” in Mecca to condemn the Prophet and his message. They claimed that the religion of the Quraysh was superior to Islam, that the polytheism of the jahiliyya (the period of spiritual ignorance preceding the revelation of the Quran) was better than the Quran, and that fighting Muhammad was pleasing to God. The Jews were able to incite not only the Quraysh but also the Ghatfan, the Asad, and the Salim tribes, among others. “The Jews succeeded in inciting and uniting in a single bloc 10,000 warriors against the Muslims, armed to the teeth and led by Abu Sufyan, against Medina” (8: 94). But with the help of a creative fortification of the city, the undercover work of Nu‘aym ibn Mas‘ud, and a torturing wind sent by God, the mutual trust between the various allied factions was undermined, and the Quraysh abandoned the last remaining Jewish tribe, the Quraydha, to the Muslims. Although other historical sources show that the men of the Quraydha were all put to death and their women and children and wealth taken by the Muslims, the story as told in the eighth-grade text ends more delicately with the withdrawal of the allies from Medina.4 The textbook merely lists the results of the battle: the failure of the Quraysh and the return of tranquility to the Muslims; the return of respect on the part of the Arabs generally; the

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filling of the hearts of the hypocrites with pain and sadness; the filling of the hearts of the Quraydha with fear and alarm; and the provision of an opportunity for the Muslims to rid themselves of the Quraydha, ending their habitation of Medina once and for all (8: 98). There is a turning point at this place in the texts. By 627 the Prophet and the Muslims had been in constant state of jihad, sometimes with the Quraysh, and sometimes with the Jews and others. After their triumph over the [allied] factions the Muslims felt tranquility, security, and stability. They began to look back toward Mecca, yearning to visit the house of God like the rest of the Arab tribes, to carry out the religious duties they had been forced to abandon in leaving Mecca. (8: 100)

Here the history and culture that bind them to other Arab tribes informs a nostalgia that has gained new meaning for Muslims in their Medinan exile. A two-year truce with the Quraysh allowed the Muslims to make their pilgrimage the following year, prior to the final conquest of Mecca. During this time the Prophet was able to devote himself to spreading the call of Islam throughout the Arabian Peninsula and beyond by dispatching messages to the kings of Persia, Rome, and Egypt (8: 104–105). The nearly bloodless conquest of Mecca in 630 followed the conversion of Muhammad’s bitter enemy Abu Sufyan, whose home was made a sanctuary as the Muslims took the town. The capitulation of the Meccan leaders was followed by Muhammad entering the Ka‘ba (the square structure—built by the prophet Abraham—that is the focus of Muslim pilgrimage) to destroy its idols and efface the images within. But it did not result in the retribution the Meccans feared. Instead, the Prophet announced the beginning of a new life in the city. He declared a general amnesty for all the people of Mecca but outlawed the charging or payment of interest, which was the most important pillar of its trade and economy. He proclaimed the unity of all men and equality before the law, without regard to color or nationality or language. And he reaffirmed the prohibition on shedding blood in the city, an ancient feature of the sanctuary space around the Ka‘ba. Now that the conflict with the Quraysh was settled, people entered the new Mecca no longer to engage in the newly condemned polytheistic worship but to appreciate the unity of God through the consolidation of prayer, fasting, and other pillars of Islamic practice. The road between Mecca and Medina was opened, and delegations of missionaries were sent throughout the peninsula and beyond to spread the news of Islam (8: 112–113). The successes of Islam changed the dynamic of its interaction with Others. Just as the Prophet allowed Jewish and Christian tribes with whom he made pacts to practice their religions, the texts stress that when Muslims opened Mecca and Jerusalem, they granted full rights to People of the

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Book—Jews and Christians—safeguarding their persons and property and their holy places. Missionary work with these groups was to suffice, for as God commanded in the Quran, “There is no compulsion in religion, for Truth stands out clear from Error” (Quran 2: 256). Even after the crusaders invaded the Holy Land, the Muslim leader Salah al-Din astonished them with his tolerance and piety and good works. He reduced taxation on Christians and appointed many of them to administrative posts. NonMuslims, the books say, enjoyed all the rights of Muslims and worked with them in building the state. Islam is a guarantor of the rights of the brotherhood of mankind (9: 193), a theme summarized in three points that refer to the examples of the Prophet, the Caliph Omar, and other leaders like Salah al-Din: 1. We are to strive for good relations with the people of other religions and give everyone who has rights his rights for the sake of social stability and increased productivity. 2. Whoever commits aggression against a Person of the Book, the Prophet will advocate against him on the day of Judgment. 3. The true believer does not transgress the rights of a Person of the Book but treats him well. (9: 193)

Polity The Egyptian middle school texts draw relationships not only horizontally between the Muslim community and the outside but vertically, between humanity as a whole and the God that created it. God is Other in that he has created all else, an impossibility for any other being. Angels, too, are Other because unlike people, they do not have free will and they cannot do anything but obey God. The Otherness of God lends structure to the relationship between him and what he has created, as well as between all created things. Sections of the texts that focus on the contemporary Muslim community depict Islam as a religion based on human nature. Apart from its health and psychological benefits, “Faith works to create the strongest bonds that combine the hearts of Muslims and establishes between them a brotherhood stronger than the brotherhood of birth” (8: 180). Historical events as well as passages from the Quran are used to demonstrate that Muslims are like a single body and every individual is like an organ of the body, the whole feeling the pain and the joy of the individual. Islam actively discourages quarreling and loves harmony. The Prophet created a brotherhood between the Muhajirun [emigrants from Mecca] and the Ansar [the new Muslims of Medina] so that they were one family with one character before the enemy in their battles. God decreed victory for them over their enemies, and this spirit of unity permeated the first Muslims, among whom were the heroes that achieved victory

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in defeating the greatest warriors of the Persians and Byzantines. . . . And this same spirit of Islamic unity expressed itself in the 10 Ramadan War [October 6, 1973] which unified the Arabs and the Muslims, joining their forces and directing their weapons at the enemy until they achieved victory and respect between peoples and the esteem of the world. (8: 185)

But this unity is not one of bare solidarity against non-Muslims. In discussing relations with people of other religions, the ninth-grade book says: If Islam is a religious bond between Muslims, at the same time Islam emphasizes other ties that bind people together as children of a single community [umma], for the community is the largest family and the children of one community are held together by many bonds, including common descent and language and environment and customs and expectations, and because of that it’s the right of the children of the nation [watan] to work together like the individuals in a single family that is not divided by different convictions. The principle of national brotherhood [ukhuwa alwataniyya] is one of the most important foundations that Islam fixes in place. . . . The Prophet, when he entered Mecca victorious, could have made everyone into Muslims following his religion, but he left them without compulsion and without coercion and they all lived in the brotherhood of a single nation, the Muslim in his submission falling under the protection of Islam, and non-Muslims in their religions guarded as well by the overarching protection of Islam. . . . Islam guarantees non-Muslims freedom of conscience and the security of their souls and their wealth and their honor and their places and means of worship. (9: 195–196)

Although the reference is to history, it’s clear that the target of the passage is contemporary Egypt: Islam is tolerant of people of other religions and strives for national bonds and national unity, as history attests: Islam didn’t destroy churches or shed blood on the basis of differences of belief. . . . The basis of human relations in the view of Islam is mercy and peace and exchange of goods and mutual knowledge that leads to loving friendship between citizens, and to national unity. And we are dedicated also to the Muslim in Egypt being bound with every Muslim on the face of the earth with bonds of religion and being bound with his brother the Copt with bonds of nationality, for one bond doesn’t diminish the other, and the Muslim is the brother to the Muslim in convictions, and the brother to the Christian in nationality. He loves his brothers in religion and in the nation and this love demands that the strong protect the weak, and the rich provide for the poor and that the big look out for the small, and that we work together for common welfare and national stability, for division is weakness and unity is strength. (9: 196–197)

Here nationality is a source not of difference, but of unity that overcomes confessional diversity. And that diversity itself is ultimately a matter of choice.

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Teaching Islam The most unified source [of knowledge] is God, revealed in a miraculous clear Arabic Quran, which tells of the mission of the Prophet, and his receipt of the message, and his taking to the Arabs of Mecca and its environs and to mankind as a whole the complete religion. [And it tells] about the day of judgment, how God has prepared a resurrection and an accounting and a reward that are real without a doubt. Before this summons people stand in two groups: those who are convinced, and believe and enter the religion of God, obeying of their own accord and earning thereby paradise; and the group of obstinate unbelievers, who flee from obedience to God. . . . [T]he fire will be their reward and harm their destiny. And if God willed, he could make all people of one religion, the religion of Islam. But his wish and his decree makes the matter of religion and its beliefs a matter of choice rather than compulsion. For when God knows a person has goodness within him, he guides him to faith and causes him to adore it, and enters him into his mercy. And when God knows a person has unbelief (kufr) and willfulness within him, he turns away from faith because of the darkness of his spirit, and he chooses a path in which there is no security or faith. And this group of people will not find anyone to help or assist them or to protect them from the torment of the day of judgment, because God is the One, the Patron, and he has the power to make the dead live and raise them up, “for he can do all things.” (8: 53)

In this construction of Otherness, there are obviously not just two entities, but three: the faithful, the unbelievers, and God himself, who is the ultimate Other setting the terms on which life is lived. When we think about the human Other in passages like this, we’re not referring to differences in race or place but differences in state of being. Being Muslim is not a matter of belonging to a culture or nationality but of manifesting one’s human nature. The division is not unbridgeable. It was bridged in the past by the Khazraj and the Aws, the original converts from Medina, and then bridged again by the pagan Arab tribes that flocked to Islam after the opening of Mecca. The ninth-grade textbook recalls “the blessing of God on them when there was war and enmity between them in the time of ignorance, and how he blessed them with Islam, making them loving brothers by the glory of God, interconnected and cooperative in piety and strength” (9: 189). There was a time, in other words, when the Muslims were not. And it is precisely the possibility and the history of change that links the textbook narratives of exclusion and inclusion. Conclusion: Seeking Utopia One way to think of these texts is that they present not portraits of people of other cultures or faiths, but portraits of people in other states of being. The Other can, if he wishes, become the Self. The Other is the human of the past and the human without the guidance of God through the Prophet. The world of differences that these books define is not one of country or geography or

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race or even culture, but of difference in the willingness to adhere to an ideal, a call, and a vision of correspondence between human practice and human nature. It is a utopian vision. But the articulation and actualization of utopian visions is exactly what we have come to expect from the school. In practical terms, we have come to expect two things from the school, ever since the glitter of enlightenment through compulsory popular education overcame the gloom of increased taxes to pay for it. First, we have faith that schooling will be an effective means of cultural transmission, through which we reproduce our values and institutions, nurture our history and literature, and impress the future with the stamp of a valued past. Education helps to forge the nation as a collectivity and to forge the nation’s own narrative past simultaneously. And second, we have faith that schooling will turn each individual student into a dynamic engine of technological and economic change, enabling the sort of progress, development, and innovation that will make the nation “competitive” in global arenas of money and power. So educators have always promised, and so leaders have always expected. But what we tend not to recognize as often as we should is that these two promises are at odds. Cultural conservation and cultural innovation are contradictory ideals. Moreover, the nation itself, as we conceive it, is a utopian fantasy whose ideal is a group without divergence of interests or, at least, a group whose divergent interests mesh in an organic way to knit them into a seamless whole. It is not an accident that Emile Durkheim’s vision of the apotheosis of society derives not from his study of the Australian aborigines, as outlined in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), but from his work on moral education in the French school system, as outlined in lectures he delivered at the Sorbonne in 1902–1903 (Durkheim 1973). Despite the promise of the school, though, we do not live in utopia, but in a world in which the relationship between education and other institutions is problematic and contradictory. Moral, religious, and political education may be less the causal force of national unity and progress than they are a band-aid to cover the social wounds gouged by the everyday operation of other institutions: the rational brutalities of the market, the stifling influence of patriarchy, the casual violence of power politics. Despite all the talk over the last few years about the danger posed to world security by fanatical madrasa teachers in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—criticisms nearly identical to those articulated by Europeans in Egypt a century and a half ago (see Starrett 1998)—I have doubts that the constructs of inclusion and exclusion they outline are all that significant on a global scale. What we forget in reproducing the nineteenth-century discourse of the madrasa is that when it was originally articulated, “fanaticism” as a category of behavior was linked causally with a theory of educational process. Fanaticism was a

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result of the culture of memorization in which the accurate reproduction of sacred text required its literal incorporation. In the words of British colonial official Alfred Milner, [To learn to repeat] a quantity of matter which you are taught to regard with religious reverence, but never taught to understand, is, if anything, an anti-educational process. If the object of true education be intellectual gymnastics, if it be to exercise and render supple the joints of the mind, then this system is its very opposite, for it tends to stiffen them. It is not calculated to enlighten, but to obfuscate. (Milner 1892: 366)

In an early-twentieth-century evaluation of the Egyptian school system by F. O. Mann, this criticism was updated from the Quran memorization of the classical Muslim kuttab (local quranic school), to the new world of government-issued texts, in which the process [of examination and cramming] is objectionable in itself but most of all when applied to such subjects as hygiene and morals. Not only is examination in these subjects apt to confuse the essential issue but it attempts to test what obviously cannot be tested by the simplicities of question and answer. The dirtiest little boy ever born might easily get full marks in a written examination in hygiene, and the most doubtful juvenile ever conceived the first place in morality by sheer capacity for the reproduction of platitudes, in the one case physiological, in the other, ethical. (Mann 1932: 21)

Obviously, understanding and application are superior to memorization and repetition when it comes to life skills. Contemporary educators laud critical thinking skills as more important than memorized facts, but despite a century and a half of this criticism, in contemporary Egypt the culture of memorization has hardly changed. That is not because of the stultifying influence of Islam, but because school overcrowding makes this sort of testing the most realistic form of evaluation, and because of the understandable desire by educators to retain prestige and control over students (as well as making money on the side by tutoring students after class). In this, though, the Egyptian school system is hardly different from the Japanese, and we hardly ever say nasty things about the products of Japanese schools. Not so long ago we even traced to them the source of Japan’s then-vital economy. The culture of memorization does not make Japanese students into nationalist fanatics. Perhaps we have difficulty in constructing a consistent view of the schooling process and its relationship to cultural progress and individual personality because, despite our educators’ faith, the content of schooling is not at the heart of either civilizational process or of civilizational struggle. Perhaps Pakistani children are not morally warped by madrasa education,

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but only taught a raw Orwellian duckspeak of anti-Semitism and antiAmericanism and jihadism that is deployed in highly context-dependent ways (as when children are performing for the press at the direction of their onlooking instructors). What, in any case, would be the purpose of teaching them mathematics and science and history and literature, if this knowledge cannot be made of use in a poor and overcrowded country whose dictators and power elites extol the virtues of education and hard work but have little real interest in changing the status quo? Whatever else they do, slogan-spewing children make great television, and they direct our attention to the relatively manageable idea of rewriting textbooks rather than the prodigious and troublesome task of reforming economies or political systems. But do social and religious studies textbooks and curricula shape our lives? We have very little idea—even in the United States—what they do for children, who upon graduating high school don’t vote despite their civics curricula and forget most of the history they’re taught. As educational researcher Michael Apple has cautioned, We cannot assume that what is “in” the text is actually taught. Nor can we assume that what is taught is actually learned. . . . Teachers have a long history of mediating and transforming text material when they employ it in classrooms. Students bring their own classed, raced, religious, and gendered biographies with them as well. They, too, accept, reinterpret, and reject what counts as legitimate knowledge selectively. . . . [S]tudents are active constructors of the meanings of the education they encounter. (quoted in Herrera 2004: 325)

Textbooks do many things. They can act as policy statements for governments, as in the Arab world, or as negotiated documents that balance the ideologies of political interest groups, as in the United States, where various organizations exist solely to study and influence the content of textbooks, either through direct moral appeal to publishers or through exerting pressure on the educational bureaucracies of large states, whose schoolbook adoption policies can make or break a text economically. They can act as articulations of a certain set of ideals. But they are never the only articulations of ideals and are hardly more influential than the ideals expressed by relatives, magazines and television shows, folklore, children’s games, schoolyard gossip, military training, or other influences to which children and young adults are exposed. It is the political facts underlying their production and promulgation that matter more than their content, because standing power structures never rely wholly on the textbook to do the work of social guidance and control. If there is to be real reform in the world, change in textbook content is best approached as a result of that reform rather than a cause of it. One thing that is clear in thinking about the role of education in the

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Middle East is that we probably have less to fear from madrasa boys, who may break windows and burn automobiles in Lahore or Asyut, than we have to fear from modern-educated young men like Muhammad Atta, who write their university theses on how the markets of Aleppo have been spoiled by the American architectural form of the skyscraper and who study aviation in order to do something about it. Atta’s technical skills were learned in school (in Germany and the United States, as well as in Egypt), but his motivations and the constructs of inclusion and exclusion that shaped them were acquired largely in the course of experience in the broad world outside (more, in fact, in Germany than in Egypt). If we wish to understand the politics of inclusion and exclusion, it’s that wide world, rather than the restricted universe of the textbook, to which we need to direct our attention. Textbooks Cited 7 Mahmud al-Sayyid al-Duwwa, et al. 1987. Al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya [Islamic Education]. Al-saff al-sabi‘ min al-halqa al-thaniya min alta‘lim al-asasi, 1986–1987. Grade 7. Cairo: al-Jihaz al-Markazi lilKutub al-Jami‘iyya wa al-Madrasiyya wa al-Wasa’il al-Ta‘limiyya. 8 Mahmud al-Sayyid al-Duwwa, et al. 1988. Al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya [Islamic Education]. Al-saff al-thamin min al-halqa al-thaniya min alta‘lim al-asasi, 1987–1988. Grade 8. Cairo: al-Jihaz al-Markazi lilKutub al-Jami‘iyya wa al-Madrasiyya wa al-Wasa’il al-Ta‘limiyya. 9 Muhammad Sayf al-Din Alish, et al. 1988. Al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya [Islamic Education]. Al-saff al-tasi‘ min al-halqa al-thaniya min alta‘lim al-asasi, 1988–1989. Grade 9. Cairo: al-Jihaz al-Markazi lilKutub al-Jami‘iyya wa al-Madrasiyya wa al-Wasa’il al-Ta‘limiyya. 12 Dr. Rif‘at Fawzi. 1989. Al-Tarbiyya al-Islamiyya [Islamic Education]. Lil-saff al-thalith al-thanawi, 1989–1990. Grade 12. Cairo: al-Jihaz alMarkazi lil-Kutub al-Jami‘iyya wa al-Madrasiyya wa al-Wasa’il alTa‘limiyya. Notes 1. A commonsense approach to this issue is an epidemiological one that assumes that the greater one’s exposure to particular textual content—in other words, the longer one has remained in school—the greater the effect of such texts is likely to be. Dale Eickelman pointed out at the 2003 conference at Brown University (see Chapter 1), however, that this is a problematic assumption, since those individuals with more schooling are likely to have access to other texts, and that the greatest impact of textbook content is probably on those individuals with the least schooling and the lowest degree of access to alternative texts. My own view is that the content of texts is less important than the institutional and political structures in which they are used. As Lisa Wedeen (1999) has pointed out for Syria, the violent imposition of official public ideologies can be accompanied by an almost universal skepticism.

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2. Interestingly, this theme of awed conversion subsequent to military victory was revived by Osama bin Laden after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when he claimed that Americans and Europeans had begun embracing Islam “in droves” as a result of the Muslim show of strength. 3. I would like to thank anthropologist Rick Shweder for this insight. 4. It should be noted that this is a standard feature of premodern warfare and has not entirely disappeared in the modern world, where ethnic cleansing has taken equally hideous forms. Compare, for example, chapters 8 and 9 of the Bible’s Book of Joshua, or Deuteronomy 20:10–18, where Moses tells the Hebrews, “When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves, and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. Thus you shall do in all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save nothing alive that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.”

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12 Conclusion: Tailor-Made Islam Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Gregory Starrett

A THOROUGH REVIEW OF THE religion textbooks used in Middle Eastern schools does not yield a picture of mindless fanaticism or of transregional jihadi ideology. In fact, the main feature of these books is that each government has used them as part of its effort to create a tailor-made Islam suitable for domestic consumption rather than a normative Islam that flows across political borders. Other political, military, cultural, and economic forces may be contributing to broader transnational trends in militant ideology and practice, but school textbooks are not the places to look for them. Indeed, one of the broadest trends we do see in these books is the use of Islam as a basis for promulgating civic and moral virtue among the citizens of nation-states, the inhabitants of cities and neighborhoods, and the members of families. The main observations drawn from comparing religious studies textbooks across the Middle East have been discussed in the introduction to this volume. Here these observations are briefly summarized:

1. Tailor-made Islam: Modern mass education and centralized textbook production have not produced a “normative” Islam across political borders. Instead, each country’s representation of Islam has unique features and reflects the policy interests of the state. 2. Identity with the nation-state: Each country’s religion curriculum is employed to promote national cohesion. In every country except Iran, Islam is represented as generic and Sunni, and except in Saudi Arabia, there is no mention of minority or heterodox sects such as Alawi, Ibadi, Shi‘a, Ismaili, or Druze. This is the case even in areas politically dominated by sectarian adherents, such as Syria, where the ruling Ba‘th party leaders are Alawi, and Oman, where the ruling family and half the general population are Ibadi. Saudi texts promote a generic Sunni Islam but pointedly mention sectarian, doctrinaire, and behavioral differences by way of reinforcing boundaries 233

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of inclusion and exclusion. Iranian textbooks teach a specifically Shi‘ite theology that is tied to the Islamic Republic and promotes loyalty to it. Zoroastrians and Baha’is are entirely excluded, but Sunni Islam, the religion of Iran’s Kurds and Azaris, is acknowledged as a brotherly branch of a single religion. Turkey’s textbooks reshape Islam as a single religion fused with Turkishness, revitalized as a result of having been adopted by the Turks, and sealed off from the larger Middle East context. In terms of coverage and context, Atatürk competes with the Prophet Muhammad for veneration. 3. Violence and intercommunal harmony: Violent behavior toward unbelievers because of their unbelief is not a feature of religion textbooks, but there are exceptions, and some textbooks embrace religious difference more warmly than others. The textbooks of Egypt, Kuwait, and Turkey and the revised books of the Palestinian National Authority counterbalance Islamic militancy and encourage tolerance and respect for others; when it comes to the circumstances of the occupation, the Palestinian National Authority’s textbooks project a measure of ambivalence. Iran’s curriculum sends a mixed message, advocating brotherhood with non-Shi‘ite Muslims and appreciation for the aspects of faith shared in common with nonMuslims of the Abrahamic tradition. At the same time, however, when a political context is introduced, the Iranian textbooks encourage Muslims to unite to “cut off the hands of foreigners and the enemies of Islam,” the common enemy being “infidelity (kufr) and global oppression.” Syria’s textbooks repeatedly stress the equality of all people before the law, including freedom of religious belief and practice, though the framework in which these rights are presented is the classical idea of the Islamic state, according to which Muslims are to rule. One sentence of one book out of the twelve that comprise the Syrian religion curriculum says that pagans—but not Jews and Christians—should face the choice of conversion or death. Similarly, in the Jordanian texts, many passages discuss tolerance, supporting the view that the People of the Book have the right to freedom of worship, among other rights, but the tone of the message is one of grudging acceptance within the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia’s religion textbooks are unique in repeating in numerous places throughout the curriculum that the blood and property of an apostate are forfeit. The Saudi and Omani textbooks alone call for the denunciation of heterodox Muslims and other unbelievers and prescribe enmity toward them, though on the whole the Omani texts, especially in the lower grades, project values of communal harmony. In the revised Saudi textbooks, as of 2006 most of these references had been removed or modified.

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4. Jihad for defense: In every country’s religion curriculum, jihad is an obligation in the cause of defending Islam, Muslims, or the nation. In each curriculum, however, there are differing emphases on the nature of the enemy and what to do about him. In Egypt, jihad in the modern world is explicitly presented as a moral duty of self-control in response to the temptations offered by Satan, although it can refer also to physical battle against those who attack Islam. In Turkey and Iran, jihad legitimizes conscription for the sake of national defense, but the “enemies” to be faced are unnamed. In the Saudi texts, Israeli expansion is noted as an example of present-day colonialism deserving of jihad, but also highlighted are ideological enemies that the reader may or may not infer as qualifying to be objects of jihad. In the Omani texts jihad is a religious duty, a prerequisite for entry into heaven, and the cause for jihad is “the destruction of some Muslim countries, like Palestine and others today.” The message is that jihad’s purpose is righteous violence, but with a caveat: its lofty goals may be subverted by fanaticism and be used for disingenuous ends. The unrevised textbooks used by the high schools of the Palestinian National Authority discuss jihad mainly in the context of countering colonialism, where jihad appears as a synonym for “national liberation” or “national resistance.” In Jordanian texts, “Muslim society is a jihadi society, defending the truth and sacrificing on behalf of it,” and is important to the society because of the hostile relationship the Muslim world has always had with Christians and Jews. In the Syrian textbooks jihad is expressly linked to defending against an expanding Israel, and in a single tenth-grade passage, in contrast to elementary-level books that refer respectfully to Jews, Israel is seen as an existential threat out to destroy the Islamic world, against which the only response is to “eliminate” the Jews from their midst. The jihad-Israel connection reflects political realities existing between Israel and its neighbors but is also produced in dialogue with Israeli textbooks that prepare children to accept war as a natural fact of life (Gor 2003) and encourage a sense of open-ended entitlement to territory beyond its internationally recognized boundaries. For example, Israeli textbooks delegitimize the existence of Palestinian Arabs historically, erase Arabic names of geographic locations from maps, and draw the borders of the “land of Israel” as contiguous with mandate Palestine, and sometimes beyond (Nasser 2005, as cited in Chapter 1, note 6). 5. Islamic moral values and “civic virtues”: The definition of moral values in Islam has expanded in the textbooks, where “traditional” values are presented alongside new values that are self-consciously

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designed to turn Islam into an instrument for economic development and civic good. In the Saudi, Jordanian, and Syrian religion textbooks, Islam has absolute answers to life’s moral questions, and moral values are couched primarily as correct behaviors: one is to learn what is forbidden and what is allowed, and individuals are to obey for the good of the community. Included among traditional values are the reciprocal rights and obligations of men and women toward one another in marriage, proper ritual observance, respect for parents, kindness to children, the rights of neighbors, and methods of ritual cleanliness. In the Kuwaiti texts the Muslim is shown to be humble and moderate in spending, one who neither kills nor commits adultery nor testifies falsely, and worships the One God. Especially in the Iranian texts, kindness, compassion, cleanliness, tranquility, honesty, humility, moderation, and chastity are mentioned repeatedly as core values. Tolerance is a new and very important theme in all of the textbooks, including the revised Saudi texts. In the revised Palestinian curriculum, civic education texts are especially insistent on the value of tolerance, encouraging an inclusive approach regarding religion, as well as economic status and disability, and also addressing sensitive moral issues such as domestic violence. The high school religion texts encourage students to think about the violence to which their own communities have been exposed, but the texts also highlight coexistence and tolerance as Islamic normative values. Some of the new values incorporated into religion textbooks also include brotherhood and equality among all human beings regardless of race, sex, or color (as opposed to brotherhood confined to one’s fellow Muslims), the responsibility of individuals for themselves, and a prohibition on torture. Syrian religion texts have added hard work and study as forms of worship and, like the Kuwaiti texts, try to reverse the Islamic concept of predestination, arguing that human beings have free will to make moral choices and are thus responsible for what they do. In the religion curriculum, the Saudis used the concept of tawhid to advocate turning away from “frivolous” activities such as the arts, whereas Egyptian textbooks reinterpret tawhid as advocating an Egyptian Muslim cultural identity that appreciates human creativity such as literature, music, fine art, and sculpture. In the Turkish textbooks, Islamic values accommodate the official secularism of the state: ablution encourages cleanliness, daily prayer teaches one to be disciplined, and fasting is good for one’s health. The old rules of obedience and rights of family members

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become a template for productive citizenship: women fulfill obligations as mothers and men as fathers and providers, children help their parents, and factory workers and civil servants put in an honest day’s work. Omani elementary school texts advocate good behavior for the civic good: Muslims are respectful and show compassion, pick up trash in the schoolroom and in the street, help the elderly and infirm, and keep themselves clean—not just for the sake of ritual purity. In Islam people want for others what they want for themselves. The Saudi curriculum incorporated as early as 1999 a separate course in “Civics” that adopts new values and presents them as integral to Islamic society. Like similar course books used in Kuwait (and also in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bosnia, countries not included in this volume; Leirvik 2004), the Saudi civics curriculum showcases Islam as a template for human decency, tolerance, inclusiveness, economic prosperity, development, and civic harmony, offering lessons on cooperative behavior, personal cleanliness, table manners, helpfulness toward parents and siblings, keeping appointments, respect for manual labor, and avoidance of drugs. That these values are presented as Islamic, yet taught as civics and not as part of the religion curriculum, suggests a back-door solution to competing versions of Islam within Saudi society and the Ministry of Education. 6. Representation of Islam versus reality: In every single religion curriculum, there is a vast dissonance between the textbook representation of Islam and the social and political realities that students encounter in their everyday lives. Given the internal complexity and even contradictions within these books, not to mention the different ways in which they are used, their different curricular and testing implications, and the vast distance between some of the books’ contents and the daily lives of their readers, it is unrealistic to take any of them as unproblematically diagnostic of the state of Islamic belief or practice within the countries in which they are used. The role of school experience in students’ lives is far too complex to allow for that (Herrera and Torres 2006; Kaplan 2006). The books can tell us about some of the idioms in which religious values and duties are expressed by official institutions. They can tell us about some of the conceptual resources students are given to think about life in the modern world. They can tell us about how Islam as a conceptual system can be molded, reformed, and sometimes even distorted by the ebb and flow of global and regional commercial and military competition and by the needs and tactics of state bureaucracies—along with ruling classes and families—to reinforce their position and underscore their legitimacy. They can tell us about how mod-

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ern standards of textbook format and contemporary research in education and psychology are employed as tools for socializing children more efficiently into an ancient religious tradition. But they can neither explain the existence of political and ideological conflict, nor explain by themselves the broad range of emotional, spiritual, psychological, and rhetorical perspectives living Muslims bring to their faith and to their lives. Textbooks are one contributor to those lives. But their true importance is that they are symbols of modernity’s confidence that education is a force that can shape new and better lives, new and better worlds.

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Taghreed Alqudsi-ghabra is associate professor of information science and founding chair of the Department of Library and Information Science, Kuwait University. Former editor of a Kuwaiti book publishing project for children, she has published widely in Arabic and English journals and is the author of Mundhu Nu‘mat Adhfarihim: Adab al-atfal al-‘arabi al-hadith fi al-qarn al-‘ashrin [A Content Analysis of Arabic Children’s Books Published in the Twentieth Century] and al-Raha al-Ghareeba [The Strange Comfort], a book for children on life and death. Özlem Altan holds a doctorate in political science from New York University, where her research focused on transnational elite networks in the Middle East. Her recent publications include contributions to the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures and Arab Studies Journal. Betty S. Anderson is assistant professor of Middle East history at Boston University. She is the author of Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State and History Handbook, as well as articles in Critique, Jordanies, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Nathan J. Brown is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords, Constitutionalism in a Nonconstitutional World, The Rule of Law in the Arab World, and Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt, as well as numerous journal articles on politics in the Arab world. Seif Da‘Na is assistant professor of sociology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. His recent publications include articles in Arab Studies Quarterly, the Encyclopedia of Israeli Palestinian

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Conflict, Middle East Affairs Journal, Human Ecology Journal, and Kanaan Intellectual Journal. Eleanor Abdella Doumato is visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where she works within the Middle East and Islamic studies initiatives. She is the author of Getting God’s Ear: Women, Islam and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and coeditor of Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East. Her articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report, and Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations, among other publications. Muhammad Eissa is president of Eissa & Associates, an educational consulting firm specializing in Arabic/Islamic studies. His recent projects include curriculum design, teacher training, application of technology to teaching Arabic as a foreign language, and distance learning. Joshua Landis is assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma. He writes “SyriaComment.com,” a blog on Syrian politics that has a daily readership of 3,000, and his forthcoming book, Democracy in Syria, will be published in 2007. He has published numerous articles and chapters on Syrian history and politics. Mandana E. Limbert is assistant professor of anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York. Her book, Of Ties and Time: Gender, Sociality and Modernity in an Omani Town, examines gendered sociality at the juncture of shifting religiosities and development discourses. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Social Text, and MIT-EJMES, and she is currently working on a history of servitude, marriage practices, and identity among Omanis in Oman and Zanzibar. Golnar Mehran is associate professor of education at Al-Zahra University in Tehran. She has worked as an education consultant for UNICEF, UNESCO, and the World Bank. She is the author of numerous articles on Iran and education including contributions to Comparative Education and Comparative Education Review. Gregory Starrett is associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His book Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics and Religious Transformation in Egypt, examines the use of religious education in public schools and their connection to state politics and Islamic movements. He has also published numerous articles in books and journals, including in Cultural Anthropology and Middle East Policy among others.

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James Toronto is associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Brigham Young University. He has conducted research on Islamic education for organizations such as AMIDEAST and Harvard Institute for International Development. His current research and publications deal with issues of Muslim integration in Europe, Christian missiology in Europe and the Middle East, and educational reform and identity construction in Islamic societies.

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Abbasid dynasty, 67 Abdu, Muhammad, 93 Abraham, 54, 63, 64, 163 Abu Lughod, Ibrahim, 126 Addictions, 28 Afghanistan: madrasas in, 2; Taliban in, 2; United States invasion, 2 Aflaq, Michel, 181 Agha Khan, 44, 199 Akaylah, Abdallah, 76, 77 Al-Aqsa mosque, 93, 165 al-Arsuzi, Zaki, 181 al-Asad, Bashar, 178, 180, 186, 194 al-Asad, Hafiz, 180, 192 al-Asad, Sulayman, 192 Alawis, 20, 177, 188–192 al-Awtabi, Salma, 122n1 al-Banna, Hassan, 167, 175n13 al-Barudi, 93 al-Din al-Afghani, Jamal, 93 al-Din al-Salimi, Nur, 107, 117 Alevis, 204 al-Faqzan, Saleh Ibn Fawzan Ibn Abdullah, 173 al-Hawali, Safar, 173 al-Hussain, Sukeina Bint, 145 Ali, Muhammad, 10, 11 Al-Jazeera, 73 al-Kader al-Husseini, Abd, 144 al-Kassam, Iz ad-Din, 144 al-Khalili, Ahmed, 107 al-Kindi, Ahmad, 122n1 al-Kindi, Muhammad, 122n1 al-Mukhtar, Omar, 144

al-Othman, Laila, 93 al-Qader, Abd, 144 Alqudsi-ghabra, Taghreed, 15, 16, 89–100 al-Sadi, Jumayyil, 122n1 Altan, Ozlem, 16, 21, 197–214 al-Wahhab, Muhammad ibn Abd, 17, 156, 157, 161, 167, 174n5, 175n14; 174n6 al-Walâya wa al-Barâ’a, 114–118, 159–163 American Israel Public Affairs Committee, 3 Anderson, Betty, 15, 16, 71–87 Anti-Americanism, 6 Anti-Semitism, 18, 20 Arab-Israeli conflict, 3, 19, 20, 38–40, 93 Arabs: importance of use of Arabic for, 144, 145; nationalism and, 145; negative representations of, 19; relations with Israel, 19 Arafat, Yasser, 147 Arsuzi, al-, Zaki, 181 Asad, al-, Bashar, 178, 180, 186, 194 Asad, al-, Hafiz, 180, 192 Asad, al-, Sulayman, 192 Atatürk, Kemal, 205, 208 Atheism, 158, 185–186, 203 Avicenna, 60 Awtabi, al-, Salma, 122n1 Ba‘athism, 14, 15, 181, 191, 192–195 Baha’ism, 20

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Banna, al-, Hassan, 167, 175n13 Banu Nadir, 222 Banu Qaynuqa’, 222 Barudi, al-,93 Basij, 61 bin Ali al-Siyabi, Mohammad, 107 bin Jibrin, Abdullah, 173 bin Laden, Osama, 2, 194 bin Said al-Bu Saidi, Qaboos, 105–106 Bosnia: religious education in, 17 Boundaries: overlapping, 10; understanding, 9 Britain: in Egypt, 12; in Oman, 105; in Palestine, 143–144 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 8 Brown, Nathan, 14, 16, 125–137 Bush, George H. W., 8 Bush, George, 6 Cheney, Lynne, 8 Christianity, 164, 220; Coptic, 38; in Iran, 56; in Jordan, 73; in Kuwait, 93; in Syria, 177, 180, 184–185, 195n2; transgressions in, 72 Circumcision, female, 28, 43–44 Class: differences, 16; social, 10, 34 Clinton, Hillary, 3, 6 Colonialism, 12, 81, 92–94, 141, 159, 167 Committee on Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), 3, 24n1, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152n3 Conflicts: intercultural, 93; within Islam, 29; jihad and, 85; nationalist and religious ideologies, 24; political, 93; spiritual, 3 Cultural: confrontation, 83; identity, 15, 17, 36–37; institutions, 2; invasions, 98; reproduction, 10; revolution, 55; symbols, 146 Culture: of death, 3; of extremism, 29; Islamic, 36–37; of jihad, 58; political, 15, 139; of praying, 58; transfer, 53; Western, 36–37; youth, 3 Curriculum: Arabic-language, 24n1; comparative contexts for, 7–10; content of, 4; debates on, 8; denial of difference in, 15; descriptions of terrorism in, 46–47; distrust of Jews in, 38–40; hidden, 21, 48; impact on identity formation, 47–48; implicit

meanings in, 49; in Israel, 14, 19; lack of coherence in, 15; militarized, 5; nationalism and, 14; planning processes, 14; politicization of, 6; presentation of Islamic values in, 17; reform, 6–7; Shi‘ite, 53–69; state interests in, 13, 14; varying representations of Islam in, 5. See also individual countries Da‘Na, Seif, 14, 20, 139–151 Democracy, 29 Development: curriculum, 127; economic, 17, 27; of morality, 13; personal, 95; political, 10; sociopolitical, 49 Din al-Afghani, al-, Jamal, 93 Din al-Salimi, al-, Nur, 107, 117 Discourse: biblical, 139; nationalist, 141; public, 5, 35, 146; religious, 29, 30, 48; Zionist, 146, 151 Divorce, 81; in Kuwait, 97; in Palestine, 146 Doumato, Eleanor, 1–24, 153–173 Dress, Islamic, 28, 41–43, 79, 161, 210 Druze, 20, 126, 180, 188–192, 192 Education, religious: bureaucratic organization of, 22; civic dimension of, 17; cultural revolution and, 55; in Egypt, 27–51; goals of, 54–56; impact on identity formation, 47–48; in Iran, 53–69; in Jordan, 71–87; in Kuwait, 89–100; in Oman, 103–122; requirements for, 22; in Saudi Arabia, 153–173; in Syria, 177–195; in Turkey, 197–214 Education: development of morality and, 13; extremism and, 2, 3; identity formation and, 28; Islamic, 13; in Middle East, 6–7; nation building and, 28; reform, 99, 100; rote memorization in, 10; segregated, 58; source material in, 27; spread of, 71; stratification in, 10; student averages and, 22; teacher-student relationships and, 16; terrorism and, 2, 3; traditional methods, 27. See also individual countries Egypt, 27–51; addressing real-life issues in schools in, 28; al-khitab al-dini in, 29, 30; ambivalent attitude toward

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Index religious education in, 31; antiSemitism in, 18, 38–40; attempts to block forces of extremism in, 48; Britain in, 12; Christian education in, 31; citizen’s relationship to society in, 33–35; civil society in, 35; “cold peace” with Israel, 39, 49; Committee on Religious and Social Affairs in, 29; concept of tawhid in texts in, 17; contradiction between government policy and curriculum, 15, 17, 19, 28, 34; counteracting extremist elements in, 30; creation of schools in, 10, 11, 12; curricular inconsistencies in, 28; curricular sanction for literature and arts, 36–37; curriculum concentration on national identity, 32; debate over religious discourse in public life, 29–31; differentiation of parental roles in, 40, 41; education and government policy objectives, 27; effect of state struggle with Islamist groups on education, 27, 28; family planning in, 28, 44; female circumcision and, 28, 43–44; freedoms sanctioned in, 33, 34; gender roles in, 28, 40–41; hidden curriculum in, 21, 48; human rights in, 33–35; Islamic culture, 36–37; Islamic curricula in, 27–51; Islamic dress in, 41–43; Islamic infiltration of school staffs in, 16; liberalization of schools in, 28; mandatory education in, 30; media apostasy in, 34; Ministry of Education in, 28, 48; Muslim-Jewish relations in, 38–40; national loyalty in, 32–37; place of Islam in modern society in, 29–31; policy to counteract development of Islamic identity in, 32; political power in, 29; preeminence of Sunnism in, 44–47; principles of national brotherhood in, 33; promotion of tolerance between Christians and Muslims in, 37–40; public discourse in, 35; religion curriculum in, 31; religious discourse in, 29; restrictions on non-Muslims, 34; role of religion in public life, 50; sanctity of family in, 40–44; schools as agents of social change in, 30;

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sectarian violence in, 37; secularism in, 29; sentiment regarding Israel, 19; shift from pan-Arabism to nationalism in curriculum, 32; student indifference to religious education in, 31; supervision of religious activities in, 30; Supreme Council for Religious Discourse in, 29; terrorism and, 30; textbooks in, 27–51; theme of political stability/economic prosperity in, 35–36; tolerance for the Other in, 27, 28, 37–40; tolerance in texts in, 17; Western culture and, 36–37; women in, 28, 49 Eissa, Muhammad, 15, 17, 21, 23, 27–51 Elson, Ruth Miller, 1 Erbakan, Necmettin, 201 Extremism: education and, 2, 3 Family planning, 28 Family: as building block of society, 71, 77–83, 165, 166; idealized views of, 40; individual roles in, 71; law, 79; as standard-bearers of Islamic tradition in Jordan, 74 Faqzan, al-, Saleh Ibn Fawzan Ibn Abdullah, 173 Farsi, Salman-e, 60 Fatimah, 54, 67 Friedman, Thomas, 1, 2, 5, 8 Gandhi, Mohandas, 24, 95, 98 Gender: curriculum content and, 78; diversity, 134; interaction, 79; in Iran, 67–68; in Palestine, 145–146; relations, 77, 82; roles, 28, 40–41, 49, 67–68; separation, 82; traditional attitudes, 40–41 Governments: fear of discontented educated classes by, 13; identity construction and, 27, 28; role of religion in, 23–24 Hadith, 178; on disassociation from non-Muslims, 160; enmity to unbelievers and, 171; on financial prohibitions, 37; prohibition of extremism, 46; proof passages, 17; references to behavior, 111; on social responsibility, 33; as source material in educa-

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tion, 27; as support for patriarchal structures, 74; on treatment of women, 41; views on Christianity/ Judaism, 83 Hawali, al-, Safar, 173 Hijab, 67, 210 Hogue, James, 1 Hussain, Iman (Lord of Martyrs), 61 Hussain, al-, Sukeina Bint, 145 Hussein, Taha, 167 Hypocrisy, 117, 161 Ibadism, 20, 103, 109–110; centrality to national representations of identity, 120; stages of imamate states in, 104 Identity: Arab, 94, 126, 180–182; boundary issues, 144; changing, 10; communal, 40; competing boundaries of, 35; construction, 27, 147; creation, 6–7; cultural, 15, 17, 36–37; formation, 27, 28, 99, 146, 151; homeland, 127; impact of religious education on formation of, 47–48; international, 127; Islamic, 20–21, 63–65, 90–92, 94, 96, 97, 126, 153, 180–182; national, 14, 20, 29, 38, 94, 105, 120, 127–128, 128, 131, 132–137, 144, 201; negotiating, 137; non-Muslim, 63–65; nonshi‘ite, 65–66; Palestinian, 127–128; personal, 40, 99; political, 27, 215; religious, 21, 27, 47–48, 103, 119, 127, 139, 144, 153; sectarian, 119, 120; of the self, 63; Shi‘ite, 53, 55, 65–66, 68, 69 Ikhwan. See Muslim Brotherhood Individualism, 10, 82 Indonesia: religious education in, 17 Infidels, 63 Innocent Ones, 54 Institutions: cultural, 2; of cultural reproduction, 10; social, 2 Instrumentalism, 3 Iran: anti-Semitism in texts in, 18; Basij in, 61; Bureau of Fostering Affairs in, 57; Committee of Fostering Affairs in, 22; cultural revolution in, 55; culture of praying in, 58; curriculum in, 53–69; defense of as religious duty, 59–62; distinction from the Other in, 64; educational link to

politics in, 54; extracurricular indoctrination for students, 57–59; gender in, 67–68; goals of state religious education in, 54–56; houses of Quran in, 58; identity in, 63–65; insecurity for clerical regime in, 61; Islamic dress in, 55, 59, 67; Islamic state of, 53–69; Islamization of, 53; knowledge of imamate in, 54, 55, 65, 66; link between religion and state in, 62–63; militarization of curriculum in, 5; military training for students in, 61; Ministry of Education in, 57, 58; nationalism in, 62; Office of Planning and Compilation of School Textbooks in, 56; Pahlavi period in, 67, 68; Qajar dynasty in, 10; religious education in, 53–69; religious minorities in, 56, 64; religious values in, 53; rule of the jurisprudent in, 62–63; sanctions against, 57; segregated education in, 58; shi‘ism in, 20; Shi‘ite/non-Shi‘ite identity in, 65–66; socialization of students in, 69; State of the Jurisprudent in, 54; student promotion in, 22; teaching methods in, 57; textbooks in, 53–69; thought policing in, 57–59; universal values in, 55; variations in texts in, 57; velayat-e faqih principle in, 53–69; war recruitment in, 57–59; war with Iraq, 55, 57–58, 61; women in, 67–68 Iraq: war with Iran, 55, 57–58, 61 Islam: Alawi, 126, 177, 180; American, 21, 59; anti-Americanism and, 6; as antithesis of the West, 158; Arabism and, 181, 182; authoritative, 168–170; avoidance of diversity in, 20; avoidance of sectarian differences in descriptions of, 5; banking and, 37; charity and, 37; civic virtue and, 89, 90, 95–96, 164–166; correct greetings in, 166; defense of, 60, 115, 143; defensive history of, 92; defining, 59; divorce in, 81; “dumbing down of,” 170; enemies of, 59, 67; exclusivist/inclusivist language in, 38; expansion through radicalization of teachers, 21; explanation of animosity toward Israel, 18; family

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Index role and, 16, 17, 77–83; fighting for, 115; foreign aggressors against, 60; functionalization of, 202; fundamentalist, 2, 146, 201; generic, 20–21, 103; good and evil in, 66–67; hypocrisy and, 115; Ibadi, 103–122; individualism and, 82; as instrument for civic good/economic development, 17; as integrated system of belief and ritual, 108; internal conflict in, 29; Israel as enemy of, 67; jihad and, 143–144; law of apostasy in, 34; martyrdom and, 54, 61, 104, 116; militant, 59; moderate, 91; as modern history of Arab world, 144; national identity and, 132–137; nationalism and, 5; nation building and, 1–24, 144–145; need for caution against Jews, 86; need for use of Arabic language, 144, 145; as perfect set of beliefs, 72; pillars of, 23, 65, 108, 115, 178, 206; place in modern society, 29–31; policy interests and, 5–6; politicization of, 55, 59, 62–63, 68, 69; portrayal as victim, 18; pragmatic, 27; “preventive” values in, 36; prohibition on torture in, 143; pure, 59, 167; redesigning identity of in curricula, 20–21; relations with Jews, 38–40; reliable vs. spurious authority in, 45–46; as religion of peace, 59; ritual purity and, 123n8; roots of, 163; sectarian differences in, 20; shi‘ite, 12, 53–69, 109–110, 154, 161, 204; as single religion, 21; societal components of, 144; strident rhetoric and, 51n5; Sufi, 6, 44, 154, 161; Sunni, 20, 44–47, 65–66, 104, 109–110, 142, 154, 163, 177–195; supremacy of, 17; terrorism and, 46–47; textbook, 16–17, 23–24, 59–67; threats to, 72, 92; traditional values in, 5; truths in, 54; unbelief and, 115; unitary, 71, 72; value of family in, 165, 166; value of science in, 36–37; values of, 17; varying representations of, 5; views of tolerance, 83; violence and, 1–24; as voice of authority, 72; Wahhabi, 5, 6, 153–173; West as threat to, 67, 81 Islamic Bank for Development, 165

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Ismailis, 20, 126, 158, 180, 188–192 Israel: claims to Palestine, 146; “cold peace” with Egypt, 39, 49; contestation of existence of, 148; creation of, 93; curriculum in, 14, 19; demands on Palestinian curriculum, 147; as enemy of Islam, 67; establishment of, 86; Muslim animosity toward, 18; negative representations of Arabs in texts in, 19, 20; relations with Jordan, 87; relations with Palestine, 139; Syria and, 186–187 Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem, 126 Jesus Christ, 54, 63 Jews: cheating of Muhammed by, 114; negative descriptions of, 38–40; relations with Muslims, 38–40; stereotypes of, 39; in Syria, 177, 184–185, 187, 195n1. See also Judaism Jihad, 194, 216; calling, 85; in the cause of God, 116; concept of struggle and, 116; culture of, 58; defensive, 5, 23, 60, 92, 143; defining, 116, 217; for deterrence, 92; emphasis on in Shi‘ism, 54; Ibadis and, 114, 115; instruction in, 178; as legitimate war, 143; liberation and, 144; martyrdom and, 61; as military struggle, 5; moderate interpretations of, 47; of Muslim opposition to Jews, 86; necessity for, 85; Omani views on, 114–118; of opinion, 85; personal, 85; of property, 85; radical, 153; reasons for, 60; religion and, 143–144; as resistance, 144; as road to heaven, 116; for social justice, 60; of soul, 85; Syria and, 186–187 Jordan: adoption of United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 82; anti-Semitism in texts in, 18; approval of texts by government in, 77; call for Islamic state in textbooks in, 82; Christianity in, 73; contradiction between government policy and curriculum, 15; creation of schools in, 14; disjunction of image and reality in, 87; education in, 71–87; family as societal building block in, 71, 77–83; family as stan-

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dard-bearers of Islamic tradition in, 74; family law in, 79; gaps between texts used and experiences, 79; gender separation in, 82; image and reality in, 15; importance of obedience in, 74, 75, 80; importance of tradition in, 81; Islamic dress in, 79; Islamic textbooks in, 71–87; kings as fathers of Jordanian family, 75; Ministry of Education in, 16, 76; Muslim Brotherhood in, 16, 76, 78, 81; omnipresence of Islam in, 73; the Other in, 83–86; patriarchal family as sole legitimate structure for family organization in, 78, 79; personal status law in, 74, 75; primacy of Islam in all textbooks in, 72, 73, 74; relations with Israel, 87; replacement of secular school employees with Islamists in, 77; socioeconomic change in, 77; as “Stepford Civilization,” 71, 72; structure of relationships in, 71, 77; support of United States economic and political policies in Middle East, 82; threats from “Other” in, 76; transfer of state authority to Islam in, 74, 75, 76; women in, 72, 76, 77, 78, 79 Judaism, 163, 164, 175n12, 220; in Iran, 56; in Kuwait, 91–92; transgressions in, 72 Kader, al-, al-Husseini, Abd, 144 Kafir, 63 Kassam, al-, Iz ad-Din, 144 Khalili, al-, Ahmed, 107 Khamene’i, Ayatollah Ali, 58, 59, 63 Kharijites, 115, 158 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68 Kindi, al-, Ahmad, 122n1 Kindi, al-, Muhammad, 122n1 Kuwait: acceptance of Western culture in, 93; anti-Semitism in texts in, 18; attempts to balance traditional values with modern in, 97–100; attention to contemporary interests in texts, 95–96; beliefs on Islam in, 108; Christianity in, 93; concept of jihad in, 92–94; concept of “Other” in, 89; contradiction between government

policy and curriculum, 15, 91; curriculum in, 24; curriculum reform in, 97–100; education in, 89–100; free, compulsory education in, 89; freedom of religious belief in, 89; human rights in, 96; identity issues in, 90–92, 94, 96–97; inclusion/exclusion in, 90–92; incorporation of religious instruction in all subjects, 90; Iraqi occupation in, 89, 94; Islamic textbooks in, 89–100; lack of real information in texts in, 98, 99; marriage/divorce in, 97; media in, 99; Ministry of Education in, 89; modern education system in, 89; promotion of global responsibility as Islamic value, 98; promotion of “middle way” in, 96; promotion of unity with wider Arab world in, 94; religious textbooks in, 89–100; respect for Judaism in, 91–92; rights of nonMuslims in, 91; sharing of Western legal sensibilities in, 96; support for Palestinian problem by, 96, 98; theme of tolerance in, 91–92, 93, 95, 97, 98; Western values in, 89–100; women in, 95, 96 Landis, Joshua, 14, 19, 177–195 League of Arab States, 165 Lebanon: religious education in, 17 Libya: religious education in, 53 Limbert, Mandana, 16, 103–122 Lord of Martyrs (Iman Hussain), 61 Madrasas, 2, 3, 10; defining, 25n5; stigmatization of, 25n5 Malcolm X, 169 Martyrdom, 104, 116 Mas‘ud, Nu‘aym ibn, 222 Mazdaism, 159 Media: exposure to alternative views from texts through, 22; impact on identity formation, 48; in Kuwait, 99; religious opinions from, 21 Mehran, Golnar, 53–69 Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), 3, 24n1 Middle East: colonization of, 20; increased literacy in, 71; socioeconomic change in, 71; spread of mass

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Index education in, 71; United States policy and education in, 6–7 Ministry of Education: in Egypt, 27, 28, 48; in Iran, 57, 58; in Jordan, 16, 76; in Kuwait, 89; in Palestine, 125–126, 128; in Saudi Arabia, 8, 154–155, 170; in Turkey, 207, 209, 213n4 Morality: individual, 16; as part of educational systems, 112 Moses, 54, 63, 64, 163, 187 Movements: nationalist, 13, 24; nonviolent, 24 Mubarak, Hosni, 30, 35, 48, 49 Muhammed (the Prophet), 54, 60, 62, 63, 65, 67, 104; cheated by Jews, 114; denial of, 115; enemies of, 223; Ibadi views of, 109–110; narrative of, 18–20; political succession to, 21; relationship with Jews, 34; on respect for other religions, 142; textbook treatment of, 220, 221, 222; universality of, 38 Mukhtar, al-, Omar, 144 Multiculturalism, 8 Muslim Brotherhood: founding of, 167; influence in Jordan, 76; influence on Saudi education system, 168; in Jordan, 16, 78, 81; political asylum for, 168; radicalization of, 167; in Saudi Arabia, 167–168, 175n13; in Syria, 188 Muslim World League, 175n13 Muslim World Outreach, 6 Muslims. See Islam

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National Council for History Standards, 8 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), 8 Nationalism, 5, 13, 212; Arab, 145, 159, 167, 181; Iranian, 62; Jewish, 14; modernity and, 23–24; Palestinian, 127; rhetoric of, 208; secular, 175n13; Turkish, 199 Neocolonialism, 5 New Historians, 152n2 Nihilism, 10 Noah, 54, 63, 163

and exclusion in, 114–119; Britain in, 105; civic virtues and, 103, 111–113; content of textbooks in, 109–118; discussion of Christianity and Judaism in texts in, 110; education in, 103–122; emphasis on good behavior in everyday life in textbooks, 111; forms of prayer in, 109; generic Islam in, 103; Ibadism in, 20, 103, 104; identity issues in, 105, 119, 120; importance of citizenship in, 103; Islamic infiltration of school staffs in, 16; jihad and, 114–118; modernization of educational system in, 105–106; neighborly responsibility in, 112; nonquranic school system in, 105; Omani-Muslim identity in, 114; parallel religious schools in, 106; politics of inclusion in, 113; quranic schools in, 123n4; religious identity in, 103; religious studies teachers in, 106–107; religious textbooks in, 103–122; remarks about Jews in, 114; Royal Diwan in, 106; sectarianism in texts, 109–110, 118–122; structure of education system in, 105, 106; Teacher Training College in, 107; textbook organization in, 107–109; understanding of religious knowledge as differing from other forms of knowledge, 120 Operation Dani, 148 Organization of the Islamic Conference, 93, 96, 165 Orientalism, 159 Oslo Accords, 131, 147 Other, the: degradation of, 76; deviance of, 83; in Egypt, 37–40; as enemy, 83; hostility toward, 85, 169; in Jordan, 83–86; lack of tolerance for, 85; Palestinian conceptions of, 142–143; presentation of in texts, 218; stereotypes of, 71; as threat to state and Islam, 76; tolerance for, 27, 28 Othman, al-, Laila, 93 Ottoman Empire: creation of schools in, 10, 12

Oman: al-Walâya wa al-Barâ’a in, 114–118; boundaries of inclusion

Paganism, 185–186 Pakistan: madrasas in, 2

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Palestine Liberation Organization, 147 Palestine: administration of schools by Israel, 125; anti-Semitism in texts in, 18; avoidance of sectarianism in, 142; Britain in, 143–144; Christianity in, 132, 134; colonial occupation of, 141; Committee on Monitoring the Impact of Peace in, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152n3; conceptions of the “Other” in, 142–143; conflict in historical narratives in, 139–151; conflict of narratives in, 146, 147; criticism of curriculum in, 147–150; criticism of previous educational curriculum, 126; criticism of religious education in, 136; culture of death and, 3; curriculum and construction of Palestinian identity, 125–126; curriculum controversy in, 146–147; Curriculum Development Center in, 126, 127, 128; curriculum reform in, 6; devaluation of religious studies in, 140, 140tab, 141; difficulty in communicating information on divisive issues to school children, 126; discovery of Western world by, 127; duwali identity in, 127; gaps between texts used and experiences, 150; gaps in textbook information and history, 142; gender in, 145–146; identity issues in, 127–128, 139, 144, 145, 146, 147; integration of religion and identity in, 128–132; Islam and national identity in, 132–137; Islamic textbooks in, 139–151; Israeli censorship in, 125; Israeli claims in, 146; Israeli demands on curriculum, 147; Jewish immigration to, 141; jihad and, 143–144; Land Day in, 150; Ministry of Education in, 125–126, 128; nationalism in, 127; negotiating identity in, 137; new curriculum for, 125–137; nonPalestinians and, 128–132; patriarchal vision of society in, 135; pluralism and, 127; qawmi identity, 127; references to societal tensions in, 134; relationship between individual and nation in, 135–136; relations with Israel, 139; relations with nonPalestinians and, 127–128; religion

and historical narrative in, 141–142; religion as curriculum foundation in, 132; religious education in, 125–151; resistance to colonization in, 147–148; rights of non-Muslims in, 142; scrutiny of texts in, 151; sentiment regarding Israel, 19; textbooks in, 125–151; treatment of gender issues in, 134; use of texts from Jordan and Egypt in, 125, 126; value of tolerance in, 130; victimization of population of, 146; views of the “Other” in, 128–132; watani of identity in, 127; women in, 134, 145–146 Palestinian National Authority, 3; control of education by, 125; curriculum designed by, 14; politics of curriculum writing and, 125–151 Pasha, Sulayman, 12 Pluralism, 29, 127 Political: authority, 35; conflict, 93; culture, 15, 139; development, 10; identity, 215; rights, 34; stability, 27, 31, 35–36; values, 69; violence, 153 Politics: of inclusion, 16, 113, 201; of sectarian integration, 191–192 Polytheism, 23, 64, 163, 164 Powell, Colin, 3 Qader, al-, Abd, 144 Qajar dynasty, 10 Qarmatians, 158 Quran, 178; on disassociation from nonMuslims, 160; on exclusivism, 38; houses of, 58; on marriage, 97; outof-context presentations of passages, 23; proof texts in, 17, 113; recitation of, 54; references to behavior in, 111, 112; social change and, 97; as source material in education, 27; as support for patriarchal structures, 74; views on Christianity/Judaism, 83; virtues coming from, 95 Qutb, Sayyid, 5, 167, 168, 194 Rabin, Yitzhak, 147, 148 Rice, Condoleezza, 3 Rights: children’s, 80; defining, 33; human, 28, 33–35, 73, 93, 96; individual, 165; men’s, 79; of neighbors, 112–113; political, 34; respect for

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Index other ’s, 143; women’s, 28, 40, 145–146 Sabeans, 158 Saddam Hussein, 94, 99 Sadi, al-, Jumayyil, 122n1 Salafi doctrine, 158 Sa‘ud, Muhammad ibn, 157 Saudi Arabia: admonitions against heresy in, 159; anti-intellectualism in, 156; attempts to homogenize population in, 154; authoritative Islam in, 168–170; avoidance of communal strife in, 155; avoidance of some secular subjects in curriculum, 156; Christians in, 163, 164; civic virtue and, 164–166; claims of curriculum encouraging violence against, 153; concept of tawhid in texts in, 17; curriculum revision in, 153; dearth of information for living in global world in texts, 153; enemies by deviation from Islam, 158, 159; extreme conservatism in, 162; founding of Islamic state in, 158; fundamentalism in, 2; General Presidency for Girls’ Education in, 154–155, 173, 174n2; hostility to the Other in, 159–163, 169; hostility to the the Other in, 170–171, 174n9; identity issues in, 153; introduction of mass education in, 153; Islamic infiltration of school staffs in, 16; Jews in, 163, 164; legitimation of violence in texts in, 23; Ministry of Education in, 8, 154–155, 170; Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and, 156, 157, 161; Muslim Brotherhood in, 167–168, 175n13; noncooperation with kuffar in, 161, 162; opposition to curriculum reform in, 173; political culture in, 15; polytheist enemies of, 161; proclamation of one Islam for all in, 155–158; prohibited activities in, 162, 163; proscriptions on frivolity, 162; religion at center of curriculum in, 154–155; religious education in, 22, 53, 153–173; religious textbooks in, 153–173; rights and duties of citizens in, 165; Salafabism in, 156, 158, 159, 167–168, 174n1; sectarian-

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ism in, 154; support from ulama for traditional curriculum, 153; suppression of nonconformity in, 158, 160; textbook revision in, 163–164, 170–173; unacceptability of views counter to Wahhabism, 159; Wahhabism in, 5, 6, 153–173 Scholasticism, 174n5 Schools: identity creation and, 6; madrasas, 2, 3, 10, 25n5; as political panacea, 10–14; radicalization of teachers in, 21 Science: value of in Islam, 36–37 Secularism, 62; in Egypt, 29; Kemalist, 200; objectives of, 200; religion and, 5; in Saudi Arabia, 175n13; in Syria, 5; in Turkey, 5, 197–214 Shahadat (martyrdom), 54 Sharia, 44, 183; divorce and, 81; law of apostasy and, 34; rule by, 93; as source material in education, 27 Shawqi, Ahmad, 93 Shi‘ism, 12, 20, 21, 44, 53–69, 109–110, 154, 161, 204; belief in resurrection in, 54; emphasis on, 60; emphasis on jihad, 54; holidays in, 56; in Iran, 53–69; mourning ceremonies in, 58; pilgrimages in, 58; religious jurisprudence in, 55; shahadat in, 54; twelve imams of, 54, 65 Shishakli, Adib, 195n2 Social: behavior, 35; bias, 35; change, 17, 30, 97; class, 10, 34; etiquette, 111; fragmentation, 72, 80; harmony, 27, 35–36, 206; history, 8; institutions, 2; justice, 31, 35, 60, 62, 64, 66; order, 205–207; problems, 6; reality, 154; responsibility, 33; roles, 67; service, 48; stability, 205 Socialism, 159 Sorour, Fathi, 51n2 Starrett, Gregory, 1–24, 215–230 Students: belittling of religious courses by, 22; exposure to alternative views from texts, 22; gaps between texts used and experiences, 15, 22, 23; manipulation of religious sensibilities of, 3; military training for, 61; religio-political screening for, 58–59; views coincident with texts, 16, 21 Sufi Brotherhood, 44, 200

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Sufism, 6, 20, 44, 154, 159, 161 Sufyan, Abu, 223 Sunnism, 20, 21, 44–47, 65–66, 104, 109–110, 142, 154, 163 Surour, Fathi, 29 Syria: Alawis in, 20, 126, 180, 188–192; anti-Semitism in texts in, 18; atheists and pagans in, 185–186; Ba‘thism in, 178, 181, 191; Christianity in, 177, 180, 184–185, 195n2; condemnation of Jews in, 177; distrust in state ideology and curriculum in, 14, 15; Druze in, 126, 180, 188–192, 192; educational reforms in, 178; identity issues in, 188–192; Islamic government in, 182–184; Ismailis in, 188–192; Israel and, 186–187; Jews in, 184–185, 187, 195n1; jihad limited to Israel, 186–187, 194; knowledge of Islam as qualification for employment in, 183; legitimation of violence in texts in, 23; mandatory education in, 180; minorities in, 177; Muslim Brotherhood in, 188; national curriculum in, 180; nation building in, 192–195; private education in, 180; religious education in, 177–195; sectarian integration in, 191–192; sectarianism in, 184–185; secularism in, 5; sharia in, 183; Sunnism in, 177–195; traditional education in, 177; treatment of minorities in, 184–86 Taliban, 2, 6 Teachers: belittling of religious courses by, 22; class differences and, 16; competence of, 16; as models of perfection for students, 57; in Oman, 106–107; respect issues with, 106–107; student lack of regard for, 16 Terrorism: attack on United States, 1; causes of, 23; education and, 2, 3; Egypt and, 30; Islam and, 46–47; as legitimate resistance, 73; students admonished to reject, 46; war on, 3 Textbooks: anti-Semitism in, 18; debates on, 9; depiction of other peoples in, 218; depiction of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims,

225–226; depictions of kuffar in, 219–220; differences from student’s experiences, 15; duty in, 16; in Egypt, 27–51; exclusion in, 4, 9; form and content, 215, 216; in Iran, 53–69; in Jordan, 71–87; in Kuwait, 89–100; large exposure to, 22; master narratives in, 13, 18–20; meanings of, 215–230; minority group representation in, 9; nation building and, 27; in Oman, 103–122; power of, 21–23; power of interpretation and, 215–230; presentation of content in, 16; provocative intentions and, 4, 5; Quranic proofs in, 15; reform of, 4; religious themes in nonreligious subjects in, 14; in Saudi Arabia, 153–173; treatment of Islamic history by, 219–224; validation of, 14; variations in defining Islam in, 5; violence and, 4, 21–23 Texts, religious: black and white division of world in, 66–67; concept of tawhid in, 17; content of, 16; exclusive truths in, 7; idealized view of family life in, 40; in Iran, 53–69; in Kuwait, 89–100; master narratives in, 5, 18–20; militancy in, 61; in Oman, 103–122; portrayal of Muslims as victims, 5; in Saudi Arabia, 153–173; uses of Muslim texts in American programs, 217, 218 Tolerance: in Egyptian texts, 17 Torah, 19 Toronto, James, 15, 17, 21, 23, 27–51 Truth: claims of exclusive access to, 7 Tuqan, Khalid, 73 Turkey: alphabet reform in, 207; compatibility of Islam and secularism in, 203, 204–205; compulsory study of Islam in, 201; control of exposure of students to Islam, 202; exclusionary redefining of Islam in, 204; identity issues in, 201; impact of teachers and texts on students in, 207–211; Islam as official state religion in, 200; Islamic dress in, 210; Islamic fundamentalism and, 201; Kurdish rebellion in, 199; lack of regard for teachers of religion in, 16; limited access

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Index to religious literature in, 207; maintenance of peace and order in, 205–207; military in, 205; Ministry of Education in, 207, 209, 213n4; modernization of, 199–201; nationalism in, 199; omissions in texts, 209; politics of inclusion in, 201; private schools in, 213n4; religious education in, 197–214; religious texts in, 199–214; sameness of book production in, 207–208; as savior of Islam, 204; secularism in, 5, 197–214; secularization of Islam in, 202–207; Shi‘ism in, 204; state control of religion in, 198; status of minorities in, 203, 204; Sufi Brotherhoods in, 200; textbook Islam in, 202–207; trivialization of religion classes in, 209–211; universal education in, 201; women in, 210 Umayyad dynasty, 67 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 126, 180 United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA), 126 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 82 United States: as enemy of Islam, 67; intervention in Afghanistan, 2; Middle East policy of, 6–7; role in politicization of curriculum in Middle East, 6–7; terror attack on, 1 US Agency for International Development, 6 Values: civic, 103, 111–113, 114, 164–166; core, 17; Islamic, 17, 100; moral, 113; normative, 19; political, 69; “preventive,” 36; religious, 29, 53, 58, 112, 164–166; sacred, 205;

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traditional, 29, 100; transmission of, 53; universal, 55 Velayat-e faqih, 53–69, 55, 62 Violence: advocacy of, 23; curbing, 4; defensive, 157; incitement to, 5; Islam and, 1–24; political, 153; religion and, 143–144; righteous, 116; textbooks and, 4, 21–23 Wahhab, al-, Muhammad ibn Abd, 17, 156, 157, 161, 167, 174n5, 175n14; 174n6 Wahhabism, 153–173, 156, 158, 159, 167–168 Walâya wa al-Barâ’a, al-, 114–118, 159–163 Western: civilization, 9; culture, 36–37; double standards of, 93; educational styles, 10–14; education style, 10; failure to adhere to rules on societal roles, 72; imperialism, 81; physical threats from, 81; spiritual challenges to Islam from, 81 Wish-images, 14–16 Wolfowitz, Paul, 3 Women: in Egypt, 28, 40–41, 49; international organizations, 82; in Iran, 67–68; in Jordan, 72, 76, 77, 78, 79; in Kuwait, 95, 96; in Palestine, 134, 145–146; rights of, 28, 40; rules and restrictions on, 79; social roles of, 67; traditional roles for, 67; in Turkey, 210 World Assembly of Muslim Youth, 169 Yemen: creation of schools in, 12; religious education in, 53 Zaghlul, Sa‘d, 13 Zanj, 158 Zionism, 86, 92, 94, 98, 141, 146, 147, 150, 151, 159, 187 Zoroastrianism, 64; in Iran, 56

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About the Book

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE OF the role that Saudi Arabia’s education system

played in fostering the hatred that fueled the September 11 terror attacks. But do Saudi textbooks deserve to be faulted for fostering violence? And have Wahhabi ideas infiltrated the Islamic textbooks used in public schools throughout the Middle East? Confronting these questions, Teaching Islam explores the political and social priorities behind religious education in nine Middle Eastern countries. The authors reveal dramatic differences in the way that Islam is presented in textbooks across the range of countries, reflecting local histories and the policy interests of the state. They also illustrate the perhaps surprising adaptability of Islam as leaders strive to reconcile Muslim identity with both state citizenship and the modern reality of an interdependent, globalized world. Eleanor Abdella Doumato is visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, at Brown University. Her publications include Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society (coedited with Marsha Pripstein Posusney) and Getting God’s Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Gregory Starrett is associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt.

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