Citations of Muhammad calling for genocidal war against the Jews deleted from Saudi textbooks

by Hugh Fitzgerald

In Saudi schools, new textbooks have improved the depictions of Jews and Israel. The encouraging report is here: “New Saudi Textbooks Show Improvement in Depiction of Jews and Israel, Study Finds,” Algemeiner, December 15, 2020:

New editions of Saudi Arabian textbooks show a significant improvement in their references to Jews and Israel, according to a new report published by a major research institute on December 14. IMPACT-se — which monitors textbooks across the Middle East in regard to what they teach about Jews, Israel and non-Muslims — called the new Saudi educational materials “encouraging,” much of the hate speech and incitement included in previous editions had been removed.

Citations of a Muslim hadith — or saying of the Prophet Muhammad — that calls for genocidal war against the Jews, antisemitic conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination and calls for jihad and martyrdom had all been deleted, the group said.

Furthermore, Israel is being depicted in a manner that is “more balanced and tolerant.”

A chapter on the “Zionist danger” is no longer present, thus removing passages claiming Israel has no right to exist and that it wants to conquer most of the Middle East.

However, IMPACT-se pointed out, “anti-Israel content does still remain in the curriculum.”

In particular, Israel is not shown on maps of the Middle East and is referred to as the “Zionist enemy,” and Zionism is still depicted as racist.

Antisemitism is also still present in teaching related to Islam, such as describing Jews as monkeys and saying Allah would punish them in his final judgement….

It is easier for Saudi Arabia to maintain security collaboration with Israel against the Iran threat, that shows no signs of diminishing, if Saudis are no longer taught to hate Israel and Jews. And if Saudi Arabia is to normalize relations with Israel, as Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman so clearly wants, the government has to prepare its population to be ready to accept, rather than want to destroy, the Jewish state and Jews. The government has calculated that it can’t cleanse the textbooks entirely of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel content at once – that would infuriate too many conservative Saudis, especially clerics. But the government can remove, by careful degrees, the most egregious examples of hate speech against Jews and incitement against Israel. The new texts – the report doesn’t tell us what grade levels are affected but these sound like history or social studies texts for use in high schools – have an entire chapter on the “Zionist danger” eliminated. That means no more inculcating students with the belief that Israel has no right to exist, or teaching that Israel wants to expand until there is a Jewish state “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” A hadith of Muhammad that speaks of genocidal war against the Jews has been eliminated (though one wonders if the Saudi state can manage to prevent that hadith being taught in madrasas ) from textbooks. There are no longer calls for jihad against Jews. The standard antisemitic conspiracy theories about powerful Jews plotting for world domination are also gone. That’s a very great deal to have eliminated from textbooks within a single year.

If these new, revised textbooks are accepted without too much opposition, the Saudi government should be willing to take additional steps in the next edition of the relevant textbooks. Instead of the hadith that describe Jews as monkeys, those Saudi textbooks could reprint the sermon delivered last September by the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Abdul Rahman al-Sudais. In that sermon, Al-Sudais said that Muhammad had treated his Jewish neighbor so well that he converted to Islam. He also said that Islam requires Muslims to respect non-Muslims and treat them well. Al-Sudais pointed out that Muhammad “performed ablution from a polytheistic water bottle and died while his shield was mortgaged to a Jew.” That sermon sets a considerably different tone, friendlier to Jews (Al-Sudais’ sermon was, no doubt, a performance commanded by the Crown Prince), than continuing to call them the descendants of monkeys.

Last to be changed will be the maps. Israel needs to be shown on, rather than effaced from, the school maps, and thus from the consciousnesses of Saudi students. Even an Israel depicted as existing within the 1949 armistice lines (and the West Bank shown as “occupied by Israel”) would be a great improvement over not showing the Jewish state at all. Israel ought no longer be formulaically called “the Zionist enemy” and described as “racist.” It should, in those continuously-improved texts, be described merely as “the nation-state of the Jews.” These additional changes to Saudi textbooks would go a long way toward making normalization of ties with “the Jewish state” possible, acceptable, and — for ever more Saudis — even desirable.

First published in Jihad Watch.