Skip to footer

Why young Saudis may reshape the Muslim world

The country’s new textbooks are moving away from teaching hate and toward a tolerance of other faiths.

|
Reuters/file
A girl swings at a park in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

 Like the proverbial hand that rocks the cradle, school textbooks still have a big influence on a country’s next generation, despite the growing power of social media. And perhaps no country has made such a swift change in its textbooks over the past few years than Saudi Arabia, the center of the Islamic world.

The shift by the Saudi Ministry of Education away from teaching hate and fear of others – especially Jews and Christians – has been so dramatic that a new study of the latest textbooks claims a change in Saudi attitudes “could produce a ripple effect in other Muslim majority countries.”

“The Saudi educational curriculum appears to be sailing on an even keel toward its stated goals of more moderation and openness,” states the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli research group. Just since 2020, at least 22 anti-Christian and antisemitic lessons were either removed from or altered in the textbooks while an entire textbook unit on violent jihad to spread Islam was removed.

“We believe that Saudi Arabia is seeking a place in a region that hopes to resemble a family of sharing and cooperating nations,” the Impact-se study concludes.

While the study cites the need for further changes in textbooks, it points out that a national vision for transforming the Saudi economy, laid out in 2016 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, requires a change to prevailing ideas, not just industries.

For decades, the country’s social and educational outlook was controlled by Muslim clerics preaching a fundamentalist version of Islam known as Wahhabism. After the attacks of 9/11 by mainly Saudi terrorists, the United States and others drew sharp attention to the hate-filled radicalism of Saudi textbooks.

But the real motive for change may be the need to allow a free flow of ideas among students and to encourage critical thinking in order to create an economy based on technological innovation, rather than oil exports. While Saudi Arabia is far from being a democracy, it feels pressure from young people to modernize. Nearly two-thirds of Saudis are under the age of 35.

As the Impact-se report states, “Rigidity and hate for the other will not serve to unlock the potential of a nation, while respect for others is key to prosperity and security.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why young Saudis may reshape the Muslim world
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2021/1203/Why-young-Saudis-may-reshape-the-Muslim-world
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe