[iwar] [fc:Anti-Western.And.Extremist.Views.Pervade.Saudi.Schools]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-19 07:26:11
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 07:26:11 -0700 (PDT)
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New York Times
October 19, 2001
Anti-Western And Extremist Views Pervade Saudi Schools
By Neil MacFarquhar
RIYADH, Oct. 18 - The textbook for one of the five religion classes required
of all 10th graders in Saudi public high schools tackles the complicated
issue of who good Muslims should befriend.
After examining a number of scriptures which warn of the dangers of having
Christian and Jewish friends, the lesson concludes: "It is compulsory for
the Muslims to be loyal to each other and to consider the infidels their
enemy."
That extremist, anti-Western world view has gradually pervaded the Saudi
education system with its heavy doses of mandatory religious instruction,
according to Saudi officials and intellectuals. It has seeped outside the
classroom through mosque sermons, television shows and the Internet, coming
to dominate the public discussions on religion.
Tireless efforts to spread a fundamentalist view of Islam through
Saudi-financed charities have taken the message well beyond the borders of
the kingdom to places including Afghanistan.
"If you review the curriculum in Saudi Arabia, you would see that it
promotes any kind of extremist views of Islam, even in the eyes of very
devout Muslims," said Abdul Khadir Tash, the editor of Al Bilad newspaper. 
This extremism, born of the local, puritanical Wahabi brand of Islam,
constrains life here, shaping the way people live and the way Saudi Arabia
greets the world. The United States seeks to build a coalition against
terror with the kingdom, long a Western business and military ally, and yet
the country has revealed itself as the source of the very ideology
confronting America in the battle against terrorism. 
These anti-Western views aid Osama bin Laden or other extremists in finding
recruits, some Saudis believe, because they can mold the imperfectly formed
religious creed of young, easily influenced men, convincing them that their
faith condones violence against non-Muslims. Even Saudi Arabia's famous oil
wealth - Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, earned $80 billion last
year - has been no insurance against economic and political unrest.
As a result, many fear that the pool of potential recruits is swelling as
tens of thousands of young Saudis emerge with an education that leaves them
unqualified for work - an estimated 50,000 per year cannot find jobs. With
half the 14 million native population under age 25, some estimates say
unemployment among the youngest job seekers is as high as 30 percent. 
"They exploit some of the half- educated people and uneducated people and
they give them the illusion that this is the real Islam," said Adnan Khalil
Basha, secretary general of the International Islamic Relief Organization. 
The F.B.I. list of 19 suspected hijackers in the attacks in New York and
Washington includes the names of at least six missing Saudi Arabian men who
left their country ostensibly to join the Islamic fighters battling the
Russians in Chechnya, plus four others whose parents lost contact. They
included a seminary student and recent college graduates. 
Investigators are convinced that the sudden movements of the Saudis believed
involved in the attack, with up to 10 young men all departing within a
couple months of one other, indicate that they were likely recruited here,
according to an American official. 
The attacks have rekindled a debate within Saudi Arabia about the amount of
religious instruction in schools. Parents say up to one third of every
child's schooling is on religious topics. 
In the early years the curriculum focuses on simple things like the rules
for prayer. By the time Saudi students reach high school, though, they have
at least one period in six devoted to study of religious topics including
interpreting the holy texts and ways of keeping their faith pure.
Some parents worry that the system overemphasizes religion. A student cannot
move onto the next grade if he flunks a religion class, unlike other topics.
Learning is by rote, with questions discouraged 
"It looks innocent, they are just trying to teach religion, but in a subtle
way it is a recruiting mechanism," said a humanities professor at King Saud
University in Riyadh. "If a pupil shows enthusiasm, he is recruited into
their circles and then suddenly, bang! - he takes a gun and goes to
Afghanistan to fight for Islam."
Those who support religious instruction contend that students need more.
"Don't put the blame on the curriculum but on the misinterpretation of the
Koran and the Sunnah," or the sayings and actions of prophet Muhammad, said
Hamid al-Majid, a professor of education at Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud
University, the country's leading seminary. "I believe the way to minimize
extremism is to put greater emphasis on religious education, but in a good
way."
There was a time when the mosque was the only place to learn to read and
write. More secular topics were introduced, though, as Saudis educated
abroad came back to run the schools. By the 1960's, a Saudi high school
graduate would have been exposed to topics like Roman history and the
Protestant Reformation.
In those years, however, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt preached Arab
unity, fought the Muslim Brotherhood and sought to undermine King Faisal. In
response, the king offered political asylum to thousands of Muslim
Brotherhood members. Most ended up as teachers andjunked the Saudi
curriculum.
"They said this is infidel knowledge and gradually their teaching crowded
out all useful information," a former government official said. 
With every challenge to Saudi family rule - like the 1979 seizure of Mecca's
Grand Mosque by a group of Islamic militants led by Juhaiman al-Utaibi - the
dynasty ceded more ground on social affairs to shore up its own Islamic
credentials. 
Its princes generally viewed such matters as unimportant anyway, far
inferior to glamorous ministries like defense, where government contracts
generated lucrative commissions. But social affairs ministries have been
dominated by descendants of Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahab, and they seek to
advance his austere teachings. 
Senior members of the ruling family reject the idea that they somehow
allowed the education system to help shape extremists. "People can get
deluded into doing acts of horrendous consequence and Saudi Arabia is not
immune to having some of its citizens deluded in this way," said Prince Saud
al-Faisal, the foreign minister. "We may have a different education system
from other countries, but that doesn't make them more susceptible to
delusion." 
But other Saudis suggest the environment does exist within the kingdom
because of the constant barrage of messages that Wahabi teachings are the
purest form of Islam. 
The attack has left the government looking for options. "Embracing the
Islamist forces was a way to channel fervor and to distract criticism," one
Western official said. "Now it is the Islamists who are a threat. It has
become problem No. 1."
Saudis and Western diplomats said the Saudi government seemed to have
inadvertently exported that attitude through large investments in spreading
the faith. The kingdom has built hundreds of mosques worldwide, but many
propagate the anti- Western, Wahabi attitudes because their prayer leaders
were trained on scholarships at religious institutions here or in
Saudi-financed schools. 
Inside Saudi Arabia, at least through the 1970's, mosques were strictly for
prayer, with one sermon each Friday. Now speeches unroll almost nightly in
some of them, long after prayers end.
Nor is the anti-Western extremism limited to mosques. Sheik Yusuf al-
Qaradawi, a religious sheik with a popular Al Jazeera television show, often
adopts an anti-Western stance. 
Recently he entertained a question from a viewer named Ali in Saudi Arabia
asking whether American civilians working in Islamic lands should be
considered warriors and warned to leave or be killed. The sheik did not
flinch at the idea, giving a legalistic answer that all those invited in
deserved protection. A guest columnist in Al Watan, Saudi Arabia's answer to
U.S.A. Today, wrote that Islam and the West are natural enemies, disputing a
writer who said the religion was peaceful. 
"He says that Islam means peace, while I say no interpretation ever said so,
and God said to fight all the infidel," wrote Mohammed al-Rameh of the
Supreme Institution for the Judiciary. The dissenting response came from
someone in Spain, not Saudi Arabia. 
The arguments also roll forth on the Internet. Hamoud al-Shuaibi, an elderly
sheik who issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, condemning the American
attacks on Afghanistan, answered a question on the Net about when jihad, or
holy war, is permissible. "Jihad is allowed against infidels like the Jews,
Christians and atheists," he answered in part. 
The extremely religious people focus much of their attention on social
matters, handing out colorful pamphlets with bold type at shopping malls.
One pamphlet said it was a sin even to vacation in the West, and another
condemned those who wish non-Muslims well on their holidays.
The very same lessons were echoed in the nearly 20 pages in the high school
textbook devoted to the involved principle known as "Al Wala and Al Bara,"
or showing loyalty to Muslims and shunning outsiders. 
"One of the major requirements in hating the infidels and being hostile to
them is ignoring their rituals and their festivities," the textbook says. 
Later in the chapter it is recommended that Saudi youth do nothing to
imitate non-Muslims in the way they dress, walk, eat, drink, or talk. 
"It is social fanaticism," said Jamal Khashoggi, the deputy editor in chief
of The Arab News, "but it takes just a few small adjustments to turn it into
political fanaticism." 

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