Just when you think there is no hope for peace, brave souls come forth...
From the Houston Chronicle:
Jan. 3, 2006, 1:45AMChild's playConfronting hateful fictions in Muslim textbooks is more than political correctness: It can mean the difference between war and peace.
AMERICANS may think we know about textbook wars: the petitions signed, school boards ousted, late-night PTA meetings over references to sex or Darwin. But in parts of the Muslim world, the contents of some textbooks can lead, literally, to bloodshed. In reaction, according to The Associated Press, "hate-hunters" from Pakistan to the Persian Gulf have begun to scour their nations' textbooks and demand that vitriol and intolerance toward other cultures be culled.
As with most reformers in the Islamic world, these activists do dangerous work. But they rightly see their efforts as a way to break Muslim countries' debilitating cycles of conflict with outsiders, as well as a way to modernize. "We are fighting for the future of Islam. Children are sometimes being force-fed a diet of hate, anger and intolerance," Pakistani Ahmed Salim, one textbook watchdog, said. Salim is the leader of a movement in his country to remove what it perceives as violent and extreme material from children's textbooks. Such activists were barely stirring in the Muslim world just a few years ago. But the psychological shock of 9/11, mixed with the material traumas of U.S. military actions in the region and internal terror, galvanized some Muslims to look critically at what their children learn in school. They're determined to excise messages that might twist those youngsters into violent or intolerant adults.
In Pakistan, the AP reports, Salim's Sustainable Development Policy Institute began demanding textbook revisions two years ago; this month it will release a report that criticizes national officials for their inaction. The group denounces the books' idealizing of "jihad" in its more violent interpretations. As "jihad" is taught in Pakistani schools, it can easily be interpreted as idealizing martyrdom or warfare with the West, or India, or between rival Muslim sects in Pakistan.
Palestinian Media Watch, a Jerusalem-based group that keeps track of similar messages in Palestinian media, also monitors violent, pro-jihadi messages in children's schoolbooks. The Israeli-American Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace reports that standard Palestinian textbooks, which often praise jihad and martyrdom, never even mention the concept of peace with Israel.
Even leaders in Saudi Arabia, home of the most xenophobic form of Islam, acknowledge the need to modify their schoolbooks' hostile teachings about other faiths and cultures. But the changes so far are minuscule, outside monitors say.
It's essential that Saudi Arabia and similarly closed societies heed Islam's reformers and sap the poison that their children are imbibing in school. It can take a lifetime to teach — or reteach — adults how to live with neighbors who are different. The lesson must begin in childhood. Conversely, as the Saudis should well know, when a culture breeds fanatics, no one is safe from the explosion.
No comments:
Post a Comment