Middle East: Islamists distribute schoolbooks that promote intolerance and hostility towards Christians

According to information by the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), extremists of the “Islamic State” (IS) are providing students in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul with textbook on occasion of the start of the new school year in the IS-controlled parts of Iraq and Syria on September 1. Apparently, the books provided by the Islamist extremists contain anti-Christian propaganda. Images of schoolbook-covers with IS-symbols can be found on social media platforms – and the textbooks are said to contain anti-Christian verses from the Koran that were taken out of their historical context to vilify Christians and non-Sunni Muslims as infidels and enemies. Mosul has been in the hands of IS since June 2014. In 2013, there were more than 50,000 Christians living in the city.

“The reports from Mosul are just the tip of the iceberg,” said the STP’s Middle East consultant, Kamal Sido. “Hundreds of thousands of other school children in the IS-controlled areas of Syria and the refugee camps in the neighboring countries will be confronted with this radical interpretation of the Koran.” In Turkey, radical Islamist “education” is widespread as well. According to the STP, 85 percent of the schools for Syrian refugee children in the country are funded by two Islamist movements – most of them by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab Gulf State of Qatar and the ruling Turkish party AKP, while the other schools are funded by pro-Wahhabi Saudi organizations.

“In January and February 2015, many Syrian refugee children in Turkey told me about what they learn at school. They are not being taught tolerance and peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims and non-Sunnis, but are showered with Islamist propaganda,” says Sido. “The children often have to learn songs off by heart without really understanding the meaning. The children’s song ‘I'm a little Muslim’, which is well-known in the ‘Islamic world’ is taught without further explanations – and you often hear the Syrian refugee children sing the anti-Semitic song ‘Khaybar, Khaybar – oh Jews, Muhammad’s army will return‘.“ The STP fears that the combination of the brutality of the Assad regime, which the children and their parents were exposed to, and this propaganda will have catastrophic consequences for the refugee children. In Syria, Iraq, in the neighboring countries and throughout the world, there might be whole new generation of jihadists growing up.

In Syria, about 20 percent of the schools have already been destroyed by the air force of the regime in Damascus and in clashes with the Islamist opposition. At least 3.2 million of the 11.6 million Syrian refugees in the country and in other countries are school-age children. About one million of them are actually visiting a school, while about one million children are about to drop out of school because their parents are not able to cover the school fees. Just like their parents, many of the children have to work hard – often twelve to fourteen hours per day – to ensure that their family survives.

Header photo: Meena Kadri via Flickr