Six-year-old Jasim* nervously entered a classroom for the first time last autumn. Like his peers, this young Saudi boy was excited about the challenges that lay ahead, the new friends to make, the unfamiliar surroundings to explore and the quest for knowledge.

But his carefree adventure was short-lived. Jasim’s enthusiasm was dampened when he was faced with his first dose of Saudi reality in the form of seemingly innocent textbooks.

The inciteful content of the curriculum came as no surprise to Jasim’s father, Hussein. Jasim’s older siblings have attested to similar hateful messages in their classrooms. The books encourage an extreme and intolerant attitude towards Jews, Christians, and basically anyone who does not adhere to the Muslim Sunni doctrine.

The following passage was taken from one of Jasim’s exercise books:

“Fill in the blanks in the following sentence with the words ‘Islam’ or ‘hell’: Every religion apart from ____ is false, and whoever dies as a non-Muslim will enter ____.”

The passage appears on page 30 in the 2005-6 edition of A-Tawheed Wal-Fiqh (Monotheism and Jurisprudence), an exercise book for first-graders, issued by the Saudi Ministry of Education.

Jasim filled in the blanks, as required, and received a sound mark of approval. “Excellent!” the teacher wrote in thick red ink.

But this does not make Hussein a proud father. Although they are Muslims, Hussein and his family are Shiites — not Sunnis — and, as such, are treated as second-class citizens in Saudi Arabia.

“I feel bad about it, but I can’t change anything,” Hussein said of his son’s schooling. “I’ve taught my kids to respect others and feel equal.”

As far as his kids are concerned, Hussein said, they aim to accomplish the minimal requirements, to pass the exams and get on with their lives.

Hussein’s wife, also a Shiite, feels “hopeless” about the situation and has lost much sleep over it.

The cited textbook provides help notes for the teachers, suggesting they stress to their pupils that Islam endorses contempt for heretics and recommending that the teacher give examples of false religions “such as Judaism, Christianity, paganism and others.” It explains that one of the aims of this lesson is to make it clear that any religion besides Islam is void.

The inciteful messages also appear in the more advanced curriculum. A textbook for high school students contains a passage telling the story of Abdallah Bin Saba, a Yemenite Jew who lived in the seventh century. According to Muslim tradition, he pretended to embrace Islam in order to sow strife and frustrate the new religion.

The internal strife among Muslims was a result of a “Jewish conspiracy against Islam and Muslims,” explains a passage from Tawhid, a textbook published by the Saudi Ministry of Education. “A malicious swindler sneaked into this group and presented Islam as a lie and a fake. This man was Abdallah Bin Saba, a Jew from Yemen. This Jew began to spit his malice and poison against the third Khalif Uthman Bin Afan … The strife was stirred by incitement from this Jew and his followers.”

Targeting Shiites

Such messages target not only non-Muslims. Hussein said the intolerant curriculum feeds hatred towards Shiites, causing them anguish in practically every sphere of life. Some Shiites he knows are pretending to be Sunnis to avoid harassment, he said.

Some 15 percent of Muslims worldwide adhere to Shiism, which is the second-largest group of believers in Islam after the Sunnis. In Saudi Arabia, Shiites constitute between 5 and 10 percent of the population. They all study in schools where the religious teachers are Sunni Wahhabis, even in areas where the Shiites are a majority.

Hussein’s kids have related stories of how their teachers insulted Shiites in front of the class. Complaints were made to the school and to the local authorities, but to no avail.

Last Christmas Hussein’s teenage son came home distraught. The teacher had told the whole school that the children should not say Merry Christmas to the Kuffar, the infidels, and that they should not smile in their faces because “it is forbidden.”

Post 9/11: Marginal Reforms

The Saudi government introduced a series of administrative, social and political reforms in 2002, including reforms in the education system. These changes were partly prompted by the need to combat terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 and to respond to pressures from the United States, a key Saudi ally. Also, the Saudi government felt a need to adopt reforms so as not to lag behind while the rest of the region debated political reform.

In practice, the reforms in the education system have been insignificant.

“These are extremely marginal, with no real impact on what’s being taught in Saudi universities and classrooms,” said Dr. Amr Hamzawy, a senior associate with Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has conducted extensive research on the reforms in Saudi Arabia.

“After 9/11, some of the hatred materials were removed from the curriculum, but they did not do it in a sufficient way,” Hamzawy said. “Saudi schoolbooks or university curricula still have hatred material when it comes to non-Muslims, Shiites, or other sects and even within the Sunni world regarding non-Wahhabi Sunnis.”

Reforms in the Saudi education system have remained frozen rhetoric and have mostly not been put to practice, because of a power struggle between the reform-minded members of government and the hard-line religious establishment, Hamzawy explained.

“As far as we know, the religious establishment is in charge of the curriculum and the Ministry of Education has to consult with the religious establishment not only on content, but even on the time plan.”

Hussein confirmed that the situation used to be worse but there are still problems.

“Every time I go to school to pick up my daughter I look at her face to see if she’s OK,” he said, “as if I’m expecting something to be wrong with her. It’s like living in hell.”

There are other parents like Hussein who object to the contents taught in their children’s classrooms, but they do not dare speak out.

“It makes me sick. I want to throw up,” he said, “but my story is just one of thousands that go undocumented.”

Hussein lamented that his concerns are only shared by fellow Shiites, not by Sunnis.

“Most of [the Sunnis] do not find these messages objectionable. After three generations of teaching Wahhabi style, people become brainwashed,” he said.

Where is Washington?

The disturbing messages in the Saudi curriculum raise questions about the need for intervention from Washington, a key ally of Saudi Arabia. Apparently, there is little the United States can do to improve the situation.

“The U.S. does not have the leverage in the Saudi case that it has in other Arab cases like Egypt, Jordan or Yemen,” Hamzawy said.

Saudis are not dependent on aid from the U.S., and they are a strong player in the region. The minimum influence the U.S. had was applied to pressure Saudi Arabia into introducing initial reforms in 2002.

“From 2003, the U.S. administration gave up on reform in Saudi Arabia. There are no real pressures today,” Hamzawy concluded.

Saudi Response

The Saudi government maintains it has worked diligently over the past five years to overhaul its education system, which includes textbooks, teacher training and the introduction of new teaching methods. However, the government maintains the process is long and will not bear immediate results.

Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Turki Al-Feisal, has responded to the allegations of hatred in the Saudi curriculum, explaining that “overhauling an education system is a massive undertaking. There are hundreds of books that are being revised to comply with new requirements, and the process remains ongoing.”

In a response communicated by the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Feisal said the objective of the Saudi educational system is “to fight intolerance and to prepare Saudi youth with the skills and knowledge to compete in the global economy.”

*Some names have been changed to protect the identities of those interviewed