Saudi Arabia is quietly changing textbook content

Textbooks in Saudi Arabia are changing. For years, researchers have observed a gradual moderation in subjects ranging from gender roles to the promotion of peace and tolerance .

Among the changes that have drawn attention recently, in light of reports that the United States is trying to pave the way for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, are issues relating to Jews, Christians, and the Israeli-Israeli conflict.Palestinian .

One report released last month by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), based in Israel and London, which primarily monitors how Israel and Jews are portrayed in educational texts, found “nearly all examples portraying Christians and Jews from negative way”, based on trends observed in previous years.

Prominent examples removed include implications “that Jews and Christians are enemies of Islam” or that “Jews and Christians are criticized for having ‘destroyed and distorted’ the Torah and the Gospel,” according to the study.

On Israel and the Palestinians, IMPACT itself has met with moderation, but has not yet been fully accepted by Israel. Certain references to “the Israeli enemy” or “the Zionist enemy” have been replaced by “the Israeli occupation” or “the Israeli occupation army”. But other negative references to Israel, as well as omitting it from maps, are also noted in the study. There is still no mention of the Holocaust.

In the 2022-23 curriculum, a lesson on patriotic poetry removed an example of “opposition to the Jewish settlement of Palestine”. A high school social studies textbook no longer contains a section describing the positive outcomes of the First Intifada, the late 1980s Palestinian uprising against Israel. And a textbook “removed an entire chapter on the Palestinian cause.”

The changes, IMPACT itself said, “are an encouraging sign that progress can include attitudes toward Israel and Zionism.”

The organization, which has been monitoring Saudi textbooks since the early 2000s, examined changes made to more than 80 textbooks from the 2022-23 Saudi curriculum and more than 180 textbooks from previous curricula.

The IMPACT-se is also advising the UAE ministry of education in updating its school curricula to include education about the holocaust .

‘Short-term memory’

“This is also intended to signal that the leaders of the new Gulf states are modern, forward-thinking and secularly inclined – all of which are meant to appeal to a specific, largely external, audience,” said Mira Al Hussein, a researcher with focus on Gulf States at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

She said, however, that it is “quite ambitious” that governments “suddenly do a 180 (degrees) turn and start preaching tolerance. Reliance on people’s short memory is misplaced in this case.”

IMPACT itself noted that new content in Saudi textbooks also criticizes certain Islamic groups, such as Hezbollah, ISIS, al Qaeda, Houthi militias and the Muslim Brotherhood.

CNN has not independently verified the findings.

The Saudi Center for International Communication and the Ministry of Education did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Experts in the region say that while the changes in textbooks are notable, they must be seen in context.

Saudi Arabia’s school curriculum has come under intense scrutiny in the West following the 9/11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saud i. Since then, the kingdom has been gradually removing radical content from its textbooks.

Kristin Diwan, senior resident scholar at the Gulf States Institute in Washington, said the recent changes are in line with the kingdom’s new political orientation “with the ruling family central to its legitimacy.”

For decades, the government has sought legitimacy at home and abroad despite its status as the birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest sites, but the kingdom has shifted in recent years to a more secular form of nationalism .

“This allows for the flexibility of religious language that denigrates Shiism, Judaism and Christianity. It also gives the leadership more strategic latitude to negotiate on these religious issues, as seen by the increased emphasis placed on peacemaking and tolerance,” she told CNN in an email.

But Diwan warned that while the new language may show more religious tolerance towards Judaism, it leaves “Israel’s political acceptance in limbo.”

“This is consistent with efforts to lessen religious intolerance of Jews, gradually paving the way for a political decision on the normalization of Israel,” she said.

Relationship with Islam

Aziz Alghashian, a researcher on Saudi foreign policy and its ties to Israel, said the kingdom is “going through a shift in its relationship with Islam”.

“It is not to marginalize it, but to make it more moderate and more tolerant of others. Before, religious discourse was not overly tolerant because Saudi Arabia was not exposed to globalization as it is today… It is clear that this is changing and it is also clear that it will take time”.

Alghashian said the amendments in the Saudi books are subtle and do not suggest a major transition to acceptance by Israel.

“Some in Israel want to see normalization with Saudi Arabia so badly that any interaction about Israel will be framed as a positive for normalization,” he said.

The changes suggest that “the Saudis perhaps have a better understanding of Israel,” he told CNN. “The general understanding of Israel in the Arab world and Saudi Arabia is misunderstood and unnuanced,” he said, adding that this could be changing “which is certainly a positive thing.”

Joe Biden’s government has been pushing to Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel, to develop the Abraham Accords, which made four Arab nations recognize the Jewish state in a major foreign policy achievement for President Donald Trump in 2020.

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace to Israeli airlines for the first time last year, but has insisted that no normalization will take place before a Palestinian state is established.

Normalization remains taboo among the Arab public. One survey Research conducted last year by the Washington DC Arab Center found that 84% of Arabs surveyed disapprove of their countries’ recognition of Israel. In Saudi Arabia, support for normalization stood at 5%.

Elie Podeh, a professor in the Hebrew University’s Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies who has extensively studied the region’s education systems, said the changes were part of a “very long process” of moderation.

“It is not a coincidence. It’s kind of politics from the top and I think if you combine the two trends, fighting extremism and the other, Israel gradually being more accepted as a player in the Middle East. So you can understand why we are seeing these changes in the education system,” Podeh said.

But even deleting an entire chapter on the Palestinian cause doesn’t mean the Saudi government will suddenly stop caring.

“Obviously they are not denying it, they are supporting the Palestinian issue. It is not that they will suddenly go in one direction and neglect the other. No, not at all,” Podeh said.

But Podeh and the other experts agreed: public perception of Israel will be shaped by much more than textbooks.

“If you asked me something like 20 years ago, I would say (textbooks have) a lot of impact… But today, social media and so many instruments of socialization minimize the role of the textbook to some extent,” Podeh said.

Diwan noted that textbooks are important, but “people’s opinions are affected by media messages, global events and personal experiences. Not all are under state control.”