During the last few days, Al-Watan (Saudi newspaper) published the report of the American House of Freedom about religious curriculums, which accused them of promoting bigotry. Al-Watan asked his eminence, the savant `Abdullah ibn Bayyah – vice chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars about his opinion and he answered:
Linking Islam to terrorism has put us in a state of defence since September 11th. The issue of curriculums is only a part of this campaign. This problem has been raised since these events and has contributed in the promotion of false ideas and prejudiced judgments about Islam due to misunderstanding of Islam as a creed and shari`ah and misjudgement based on certain practices, which are irrelevant to Islam, committed by extremists. In America, and the West in general, there is a problem with the construction of these Western communities that has been associated with principles and rules that have resulted from the development of these societies. This includes, for example, the secular and material orientation of these societies. Although positive philosophies and atheist trends have recently dwindled in the West, there has been a strong presence of the tendency of desacralising everything and reducing religion to be just a personal issue.
But these people do not comprehend the religious and spiritual values for Muslims. Most of the materials written about Islam in school curriculums present Islam from the perspective of these curriculums, not as it really is. The result will be the distortion of the image of Islam in the minds of the students. They persist on presenting it as a religion that cannot cope with modernity.
Media and school curriculums are interrelated. Media channels address the audio-visual perception more than mind and critical conscience. Media channels together with certain study and research centres complete the job of school curriculums when they launch campaigns against Islam and attempt to link it to the practices of some militant and extremist groups to impugn it, out of ignorance, with terrorism. They ultimately aim at implanting a correlation in the recipient’s mind between Islam and violence. These goals reveal as much abhorrence to Islam in no less degree than deliberate negligence of the objective facts.
It should be considered that the amendment of curriculums involves no harm for Muslims, particularly if the goal is to unify the Islamic ranks and to remove the reasons of conflict and disagreement between Muslims. The call to amend curriculums is not heretical in order to take a stance of enmity and warning against it as if it involves transgression against heavenly teachings. The call for amendments was adopted by a group of Muslim people that have realized the harms that result from certain wrong curriculums that have been taught here and there.
But I really wonder of how these centres have ignored the magnitude of distortion of Muslims in the Zionist school curriculums. One of the main principles adopted by Israel in its school curriculums for children is to distort the image of Arabs and Muslims and misjudge them. It is enough to read this text as an example “Arab rulers are killers. They are responsible for the bad conditions that the Jews suffer in Arab and Muslim countries. In 1868 and 1906 a lot of Moroccan Jews died in Malalah ghetto. Let alone the repeated attacks, murdering, looting, and terrorising they faced at the hands of Muslims in Morocco. In 899 A.C. 2500 Jews died of smallpox because the Jews were banned to live or dwell outside Malalah and they were forced to wear black clothes and walk with their heads downcast and were prevented from meeting with Muslims.”
One can say that educational curriculums are related in general to the existing policy and each curriculum has a philosophy. However, the Israeli educational curriculum is one of the curriculums that are closely related to the Zionist ideology and the Hebrew state. This curriculum shapes the general intellectual vision of the generation after they have been isolated and prepared for the educational process. Therefore, this American report is politicised, prejudiced, and untrue.