A twelfth-grade Saudi textbook is teaching hatred of Jews and jihad to liberate Palestine, according to MEMRI. The report illustrates that hatred and violence continue to be themes in Saudi educational materials, putting a black mark on the conservative Islamic kingdom's desire to become a "knowledge society."
"Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it," states Saudi textbook Studies from the Muslim World.
The book says that the conflict will not end unless one side vanquishes the other, because "throughout Islamic history, the Jews have striven to destroy the [Islamic] religion and spread fitna [chaos] among the Muslims."The book also repeats classic anti-Semitic lies that Jews have taken control of Western media and culture, exploited their home societies, and aligned themselves with Christians to destroy Islam.
The natural response to the Jews and the state of Israel, the textbook states, is violence. "Jihad for the sake of Allah is the only path to liberating Palestine. Only through jihad did the Muslims conquer Jerusalem, and only through jihad did the Crusaders leave Palestine," it declares.
The widespread use of Saudi textbooks, inside and outside the kingdom, spreads extremist views, despite claims by Saudi authorities that they are refining their educational system. In September, the Hudson Institute released a report that showed that Saudi authorities did not delete hatred from textbooks, but simply shifted around offensive passages or slightly reworded them.