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Gulf states remove anti-West references from textbooks

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, June 6, 2005

ABU DHABI — Gulf Cooperation Council states have revised their educational curriculum.

GCC officials said most of the six Gulf Arab states have significantly altered their school curriculum over the last year, Middle East Newsline reported. They said the revisions sought to remove anti-Western and anti-Christian references in textbooks.

"The move to redesign the curriculums is intended to meet the challenges of the new world order and is unrelated to the Sept. 11 [2001] terrorist attacks," Abdul Ilah Al Mosarraf, director of planning and evaluation at the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States, said.

Al Mosarraf said nearly all GCC states have significantly revised their school curriculums. He said Saudi Arabia has removed 31 anti-Western or anti-Christian references from textbooks.

Over the last two years, the United States has sought to work with GCC and other Islamic states to revise their curriculum. GCC officials said the aim of the revisions was to remove material that encouraged Al Qaida doctrine.

In other cases, the Saudi Education Ministry has removed books deemed as offensive to the West, officials said. They said the ministry was considering a recommendation to draft a new school curriculum.

"Riyad has removed the offensive books and passages from the curriculum," a Saudi Education Ministry report said. "In fact, as part of its plan to go ahead with the reform, some experts from the kingdom and from other countries have been employed to develop the curriculum and to suggest changes."


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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