Paper prepared for the workshop
“Learning about the Other and Teaching for Tolerance in Muslim Majority Societies”

organised by

Center for Values Education, Istanbul
The Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Oslo

10-12 November 2005
Istanbul, Turkey

Dr. Fawzia AL ASHMAWI

University of Geneva

31, rue Le Corbusier-1208 Geneva- Switzerland

Tel :004122/830 10 61-Fax :004122/ 830 03 33

e-mail:Ashmawi7@ yahoo.com

Biographical Note

Dr. Fawzia AL ASHMAWI, Egyptian and Swiss, has been working since 1979 as a lecturer in Arabic and Islamic civilisation at The University of Geneva, Switzerland. She was awarded a PHD in Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies from The University of Geneva in 1983. She has worked as Senior Researcher for UNESCO, for the European Commission and for ISESCO. Her main research interests are the image of the other in textbooks, the status of Muslim women, human rights in Islam and inter-religious dialogue. She is the founder of the “European Forum for Muslim Women”, which aims to promote human rights for Muslim women in European countries. She is an Egyptian novelist and has published several novels and short stories in Arabic since 1990. She has also contributed several articles to journals of repute in Egypt, in France and in Switzerland.

Dr. Fawzia AL ASHMAWI (University of Geneva):

REVISION OF TEXTBOOKS WITH RESPECT TO THE IMAGE OF THE OTHER (CHRISTIANS AND JEWS) IN SOME ARAB AND MUSLIM COUNTRIES (EGYPT, JORDAN AND SYRIA)

Today people around the world remain divided based on religious differences that are passed on from generation to generation and written into history textbooks, perpetuated in discussions between teachers and their students and between parents and their children. These differences of belief have contributed to violence, armed conflits, and wars throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, a real potential for change exists and we have to promote a culture of peace that leads the way towards the development of curricula which uphold principles of tolerance among young people and adults.

For this noble purpose, we conducted ten years ago a “Comparative study of the image of the “other” in history textbooks in some Mediterranean countries” , under the auspices of UNESCO. The study covered four countries from the southern coast of the Mediterranean (Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Lebanon) and three from the northen coast (France, Spain and Greece); it aimed at shedding light on the negative factors affecting the way the “other” is perceived by children in the primary classes on the two shores of the Mediterranean. In countries to the north of the Mediterranean, the other is the Muslim Arab and in countries of the south the other is the Christian European. Here we continue our researches into the same field, this time under the auspices of ISESCO, and extend our study to cover other countries.

We have encountered in history books a mixture of false judgements, unverified or erroneous information, stereotypical portraits, distorted caricatures, as well as several illustrations, some of which are very old, badly chosen and not representative of either present-day realities or of historical facts. We have established that history as is it taught to European children is totally different from that which is taught to Muslim Arab children. Needless to say, every country gives priority to its national history , but we believe that this principle should not be exploited to justify the practice of totally or partially ignoring the history of other civilizations, or the wide differences between the presentation of historical events which relate to our own culture and those which relate to the civilization of the “other”. A quantitative balance must therefore be achieved. This indifference towards the history of “ the other” in fact reflects a conscious rejection of the “other” and a myopic view of history. We have observed that most history textbooks in Europe depict Europe as the epicentre of important historical events and the axis around which the historical events of the Middle East and of the rest of the countries of the world revolve . Thus the history of civilizations and peoples to the south of the Mediterranean is presented as no more than a footnote to world history, which revolves around Europe. A blind eye is turned completely to important historical events that are regarded as landmarks in the history of the Arabs and Islamic nations. On the other hand, the history of the Arab and Muslim countries revolves around the bygone glory of Muslim civilization.

We have noted that European textbooks have been written specifically for children of European culture, based on a judeo-christian conception of life. As a matter of fact, twenty years ago, Muslim children in European schools were very rare: no more perhaps than two or three pupils in a classroom. But nowadays, classrooms in some European countries have more Muslim children than Christian or Jewish. This is the case in French and Swiss schools.Therefore, this fact must be taken into consideration when writing new European textbooks. The authors must respect the Muslim presence in European schools and not write things which are offensive to or hurt the sensitivity of muslim children.

We have pointed out some general observations at the end of this revision of European Mediterranean textbooks. The most important are:

-  The European Curricula tend to depict Islam and its founder, Muhammad, within a Judeo-Christian perspective, including negative connotations, and contain information which, to say the least, is injurious to the feelings of Muslims.

-  Almost all these textbooks begin with the presentation of Islam’s fast expansion and the fast conquests realized by its founder and successors are presented in a stereotyped way as having been achieved by Arab conquerors regarded as savage and invincible invaders.

-  An important chapter of the European books is that concerning the Crusades, in which it is claimed that the fundamental objectives of the Crusades was to liberate Jerusalem from the infidels (the Muslims).

-  The European books either maintain a complete silence or deliberately ignore the extensive sense of tolerance shown by the Muslims following the recapture of Jerusalem in the year 1187, when the Muslim commander, Salahuddin, declared a general amnesty for all the inhabitants of the holy city. Needless to say, the motive behind such a deliberate omission of historical facts is to distort the image of Muslims in the minds of schoolchildren by falsifying the past.

-  An example of the phenomena of deliberate disregard by European authors can be seen in the failure of the European textbooks to recognize the contribution made by Arab-Muslim philosophers and scientists to the European Renaissance in the 15th century.

-  Another example of deliberate distortion of reality is the presentation of the Prophet of Islam Muhammad. The Prophet Muhammad is never presented as a Prophet or as the Prophet of Muslims, but as a “ camel-driver” or “ a poet “ or a man who saw some visions”. The Qur’an is presented as the work of Muhammad. Thus a link is suggested intentionally between the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad rather than between the Qur’an and God. The purpose of this connection is to bring influence to bear on childrens’ minds that the Prophet Muhammad is the author of the Qur’an and that there is no connection between the Qur’an and God. In this way, the children are being convinced that the Qur’an is not a holy book which contains the words of God as Muslims believe, but an ordinary book written by a simple man, Muhammad. The authors of the history books add some sentences that confirm those allegations, such as “Muhammad said in the Qur’an…” or “ Muhammad wrote in the Quar’an” or Muhammad gave order to women in the Qur’an to be veiled” and so on. We think that it would be better to use neutral expressions in textbooks, and to replace these sentences by “It is said in the Qur’an” or “in the Qur’an, order is given to women to wear the veil” or some similar objective expressions which do not hurt Muslim sensitivities.

-  Since 11 September 2001, the European curricula of secondary schools are mainly concerned with contemporary Islam: they point out the widespread religious trend, including elaborate commentary on “fundamentalism, fanaticism and the danger of intolerance”. The term “Jihad” is commonly translated by holy war and not by a spiritual or nonviolent physical struggle over evil; the term “martyrdom “ is associated with terrorism and suicide bombers and both are used frequently to imply that Islam rejects European modernity and peaceful co-existence. Some authors only began to seek information on those concepts in the wake of the Sept.11 terrorist attacks on The U.S. by Muslim extremists.

The Image of the other (Christians and Jews) in Arab Muslim countries

It is very important to draw attention here to the fact that the driving force behind education in the islamic countries is the Arab Islamic culture, whose dynamic is Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book. This unity of islamic culture based on the Qur’an’s prescriptions is the prime dynamic for intellectual, cultural and spritual life in these countries. It goes without saying that the history textbooks in those countries magnify and exagerate their evaluation of historical events in order to highlight the glory and greatness of Muslims in the golden age of Islam. This method aims at reviving religious and national feelings in the hearts of muslim children, in order to make them feel proud of their glorious past and to sow hope in their souls that one day they will be able to restore this glory and take their revenge on the west.

As for the Arabo-Islamic presentation of Europe’s Christian and Jewish culture, it corresponds to Islam’s view of Christianity and Jewish faith as displayed in the Qur’an. In most of the history books, Christianity is described as a monotheistic world religion but no elements of its historical or dogmatic content are mentioned. Its representation is confined to superficial descriptions of the external characteristics: we can find the most important concepts of Judaism and Christianity, such as the concept of Moses and his miracles, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, his miracles and his Ascension; but these concepts are presented according to Islam’s dogma and explained in terms of what is in the Qur’an. Sometimes Qur’anic verses are quoted in confirmation of the concepts mentioned in the history textbooks.

In Egyptian books, the emphasis is put on the flight of the Virgin Mary and Jesus to Egypt:

“The Messiah was born in Bethlehem south of Jerusalem. As the Romans were persecuting the population of Palestine and were killing their children, Mary afraid for her son, had to take him and flee to Egypt. Once calm had returned, she returned to Palestine and lived with her son in Nazareth. At the age of thirty, Jesus began to preach a new religion, Christianity… The apostle St Mark advocated Christianity in Egypt which was well received by Egyptians desirous of freeing themselves from Roman servitude and from no longer worshipping the Roman emperor.”(Egypt, Social Sciences,ed.1989).

Note that the authors of this Egyptian book avoid speaking about “ the holy family” and do not mention St. Joseph who, according to the Christian version, accompanied the Virgin Mary and her son, Jesus, on their journey to Egypt.

In Jordanian books, we can see from the following extracts that their interpretation of the dogmas of Christianity come much closer to that of the Quranic conception:

“When God wanted to create Issa (Jesus) *may peace be on him*, He sent the Holy spirit, which is no other than Jibril *may peace be on him* to Mary, in human form. Mary was very afraid when she saw him and asked him who he was and what he wanted. He replied:I am the Holy spirit, my God has sent me to you to offer you a boy, a gift from God… The Holy spirit created the word of God in Mary “is”, she became pregnant with the permission of God… Mary gives birth to Jesus”.

It goes without saying that this version of the birth of Jesus is that of Qur’an, chapter of Mary.

It would be desirable that Christianity be portrayed in Muslim history books not simply from a traditional islamic perspective but from a Christian point of view also. We think that this would help young pupils to conceive of the idea of difference, even if they do not yet succeed in assimilating it. With age and in the company of Europeans friends, they would be able to tolerate the existence of the “other”. The most important thing is to sow the seed of tolerance in their young minds as well in their hearts.

Among the techniques used in Muslim history textbooks is that of exagerating, magnifying and embellishing the scientific discoveries of Arab Muslim scholars and philosophers, praising the golden age of Islam and focussing on the difference between the enlightenment of the golden age of Islam and the darkness in which westerners were living in the Middle Ages. While European authors of history textbooks use omission and neglect as weapons in order to mask historical truth, the Muslim authors of history textbooks make use of an emphatic terminology and overvalue historical facts in order to stress the Muslims’s past glory.

The Crusades constitute an important chapter in these books. We have remarked that the authors of Islamic texbooks strive to present the Crusaders as uncivilized people dominated by their violence, while European countries show Muslims as raiders knowing nothing of civilization and failing to accept progress. The majority of Muslim books portray the Crusaders who seized Jerusalem in 1099 as uncivilized people who did not recognize the inviolability of sacred places and of civilians.