After the September 11 attacks, the Kuwaiti minister of education promised to revise the textbooks used in his country’s schools so that they would promote “brotherhood, equality, love, caring, mercifulness, and coexistence.” Two decades later, the textbooks indeed contain such statements as “people are equal in dignity and enjoy equal right to protection under the law without discrimination.” They also contain much invective aimed at Jews, as David Andrew Weinberg writes:
Kuwait’s new ruler, Amir Nawaf al-Sabah, took office in September 2020, and during his biggest speech this year he called on the Kuwaiti nation to practice “adherence to the teachings of our tolerant religion, which urges us to unify ranks and spread kindness and compassion.”
However, according to the Kuwaiti government’s official list of textbooks in use for the new 2021-22 academic year, its Ministry of Education is continuing to reuse state-published textbooks from past years that teach horrific anti-Semitism. In addition, some lessons include ideas that are intolerant or confrontational toward Ahmadi Muslims, Baha’is, and Christians.
The ADL found particularly disturbing examples of anti-Semitic materials in Kuwait’s second-semester textbook in use for eighth-grade public-school courses on Islamic education. Even among the textbook’s stated learning objectives, it declares one objective is for students to learn that “the enmity of the Jews toward Islam and the Muslims is old and deeply rooted” and that “stirring up strife, breaking pacts, and malice are among the inherent characteristics of the Jews.” . . . And it advocates a range of actions to “challenge the conspiracies of the Jews,” including “boycotting their products.”
Looking . . . toward the future, this textbook. . . calls for confronting the Jews by “Muslims’ shouldering the obligation to liberate their lands and holy sites, and to cleanse them from the enemies of God.”
Read more on ADL: https://www.adl.org/news/kuwaiti-textbooks-teach-that-jews-are-treacherous