Saudi Arabia Textbooks Teach Hatred Against Jews, Christians, and Gays, Beating Women

A Saudi classroom where hatred is taught.

On the same day that Der Trumpenführer tacitly approved political murder by Saudi Arabia, The Anti-Defamation League released a report confirming that not much has changed since 9-11 in terms of the hatred and misogyny taught in Saudi high school text books.   Incitements to violence against Jews, Christians, and gays continues and the beating of women is endorsed "when necessary."  This is the false ally that Trump has embraced even as he bleats about about radical Islam, the main financier of which is Saudi Arabia.  With Anerican and Russian oil production now surpassing that of Saudi Arabia it is far past time that the indoctrination of hatred towards others be condemned and adverse consequences attached to its continuation.  NBC News looks at the ADL report.  Here are excerpts:

Textbooks for high school students in Saudi Arabia promote hatred against Jews, Christians, women, homosexual men and other Muslim sects despite repeated promises to return the country to a more moderate form of Islam, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Anti-Defamation League highlighted that some textbooks include anti-Semitic stereotypes.

Among the goals of Zionism is a “global Jewish government to control the entire world," one excerpt states.

Another example reads: “The hour will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, so that the Muslims kill them, until the Jew hides behind rock and tree, so the rock or the tree says: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of God, this Jew is behind me, so kill him.’”

A third passage suggests that “beating [women] is permitted when necessary.”

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and for decades has exported a strict Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam that views Shiite Muslims as heretics.

Intolerance in the kingdom came under particular scrutiny after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when it emerged that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. . . . hard-line views endure in some books taught in high schools.

While the report notes some improvements, “much of the incitement evident in today’s textbooks is still alarmingly similar to what was included in the kingdom’s curriculum around the time of the 9/11 attacks.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called on U.S. officials to hold Saudi Arabia to a "higher standard."  “The U.S. cannot look the other way while Saudi Arabia features anti-Semitic hate speech year after year in the educational material it gives to its children,” he said in a statement.

The ADL also called for "greater scrutiny of the kingdom's textbooks by the American government."

Many of the excerpts highlighted by the ADL are based on hadiths, or accounts of the sayings, actions or habits of the Prophet Muhammad that are used by preachers and jurists, as opposed to the Quran.

Saudi Arabia is no ally and it is long past time that this reality be faced and action taken against this financier of Islamic extremism.