publicdiplomacycouncil.org
Saturday, October 31st 2015
Provided by Niqash.org
Malign narratives can influence whole generations when they shape school textbooks. The German nonprofit organization MICT (Media in Cooperation and Transition), which develops media project in the Middle East and North Africa, has recently obtained copies of some textbooks used in Islamic State schools. A brief report on their Niqash.org website on October 29, 2015, “'How To Be a Good Little Jihadi': Extremists Release New School Textbooks, Curriculum in Mosul,” provides some troubling details and provides links to four textbooks (in Arabic).
To the right is the cover of one textbook.
NIQASH managed to obtain some digital samples of the new primary school curriculum, to be taught to children aged between six and 12 years old. Even just reading the introductions to the textbooks it is clear the level of indoctrination that is at work in them.
For example, in a book about physical fitness for six-year-olds, two words are written on the cover: “continue”, or exist, and “expand”. The two words are used continuously inside the book with regard to sports and physical exercise. However these two words are more significant than that – they are part of the IS group's well known motto, where they say the Islamic State will “continue (or persist and remain) and expand”.
Illustrations in other books, such as one on religious education and religious missions, or jihad, show children wearing the same outfit as the grown IS fighters wear – a loose “Afghan-style” tunic and baggy pants – and carrying weapons like pistols and machine guns.
A mathematics textbook asks arithmetic questions like this: If the IS group has 275,220 heroes in a battle and the unbelievers have 356,230, who has more soldiers?
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