Manama, May 09 (BNA): Committed to the approach of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the great King of the Kingdom of Bahrain, may God preserve and protect him, in protecting our Islamic religion and its tolerant faith; His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, may God protect him, ordered the Minister of Education to immediately stop any changes to educational curricula that are incompatible with our national values represented in protecting religion, not compromising its constants, and adhering to Islam as a creed, law and method, according to what was reported in the National Action Charter and the Constitution.
An article about this announcement gives a hint as to the kinds of changes that are being stopped that the Education Ministry had approved. One was adding the name "Israel" to a map, one deleted a lesson about Jews, and a third added a discussion of the Abraham Accords.
The Bahraini curriculum is online, and from a brief search, it has a lot of antisemitism.
Besides the lessons on Islam that describe the Jews of Mohammed's time in an unflattering light, there are other references that point to endemic hatred of Jews. A remedial reading lesson includes phrases like "The Jews destroyed the camp" and "The Jews destroyed the farm." An Islamic lesson has a chapter on "The dangers of the Jews." A sixth grade lesson includes "The poet is crying out for the city of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whose sanctity was violated by the usurping Jews." A chapter of one book (published after the Abraham Accords) is "Palestine and the global Zionist conspiracy."
Most of the lessons were written before the Abraham Accords, so it would be reasonable to expect that they should be changed to excise the antisemitism. But this announcement makes it appear that there has been pushback on the Bahrain Education Ministry doing exactly that, and the Crown Price is shutting down any such program - in the name of Bahraini and Islamic values.
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