This column by Ahmed Al-Sarraf was published in Kuwait's liberal Al Qabas newspaper, and it was republished in Al Arabiya:
I remembered the Kuwaiti proverb, “We satiated them with insults... They satiated us with jokes”! It means that we cursed our enemies, but they beat us up! I remembered it while reading passages from one of the textbooks, which are taught in our schools, and which clearly show that whoever sets educational curricula is either completely detached from reality, or that he lives in a fantasy world steeped in aspirations that are difficult to achieve.From reading three or four pages of a textbook, we find that the greatest concern of the nation, which the educators, who wrote the books, would like to focus on is the enmity of the Jews and their elimination, and this is indeed confusing, as the number of Arabs is 400 million, and above them is a billion Muslims, and it is inconceivable that it is Are all of these with this “mental” humility and desire to eliminate a country of 6 or 7 million?There is no doubt that there is a defect in the matter, and if the Ministry of Education allowed school students to be taught the subject of critical thinking, then the students themselves would have shown the absurdity of the equation and the absurdity of the text. The issue is not a sword and horses and a hand in which camels run and horses spear, but rather knowledge, understanding and achievement. Not all of our nation can eliminate Israel with our current reality that is weak, disjointed, and backward in health, socially, morally, industrially, and financially. They continue to defeat us in every military or moral battle!Our children are taught, based on school texts, how to confront the conspiracies of the Jews, and we forget that we conspire against each other more than they conspire against us, because our involvement in our differences represents the greatest support for them and their continued survival, especially since the curricula are completely devoid of materials related to how to eliminate our differences, and accept each other, stop our dispersion and fragmentation, and reject the distinction between free and slave, indigenous and faction from faction, Muslim and Christian, Shiite and Sunni, Druze and Alawite, Coptic and Amazigh, Kurdish and Ibadhi, without liberalism and freedoms we will not exist!The curricula also focus on the fact that the enmity of the Jews towards Islam and Muslims is deep-rooted and ancient! Of course, this is not true, and if it is true, I do not think for a moment that they are as preoccupied as we are with this enmity, thinking about it and teaching it in their curricula.Our curricula also focus on the story that the Jews are covenant-breakers, and this automatically means that we are among those who keep them. It is another lie that is difficult to deceive the least bright of male and female students.Conclusion: We are the enemies of ourselves more than others are our enemy.
Notice he doesn't say that Jews are good, just that they aren't as bad as Arabs are to each other.
Articles like this are few and far between, but they do get published occasionally.
|
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
|
