School textbook changes welcomed

A priest in Amman has welcomed government reforms to the Jordanian school curriculum aimed at curbing Islamic extremism among young people, writes Abigail Frymann Rouch.

Fr Khalil H Jaar, who is co-ordinating aid for around 500 Iraqi refugee families in the capital, told The Tablet last week the changes were “good news for Jordanian Christians and Muslims”.

The Ministry of Education introduced updated textbooks for the teaching of history, Arabic, Islam and civics this year. Changes include a reference to Christians as part of the population, with pictures of churches as well as mosques, the removal of some verses from the Qu’ran, the replacement of a picture of a veiled woman with one showing an unveiled woman, and in Arabic-language teaching, the replacement of a Qu’ranic verse with a neutral text, the website Al-Monitor reported last month.  

Fr Jaar attributed the Islamist views expressed in the previous textbooks to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members gained control of the Ministry of Education in the 1980s. “In 30 to 35 years, they were able to change the mentality of our people,” he said. In parliamentary elections last month, the Brothers’ political arm, the Islamic Action Front, adopted a more moderate stance but grassroots support for their vision of Islamic governance has waned since the failure of a Brotherhood-linked government in Egypt in 2013. Nonetheless, commentators have expressed concern at levels of support for movements such as IS.