The Ministry of Education announced on its Facebook page on Wednesday that it had removed propaganda from the Baath Party which was in power under Bashar al-Assad, as well as poems about women and love.
Syria's education minister sought Thursday to downplay changes to school textbooks announced the day before by the new Islamist-led authorities, after activists denounced changes based on “extremist ideologies”. A coalition of armed groups led by radical Islamists took power in Syria after a lightning offensive which resulted on December 8 in the fall of Damascus and the flight of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Ministry of Education announced Wednesday on its Facebook page that it had made some changes to school textbooks, removing propaganda from the Baath party which was in power under Bashar al-Assad but also poems about women and love. The changes also included the interpretation of a Quranic verse relating to “those who provoked anger” of God and “the lost” as referring to Jews and Christians.
The nationalist phrase “sacrifice your life to defend your homeland” is further replaced by the expression “sacrifice one’s life for the cause of God”. “The curricula of all Syrian schools will remain as they are until specialized committees are formed to review them”Minister of Education Nazir Al-Qadri said in a statement on Telegram on Thursday.
Controversy on social networks
“We only ordered the removal of parts glorifying the fallen Assad regime, and we adopted images of the flag of the Syrian Revolution instead of the regime flag” fallen, he added. He further indicated that information “wrong” had also been corrected in the Islamic education curriculum, where “certain Quranic verses were explained incorrectly”.
Wednesday's announcement of the changes caused controversy on social networks. Yazidi Kurdish activist and journalist Shiyar Khaleal notably warned on Facebook that “Education based on extremist ideologies can shape individuals whose ideas threaten regional and international security”.
“Changing the school curriculum under the supervision of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTC, the Islamist group leading the ruling coalition, editor's note) is not only an educational danger, but a long-term threat to the social fabric and the future of Syria”he added. The journalist Ziad Haidar estimated that with some of these changes, “specific religious groups” were “targeted”. The new power, which knows itself to be scrutinized by the international community, has sought to repeatedly reassure minorities that they would not be victims of violence.
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