Textbooks in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of Hindus and Christians, while most teachers view religious minorities as “enemies of Islam,” according to a study by a US government commission released yesterday.
The findings indicate how deeply ingrained hardline Islam is in Pakistan and help explain why militancy is often supported, tolerated or excused in the country.
“Teaching discrimination increases the likelihood that violent religious extremism in Pakistan will continue to grow, weakening religious freedom, national and regional stability and global security,” said Leonard Leo, the chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Pakistan was created in 1947 as a homeland for the Muslims of South Asia and was initially envisaged as a moderate state where minorities would have full rights. However, three wars with mostly Hindu India, state support for militants fighting Soviet rule in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the appeasement of hardline clerics by weak governments seeking legitimacy have led to a steady radicalization of society.
Religious minorities and those brave enough to speak out against intolerance have often been killed, seemingly with impunity, by militant sympathizers. The commission warned that any significant efforts to combat religious discrimination, especially in education, would “likely face strong opposition” from hardliners.
The study reviewed more than 100 textbooks from grades 1 to 10 from Pakistan’s four provinces. Researchers in February visited 37 public schools, interviewing 277 students and teachers and 19 madrasahs, where they interviewed 226 students and teachers.
The Islamization of textbooks began under the US-backed rule of Pakistani army dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who courted Islamists to support his rule. In 2006, the government announced plans to reform the curriculum to address the problematic content, but that has not been done, the study said.
Pakistan’s Islamist and right-wing polity would likely oppose any efforts to change the curriculum and the government has shown no desire to challenge them on the issue.
The report found systematic negative portrayals of minorities, especially Hindus and, to a lesser extent, Christians. Hindus make up more than 1 percent of Pakistan’s 180 million people, while Christians represent around 2 percent. Some estimates put the numbers higher.
There are also even smaller populations of Sikhs and Buddhists.
“Religious minorities are often portrayed as inferior or second-class citizens who have been granted limited rights and privileges by generous Pakistani Muslims, for which they should be grateful,” the report said. “Hindus are repeatedly described as extremists and eternal enemies of Islam whose culture and society is based on injustice and cruelty, while Islam delivers a message of peace and brotherhood, concepts portrayed as alien to the Hindu.”
The textbooks make very little reference to the role played by Hindus, Sikhs and Christians in the cultural, military and civic life of Pakistan, meaning a “a young minority student will thus not find many examples of educated religious minorities in their own textbooks,” the report said.
The researchers also found the books foster a sense that Pakistan’s Islamic identity is under constant threat.
“The anti-Islamic forces are always trying to finish the Islamic domination of the world,” read one passage from a social studies text being taught to Grade 4 students in the province of Punjab, the country’s most populated. “This can cause danger for the very existence of Islam. Today, the defense of Pakistan and Islam is very much in need.”
The report states that Islamic teachings and references were commonplace in compulsory textbooks, not just religious ones, meaning Pakistan’s Christians, Hindus and other minorities were being taught Islamic content. It said this appeared to violate Pakistan’s Constitution, which states that students should not have to receive instruction in a religion other than their own.
The attitudes of the teachers no doubt reflect the general intolerance in Pakistan — a Pew Research Center study this year found the country the third most intolerant in the world — but because of the influence they have, they are especially worrisome.
Their views were frequently nuanced and sometimes contradictory, according to the study. While many advocated respectful treatment of religious minorities, this was conditional upon the attitudes of the minorities, “which appeared to be in question,” the report said. The desire to proselytize was cited as one of the main motivations for kind treatment.
According to the study, more than half the public school teachers acknowledged the citizenship of religious minorities, but a majority expressed the opinion that religious minorities must not be allowed to hold positions of power, in order to protect Pakistan and Muslims. While many expressed the importance of respecting the practices of religious minorities, simultaneously 80 percent of teachers viewed non-Muslims, in some form or another, as “enemies of Islam.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS