Syrian Curriculum Changes Harbinger of Islamification Plans

February 11, 2025

by: JNS

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 | A raft of planned changes to Syria’s educational curriculum reveals a trend toward Islamification, while antisemitic, anti-western, and terror-glorifying material from the Assad-era curriculum remains in place, a watchdog group said last week.

The proposed adjustments, which were first made public last month, have raised alarm bells in the West, especially after promises of reform and inclusiveness by the new Syrian government following the ouster of the decades-old Assad regime.

The study by the London-based NGO Impact SE finds that the directives issued by the new Syrian government at the start of the year call for the removal of secular scientific concepts from school textbooks, the erasure of depictions of women, and the addition of new content describing martyrdom as a godly endeavor.

Syrian Education Minister Nazir al-Qadiri had previously said that the proposed changes are limited to “inaccuracies” in Islamic education, but the 50-page report reveals that the planned revisions are far more extensive.

In a grade 1 science textbook, for example, the chapter entitled “The Gift(s) of Nature” is set to be Islamized by changing it to “The Gift(s) from Allah,” according to the review. An entire grade 8 biology textbook chapter on evolution, titled “The Origin of Life and its Development on Earth,” has been removed, the study finds, because it is perceived to be un-Islamic.

Martyrdom is reframed from a national to a religious perspective in a grade 9 lesson where “a person giving away his soul to defend his homeland” becomes “a person giving away his soul for the sake of Allah.”

The changes come after a shift in leadership following the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad with the new government having ties to Islamist factions, including one that formed an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria during the civil war.

At the same time, in a first-grade Islamic education exercise, an existing reference to “those who have gone astray from the path of goodness” is to be replaced with an explicit mention of Jews and Christians.

“This change introduces an overly negative portrayal of Jews and Christians to young, impressionable students,” the report states.

Moreover, a 12th-grade history textbook describes Zionism as a “racist and expansionist” worldview, which “believes that all the world’s resources must be employed to serve the Zionist Entity and protect it,” linking Zionism with control and the exploitation of global resources, evoking antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish world domination.

A grade 10 history textbook describes Jews as adhering to the “extremist idea” that they are “God’s chosen people,” presenting Judaism as “ethnically exclusive,” and self-referentially superior.

“The dramatic fall of the murderous Assad regime heralded the opportunity for a new beginning in Syria,” said IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff. “However, the textbook reforms introduced by the new regime less than a month after assuming power, demonstrate an increasing Islamization—and are concerning.”

This shift in Syria stands in stark contrast to efforts by other Muslim nations, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have sought to revise textbooks to remove negative portrayals of Jews, Christians and Israel, signaling a move toward more inclusive education.

Posted on February 11, 2025

Source: (This article was originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on February 11, 2025. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Images/jns.org