AMMAN, Jordan (AP) – In pro-Western Jordan, a leader in the fight against Islamic State militants, school books warn students they risk “God’s torture” if they don’t embrace Islam. They portray “holy war” as a religious obligation if Islamic lands are attacked and suggest it is justified to kill captured enemies.
Christians, the country’s largest minority, are largely absent from the texts.
The government says it’s tackling the contradiction between official anti-extremist policy and what is taught in schools and mosques by rewriting school books and retraining thousands of teachers and preachers.
Critics say the reforms are superficial, fail to challenge hard-line traditions, and that the first revised textbooks for elementary-school children still present Islam as the only true religion.
“Islamic State ideology is there, in our textbooks,” said Zogan Obiedat, a former Education Ministry official who published a recent analysis of the texts. If Jordan were to be overrun by the militants, a large majority “will join IS because they learned in school that this is Islam,” he said.