Saudi Textbooks: War With Jews Not Over Land--They're Just Plain Evil!

Thanks for clearing that up.

MEMRI has a translation of a textbook from a Saudi Arabian textbook,indicating: The Enmity between the Muslims and the Jews Is Everlasting:

A twelfth-grade Saudi textbook titled Studies from the Muslim World includes a chapter on Palestine and the Palestinian cause, which deals extensively with the Jews. The chapter presents the conflict over Palestine as a religious struggle between the Jews and the Muslims that goes back to the era of the Prophet Muhammad.
It states that there is no hope of ever making peace with the Jews because they do not believe in peace, but only strive to spread corruption and instability throughout the world, for they are liars, connivers and cheats by nature. It also stresses that these negative traits of the Jews are described in the Koran, and quotes verses to prove this. Finally, the chapter states that the only way to liberate Palestine is through jihad.

MEMRI has a number of excerpts, including this from page 91:

"Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it. This is a deeply rooted enmity, a conflict between truth and falsehood, between monotheism and polytheism, between heresy and faith. The enmity between us and the Jews will not cease under any circumstances until one of two things [happens]: either they join our religion and become Muslims, or we abandon our religion, God forbid. [Allah], may He be exalted, said [in the Koran]: 'They [the Jews] will not cease fighting with you until they turn you back from your religion, if they can' [Koran 2:217]; 'And the Jews will not be pleased with you, nor the Christians, until you follow their religion' [Koran 2:120]."

At least the Saudis acknowledge that the Arab conflict with Israel is not about land.

Other tidbits from the Saudi textbook indicate:

• The Jews Spread Corruption, Fitna, and Conspiracies
• The Jews' Corruption Is Described in the Koran
• The Jews Will Be Forced Out of Palestine through Jihad

All of which would indicate that the much-vaunted Saudi interfaith conference in Madrid back in 2008 was something of a sham to begin with--it's all fine and well to denounce religious extremism, but when your own country is a main source of Islamic extremism and terrorism, encouraging those attitudes in your textbooks is not a good thing.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Saudi Arabia and Islam.