Pakistani textbooks teach kids intolerance toward religious minorities, says study

A recent study found that school textbooks in Pakistan teach children intolerance and superiority toward those of other religions.

"Pakistan's public school textbooks contain deeply troubling content that portrays non-Muslim citizens as outsiders, unpatriotic, and inferior; are filled with errors; and present widely-disputed historical 'facts' as settled history," Robert P. George, the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, said in a statement.

He said that the textbooks lack content on the rights of religious minorities and their positive contributions to the development of Pakistan. The school materials, he expressed, reflect the current state of religious freedom in the country.

"A country's education system, including its textbooks, should promote religious tolerance, not close the door to cooperation and coexistence," he said.

The study, sponsored by the USCIRF titled "Teaching Intolerance in Pakistan: Religious Bias in Public School Textbooks," says that school materials in Pakistan portray those of other religions as "untrustworthy, religiously inferior, and ideologically scheming and intolerant."

"The major findings of this report are that the content of Pakistani public school textbooks related to non-Islamic faiths and non-Muslims continue to teach bias, distrust, and inferiority," the report reads. "Moreover, the textbooks portray non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan as sympathetic towards its perceived enemies .... These perceptions predispose students early on that the non-Muslim population of Pakistan are outsiders and unpatriotic." 

The study, conducted by Peace and Education Foundation, a non-government organization in Pakistan, found that there is no content in the textbooks that discusses the complexity of religions. Instead, they indoctrinate Muslim kids to be prejudiced against religious minorities; while non-Muslim kids are subjected to public shaming at a very young age.

Hindu kids, for instance, are made to read lessons on "Hindus' conspiracies toward Muslims" while Christian students are told that Muslims taught Christians how to be tolerant and kind-hearted.

The report also said that while some biased content have already been removed, new excerpts reflecting bias toward religious minorities have also been introduced.

"A review of the curriculum demonstrates that public school students are being taught that religious minorities, especially Christians and Hindus, are nefarious, violent, and tyrannical by nature," something that the researchers found to be ironic since Hindus and Christians in Pakistan are persecuted daily and are commonly victims of crime.

Public school textbooks are perused by more than 41 million children in Pakistan.