Mulack said “it is very good to begin with textbooks to change the mindset on Islam” in European countries.

Mustafa Abdel-Halim, IOL Staff

CAIRO, December 12 (IslamOnline.net) –  Europe should review its schoolbooks on Islam as a good start for introducing the true image of the Muslims’ religion, European experts recommended on Sunday, December 12.

“A lot of factual mistakes, misleading perceptions are prevalent in schoolbooks in  Europe all over the past years, we have to admit,” Wolfgang Hoepken, the director of Germany-based Georg Exkert Institute, told a three-day Euro-Arab Dialogue conference that opened here earlier in the day.

The Institute has analyzed several textbooks presented to school children in European countries on Islam.

“There is relatively little on Islam in these selective texts,” Hoepken said.

The “Euro-Arab Dialogue: The Image of Arab-Islamic Culture in European History Books” conference is bringing together European and Arab experts on schoolbooks.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa opened the conference with an appeal for Europeans to combat Islamophobia with the same enthusiasm they battle anti-Semitism.

Missed Information

Other participants have agreed that European history schoolbooks have always downgraded the “Other”, including Muslims.

“That’s way we could find no reference to European colonialism of the Arab and Islamic world and the influence of Muslim scholars on Europe in Medieval Ages,” said Fawzia Al-Ashmawi, a professor of Arabic Language and Civilization, University of Geneva.

She conducted a comparative study on the image of Islam in textbooks in European and Arab countries.

In Europe, Al-Ashmawi said, the schoolbooks are very selective and superficial, citing the European colonialism of Arab and Muslim countries as a case in point.

“For Example, French schoolbooks say that French troops invaded  Algeria in 1830 to spread modern culture and civilization.”

“There is no reference to the fact that one million Algerians were killed defending their country against the invaders,” she the professor.

She even indirectly accused European textbook authors of “deliberately introducing” wrong information on Islam and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

“European Religion”

Gunter Mulack, Germany's first-ever commissioner for dialogue with the Islamic World and dialogue among civilization, agreed on the need to review textbooks on Islam.

“We have to know more on what’s going on in Islam, which is no threat to western society,” he told the gathering.

Mulack and other participants expressed conviction that “it is very good to begin with textbooks to change the mindset on Islam” in European countries.

“Islam is a European religion, with many Muslims now living there. So, we have to accept it,” the senior German official concluded.

There are some 20 million Muslims now living in the 25-member European Union,  which has an overall population of 200 million.

British Initiative

The conference welcomed a British government’s initiative to change the schoolbook on Islam introduced to students of 11-15 years old.

“We will include more accurate information on the religion in the 12-chapter,” said Dr. Michael Reily, a history education lecturer, Bath University in the UK, told IslamOnline.net.

He said European colonialism, Muslims’ earlier achievements and various viewpoints on such prickly issues as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Crusades will be mentioned in the new book.

Muslim scholars in Britain will be consulted with on the content of the new textbooks, added the British professor, who is assigned by the government to do the job.

A recent study on thirty British schoolbooks by Saudi researcher Abdel-Mohsen Al-Ukaly found that they tend to connect Islam with terrorism and ignore the Islamic viewpoint on Crusades.

“This is contrary to what the authors use when dealing with other religions,” concluded the study, presented by Al-Ukaly at the conference.

Reily retorted the misleading information could be “out of ignorance of Islam.”

“Given the potential for distortion of Islam in the media and current schoolbooks, we want children to be critical of what they watch or listen to or read in the future.”

Muslims Should Do

Similarly, a number of participants have urged Muslim and Arab countries to clear their schoolbooks of “exaggerated fears” of the Other.

Ashmawi’s study found that textbooks in Arab countries say, for example, that Moguls could have vanished all of the Muslim civilization if they were not defeated in Al-Quds.

“This is unjustified exaggeration that should be removed also,” she maintained.

Western countries, especially the US, have been criticizing the educational system in a number of Arab countries for allegedly fueling up extremism that led to the 9/11 attacks.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz recently urged teachers to avoid promoting “extremist concepts,” in a new effort to introduce reforms to the education system.