David G Kibble & Qari Asim. Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Volume 56, Issue 4, Fall 2021.
Societies in conflict usually portray negative images of “the other,” such images often being transmitted through the education system. Using school curricula in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Israel and Palestine as examples of such a negative transmission, it is argued that real peace between societies in conflict will be developed only where especially the younger generation is enabled to see things through the eyes of those who are traditionally seen as their enemies. It is shown how such a more empathetic education is not just politically useful but is also demanded by both Christianity and Islam—the faith traditions present in both of the conflicts studied.
In 2007, 138 Muslim scholars issued A Common Word, a document that suggested that Christians and Muslims worship the one God and called on Christians to work together with their Muslim colleagues in social-action projects. That was followed in 2008 by the Makkah Declaration in which, again, a group of Muslim scholars (The World Islamic Conference on Dialogue) called on Christians and Muslims to “work side by side in spreading virtuous ethics and values… [including upholding] justice, virtue and peace.” In the spring of 2019, Pope Francis visited Abu Dhabi, where he and the Grand Imam of al Azhar, Ahmed al Tayyeb signed the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. Like the previous documents, this one also called for Christians and Muslims to work together on social projects, including the promotion of peace in areas of conflict.
The purpose of this essay is to suggest that one area where Christians and Muslims can and should work together is in the promotion of learning about “the other” in areas of conflict. We believe that there are good political and religious reasons why this should be done.
I. Education about “the Other” in Bosnia-Herzegovina
The population of Bosnia-Herzegovina is divided into three ethnoreligious groups: Bosniaks make up forty-eight percent of the population and are Muslim; Serbs make up thirty-seven percent and are Orthodox Christian; Croats, who are Catholic, make up fourteen percent. A 2018 article in the New York Times pictured how the divisions manifest themselves now, more than twenty years after the civil conflict ended in 1995: The city of Mostar has two fire stations, one for the Muslim Bosniak area and one for the Catholic Croat area; two garbage companies, one for the Bosniaks and one for the Croats; as well as two hospitals, two electricity companies, two bus stations, and two football teams.
The state itself is divided into two entities: Republica Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into ten cantons. Each of the ten cantons together with Republica Srpska and the additional Brcko district are responsible for education in their area, including curriculum policy. Kelly Hill summarized the result of this delegation of authority as follows: “Schooling is characterized by monoethnic classrooms, segregated schools, opposing pedagogies, and an absence of a common curriculum.”
The vast majority of young people attend schools alongside students of their own ethnicity—Bosniak, Serb, or Croat. In some instances, Bosniak and Croat students attend a school that is in the same building as that of another ethnic group, but they will be on different floors of the same building, or school will be held at different times on the same campus—sometimes with an hour’s break to ensure that the students do not come into contact with one another. These schools, over fifty of them, are known as “two schools under one roof,” each with its own headteacher—even when they are taught at the same time. When these schools were set up at the end of the 1991–95 conflict, after many schools had been destroyed, it was assumed that in time the two schools would become one, but this has not generally been the case. In more rural areas or in schools run privately, there is some ethnic mixing; in Mostar Gymnasium, for example, Croat and Bosniak students join for computer sciences classes and for some after-school activities, but this is a rare exception. Only the privately run United World College in Mostar, housed in the same building as the Mostar Gymnasium, fosters real ethnic mixing. Its website says, “Though national divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina persist—we are still the only school in the country where Bosniak, Croat, and Serb youth live and go to school together.”
This system of ethnically and religiously divided schools has been seen by many students and their teachers as divisive. In the ethnically mixed Nikola Sop secondary school in Jajce, there were plans to make the school a “two schools under one roof” in 2017. The staff and students protested vigorously, and the plan was eventually abandoned. Where students attend ethnically segregated schools, prejudice often lurks beneath the surface; one NGO suggested that young people are more divided than previous generations. One study concluded that “the effect of this [two schools under one roof] formula has been the emergence of a radicalised youth that do not have a vivid memory of the war, yet have more extreme views than their parents.”
It will come as no surprise to learn that the three different ethnic groups have different curricula. Croats learn about Croatian history, Serbs about Serbian history, and Bosniaks about Bosnian history; they learn different languages and have different lessons in religious studies that are often confessional in nature. When the President of Republica Srpska, Milorad Dodic, was asked when Serb students would be taught about the genocide in Srebrenica, he replied, “It’s not true and it will not be studied here.” School textbooks make heroes of one ethnic group while demonizing another.
There has been an element of peace education in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but it is difficult for students to take it seriously when they are educated as separate ethnic and religious groups. Dubravko Lovrenovic, a historian and former deputy minister of education in Bosnia-Herzegovina, commented, “If you don’t have a common curriculum, if you don’t agree about history, how can we make a modern political culture? How can we create citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina? How can we talk about a common future?” Both a common curriculum and reform in teacher training are needed, as teachers are currently ill prepared to promote intercultural education in which students are encouraged to value those who are currently seen as “the other.” In Bosnia-Herzegovina, education about “the other” is decidedly absent, unless it means demonization of the other.
II. Education about “the Other” in Israel and Palestine
In 2017, a report sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Middle East Forum drew the conclusion that Palestinian school textbooks foster a delegitimization and demonization of Israel and that they indoctrinate Palestinian students to pursue a violent struggle, rather than promoting education for peace. The report described how in Palestinian school textbooks Jews are seen to have no rights to the land of Israel. It describes how there is no recognition of it as a sovereign state and how, since 2016, most textbooks replace the word “Israel” with the phrase “Zionist occupation.” In the schoolbooks there are maps and texts that replace “Israel” with “Palestine.” The Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the mosque in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, the town of Caesarea, and the city of Tiberias are all seen as Palestinian sites. The report describes how Jews are portrayed as enemies of Islam’s prophets, of Moses, of Jesus, and of Muhammad. In one 2016-17 textbook, they are referred to as the “Devil’s aides.”
One of the main topics for discussion when analyzing Palestinian textbooks and the Palestinian curriculum is whether students are incited to violence. The 2017 report felt that they are. In a 2016 textbook, there is, for the first time, a call for the expulsion of Jews living in Israel; the text includes the words, “I shall remove the usurper… from my country [a]nd shall exterminate… the foreigners’ scattered remnants.” Two textbooks quote hadith that use the term “jihad”; one suggests that jihad is “the third most important thing in God’s eyes after prayer and respect for parents,” while the other says it is the “most important thing after the belief in God.” One twelfth grade textbook contains the following advice: “Jihad is among the most exalted factors that place the Muslim nearer to his God. Moreover, it is the highest apex of Islam.” In each case, the Palestinian textbook authors interpret the word “jihad” in terms of a military struggle.
There has been discussion among British Members of Parliament as to whether the British government should continue to help fund Palestinian education when Palestinian children are subject to such teaching. Such concerns in both the United Kingdom and beyond have led to a series of reports that have continued to monitor and evaluate the Palestinian curriculum. As a result, the Palestinian Authority has amended texts in some schoolbooks. For example, a 2018 math textbook included an exercise based upon the number of worshipers killed during a massacre at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron; in the 2020 version of the textbook, students are asked to make the calculation based simply on the numbers of worshipers at a mosque. A 2018 math textbook included an example—since removed—involving a Jewish settler who shoots at a Palestinian car. In a 2019 Arabic-language textbook, students were asked to learn a poem beginning, “I swear, I will sacrifice my blood to irrigate the land of generosity, to kick out the violators and strangers from my country.” This has been removed from the 2020 edition. So, the Palestinian Authority has made moves to reduce what appears to be a glorification of violence in some of its textbooks.
Despite these recent changes, however, a report published in 2021 concluded that there are still significant issues. It points to a textbook in which martyrdom is glorified with the following: “Drinking the cup of bitterness with glory is much sweeter than a pleasant long life accompanied by humiliation.” It sees textbooks involved in promoting jihad and assuring students that martyrs will go to paradise; in one exercise, students are asked to explain how martyrs face death. They are also asked to display pictures and names of babies killed by Israel.
There is little attempt to help Palestinian students understand the Israeli “other.” They are not helped to understand why Jews wanted to return to their ancestral homeland, nor are they taught about the Shoah. There is no information about the Jewish religion, and little attempt is made to help students understand the reasons for and the nature of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The 2021 Impact–se report concludes that, despite recent revisions, the 2020-21 curriculum “supports hate speech, antisemitism, incitement, violence, and encouragement of martyrdom and jihad. Themes of cooperation, coexistence, understanding, tolerance with the Jewish-Israeli Other remain entirely absent.”
What about the other side of the divide? Do Israeli textbooks foster an understanding of the Palestinian “other”? It is generally agreed that in recent years Israel’s education policies have moved more to the right, with schools reinforcing Jewish and Zionist values and placing less emphasis on the promotion of coexistence. It is also agreed that the presentation of “the other” is “statistically significantly more pronounced” in Ultra-Orthodox textbooks than it is in Israeli State textbooks. Like Palestinian textbooks, Israeli textbooks also publish maps without a recognition of the two states. A study published in 2013 reported that seventy-six percent of maps showed no border between Israel and Palestine and that the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian Authority” did not appear at all. In one instance, a map showing Israel without its border with Palestine is legitimated by a biblical quotation in which God promises Abraham the entire area “from the river Prath to the uttermost sea.”
In 2012, Nurit Peled-Elhanan published her study of textbooks used in Israel. She found that, in a number of geography, history, and civics textbooks, there were no positive verbal or visual presentations of Palestinians; they were represented as terrorists, refugees, or primitive farmers. Palestinians were often presented as what Peled-Elhanan called the “Oxfam type”—a farmer following a primitive plough pulled by oxen or donkeys. While she concluded that “racist and discriminatory practices” in Israeli textbooks contribute toward the poor behavior by some young Israeli soldiers toward their Palestinian neighbors, the positive attitude to violence that is presented in some Palestinian textbooks is absent. A more recent study of Israeli school textbooks suggested that, although the suffering of Palestinians is acknowledged, such suffering is seen mainly in the context of the events around 1948; the current suffering of Palestinians is rarely described, so current students find it difficult to put themselves in the shoes of those who live on the other side of the Green Line.
In both Israel and Palestine, we have education systems where real education about “the other” is absent. It is not the authors’ purpose to make a detailed comparison between the two; what we will say is that, although the Palestinian textbooks seem to present a future in which violence toward “the other” seems inevitable, it is difficult for many Palestinian students to envisage anything else when they are constantly reminded of what they can only term as “occupation.” Nevertheless, the more negative stance toward Israel and its Jewish citizens in the Palestinian curriculum is regrettable.
III. Education about “the Other”: A Political and Religious Imperative
Societies that are divided would generally prefer to be reconciled; countries that are involved in conflict would prefer to live in peace. Effecting reconciliation and peace is, however, no easy task. In South Africa and Northern Ireland, for example, although armed conflict is a thing of the past, it is obvious that establishing real peace and reconciliation is a generational task that political leaders have set themselves because visionary leadership and the wish of the people have demanded it.
Peace and reconciliation do not come about when political leaders sign pieces of paper, necessary though that is. Peace and reconciliation develop between groups of people when people themselves actively become engaged in some form of peacemaking. It is our belief that part of that peace process is education about “the other” as part of young people’s education. The Dayton Accords, which ended the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, have been described as “a self-sustaining machine for producing misery.” The accords failed to ensure that the country’s young people were given an education where they could begin to develop either knowledge of or relationships with young people of other ethnicities and faiths. Since each faith and ethnic group was given little opportunity to learn about “the other,” it is not surprising that healed relationships are a long way off. Watching some of the YouTube clips of young people in the country tells us that many of them recognize that they are being brought up simply to replicate the hate of their parents; many are asking for a way out and a road toward greater integration.
Similarly, in Israel/Palestine, education about “the other” is a political imperative. When a group of Christians and Jews visited Israel/Palestine a few years ago, one of their questions to people on both sides of the divide was whether they would support the concept of education about “the other” in schools; there was universal agreement that this would be a good thing. Such an idea has been put forward on a number of occasions, most recently by Gershon Baskin. Yet, in the visit by Christians and Jews, they were often told by people on both sides of the divide that politicians are more interested in bolstering their own positions rather than making real moves toward peace. The audience was stunned when Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told them at Bradford University that there was no way that Palestinian children would learn about “their oppressors.” That political imperative of education about “the other” in Bosnia-Herzegovina is also a political imperative in Israel/Palestine.
It is our contention that education about “the other” is not just a political imperative but also a religious imperative. Pope Francis, during his 2021 visit to Iraq, said at an interfaith gathering in Ur that “the greatest blasphemy is to profane [God’s] name by hating our brothers and sisters. Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion.” In both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Israel/Palestine, there is a sense in which religion is part of the problem. In the former, hostility among the three ethnic groups was and is hostility among three ethnic groups who identify with a faith community—Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim. In Israel/Palestine, it is not just a conflict between two different nations or ethnicities that are made up of different faith groups, but there are also people within those faith groups who believe that their tenure on particular pieces of land is a religious obligation. Some in the Jewish community believe that the promise given by God in the Hebrew scriptures that they would inherit the land we currently designate as Israel/Palestine and beyond gives them permission to establish political power there now. Similarly, many Muslims believe that the whole of former mandate Palestine is a waqf or endowment given to them by God and one for which they should now strive. If religion is part of the problem, then religion must be part of the solution and should include dialogue between different faith groups.
However, there is a second reason why Christians and Muslims in particular should be calling for education about “the other”: The establishment of reconciliation and peace is something that our two faiths hold as a religious good. From a Christian perspective, the creation story in Genesis affirms that people are created by God and are therefore to regard one another as brothers and sisters. People are not meant to live in conflict and to be unreconciled. Peacemaking is something commended by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5:9) and by other biblical writers, including Paul. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says that Christians are given the “ministry of reconciliation.” In the first instance, of course, he is no doubt referring to the gospel message of God’s reconciliation with humankind in Christ, but such a God-human reconciliation also needs to be reflected in human relationships if the whole concept of reconciliation is to have real meaning. Christians are to reflect the religious God-to-human “vertical” reconciliation in their “horizontal” relationships.
If Christians take the Reign of God as an ethical motif, then they can look to exemplars such as Isaiah’s visions of swords’ becoming plough-shares (Is: 2:4) and of animals’ living peacefully together (Is. 11:6-9). A second Christian motif is the Incarnation itself: God’s becoming human in Jesus in order to bring peace between humanity and God. Christians can see this as a prime example of understanding “the other.” In the Incarnation, God demonstrated an understanding of humanity as the estranged other in its deepest sense. Christians can also argue their case based on a third motif: the need to understand “the other” as a reflection of the internal life of God in the Trinity. The persons of the Trinity are seen to open themselves to each other, to “go out” to each other, and to “receive” each other. Such “going out to the other” is a motif that Christians can follow themselves and that they can argue is needed in the secular educational sphere if real reconciliation and peace are to be effected between people who are not at peace and who remain unreconciled. The action of the father in the parable of the prodigal son illustrates the importance of taking the initiative in reconciliation: Christians, like the father and like God, are to take the initiative and to see that such initiative-taking is reflected in social and political relationships.
The same argument about the need for education about “the other” can also be made from a Muslim perspective. First, Islam confers dignity and respect on a human simply by virtue of his or her being a human. The Qur’ān says, “We have conferred dignity on the progeny of Adam” (17:70). This dignity is bestowed by God on all humans, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, tribe, or nationality. Accordingly, fair treatment of all human beings and engagement with them is part of acknowledging the God-given dignity of kindred human beings.
Second, diversity is part of the divine plan, according to the Qur’ān. “If God had willed, He would have made you one community but things are as they are to test you in what He has given you. So compete with each other in doing good” (5:48). The Qur’ān refers to the differences among human beings and explains that the purpose of these differences is to test people in order to discover how they respond to revelation. The responsibility of humankind is not to lead exclusivistic, hermetic lives or to demonize “the other” but to make use of the difference by establishing relationships based on excelling one another in doing good.
Third, interfaith dialogue and the protection of the identity and religious symbols of others are Muslim duties. Muslims are called to protect “cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of God is oft commemorated” (Qur’ān 22:40). In addition, there are examples of religious cooperation from the life stories of the prophet Muhammad and his companions. The Charter of Medina for the city-state’s citizens and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah made with the people of Makkah are two important documents that testify to their dialogic life. The prophet abandoned the title “Rasulullah” (Allah’s Messenger) when writing the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah because the Meccans did not believe in Muhammad as a prophet of God.
Finally, without the necessary education about “the other,” people can all too easily develop an irrational fear and mistrust, which can lead to violence. The Qur’ān, therefore, urges believers to be “witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety” (5:8). Accordingly, Islam encourages people to “reach out to the other,” to be just in dealings with people of other faiths, and to build castles of peace.
Conclusion
What we are suggesting, then, is that education about “the other” needs to be a component in the education of young people in areas of conflict. We believe that it can help to reduce tension and to promote peace. Peace, in the end, is not something that takes place when politicians sign pieces of paper but something that takes place between two sets of people. Education about “the other” in areas of conflict can help both sets to accept one another as partners rather than seeing one another as enemies.
It should not be thought that educating young people about the other is easy; it is anything but easy. Societies in conflict generally portray “the other” as delegitimized and positively avoid gathering any information that might contradict their current beliefs. Education about “the other” requires students to look at information that may sometimes lead them to question their beliefs about “the other” and, indeed, sometimes about their beliefs about themselves. These beliefs are sometimes called “core beliefs,” and questioning them is a difficult and painful process. Maya Kahanoff wrote that change in this area is “complex, slow, and arduous, and requires overcoming multiple barriers. It requires a change of beliefs, positions, feelings and behaviour patterns.” The sort of changes that are being sought have been described by some as “spiritual”; George Njoroge, writing about peace education in Rwanda, suggested that teachers may need to transform their hearts, minds, and souls.
Education about “the other” is a necessity in areas of conflict; often it just does not happen. It has been our purpose to show that not only is such education a political necessity but also that it is positively demanded by our two faiths, Christianity and Islam. Our two Abrahamic faiths urge the need for self-relativization and self-transcendence. This is an area in which, despite our theological differences, we can and should work together to help bring peace to our fractured world. “Education about” the other is only a start. Education needs to develop into meeting and talking with the other and, in the words of Miroslav Volf, “embracing the other.”