The Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, with the Institute for Gulf Affairs, published this year an extended brief titled, "2008 Update: Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance." The Introduction describes the Center for Religious Freedom as an institution that "promotes religious freedom as a component of U.S. foreign policy." It joined the Hudson Institute in 2007, following ten years of affiliation with Freedom House. The Center , in its own words , "is increasingly engaged in ensuring that American policymakers defend the principle of religious freedom and believers who are persecuted purely for their religious beliefs." The Foreword presents the current world political situation and says that "it has become quite clear that extreme Islamist ideologies have been gaining adherents throughout the world." The paper looks at how Saudi Arabia encourages extremist thinking and radical views through textbooks and educational materials at schools, all the while funding madrassahs (religious schools) world-wide. The subsequent claim of the Center, therefore, is that "the world has been slow to respond to this new ideological challenge." Furthermore, the goal of the report is to reveal the content of the textbooks posted on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Education and argue that it includes "violent and intolerant teachings against other religious believers." It is an update from a 2006 document, which looked at a dozen textbooks published by the Saudi Ministry. The analysis is summarized in 12 key points on how the textbooks encourage religious discrimination. The points are further broken down into three categories regarding 1) Sunni, Shiite, Sufi and other non-Wahhabi or non-Salafi Muslims; 2) Christians, Jews, Polytheists, and other infidels; and 3) anti-Semitism. In the end, the report argues that the U.S. needs to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its adherence to its international obligations to respect freedom of religion , particularly as the U.S. State Department in 2006 "publicized that Saudi Arabia confirmed it would revise its textbooks and make other related reforms within two years" during the course of bilateral discussions.
