A comparison of the 2019 and 2021 versions of a UAE Grade 11 social studies textbook. Photo: IMPACT-se / screenshot

A year and a half after the Abraham Accords normalized ties between the United Arab Emirates and the Jewish state, an Israeli education watchdog found that K-12 textbooks in the Emirates embrace the treaty and generally shun anti-Israel and antisemitic material.

Released Thursday by the Israel-based IMPACT-se, the report — “When Peace Goes to School: The Emirati Curriculum” — found that the textbooks promote tolerance of and positive engagement with Jews and Christians based on principles based in Islamic theology.

“It is by far most tolerant and peaceful Arab or Muslim majority country curriculum that the institute had reviewed, in over a quarter of a century of research,” the group’s CEO, Marcus Sheff, told The Algemeiner.

In one example, grade 12 Emirati students are taught that the Prophet Muhammad visited a sick Jewish child, and in another, that Omar bin Al-Khattab, the second Rashidun caliph, ruled in a favor of a Jew in a civil case.

“Textbooks offer a realistic approach to peace and security, teach patriotism, anti-radicalism, commitment to defending the homeland, and cooperating with allies; peacemaking is by the priority,” said the report. “The large Islamic education program emphasizes tolerance, coexistence, and friendly relations with all non-Muslims and ethnicities.”

IMPACT-se — which has issued reports on Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian, Turkish and a range of other curricula across the Middle East — evaluated 220 Arabic-language textbooks, applying standards based on UNESCO and UN declarations.

The group lamented that the State of Israel has been erased from all but one maps of the Middle East, either described as “Palestine” or visible only as an empty silhouette.

But it noted that the 2020 Abraham Accords are discussed in materials for students in grades 6, 8, and 12, along with endorsements by leading Islamic UAE organizations.

“The twelfth grader context is one of an opposition to radicalism. In Grade 8, the peace treaty epitomizes national security; to sixth-graders it conveys a vision of future prosperity,” the report said. “Prosperity, or ‘sustainable development’ in the textbook’s wording, points to normal, natural situations, markedly different from framing peace in terms of emergency and national security exigencies.”

The material, it continued, also describes the Abraham Accords as “helping Arab and Islamic causes, derived from an Islam intent on containing extremism and enhancing a global atmosphere of tolerance and cooperation.” Radical Islamism is strongly discouraged as a “chief threat” to prosperity, and the Palestinian cause is no longer portrayed as the key to solving all of the region’s challenges.

A number of depictions of Israeli and the conflict with the Palestinians had been revised in recent years, IMPACT-se found. In one 11th grade social studies textbook, quotations of Emirati founding father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan were revised to remove criticism of the idea that Palestinians should recognize the Jewish state.

A grade 9 chart on “Schemes of the Enemies to Impede Joint Arab Action” was changed to discuss “main challenges” instead of schemes or enemies, and to remove the blame on “taking the side of the Zionist Entity on the land of Palestine.”

Toleration of non-Muslims and freedom of religion were also found to be emphasized in all Emirati textbooks, with calls to “answer the greetings of non-Muslims, especially Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.” The Medina Document, described by the curriculum as the first constitution in history, is drawn upon for its “ideal of communities and clans living equally and in harmony throughout middle and high school grades” and cited as supporting the “absolute necessity to treat non-Muslim workers fairly.”

Said an example of toleration found in Islamic Education, a grade 6 textbook, “I am proud to be a peace-loving Muslim, who is tolerant when dealing with others, and I work hard to spread goodness to all corners of my country, by works of charity and development.”

However, parts of Emirati curriculum remained “hostile” to Jews, including a grade 11 lesson describing Muhammad’s filling “[Jews] hearts with horror” — for, the report said, “supposedly violating their commitment to support Muhammad.” In a lesson drawn from a passage from the hadith, students are told not to “resemble the Jews.” And the materials say nothing about the Holocaust or the history of Jews or other minorities in the Middle East.

“Changes are needed,” the report emphasized. It noted that the material only partially fosters gender equality — encouraging women’s participation in “all walks of life,” but urging men and women to follow traditional Islamic family values and for women to obey their husbands.

Still, Sheff said Thursday in further comments, the group’s first-ever review of the Emirati curriculum was encouraging.

“School education is the key to fostering the development of peaceful, tolerant societies and the UAE curriculum’s authors seem determined to follow that path, relentlessly educating young Emiratis to understand the centrality of peace and employing Qur’anic verses to teach tolerance,” he said. “Coexistence with Jews, Christians, and other religions is a central feature while the authors have ensured that antisemitism has now been eradicated from the curriculum.”

“This can only bolster people-to-people normalization,” he added.