Vienna May Shut Down Controversial Saudi School

Photo: ssiv.edu.sa

Vienna's Board of Education has ordered for a school owned by the Saudi government to stop operating by the end of the year, after it failed to provide a full list of its staff to authorities. The institution previously came under fire for its curriculum.

RT.com reports located in the heart of the Austrian capital, the school has been educating 150 pupils since the start of this academic year. All lessons at the private institution are taught in Arabic, and comply with the Saudi curriculum. But the school has to be approved by the school board, if its students are to receive official Austrian education certificates. Supplying a full list of staff, so that they can be vetted, is a basic requirement which should have been fulfilled by December 1.

The educational authorities have refrained from handing out the harshest penalty within their power – immediate closure – which would only be enforced if the pupils were deemed to be in “physical or moral danger.”

The institution has four weeks to appeal the decision, according to Reuters.

Controversial since its inception, the Saudi school became notorious when a reporter from News Magazine got hold of a copy of a history notebook used in the classrooms.

Its contents included age-old anti-Semitic conspiracies, and one excerpt stated that the Freemasons are "a Jewish, secret, subversive organization focused on guaranteeing control of the world by Jews."

Viennese authorities have requested that the school provide a copy of all of its educational materials in German.

The Saudi school has not responded to enquiries from the media, other than to say that it is dealing with official requests.

Objections to the curriculum taught inside the conservative Middle Eastern state, and in its growing network of oil-funded foreign schools, have been aired for more than a decade. Each time, the Saudi government – which provides textbooks for more than 5,000 children in the UK, according to the BBC – has replied that it has revised the content, in line with a more tolerant view of the world.

Yet, inspections of recent editions exhibit scant change in the institution's world view.

According to a report from the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, a textbook intended for 13-year-olds, revised for the 2010-11 school year, contained sentiments such as “The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.” As a potential group activity, students were encouraged to spend time listing “Jews’ condemnable qualities.”

The same report demonstrated that older pupils were taught the notorious anti-Semitic forgeries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as a set text.

An earlier report from Freedom House said that pupils of all ages were taught that spreading Islam through jihad is their “duty,” and that “infidels” must not be socialized with, respected, or imitated.

Austrian Saudi School ‘teaching anti-Semitic values’

Reuters/Susan Baaghil

Meanwhile it had earlier been reported by RT.com that the Saudi School – a private institution for Middle Eastern immigrants in Vienna – was being investigated for allegedly teaching anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, according to local media, which procured some of the school’s learning materials.

Austria’s News magazine saw the school’s required textbooks for the history syllabus, and according to its report it contained “a smorgasbord of conspiracy theories and incitement against Jews, Israelis and divergent trends in Islam.”

In an article describing “Jew-hate in school”, summaries are made of the textbook’s sentiments, following News’ commissioning a translation of the history book from Arabic.
In the book, you can read sentences such as: “The Freemasons were a secret, subversive Jewish organization, which aimed to secure Jewish control of the world.”

The school is now required to provide full evidence in the form of a certified German translation of all its teaching resources.

The Saudi government officially runs the Saudi School. However, it is deemed an educational institution rather than a religious institution.

While lessons are taught in Arabic, the school is still required to operate under Austrian law and guidelines set out by the Austrian Education Ministry, under which anti-Semitism and incitement are illegal.

If the investigation’s findings confirm the allegations of the magazine, students will have to transfer elsewhere as the educational status of the Saudi School will be withdrawn.The Islamic Austrian International School in Vienna has also been subject to recent investigation following reports that children were being barred from taking music lessons by parents. However, the school’s status remained intact after it was found to be following the Austrian curriculum.