ICC Note:

A report released by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom found that textbooks being used by Pakistan’s public school system is actually teaching children to hate religious minorities. Specifically, the report found that the textbooks present religious minorities in Pakistan, including Christians and Hindus, as untrustworthy and dangerous. Millions of Pakistan’s youth are taught in the public school system which may explain why Pakistan remains one of the world’s most religiously intolerant nations. 

4/14/2016 Pakistan (Christian Examiner) – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has issued a troubling report on the religious content of textbooks in Pakistan’s schools.

According to a study commissioned by USCIRF and conducted inside Pakistan by the Islamabad-based Peace and Education Foundation, the textbooks are rife with factual errors about religions other than Islam, false historical accounts of world events, and outright attempts to encourage the suppression of minority faiths in the country.

Textbooks are an important means for communicating the importance of national unity in any country and, in the case of Pakistan, a predominately Muslim country, the books find their way into the hands of more than 41 million school children. The problem, according to USCIRF, is that the texts negatively portray religious minorities and depict them as untrustworthy and inferior.

“Pakistan’s public school textbooks contain deeply troubling content that portrays non-Muslim citizens as outsiders, unpatriotic, and inferior; are filled with errors; and present widely-disputed historical ‘facts’ as settled history,” USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George said in a statement.

“Missing from these textbooks are any references to the rights of religious minorities and their positive contributions to Pakistan’s development. These textbooks sadly reflect the alarming state today of religious freedom in Pakistan. A country’s education system, including its textbooks, should promote religious tolerance, not close the door to cooperation and coexistence.”

Ironically, this is the second such study commissioned by USCIRF. In 2011, another study identified passages in textbooks which the Commission deemed intolerant of other religions and worldviews.

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