The Saudi Arabian textbook controversy refers to criticism of the content of school textbooks in Saudi Arabia since the September 11 attacks. The United States demanded that Saudi textbooks be reviewed and revised to remove material perceived as spreading intolerance and hatred.
After the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York, the American government called on Saudi Arabia to reform its educational curriculum by eliminating educational material that demonizes Christians and Jews and promotes holy war against "unbelievers."
Senior Saudi officials assured the United States that the reform was completed, but a new report by the human-rights group Freedom House suggested otherwise. Saudi officials have tried to convince Washington that the educational curriculum has been reformed. On a speaking tour of American cities, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki bin Faisal, told audiences that the Kingdom has eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from its old textbooks.
In November 2010, the BBC's investigative program Panorama reported that Saudi national textbooks advocating anti-Semitism and violence against homosexuals were still in use in weekend religious programs in the United Kingdom.
In October 2012, Robert Bernstein, who founded Human Rights Watch, serves as a chairman of Advancing Human Rights, and was a former chairman and CEO of Random House, and various other book publishers, expressed their "profound disappointment that the Saudi government continues to print textbooks inciting hatred and violence against religious minorities." They gave an example of an 8th grade textbook which writes, "The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians." The publishers explained that "hate speech is the precursor to genocide. First you get to hate and then you kill."
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