Assad is out, but so is a revered queen: Textbook changes unsettle Syrians

Damascus, Syria — References to the ousted President Bashar Assad and his father, who ruled Syria before him, have been removed, as have images of pre-Islamic gods. The definition of a martyr has been changed, and it now means someone who has died for God, not one’s country. A Roman-era queen has been taken out of some textbooks.

Just weeks after a coalition of rebels toppled the Assad regime, the interim government they have set up in Damascus has moved quickly to order a raft of changes to the country’s school curriculum. The modifications cover subjects ranging from English and history to science and Islamic studies.

The move has been criticised by teachers and other Syrians who object not only to the nature of some of the changes but also to the fact that they were decided upon so quickly, with no transparency and no guidance from teachers and the general public.

Critics say that the changes, and the unilateral way in which they were ordered, are worrying signs of how the new Syrian government plans to govern a diverse country.

Some of the changes, which were detailed in nine pages released by the Education Ministry on social media last week, have been broadly welcomed, like removing glorification of the Assad regime from textbooks.

But some Syrians question why other changes were a priority, given the more pressing issues, like insecurity, sectarian tensions and an economic crisis, that still confront the country.

“The modifications should be restricted to only the things that involved the previous regime,” Rose Maya, 45, a high school French teacher, said at a small protest against the changes outside the Education Ministry on Sunday. “But there is no need for all the other changes.”

Maya was joined by about two dozen other people — among them teachers, students, doctors and artists — holding signs expressing various objections to the changes. Next to her was another teacher, Muayid Muflih, with a sign that read: “Power belongs to the people, not over the people.”

Muflih said that until recently he taught about nationalism, a subject that was widely seen as serving the agenda of the Assad regime. It has now been eliminated completely from the curriculum.

Maya, referring to Nazir Mohammad al-Qadri, the education minister, said that “as an interim minister he shouldn’t make changes.” And she said there needed to be transparency regarding the committees the ministry said it formed to review textbooks and suggest the changes. “There should be teachers involved,” she said.

The ministry has defended the changes and pushed back against suggestions that the alterations were Islamist, or a nod to Salafism, a conservative branch of Sunni Islam to which many of the country’s new leaders belong.

“The modifications were needed after the liberation of Syria,” al-Qadri said in an interview Sunday. “These modifications were not changes to the curriculum but modifications of some of the slogans and symbols that used to glorify the previous regime.”

Al-Qadri was part of the education ministry in Idlib, the province in northwest Syria run by the Islamist rebel group that now heads the interim government, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Specialised committees involving both members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led government in Idlib province and members of the Assad-era education ministry reviewed the textbooks and suggested changes, he said.

Mutasem Syoufi, executive director of the Day After, a nonprofit group, said that the interim government was trying to impose its vision not just on the political system of Syria but also its public life. The Day After was founded in 2012 by members of the Syrian opposition to plan for a transitional phase in Syria after the eventual fall of the Assad regime.

“The changes are a clear reflection of a very narrow reading of Islam, and again it reminds us of the background of the group which is in charge of Syria today,” he said. “There is no inclusive viewpoint.”

The speed with which the curriculum changes were made suggests they had been prepared before the interim government took power, Syoufi said.

Across Syria, even as people celebrate the toppling of a brutal and autocratic regime, there is some trepidation about the future of the country under a government headed by Islamist rebels.

Syria’s de facto new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, recently said it could take two to three years to draft a new constitution and up to four years to hold elections, alarming some Syrians who have expressed fear that they have traded one authoritarian leader for another.

Several people at the protest questioned why removing a Roman-era queen was such a priority for the new Syrian leadership, which is already overwhelmed with suddenly running a whole country, and rebuilding the state.

On Page 19 in the third-grade Islamic Studies textbook a reference to Zenobia, a queen in the Roman colony of Palmyra, in present-day central Syria, has been removed. An ambiguous notation in the ministry’s list of changes has been read by many as proof that it sees her as a fictional person.

Al-Qadri said she had not been removed from history textbooks. He said she had been deleted from the Islamic Studies textbook because she had lived and ruled in a pre-Islamic period.

“We don’t deny that Zenobia was present in history,” he said. But, he said, “we object to her inclusion in this book.”

The deletion of the female leader from the textbook has nevertheless worried some Syrians, who see it as an attack on the storied history of Syria.

“If we teach this generation that she was a fictional character, then we lose our connection to the past,” Maya said. “It means that we don’t have a past. And those that don’t have a past don’t have a future.”

Such changes, some Syrians say, should await the writing of a constitution and elections. They should also be part of a broader dialogue between different parts of Syrian society, made up of various religions, sects and ethnicities, they said.

“Their focus at this point should be just enforcing security and making it clear how they came into power and what their plans are,” said Malak Muhammad Suleiman, a dentist.

Another of the curriculum changes that has Syrians worried concerns the translation of a verse of the Quran. The final verse in the first chapter of the Muslim holy book refers to “those who are astray.”

In the previous first-grade Islamic studies book, the phrase was defined as “those who have moved away from the right path.” Under the new government’s changes, the phrase is now defined as “Christians and Jews.”

Manwella al-Hakim, a 60-year-old abstract painter and observant Muslim who wears the hijab, held up a sign at the protest objecting to this new interpretation.

“We don’t want things that will divide us,” she said. “Syria has always had all the religions and all the beliefs.”

Near her, Ziyad al-Khoury, a 61-year-old retired journalist, held up two signs, one of which read: “I am a Christian and not astray.”

Al-Khoury said he was shocked when he first heard of the change.

“It felt like a message from the new government that we aren’t part of this country,” he said.