Nation-building with school books

RECENTLY, a close friend of mine asked me to look at the text books for primary and secondary national schools to see how she could ask her religious teachers to teach Muslim boys and girls how religion can play a role in nation building.

I said that I would do my best and I was quite excited to read all the books from Year One to Form Five.

To begin with, I was disappointed as all the books were written in the Jawi script.

My Jawi reading is a bit slow as I don’t really do any Jawi reading in Malay every day. When I took Ugama Islam in secondary school, the text was mostly in Romanised letters with only some sections in Jawi.

I wanted to read as many of the text books as possible to give a proper analysis of nation-building content but it would take me a very long time to go through more than 3,000 pages in Jawi.

But looking through them, I was able to more or less get the gist of the content from the drawings and photographs used.

For me, the images were critical as they presented much of the impressions of the message and content of the books.

A brief prequel before beginning my analysis: Islam is seen as having close ties with Christianity and Judaism.

The Quran requires all Muslims to believe in the Books before Prophet Muhammad, which were the Bible, Torah, Zabur and others. The teachings and values of Islam are very similar to Christianity, which in turn is similar to Judaic teachings and values.

The history of the past Prophets like Moses, Noah, Adam, Solomon, Joseph, Lot and many more are all mentioned in the three Books, the Quran, Bible and the Torah.

The three religions share the same heritage and value system. Their differences are mostly in the rituals of prayers and other devotions.

But I noticed that none of the text books contained any pictures of the Bible, the Torah or of churches and synagogues to affirm this single line of historical, spiritual and political narratives of the Semitic religions.

If students are exposed to such images then the two religions might not be looked upon in animosity but as part of a single heritage. This appreciation of the common lines of history is important for the bonding of all the faiths.

Also missing from the text books are images of any other houses of worship, like Hindu, Chinese or Buddhist temples – in all the pages I went through there was not a single such image.

And there were no images of community heritage except for a single drawing – in 3,000 pages – of four boys dressed in different traditional wear.

What kind of relationship can Muslim boys and girls build with others if there are no images depicting these different cultures? With the Internet and YouTube, you could even imagine “living in a Christian or a Buddhist monastery”.

How can Muslims relate to the different cultures in Malaysia and the world if no words or pictures present the Islamic stand?

If the books are silent and a politician makes terrible statements against the others, how should the Muslim boys and girls react?

In the akhlaq (morality) lessons, I did not see images of Muslim boys and girls paying their respects to teachers, elders and leaders from other faiths and races.

All the adults in the pictures are wearing the songkok, serban or the tudung (types of headgear). What kind of message does this suggest?

In all 3,000 pages of the books, the drawings and photographs that have female characters show them wearing the tudung. I found only one drawing of a female child playing in the playground wearing a knee length skirt and not wearing the tudung.

If there are no females who are not wearing the tudung, how will the Muslim boys and girls learning from these books treat respected Muslim women like Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir and some of our royal personalities who don’t wear the tudung?

Furthermore, since there does not seem to be any drawing or photograph of non-Muslim females wearing their own preferred style of clothes, how will the boys and girls reading these books treat them?

There are many women of other races and faiths who are their teachers in schools as well as doctors or nurses or sales workers in supermarkets, etc.

The books do not seem to prepare the students for the real world at all, only for an “all Muslim world”.

There were only three out of the 3,000 pages that contain the drawings of several animals.

None of the animals were dogs or pigs or any animal deemed haram to eat by Islam. How will the boys and girls treat these “haram” animals if even their pictures cannot be depicted?

Will they be cruel towards these animals? What if there is a culture that honours animals such as dogs or pigs in festivals?

Will depictions of these animals in malls and public spaces be a point of conflict?

In conclusion, based on my visual survey of every single page of all the text books, I do not believe that how Pendidikan Islam is taught currently can help students develop a sense of accepting differences among cultures, uniqueness among Muslims themselves, a respect for the heritage of others – and even of the Malays, like Mak Yong and wayang kulit – and the ideals of the Rukunegara.

If we are to build a world where Islam can co-exist with other faiths, not only in this country but also the global community, serious attention must be paid to the pedagogy and content interpretation of the teachings, values and narratives of Islam in the modern world.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.