Death 101 in Saudi Schools

As I wrote in a Cato Institute paper published earlier this year, the Saudi government has been sending conflicting signals over the future of its education system. Some royal family members, on some occasions, have indicated that there are problems with Saudi schooling (e.g. inculcating mistrust and hatred of non-Muslims) and that these problems have been or will soon be corrected. Other Saudi royals have fiercely defended the educational status quo, stating flatly that they aren't going to bow to external pressure.

The rising incidence of terrorist attacks within Saudi Arabia would seem to give the royal family plenty of reason to reform its education system, but if it's really happening it's doing so at a glacial pace (I refer here to real glaciers, which are slow, rather than to the speedy but fictional glaciers depicted recently in a theatre near you).

Consider the following recent news story:

"Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Athian from the city of Al-Jawf sent a letter to the magazine Al-Yamama, which was published in Issue No. 1789 on page 16, under the title 'How They Educated My Daughter.' In this letter, [Al-Athian] relates that one teacher showed the schoolgirls a video 'so that they will see how a dead [body] is washed, and how it is wrapped in a shroud, by means of frightening pictures, with an even more frightening voice in the background.' He [also] tells what his daughter said: 'The teacher has already shown us this film a number of times. I intended to avert my eyes so as not to see what it shows. [But] today the teacher chose the girls who are most frightened [by the film], including me, and sat [us] in the front and forced us by various means to look at the screen, saying, 'Look, oh... Look, this is your end, and that of all your friends.'

"Mr. Al-Athian related that his daughter 'started to sleep only when all the lights in the house were left on until morning. She slept for very short intervals, which were filled with nightmares, some of which she woke up from frightened and horror-stricken. She has no desire to study, and she is distracted all the time'...

"Reality proves ... that 'the culture of death' is still alive... This is not one-time behavior by an enthusiastic teacher, but a culture that is widespread among many teachers and in many schools in the different regions...

"The film about washing the dead is accompanied by a combination of Koran readings, 'Islamic' poems, and extremely emotional and frightening audio passages."(3)

An the textbook for this lesson is Embalming for Schoolgirls, no doubt?