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Discrimination and Intolerance in Iran's Textbooks

March 27, 2008

The government of Iran is teaching the country's children to discriminate against women and minorities, to view non-Muslims with suspicion if not contempt, and to perpetuate the regime's theocratic ideology. Discrimination and intolerance are deeply ingrained in the textbooks that make up the core of Iran's school curriculum. The country's textbooks systematically denigrate the importance of women as individuals, largely neglect minority groups or fail to acknowledge them entirely, propagate Shi'ite egocentrism, and encourage hostility toward non-Muslim countries. The textbooks present a particular interpretation of Shi'a Islam as the basis of Iran's political order and adopt this interpretation as their ideological foundation. They often describe this political order as "sacred" and warn that criticism of the regime constitutes opposition to divine "will." Discrimination and intolerance appear consistently throughout Iran's textbooks, across the range of subjects in the core curriculum. They are neither accidental nor sporadic. They are values the regime deliberately seeks to instill in the country's school children.