Turkey's National Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz. Photo: Yenisafak
(Newswire.net — July 20, 2017) — Turkey’s Education Minister Ismet Yilmaz revealed Tuesday at a press conference details of a new educational program, in which jihad is termed as pure patriotism, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.
Jihad is misinterpreted as “holy war,” Yilmaz said, explaining that the term actually means love, not hate.
“Jihad is an element in our religion; it is in our religion…the duty of the Education Ministry is to teach every concept deservedly, in a correct way. It is also our job to correct things that are wrongly perceived, seen or taught,” Minister Yilmaz said.
The new Turkish school curriculum will include lessons on Islamic law and religion. Yilmaz referred to Prophet Muhammad’s alleged teaching that there is small and a big jihad. A small jihad refers to a war, but when a jihadist is back from the war, there is a big jihad, Yilmaz explained.
“What is this big jihad? It is to serve our society, to increase welfare, to ensure peace in society, to serve the society’s needs. The easiest thing is to wage war, to fight. The skill is the difficult one, which is to ensure peace and tranquility,” the Turkish education minister told the news conference.
He added that teaching of jihad is teaching of a personal struggle against sin.
The distortion of historical facts has always been present in Turkish textbooks, however, this time the line has been crossed by dropping Darwin’s theory of evolution. Under the new curriculum, Darwin will not be taught until universities, where his theory will be mentioned as one of the theories of evolution coming from the Western culture and science.
According to the minister, Charles Darwin will be eliminated from elementary and high school textbooks, “because it is above the students’ level and not directly relevant.”
Strongly leaning on religious indoctrination, the new Turkish school curriculum will also include modern political affairs, glorifying incumbent Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and demonizing his political opponents. The day a coup d’etat was attempted, July 15, 2016, which is fficially named ‘the Democracy and National Unity Day,’ will enter textbooks as the day of the victory of democracy. In the name of that same democracy, Erdogan arrested nearly all opposition leaders and placed himself as a supreme ruler of Turkey.
In new textbooks, the Kurdistan Party is labeled as a terrorist organization. Kurdish militants have actually been fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State would also have its place in the new curriculum, but it is not clear yet in which context.