Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback said the United States must push countries to reform their educational materials to remove prejudice toward religious minorities.
Brownback, a former senator from Kansas, warned in a Wednesday hearing hosted by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that denigrating religious minorities in educational materials has dangerous consequences.
“If you’re denigrating a religious minority in your educational materials, this is bad, this is the way you’re training your future generations, and it’s going to haunt the world, what you’re doing,” said Brownback.
The commission’s annual report from earlier this year found discriminatory content in textbooks in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia but also said Egypt had made progress at removing such content. Pakistani public school textbooks portrayed non-Muslim Pakistanis as sympathetic toward the country’s enemies and in one case suggested it was “impossible to cooperate with Hindus.” Saudi textbooks promoted “violence and hatred” toward religious minorities and warned students against associating with non-Muslims.
The ambassador added that all countries need to teach respect for different faiths, not just tolerance, saying religion “is the common human search for God” and “we should have respect for that.”
Brownback highlighted China’s violations of religious freedom and said the U.S. has been aggressively pushing back against “what China is doing in their war on faith.” He said that China has bulldozed Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, destroyed cemeteries of the Uighur ethnic minority, and closed house churches used by Christians.
