In a call with Al-Monitor, Haiman Aziz, of the history department at Koya University in Iraqi Kurdistan, said "some teachers hold extremist ideas." Amid these concerns about the curriculum, the government of the Kurdistan region is at a loss about what to do. Religious extremists have infiltrated the educational religious institutions, and there is a lack of a sound educational strategy to produce a balanced educational institution that serves the peaceful coexistence of the Kurdish community.
Al-Monitor asked Jawad Faqih, a member of the Supreme Committee for the Curricula of Islamic Studies at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, about what is happening at the ministry. He said, "The committee has made radical changes to the curricula of logic, research methodology, psychology and sociology in the college of religious science and created a balance between religious and secular sciences."
But according to an official at the Ministry of Religious Endowments who spoke on condition of anonymity, these efforts "will not be useful because on the one hand there are materials that already exist and will remain as they are and on the other hand many teachers are either extremists or Islamists and they are the ones choosing the materials. The university does not interfere with the quality of their choices, and this constitutes a real danger to the mentality of our students and on how to end extremist ideology."
In order to get out of this dark tunnel, Kermanj said, the system could move away "from Islamic education to the study of religions in a comparative approach by introducing our children to world religions and not promoting a specific religion." This was seconded by Murad Hakim, a sociology professor at Salahuddin University, who said that it is necessary to introduce into the curriculum the study of religions and the history of religions in general.
The curriculum needs several changes. For example, why are children in elementary school studying Islamic dawa (proselytizing) and why are they studying how to perform the prayer for the dead and the prayer of the lunar eclipse?
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