New school books in Iraqi Mosul showing the symbols of the IS on the cover

Christians and non-Sunnites are presented as infidels and enemies. They should be fought everywhere.
By Dr. Kamal Sido
On past Sunday (8/31/2015), the “Islamic State” (IS) made new school books available in northern-Iraqi Mosul, which is under its control since June 2014, for the children in the first school year 2015/2016 that is meant to start in September in the IS ‘dominion in Iraq and Syria. In the social media, images of the new books circulate, showing the symbols of the IS on the cover. Regarding the content, the books are stressing the anti-Christian Koran verses ripped out of the historical context. Such, Christians and non-Sunnites are presented as infidels and enemies. They should be fought everywhere.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Also hundreds of thousands of other school children in the Syrian Areas controlled by Islamists as well as in the refugee camps in the neighboring countries, especially in Turkey, are affected by this radical interpretation of the Koran.
The Syrian refugee children are especially in Turkey, both in the refugee camps and in private housing, exposed to the radical Islamist “education”. The schools organized in Turkey are maintained to 85 percent by two Islamist currents: Most of them are financed by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the Arabic Gulf Emirate Qatar and the governing Turkish party AKP. Other schools are financed by Wahhabi pro-Saudi organizations.
In January and February 2015 I had the possibility to speak personally with many Syrian refugee children in Turkey. They presented to me what they had learned in the schools. Not tolerance and peaceful co-existence in contact with non-Muslims and non-Sunnis is promoted, but the children are rather polluted with Islamist body of thought. Often, the children are forced to memorize songs with whose content they can`t do anything.
The nursery song “I am a little Muslim” – well-known in the Islamic world – is spread without comment under the Syrian refugee children. Also the anti-Semitic Song “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh you Jews, the army of Muhammad will return” is heard again and again below the Syrian refugee children. To make matters worse, Syrian refugees in Turkey are confronted day-to-day with the rhetoric of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who presents himself willingly as savior and leader of the Sunnites in Syria and the whole world, which is often Islamic and hostile to minorities. The brutality of Assad`s regime, that the children and their parents had to face, combined with this “syllabus” connoted with negative attributes, will have catastrophic consequences for the refugee children. In Syria, Iraq and the neighboring countries as well as in the whole world will grow up new generations of “holy warriors”
One of the five schools in Syria has presumably been destroyed totally by the air force of the brutal regime in Damascus and during fights with the Islamist opposition. At least 3.2 of the 11.6 million Syrian refugees inside and outside the country are children required to attend school. Around one million is not attending school. Approximately one million children are about to leave school because the parents are not able to finance a graduation. Many children, as well as their parents, have to work hard every day, often 12 to 14 hours, in order to finance their maintenance.

*Dr. Kamal Sido, who was born in Afrin in northwestern Syria, has been living and working in Germany for 25 years. Currently, he is the Middle East expert of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP).