Baladi News (Abu Khattab al-Numairi)
On the impact of political and military defeats of Assad’s regime, its government and parliament seek retaliation on history after falling short of changing reality from discussing the elimination of religious education subject from curricula to making changes on the historical references in terms of the Ottoman conquest era and replacing the terms of that era with new ones that are harmonized with the spite of Assad’s regime spite against Turkey, the main ally of the Syrian revolution.
Assad’s regime decided to change some terms and phrases in the history subject in schools’ curricula, and particularly the chapters of the Ottoman Empire. The ministry of education declared that the 2016-2017 edition of the history book was changed. In the new edition, the word “the Conqueror” was eliminated from the name of Sultan Mehmed, and the “Ottoman conquest” term was changed into the “Ottoman Occupation” and other synonyms according to the context.
Sultan Ahmad, a previous history teacher in Assad’s Ministry of Education, spoke to Baladi News about the recent changes, saying, “the government of the previous president, Hafez al-Assad, took a similar step in the past, when it changed the expression (Ottoman conquest) of Islamic countries into (Ottoman Occupation) in all schools’ curricula, which made most of Syrian think that the Ottoman empire was no different from other colonial states. Now, the government of Assad Junior follows forth by distorting the history of the Ottoman Empire again.”
The speaker added, “Of the radical changes that was made by Assad’s government on history book of the 8th grade (second grade of the intermediate stage) was the change of the phrase (the conquest) of Constantinople into (the seizure), (the fall), or (the storming) of Constantinople. These changes are mostly attributed to racial and sectarian discrimination followed by Assad’s government.”
On the other hand, Assad’s ministry of education website emphasized that the modifications were made to correct the errors in the previous editions of the history book of the 8th grade, which talks about “The establishment and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Europe.”
Commenting on these changes, Ahmad Omar, the director of one of the Syrian National Coalition schools, told Baladi News, “This was concurrent with the heated discussions of Assad’s parliament that took place on the 28th of last July on eliminating religious education subject in Syria, which was rejected by some of those described as extremists.”
The speaker added that the Syrian regime Mufti, Ahmed Hassoun, is the one who called for the elimination of the religious education material from the Syrian curricula late in 2013. The Mufti raised this issue in a meeting in Ain al-Bayda in Lattakia, the hometown of the Syrian regime president, where he demanded replacing Religious Education with National Education.