PESHAWAR, pakistan — Two years after secular textbooks arrived in northwestern Pakistan, politicians and religious scholars are rolling back reforms by limiting students’ exposure to Western theories, academics, scientists and authors.
The effort is being led by the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party, which recently gained more power in a region on the front lines of Pakistan’s effort to curb Islamist extremism and terrorism. Now the party, which wants Sharia law in Pakistan, has considerable influence over what 4 million students learn in 28,000 public schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
After Jamaat-e-Islami leaders scrutinized hundreds of pages of textbooks, a story about Helen Keller, a deaf and blind American author and activist, is being removed from ninth-grade lesson plans.
First- and second-grade books will no longer include photos of a Christmas tree and holiday cards. And inscriptions on textbooks stating, “We want peace,” are being replaced with religious verses, said a local education official.
“Pakistan is an Islamic country and nothing should be taught in our schoolbooks that (is) un-Islamic and against the ideology of Pakistan,” said Zahir Shah, a professor at Islamia University in Peshawar who is leading a review of textbooks for Jamaat-e-Islami.
Activists worry the efforts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will make it more difficult to continue reforms in other provinces.
