Riyadh, Jan 05: Saudi Arabia's Shura (consultative) Council has endorsed an education review bill that calls for making the concept of moderation a central tenet of Islam, the Council's secretary general said. The recommendations, which have to be approved by the government, include "entrenching the Islamic concept, in its moderation and centrism, in the philosophy of education and in curricula," Hmud al-Badr told the official Spa News Agency yesterday.
They also call for "training students to engage in dialogue," he said.
Another recommendation calls for grouping all education bodies into a "higher council of educational policy" to unify planning and policy-making in the education sector, Badr said, adding that the education review had been going on for eight years.
The proposal by the 120-member advisory body comes at a time when Saudi Arabia, stung by a string of suicide bombings blamed on Islamist militants in May and November last year, is engaged in an effort to combat what officials call the "deviant thinking" of extremists donning Islamic garb.
"Islam advocates moderation, moderation, moderation. Everyone of us ... knows it," crown Prince and De Facto Ruler Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz yesterday told a group of intellectuals who recently ended a second round of "national dialogue." Bureau Report