Representations of Arabs in Iranian elementary school textbooks

Abstract

The identification of being Arab in the Iranian psyche depends to a great extent on the definition of the Iranian identity. Who is an Iranian? The answer to this question was relatively easy during the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979). Schoolchildren learned that they were Aryans, proud of their rich pre-Islamic heritage rooted in the glory of the Persian Empire. The sons and daughters of Cyrus the Great, “the King of the Nation” (Lamb 2007: 355) and the author of the “oldest declaration of human rights” (Moradi Ghias Abadi 2007: 8), Iranians belonged to a civilization that once ruled a great proportion of the world. Prerevolutionary formal education emphasized belonging to the Iranian nation as a source of pride, with clear lines of demarcation from Arabs. The Islamic Republic of Iran, established in 1979 after the overthrow of the late Shah, presented schoolchildren with a totally different world view. Almost overnight, the children of the revolution were told that it was not the Iranian nation but the Islamic umma (community of believers) that was to be their source of pride. Students learned that what mattered was no longer the boundaries of a land called Iran, but a sense of belonging to a vast community called Islam. Iranianness was replaced by Muslim-ness. There was no longer a division among Iranians and Arabs based on language and race, but a strong unity founded on a common religion. Paradoxically, however, Iranians continued to separate themselves from the majority of the Muslim umma through their faith and language. While undermining Zoroastrianism as the original religion of Iran, and replacing the pre-revolutionary language that pointed to the “Arab conquest of Iran” in the seventh century as the “invitation of Arabs to believe in Islam,” the leaders of the Islamic Republic have ensured that Iranians remained distinct by keeping Persian as the formal language and Shi‘ism as the state religion. The pendulum continues to swing in Iranian politics even today, from emphasis on Iranian-ness to Islamic unity, at the center of which is the Arab world. Both voices have been heard in Iran in 2009; solidarity with the Palestinian victims in Gaza during the Israeli bombardments while, at the same time, blaming the late Shah for the loss of one of the “former provinces of Iran”, namely Bahrain, were part of the sentiments expressed by Iranian politicians. The school, as an important agent of socialization, plays a significant role in shaping the minds of the younger generations. It is true that the family, peer group, media, and the Internet present themselves as strong rivals, yet this does not negate the impact of formal education especially during the primary school period. The socialization role of the school has long been recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The post-revolutionary Iranian authorities have used textbooks as key instruments of political and ideological education, charged with teaching the younger generations about the values and attitudes deemed appropriate in the construction of the “new revolutionary society.” Textbook content has, therefore, been used to represent the political, social, and cultural values of the régime. Postrevolutionary textbook content has been the focus of various studies addressing such diverse topics as ideology (Shorish 1988, Siavoshi 1995); identity (Higgins 1985); gender roles (Touba 1987, Higgins and Shoar-Ghaffari 1991, Ferdows 1994); nationalism (Ram 2000, Kashani-Sabet 2002); and socialization (Mehran 1989, 2007). This chapter focuses, more specifically, on constructions of the image of Arabs in elementary school textbooks in Iran. The primary school level (ages 6–10) has been chosen since political education, as an institutional form of political knowledge acquisition, first takes place at the primary level. Realizing that elementary schooling is the first and at times the only exposure of Iranians to formal education, the Islamic Republic has made every effort to disseminate the dominant political ideology through primary school textbooks. The centralization of the Iranian educational system, and the use of standard textbooks throughout the country, despite linguistic, religious, and ethnic diversity, highlights the importance of textbooks.