Education in conflict: how Islamic State established its curriculum

ABSTRACT

In places where Islamic State (ISIS) took hold in Syria and Iraq between 2014 and 2017, its domination was followed by an elaborate educational system. As such, the terrorist organization’s ‘state program’ is a unique case in recent history. Indeed, not only did it overturn the existing education system in Syria and Iraq, resulting in a hiatus in the schooling of children and teens, the organization went a step further by creating its own alternative educational system in its stronghold regions replacing the Syrian and Iraqi formal system. This topical paper presents a case study whose purpose is to produce a description and interpretations through interviews and official document analysis of the way ISIS established its education system. To understand these unique, unprecedented circumstances, we retrace the steps taken by ISIS to institute its education system. Our results show among other things that ISIS acted as a proto-state and attempted to redefine education through the lens of a sectarian vision of Islam. By this study, we hope to shine light on the unique context in which the curriculum was prepared and implemented.

KEYWORDS:

• Education in conflict
• curriculum
• alternative educational system
• Islamic State

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. We possess the entire set of primary school textbooks used by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, in both paper and electronic (PDF) formats. The original paper versions were found on-site in Iraq, while the electronic versions were taken from the web. There are more than 30 textbooks in all, forming a singular corpus of study never seen before.

2. The Radicalization Watch Project (RWP) is a joint program by France, the United States, and Canada. It was founded in 2004 by the Laboratory for Analysis of Strategic Information and Technological Monitoring at the Saint-Cyr Coetquidan Schools Research Centre (CREC) under the leadership of professor Mathieu Guidère. The program tracks information in multiple languages from radical groups around the world.

3. We have stayed in touch with teacher colleagues who were there at the time, in particular in Mosul, ISIS’s Iraqi capital. We were able to gather detailed accounts from them of how ISIS’s education system came to be, as long as we agreed to keep them anonymous to protect their lives and the lives of their loved ones, whether they were refugees or still living in the country.

4. Dhu al-Qarnayn—literally ‘he of the two horns’ (Qarn)—is a figure mentioned in the Qur’an (18:83–98). He erected a protective wall to contain the invading peoples Gog and Magog. Some believe he was Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), while others think he was Cyrus the Great (559–530 BCE), both founders of immense empires in the Middle East.

5. Reda Seyam was born in 1960 and fought in Bosnia in 1994 before moving to Saudi Arabia in 1998. Suspected of having helped finance the Bali attacks in 2002, he was arrested and imprisoned in Indonesia. It was there that he adopted the pseudonym Dhu al-Qarnayn, which is pronounced Zulkarnaen or Zulkarnain in Indonesian and is a common family name in Indonesia. He returned to Germany in 2003, where he became an important figure in Salafism, and made a name for himself in 2009 when the German Ministry of the Interior brought a case against him for naming his son Jihad. In March 2013, he went off to fight in Syria. In July 2014, he was appointed Minister of Teaching and Education by ISIS leader al-Baghdadi. He moved to Mosul but travelled throughout the ‘caliphate’ territories and became known for his religious zeal and brutality. He was finally killed in December 2017, in the company of the University of Mosul’s president (appointed by ISIS) by a drone strike by the international coalition targeting his vehicle.

6. The Iraqi Ministry of Higher Learning also ceased paying over 200 teachers accused of ‘collaborating with the enemy’.

7. In late 2014, UNICEF estimated at 5,000 the number of Iraqi schools destroyed by combat, closed or converted into shelters for refugees and displaced persons.

8. The term used in the framework document is `unsur hisba, which means member of the religious police.

9. It should be noted that the guarantor was legally responsible towards the tribunal if the penitent fled or lapsed.

10. To provide an idea of the scope of the events, in March 2015 alone, there were no fewer than 2,000 certificates of repentance signed in the small town of Tell Abyad in Syria.

11. ISIS experimented with alternating days in the early period after its capture of Mosul, in 2014, as a way to work around the lack of usable facilities. Later, in 2015 and 2016, ISIS designated separate buildings for each gender.

12. This outfit was inspired by the perahan tunban, a traditional outfit worn in Pakistan and Afghanistan and called the Kandahar outfit by ISIS. It became widespread, and was made mandatory for all male students at the start of the 2015–2016 school year, at the same time that the veil became required for all girls in primary school.

13. During our research into documents to verify and authenticate teaching materials found in the field, we noted that the majority of the textbooks could still be viewed online and downloaded in their original format (PDF).

14. Of course, these numbers should be viewed with caution, but it seems that one-third of schools had reopened in 2015 and that in 2016, almost all schools were up and running again with ISIS’s new textbooks. We estimate that over 250,000 students passed through ISIS’s education system between 2014 and 2017.

15. To get a better grasp of the weight of the religious elements, a study should be conducted of the textbooks, and it should be quantitative, qualitative, and semiotic to encompass the entire spectrum of verbal and non-verbal, subject-specific, cultural, and ideological meanings conveyed by the linguistic and non-linguistic symbols.

16. To Muslims in general, and to ISIS in particular, Arabic is holy because Islam’s holy book, the Qur’an, was revealed in Arabic, and God was said to have spoken in Arabic to his prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. For that reason, classical Arabic continues to be used both as a liturgical language and a language of communication. In any case, believers believe that only the Arabic version of the Qur’an is valid; translations are permitted only to help readers grasp the meaning.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olivier Arvisais

Dr. Olivier Arvisais is a professor in the Department of Didactics of the Faculty of Education at UQAM and Scientific Director of the Canadian Observatory on Crises and Humanitarian Aid (OCCAH). His research is divided into two poles. Firstly, it focuses on the didactics of human and social sciences at primary and post-secondary levels. Secondly, he is also a specialist in education in emergencies situations. In this part, his research focuses on education initiatives in refugee camps, child protection through socio-emotional learning and education under armed groups or totalitarian proto-states.

Mathieu Guidère

Dr. Mathieu Guidère is full Professor at the University of Paris 8, France, and Research Director at the “National Institute of Health and Medical Research” (INSERM, France). He is also Editor of the “Journal of Applied Research in Human and Social Sciences” (JARHSS) and Director of various scientific series (DeBoeck, Harmattan).