Perhaps no other issue (save for the status of Muslim women) has been a greater source of American fixation and discourse on the Middle East in recent years than how “they” educate their children. In the post-9/11 era, a range of American pundits and politicians took up this issue, from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to then vice-president Dick Cheney to former secretary of state Collin Powell. (This fixation predated 9/11 but was accelerated by those events.) The preoccupation with Middle Eastern education, as well as the tendency to view education as a key explanatory variable for the “clash of civilizations,” persists today.

It is this public discourse about Middle Eastern education that the volume under consideration, Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East, seeks to address. As the editors state, the book is “a response to the current concerns that the content and character of official Middle Eastern educational programs are a danger both to local children and to international peace and security” (p. 4). The authors in this volume were initially convened at a 2003 conference at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University to examine “constructs of inclusion and exclusion” in the religious curriculum in Middle Eastern countries.

The volume is composed of twelve chapters, which in total engage with the textbooks of eight countries (Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey) as well as the Palestinian territories. (All of the authors analyzed Islamic-studies texts, and many of them also reviewed textbooks for other subjects, such as civic education.) Although there is some consistency in approach to the textbook analysis as well as to chapter organization, the various contributions vary in the degree to which their authors reach beyond the text to understand their significance. Some of the authors rely almost exclusively on the texts (e.g., Mehran) while others go to great lengths to address historical context and contemporary debates about the content of texts and/or perceptions of students and teachers about the significance of the Islamic-studies texts and the religion curriculum in general (e.g., Altan, Doumato, Limbert). In addition, the two chapters on Palestine (Brown and DaʾNa) and the one on Saudi Arabia (Doumato) address international and internal debates surrounding curricular reform.

In the introductory chapter, the editors (Starrett and Doumato) provide a valuable summary of themes and findings across the chapters, providing a frame of reference with which to read the individual articles. First, the authors argue that no explicit “incitement to violence” can be found in the texts with two exceptions (one line in a Syrian textbook and several passages in the Saudi texts). Rather, any discussion of jihad, battle or struggle, is always construed in defensive terms. Second, each country constructs a different image of what it means to be Muslim, although almost all seek to present a “generic Islam” that avoids any discussion of sectarian difference. Thus, the editors emphasize, despite assertions about the spread of Wahhabi influence in the region, the national religious curricula are each unique in the portrayal of Islam. Third, despite different constructions of the ideal Muslim, a “master narrative” of Muslims as victims facing persistent threats is found across the texts. Fourth and finally, within religious curricula, religious values are used to promote religious and ethnic tolerance.

Yet, as the editors and authors highlight, state-sponsored textbooks are often riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. Messages of tolerance and at times respect for non-Muslims contrast with a master narrative of Muslims under threat by these same non-Muslims. The editors consider this tension in light of religious education outside the Islamic tradition, arguing that “many religious traditions. . .claim exclusive access to truth” (p. 7), excluding those who reject this truth and at times viewing this rejection as a threat. States concerned with legitimacy also exclude those who cloud the boundaries of national belonging, as is clear from the analyses presented here. In addition to inconsistencies found within the curriculum, students cannot escape incongruities apparent when textbook ideals are held up against reality (e.g., Anderson). The somewhat unanswerable question is whether such contradictions actually lead to debate and/or skepticism that we might expect such inconsistencies to elicit.

How significant is the influence of textbooks? Much of the research on education in the region has suffered from a reductionism that stems from an overreliance on textbook analysis. To their credit, the editors and many of the authors take up this issue. It is difficult, if not impossible, to empirically measure the impact of textbook passages on young minds and to separate any effect from other influences in school, the family, the mosque, and the larger community. The authors attempt to address this reality by a number of strategies, including a discussion of the importance of religious studies in the larger curriculum in terms of grades and promotion (e.g., Landis, Toronto, and Eissa) and public perceptions of the quality of religious education provided in schools (e.g., Limbert).

The research would have been strengthened by greater attention to what actually transpires in schools and classrooms. My own ethnographic research in schools, including extensive classroom observations, reveals that what actually transpires in schools cannot be captured by curriculum analysis and/or debates about curriculum. For example, teachers have a critical role in the messages that are conveyed about religion, identity, and the wider world, even in systems that are ostensibly tightly controlled by the state. Others in this volume argue that real events and the media have an equal, if not greater, role in constructing images about the West and Israel (e.g., Alqudsi-Ghabra). Starrett takes up this issue in an insightful chapter, “Textbook Meaning and the Power of Interpretation,” in which he challenges the contemporary faith in the power of schooling and questions the explanatory weight with which schools have been imbued. Yet, he asserts textbooks are an important discourse–“articulations of certain ideals”–albeit not the only discourse nor necessarily the most powerful.

This is an important book. It highlights the importance of state educational institutions in the struggles to construct national and religious identities, a process that is, not surprisingly, exclusionary and homogenizing. As the authors argue, what is most significant about the texts is not what is potentially conveyed to young people but rather what state actors wish to convey to their young citizens–the “official wish-images” that speak volumes about states (Limbert, p. 121). In this respect, the contributions here provide an interesting perspective on the dynamics of statecraft, religiously based challenges to local regimes, and contemporary struggles to define legitimate forms of religious expression and practice. The collection provides important material for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in education and the social sciences.