Tag: Education

Ceasefire holds but food shortage threatens Sudan’s Nuba people

November 14, 2017 Sudan East Africa, Education, Nuba Mountains, Sanctions, South Kordofan, SPLM-N, Sudan

A young girl grinds some grain in the shade of her home in the Nuba Mountains. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

The war planes may have gone and the bombings stopped, thanks to a ceasefire, but the people of Sudan’s Nuba Mountains are now battling another enemy: hunger. Six years of civil war between Sudan’s government troops and the SPLM-N rebels, fighting for self-determination, has destroyed communities and infrastructure in the . . . Read More

Eritrean Christians told to remove crosses as schools forced to go public

November 3, 2017 Eritrea Abune Antonios, Asmara, Catholics, Education, Eritrea, Pentecostals, Religious freedom

People running in the streets of Asmara while gun shots can be heard.

Eritrea’s security forces shot at protesters, using live ammunition, in the capital Asmara on Tuesday (31 October) during a protest against the government’s plans to turn all schools public. This would mean forbidding students from wearing religious items such as Christian crosses or Muslim headscarves. A local source told World . . . Read More

Bangladesh orders removal of ‘jihad’ from madrassa textbooks

October 30, 2017 Bangladesh Al-Qaeda, Bangladesh, Dhaka, Education, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Madrassas

In a move to curb the growth of Islamic extremism in Bangladesh, the government has ordered chapters on jihad to be removed from next year’s textbooks for madrasas (Islamic schools), reports UCAN. According to the news agency, the National Committee on Militancy Resistance and Prevention, which advised the government on . . . Read More

Saudi Arabia pledges to scrutinise hadiths to ‘eliminate’ extremism

October 19, 2017 Saudi Arabia Education, Islamic extremism, King Salman, Pope Francis, Prophet Muhammad, Saudi Arabia

The big mosque near Deera square in Riyadh with room for 20,000 people. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Saudi Arabia has pledged to monitor preachers and jurists’ use of Prophet Muhammad’s hadiths (sayings) “to prevent them being used to justify violence or extremism”. Saudi’s King Salman has ordered an international council of senior Islamic scholars to scrutinise the hadiths. The Saudi Culture and Information Ministry promised on Tuesday . . . Read More

Saudi Arabia clerics ‘guilty of hate speech’ against religious minorities

October 3, 2017 Saudi Arabia Education, Human rights, Saudi Arabia, Shia, Sunni

Men standing in front of a building in Saudi Arabia. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Some Saudi religious scholars and clerics use language that discriminates against and demonises religious minorities, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. “Saudi Arabia has permitted government-appointed religious scholars and clerics to refer to religious minorities in derogatory terms or demonise them in official documents and religious rulings that . . . Read More

Indian children ordered to hail ‘the land of the Hindus’

September 21, 2017 India Bhopal, BJP, Education, Hindu nationalism, India, Madhya Pradesh

An Indian Catholic bishop has voiced concern at an edict from a state education minister that schoolchildren should be forced to adopt a slogan praising India as the land of the Hindus. Kunwar Vijay Shah, education minister of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, has ordered pupils at state schools . . . Read More

Saudi schoolbooks ‘teach students to hate those of other faiths’

September 18, 2017 Saudi Arabia Children, Education, Islamic extremism, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, USA

The Imam Turki Bin Abdullah Grand mosque in the capital Riyadh. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

Students in Saudi Arabia’s schools receive religious education that “contains hateful and incendiary language” towards other Islamic traditions than Sunni Islam, and severe criticism of Jews, Christians and people of other faiths, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report says. The comprehensive review of schoolbooks for religious studies for the 2016-17 . . . Read More

‘Extreme negligence’ of Pakistan’s school authorities led to student’s murder

September 14, 2017 Pakistan Education, Pakistan, Punjab, Sharoon Masih, Vehari

Pakistan’s government has been severely criticised over a Christian student beaten to death by his classmates on only his second day in school, reports Catholic news agency Fides. A statement, signed by Bishop Joseph Arshad and Fr Emmanuel Yousaf, both of the Catholic Bishops’ National Justice and Peace Commission (NCJP), . . . Read More

Egypt: Copts appeal to PM after 24-year delay in return of school

September 1, 2017 Egypt Copts, Education, Egypt, Sohag

A field and some houses in Egypt's Sohag governorate where there has been an ongoing dispute over a Coptic school between the Church and the Ministry of Education.

Egypt’s Education Ministry has rejected another court order to return a Coptic primary school to the Coptic Bishopric of Baylana and Dar as-Salam in the southern governorate of Sohag and, instead, issued a decision to postpone the handover for three years. The order came after an appeals process, which has . . . Read More

Sudan demolishes another church, but MPs block school on Sundays

August 4, 2017 Sudan Donald Trump, Education, Justin Welby, Khartoum, Omdurman, Religious freedom, Sanctions, Sudan, Sudanese Church of Christ, USA

The Baptist Church in Omdurman that was demolished this week. (Photo: Open Doors International)

The Sudanese government demolished another church on Wednesday (2 August), the day after Members of the Khartoum state parliament rejected an order by the Minister of Education for all Christian schools in the capital to open on a Sunday. The Baptist Church in Omdurman, across the Nile, just west from . . . Read More

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