TEL AVIV – Just before President Donald Trump landed in Saudi Arabia, a leading Jewish human rights organization revealed that one of the kingdom’s top universities offers a course on Jews that fuels “hate-mongering.”
Last week, Dr. Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) wrote in a letter to the Saudi ambassador to UNESCO, Ibrahim Youssef S. Albalawi, that Trump was “about to visit your country, undoubtedly an occasion when you would wish to present an image of supporting dialogue and tolerance between different cultures and civilizations.”
Samuels demanded that the Islamic Studies Department at Umm al-Qura University’s course, entitled “Judaism 241,” be shut down.
Umm al-Qura, in Mecca, is one of Saudi Arabia’s leading universities, with an annual budget of approximately $250 million according to the Algemeiner.
“At a time when Riyadh shares with Jerusalem mutual existential concerns, we urge you to publicly condemn this outrage, and see that measures are taken to close this hate-mongering course,” Samuels wrote.
According to the course prospectus, “the Jews rely on three sources: ‘The Torah, the Talmud, the Protocols of Zion,’” Samuels writes, explaining, “The Protocols, often denoted as ‘a warrant for genocide,’ is a forgery by the Russian Tsarist regime to distract public attention from dictatorship and economic woes. It has been used across the Arab world to foment hatred of the State of Israel and Jews worldwide.”
“Besides the Protocols, the course curriculum is heavily antisemitic, speaking of the ‘evil traits’ of the Jews as stated in the Quran,” Samuels notes, as well as the Jews’ alleged associations with the Freemasons.
“Mr. Ambassador, at a time when Riyadh shares with Jerusalem mutual existential concerns, we urge you to publicly condemn this outrage, see that measures are taken to close this hate-mongering course. … Such an offense to Islam on any Western campus would result in a loud protest supported by our Center. This is surely not the face of Saudi Arabia you wish Mr. Trump to see,” Samuels concludes.
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