"Muslim or Kafer": Too Little to Understand
by Mohammed Al-Qadhi from The Yemen Times
Last week, I was trying to review with my little child Maha some of her school courses. When we were going through some of contents of the Islamic religion course, she started telling me that Islam teaches people to be clean and tidy. This is fine. However, the 6-year girl in her first year in a private school started telling me her teacher taught her that the devil likes the Kafer or infidel because he is dirty and that the devil does not approach the Muslim because he is clean. Wow. This is horrific ... I understand it is fine our kids learn Islamic teachings from their elementary school. Yet, they should not be confused with such hard and debatable questions. It is very dangerous to teach little children that one party is holding the absolute truth and the other is completely wrong and is the beloved of the devil. They grow with such stereotypes that really broaden the scope for hatred and intolerance. They listen to such discourse in school, mosques and even at university. Some helpless and distracted people due to unemployment or other sorts of reasons find in such a discourse a good resort to diffuse their depression. They grow fanatic.