Many studies prove that school education, especially primary school education influences one's psychological and intellectual growth.  It plays an important part in the development of youth and forming their values and beliefs. People's attitudes towards other nations, ethnic and/or religious groups can mainly be traced back to their primary experiences in schools, where they became acquainted for the first time with a certain religion and/or the history of other nations and civilizations. It is, therefore, very important that this first meeting with the image of "the other" must be totally removed from any bias and prejudices about any religion.

School curriculum can promote many positive or negative values including those related to the religious or the ethnic other. School text books can instill hatred and mistrust by presenting biased distorted images of a certain religion and inaccurate and incomplete information. This is usually done  by equating a faith group with aggression, oppression, violence, intolerance, and backwardness and/or by intentionally and consciously disregarding facts to belittle the image of a particular religious group.

The proposed project aims at conducting a five – year study to review the distorted images of religions in the schools text books in some countries such as the US, Europe and Arab/Muslim countries. The project will review how the image of a certain religion is presented and described, and particularly highlight the factors and the motives that distort these images.

The main objective of the project is to suggest and introduce some modifications to the history and religious education curriculum in order to correct prejudices and inherited beliefs and hence produce a better understanding of the other religions. This project will start a campaign for curriculum reform process to establish a quality education that helps building more peaceful attitudes. Teaching moderate and open-minded understandings of religious values based on examples taken from different religious scriptures will inculcate the values of tolerance and acceptance into the next generation.

The project will establish a committee of experts to develop a strategy and an action plan for the proposed project. The committee will include of a number of eminent researchers, curriculum specialists, educators, psychologists, academicians, and representatives from different international intuitions such as UNESCO, UNDP, and ISESCO. The committee will develop a project strategy based on a number of studies already done in this regard such as:

 -         Islam in History Books: an international research project prepared by 22 European countries in 1978 under the supervision of Prof. Abdul Jawad Faltouri from the University of Cologne.

 -         A field study under the supervision of UNESCO and FAO under the title Towards Co-operation in Education. This was published in a book under the title History and Ethnocentricity. The names of the authors are Rawa Barisfark and Dominique Perrot. It was published in Paris in 1975 by Intropolis.

-         A group of papers presented at a conference held by the Centre for Economic and Social Research at the University of Tunis. The theme of the conference was The School Textbook and the Educational Program. The papers are published in a book in Arabic under this title.

-         Recommendations on the teaching of history and the writing of history textbooks adopted by conferences and seminars held within the framework of the Council of Europe between 1953 and 1983. The fruits of their labours were published in a book entitled Against Stereotypes and Wrong Beliefs in Strasbourg in 1988.

-         The Image of the Other in History Textbooks in some Mediterranean Countries (Spain, France, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia), Dr. Fauziya Al-Ashmawi. ISESCO 2009

-         Islam in German Textbooks: Examples from Geography and History, Nese Ihtiyar - Georg-Eckert-Institut, Celler Strasse 3, 38114 Braunschweig, Germany

The project will assemble and hire teams of researchers in different countries to start a campaign of correcting the distorted images of religions in different countries.