Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the 45th Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit in Kuwait city, Kuwait, Dec. 1, 2024. Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/Handout via REUTERS

Saudi Arabia is continuing to implement major reforms of its sprawling system of 35,000 public Islamic education schools, according to a new report by the Institute for which says government officials have scoured virtually all antisemitic content from curricula and textbooks assigned to Saudi youth.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), which analyzes school curricula around the world, examined 136 textbooks as part of its study. The nonprofit organization found that the trend of moderation offers a glimpse of how Saudi Arabia imagines its future, one in which less popular suspicion of Israel, Jews, and the US facilitates increased cooperation with the West and draws continued support for its ongoing “Vision 2030” initiative to modernize the country’s economy and culture.

“Saudi textbooks published for the 2025/26 school year continue the kingdom’s sustained program of educational reform, further advancing moderation, coexistence, and critical thinking,” Impact-se CEO Marcus Sheff said in a statement on Monday, following the announcement of the main findings of his organization’s exhaustive review and translation of thousands of pages of content. “The curriculum is now entirely free of antisemitic content, with the final few remaining examples removed. In fact, Saudi curriculum has never been more positive in its portrayal of religious minorities or more encouraging of peace and tolerance.”

Impact-se noted several areas of improvement in Saudi curricula, highlighting the attenuation of stories which promote armed religious conflict and repressive gender roles. Other areas of improvement include materials regarding religious minorities living in the state, but perhaps the most significant progress was made in reshaping how Saudi youth think about and relate to Israel.

“The reports also found further progress in the curriculum’s portrayal of Israel, including the removal of content describing Zionism as a ‘racist European movement,’ and falsely accusing Zionists of the 1969 al-Aqsa Mosque arson,” the report said. “In addition to the removal of problematic content, new textbooks promoting values of peace and tolerance were also introduced.”

There was previously far more daylight between Israel and Saudi Arabia over this issue, as reported by The Algemeiner. Saudi curricula once taught high school students that Jews are apostates who had “sold their souls” and introduced the country’s youth to the events which led to the establishment of Israel as “The Attempt to Create the Zionist Entity,” a period of history it now moderately calls “British Mandate in Palestine.” Students were also once taught that Muslims and Jews are interminably in conflict.

Now, Impact-se says that “the current review presents the most positive picture of the curriculum to date, demonstrating the significant strides that have been made toward greater moderation, inclusivity, and alignment with the broader reform objectives of Vision 2030.”

Saudi Arabia has refused to recognize Israel since the latter’s establishment in 1948, historically holding deep animus toward the world’s lone Jewish state. In recent years, however, the two countries have quietly established a working relationship across a range of areas, especially security cooperation. However, Saudi leaders have said publicly they will not normalize relations with Israel until it takes certain steps toward creating a Palestinian state.

Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish US secretary of state, famously reconciled former President Richard Nixon’s wish to maintain “special relationships” with both countries, negotiating agreements which integrated the oil-rich monarchy into the US-led international order while supplying Israel with military technology o protect itself in a time when the Jewish state regularly came under attack by coalitions of Arab countries, as well as their proxies.

In 2025, US President Donald Trump designated Saudi Arabia as a Major Non-NATO Ally, an elevation in diplomatic status which qualifies it for certain “military and economic privileges,” such as access to loans and the development of new munition technology. The new title stopped short of providing for a mutual defense pact, but Trump recently approved a separate agreement which, if approved by the US Congress, would commit Washington to assisting its construction of a civilian nuclear energy program. Trump later amended the deal, conditioning its implementation on the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords, which his first administration negotiated to establish formal diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab countries.

The United Arab Emirates, a founding signatory of the Abraham Accords, followed the model of moderation toward Jews and Israel, announcing in 2023 a Holocaust education where “public figures and scholars should be encouraged to discuss the Holocaust and protect common human values while leaving political differences.”

The UAE has steadily promoted coexistence and positive engagement with Jews and Christians in recent years, creating what Impact-se describes as the “most tolerant and peaceful Arab or Muslim majority country curriculum.” Students, it noted, are taught that the Prophet Muhammad visited a sick Jewish child, and that Omar bin Al-Khattab, the second Rashidun caliph, ruled in a favor of a Jewish complainant.

Additionally, the 2020 Abraham Accords are discussed in materials for students in grades 6, 8, and 12, along with endorsements by leading Islamic UAE organizations, describing it as “helping Arab and Islamic causes, derived from an Islam intent on containing extremism and enhancing a global atmosphere of tolerance and cooperation.”

Impact-se also said UAE curricula strongly discourage radical Islamism, which the country says is a “chief threat” to prosperity, and no longer insists that settling the Palestinian question is the key to overcoming the region’s challenges.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.