Guest post by Soroush Seifi
Originally published in the Toronto Star, May 21, 2006, D11

My name is Soroush. I was born in Iran 21 years ago and now reside in Toronto. I lived through the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. But this article is not about me. It is about a disturbing trend in education in Muslim countries.

I hope to draw a correlation between the education system in Iran and the recruitment of angry, young and easily manipulated individuals by terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda.

The ruins of Ground Zero are proof that we no longer live in an isolated box. The problems of people on one side of the world can bring destruction to people on the other. I say this only to reiterate former secretary of state Colin Powell’s statement in 2004:

To eradicate terrorism, the United States must help… alleviate conditions in the world that enable terrorists to bring in new recruits.

It seems that conditions in the Middle East are not being “alleviated,” as the U.S. administration had planned. Even Republican senators disagree with U.S. President George W. Bush on the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ annual surveys consistently show a lack of freedom of expression, human rights, access to resources, economic stability and technological innovation in societies where most terrorists come from.

So perhaps there are more effective ways than military force to fight terrorism. The failure of American military intervention should prompt us to look at other dimensions of the conflict.

The school system of countries like Iran, where I was educated, is a good place to start.

To be a terrorist, it is not enough to be poor and angry. Otherwise, many more terrorists would originate from places like sub-Saharan Africa, where the rates of poverty are much worse than in Saudi Arabia, the homeland of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists. Those terrorists were predominantly from middle-class families.

The more interesting issue is why these individuals were unable to think for themselves and find better ways of showing displeasure than through terrorism. My personal school experience in Iran offers a clue.

My education there was a military-like experience. The vice principal would stand in front of students lined up in formation and ask us to repeat pro-government propaganda, such as “Long Live Hezbollah” (a Middle Eastern paramilitary group with a strong presence in Iran and Lebanon). I was only 10 back then.

I remember that the teacher was similar to a God figure. We accepted his/her words without a grain of salt. Students were not encouraged to think for themselves or come up with our own solutions. On the contrary, we were spoon-fed information.

In religion and Qur’an classes (mandatory for all students), we learned the “correct” way of speaking, reading and acting. The incessant declaration of the importance of tradition helped students conform to what the authorities considered “Islamic.” For example, it was blasphemous to dress in “feminine” colours, have a fancy haircut or, in general, think outside of the box. Such transgressions were often met with physical abuse.

I remember one of my close friends, Ali Esmaili, asked our Grade 5 teacher,

Miss, is it true that Ayatollah Khomeini only had an elementary school education?

The teacher immediately got up from her chair and her glare became fixed on Ali’s eyes. She asked him to stand up. When he did, she hit him. After three blows, the teacher told Ali to go to the office and call his parents because he was going to be expelled from school.

Ali was not expelled in the end, but I learned never to question authority again. I can only assume that the other 41 students in that class continue to believe that very same message today:

Never think for yourself.

When it came to mathematics and science, those subjects were no more than a struggle through theoretical concepts in books that we bought at the beginning of each school year. I never had to do research, look through dictionaries and encyclopedias, or go to the library to learn things on my own.

I remember that teachers constantly reviewed many of the political experiences of the nation in a certain framework. We were taught to accept some values and reject others. For one reason or another, the teachers, despite their own personal opinions, usually promoted the status quo.

In Grade 7, my teachers told me and other students to tell our parents to “vote for Nouri,” the conservative opponent of the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami.

My experience in Canadian schools has been entirely different. I moved here in 1997 with my family and went into Grade 8 in the Toronto public school system. The teachers there taught me to understand things through various creative activities and to think for myself.

I sometimes wonder whether young Muslims who become terrorists are trapped by the limits of their education. Like me and my classmates in Iran, they don’t question anything; they merely do what others tell them to do for no other reason than to simply obey orders.

To alleviate terrorism, it will be necessary to create educational systems in Muslim countries like Iran that allow the harvest of children’s creative ideas. Allowing thought to grow will give these children the opportunity to imagine and be innovative as adults; they will find new ways to solve their problems. These solutions will stem from within and most likely match their culture, as well.

It is not possible to build a house without first laying the foundation. Hence, developed nations – instead of military intervention – have the responsibility to help lay the foundation and encourage education systems that foster creativity in Muslim nations.

Soroush Seifi is a Kinesiologist who graduated in the top 5% of his class during his final year at York University.  He was the creator and president of Red Cross Society at York University when he wrote the piece above.

He was recently accepted to Whittier Law School in 2009 on a scholarship, and is currently working before starting law school.