What Schools Refuse to Teach About Political Islam
A curriculum shaped by monopoly interests, whether religious, ideological or bureaucratic, cannot produce free and informed citizens.
Written By: Gregory Hearn
South Africa’s education debates are usually dominated by questions of language, history, and transformation. Less attention is paid to what is quietly left out of the curriculum when it comes to one of the world’s most consequential political ideologies. A detailed review of the Victorian education system in Australia over the past 21 years offers a useful warning.
The Victorian Case
After the September 11 attacks, Australian authorities introduced Islamic studies into schools with the stated aim of reducing ignorance and fostering mutual understanding. The intention was reasonable. The outcome was not.
A comprehensive analysis by the Center for World Understanding and the Center for the Study of Political Islam International examined two decades of Victorian curricula and examination material. The findings are stark. Students have been systematically shielded from more than 60 per cent of core Koranic and doctrinal content specifically the large majority that deals with the treatment, management, and subordination of non-Muslims. Less than 1.5 per cent of examination questions over that period addressed this material.
Political Islam and its doctrine that prescribes the civilisational, legal, and military system that governs relations with non-Muslims is largely absent. Requirements to examine jihad, dualism (different moral and legal codes for Muslims and non-Muslims), and the political objectives of the doctrine are routinely neglected. What remains is a selective focus on religious, mystical, or poetic elements. The political dimension that shapes events from the Middle East to Western cities is left out.
This is not an accidental oversight. It is the product of institutional choices. Curriculum authorities prioritised the avoidance of controversy over completeness. Officials and committees, often influenced by advocacy organisations and theologians with a direct interest in managing the narrative, chose safety through omission. The language of “harmony,” “inclusion,” and “diversity” is abundant. The doctrinal facts that matter for public policy and social cohesion are scarce.
Why This Matters Beyond Australia
The Victorian pattern is not unique. It reflects a broader tendency in Western education systems: when a subject touches on a politically sensitive ideology, the institutions responsible for curriculum design tend to retreat into selective presentation. The result is not neutrality. It is a monopoly of perspective enforced by bureaucratic risk-aversion and academic capture.
Political Islam, as set out in the primary sources (Koran, Sira, and Hadith), is not merely a private spiritual tradition. More than half of the foundational texts concern the treatment of non-Muslims. The system is dualistic. The jihad, both violent and non-violent is central to its historical and doctrinal self-understanding. Presenting only the “courtesy” verses while omitting the rules of discrimination, hierarchy, and struggle is not balanced education. It is curated education.
In any liberal democracy, citizens and future officials need accurate knowledge of major political ideologies if they are to make informed decisions about integration, security, foreign policy, and social cohesion. When curriculum authorities systematically withhold that knowledge, they fail in their basic duty.
The South African Question
South Africa has its own contested curriculum terrain. Debates over history, land, race, and identity already generate intense pressure on what may and may not be taught. The same institutional incentives that produced the Victorian omissions and fear of condemnation, deference to activist gatekeepers, and a preference for managed narratives over primary-source analysis exist here.
The relevant question is therefore straightforward: how does South Africa currently present Islam in its schools and universities? Is the political and legal dimension of the doctrine taught with the same seriousness as its religious and cultural aspects? Or has the subject been narrowed in ways that leave students without the tools to understand a major global ideology on its own terms?
These are not questions of prejudice. They are questions of educational integrity. A curriculum shaped by monopoly interests whether religious, ideological, or bureaucratic cannot produce free and informed citizens.
Breaking the Monopoly
The solution is not complicated in principle. Curriculum review on this subject should not be controlled by those with a direct interest in restricting the range of material examined. Independent scholars with expertise in the primary texts, rather than those constrained by orthodoxy or political pressure, should be able to assess what is taught and what is omitted. Transparency about who influences content decisions is essential. Public debate, rather than closed committees, is the appropriate mechanism in a free society.
Victoria’s experience shows what happens when these safeguards are absent. South Africa has the opportunity to learn from that failure rather than repeat it. The alternative is to continue producing graduates who have been shielded from large parts of a political system that continues to shape events around the world including, increasingly, in Western democracies.
Educational honesty is not optional. It is a condition of genuine liberalism.
Gregory Hearn is the Australia Country Director for the Centre for the Study of Political Islam International (CSPII). CSPII applies a scientific methodology to the analysis of the Islamic doctrine that consists of the Koran, Sira and Hadith with a particular focus on Political Islam and its doctrine concerning specifically non-Muslims. Founded by Dr Bill Warner, CSPII produces research grounded exclusively in primary Islamic texts.