Intellectual invasion: Qatar controls Sudan’s religious education

Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar

In the past, countries that wanted to control other countries sent weapons, ammunition and armies with the aim of taking their goods, but now the situation has changed and instead of sending gunpowder, books and ideas are sent, as Doha has done in Khartoum.

Countries have become focused on cultural conquest through television programs, cultural festivals and educational curricula as a long-term presence is allowed among the peoples of other countries, such that young people speak the language of this country and live their lives through it, indirectly linking them to it.

Sudan, Qatar and education

Qatar has developed a long-term strategy that relies primarily on the exploitation of religion by means of permeation among Arab peoples, either by hosting sheikhs who agree with its vision and spread its toxins with a religious character, like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, or through groups that use religion as a mask, such as the Brotherhood and its arms in Arab countries.

One of Qatar’s satanic methods takes the form of religious education, as it transmits intellectual toxins encapsulated in a religious nature to mislead people.

Doha linked its educational relationship with Khartoum through religious education, as it attempted to exploit the religious tendency of the Sudanese people in order to serve its own interests. The two countries signed various agreements, such as the Arab Cultural Unity Pact in 1964 and a joint strategy for the economic development of Arab states in 1979, which the Arab League took as an umbrella.

The ministries of education and culture in the two countries also held numerous conferences to exchange educational experiences, in addition to jointly attending regional conferences, such as the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal.

Similarities to religious secondary curricula

The Qatari intervention in Sudan’s education did not stop at the end of joint conferences but extended to practical aspects, as the official educational strategies of the two countries were similarly based.

Sudan’s educational policy indicated that it is necessary to combat illiteracy and ignorance, to develop educational curricula, and to link them with development plans, similar to Qatar. The religious curricula in the two countries have been developed in a similar fashion, which researcher Elmukashfi Osman emphasized in a comparative study on the strategies to develop the Islamic education curricula at the secondary level in Sudan and Qatar.

Osman pointed out Qatar focused on the Islamic education curricula for the secondary stage in Sudan and worked to pass on its ideas. It also worked to use the curricula to discuss issues of war, national unity and peace in Sudan from a religious point of view compatible with Doha’s ideas.