Inclusion of ‘The Creation of Adam’ in Education Curricula Sparks Controversy in Sudan

Sudan's Director of the Educational Curricula Center Omar Ahmed Al-Qarray | Asharq Al-Awsat
Sudan's Director of the Educational Curricula Center Omar Ahmed Al-Qarray | Asharq Al-Awsat
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Inclusion of ‘The Creation of Adam’ in Education Curricula Sparks Controversy in Sudan

Sudan's Director of the Educational Curricula Center Omar Ahmed Al-Qarray | Asharq Al-Awsat
Sudan's Director of the Educational Curricula Center Omar Ahmed Al-Qarray | Asharq Al-Awsat

In Sudan, Islamists and advocates of the ousted regime of Omar al-Bashir have waged a fierce campaign against the country’s Director of the Educational Curricula Center Omar Ahmed Al-Qarray over the sixth grade’s history book containing “The Creation of Adam” by Italian artist Michelangelo.

Apart from Qarray receiving death threats, Islamists have also threatened to prohibit the teaching of the academic curriculum. They argued that the work of art is blasphemous in its attempt to portray the divine.

Qarray, alongside a host of supporters, considered the painting an important work of art that is worth studying away from any religious context. He also warned that followers of the former regime are using the painting as an excuse to push their self-styled curriculums.

Campaigns both with and against Qarray have taken over social media.

Some accused him of exploiting curriculums to promote republican ideology formerly held by Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, who was executed for apostasy by the regime of Gaafar Nimeiry.

Others supported Qarray’s effort to turn around a curriculum tailored to Muslim Brotherhood dogma, saying that it advances the goals of the revolution that toppled Bashir’s Islamist regime. They added that the new curriculum gets the new generation to step out of the shadows of extremism that the former regime introduced to rather tolerant Sudanese religiosity.

On October 17, 2019, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok entrusted Qarray with rewriting school curricula.

Hamdok tasked Qarray with purging material taught in schools from Muslim Brotherhood influence, which had dominated education in the African country for the last three decades.

Qarray, for his part, described the campaign organized against him on social media sites, some mosques, and places of worship as unfair dishonest.

Defending the inclusion of “The creation of Adam,” Qarray told a presser that this was not the first time the painting appears in Sudanese curriculums, and that it was already studied in the arts curriculum at the Islamic University without anyone criticizing it.

He launched a violent attack on the Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowments, which issued a statement declaring the prohibition of teaching the new history curriculum to sixth graders.



Hezbollah Says Fired Missiles at Base Near South Israel's Ashdod

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system operates to intercept incoming projectiles, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Nahariya, Israel, November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system operates to intercept incoming projectiles, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Nahariya, Israel, November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
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Hezbollah Says Fired Missiles at Base Near South Israel's Ashdod

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system operates to intercept incoming projectiles, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Nahariya, Israel, November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system operates to intercept incoming projectiles, amid hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Nahariya, Israel, November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Hezbollah said its fighters on Thursday fired missiles at a military base near south Israel’s Ashdod, the first time it has targeted so deep inside Israel in more than a year of hostilities.

Hezbollah fighters "targeted... for the first time, the Hatzor air base" east of the southern city, around 150 kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, "with a missile salvo," the Iran-backed group said in a statement.

A rocket fired from Lebanon killed a man and wounded two others in northern Israel on Thursday, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
The service said paramedics found the body of the man in his 30s near a playground in the town of Nahariya, near the border with Lebanon, after a rocket attack on Thursday.
Israel meanwhile struck targets in southern Lebanon and several buildings south of Beirut, the Lebanese capital.

Israel has launched airstrikes against Lebanon after Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel the day after Hamas' attack on Israel last October. A full-blown war erupted in September after nearly a year of lower-level conflict.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the country’s Health Ministry, and over 1 million people have been displaced. It is not known how many of those killed were Hezbollah fighters and how many were civilians.
On the Israeli side, Hezbollah’s aerial attacks have killed more than 70 people and driven some 60,000 from their homes.