She was also approached by the Japanese, who wanted to know how the findings of the study would impact their export sales to Egypt and the Middle East. Her work drew her into the limelight and, while she is not a diva by nature, she is no shrinking violet. The study revealed that religious textbooks were changed on average every three years, but, Radwan says, the effort at indoctrination was consistent. Textbooks must be constant over many years for students to trust the system. But if we say something is true today and deny it tomorrow, students will lose faith in us.
Consistency is at a premium.
Invariably, the religious standpoint of the curriculum changed with ideological and political transformations at the state and national levels. Immediately after the 1952 Revolution, religious texts in schools were manipulated to condemn the monarchy, then to promote socialism, to incite hatred of Jews, and, in the Sadat years, to bolster the open-door policy. People simply lost faith in the state and in the government-authored syllabi. People found refuge in the mosques and took to religious books more often than not written by Islamist militants. Radwan elaborates on the methodology that guided this particular project.