Perceptions of Europe and Anti-European Hate Speech in Iranian Textbooks - Consistencies and Processes of Change in Times of a Political Thaw

The April 2015 agreement on Iran's nuclear program marks a political achievement of Hassan Rohani's moderate government and an effort to improve Iran's ties with the West, including in particular with Europe. Domestically, as a result of this change, educational ideas are clashing hard. On the one hand, there is the new curriculum developed under the direct orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, which is directed against a "Western cultural invasion" (Tahajom-e-Farhangi). On the other hand, there are the new textbooks developed during Rohani's administration, which are making their way into all levels of the Iranian school system.

Textbooks are a sign of the seriousness and permanence of political change, as they are hardly an instrument of day-to-day politics. They allow statements to be made about whether tolerance and openness in the sense of a GCE are given a chance in Iranian textbooks. Very little is known about corresponding attitudes that can be found, about changing perceptions of the West in general and Europe in particular.

A textbook study using "hate speech" as an analytical lens aims to address this - also political - desideratum. On the basis of history textbooks, patterns of construction of the image of "the Other" are uncovered and the state of research on images of Europe is expanded, specifically those that come into being in the view from "outside.