A distinct political and social thread runs through two recent controversies in Syria: the revisions to school curricula and the vehement opposition to a proposal allowing Syrian women to pass their nationality to their children. At first glance, the issues seem unrelated. One concerns what millions of children encounter in their classrooms; the other touches on women’s legal rights and their relationship with the state. Yet both converge on a single, essential question: what kind of Syria do those in authority intend to build? A state grounded in equal citizenship, or a state that reproduces old social and intellectual hierarchies and consigns women to a subordinate rank?
The debate over school curricula extends far beyond the pedagogical merits of updating textbooks or revisiting the legacy of the former regime. Alterations in several schoolbooks — including the removal of images of women and young girls, the deletion of artworks, the modification of other illustrations, and the erasure of content related to equality and citizenship — have raised serious questions about the principles shaping the re‑formation of consciousness among Syria’s next generation.
More troubling than the removal of any particular image is the mindset that may lie behind such choices. Will schools cultivate critical thinking and teach children to respect difference and diversity? Or will they become instruments for imposing a narrow and uniform social and ideological vision?
As this debate unfolded, another controversy emerged, equally revealing in its implications. Remarks by Hind Kabawat, Syria’s Minister of Social Affairs and Labour, regarding a proposal to grant Syrian nationality to the children of Syrian women married to foreign nationals revived a longstanding discussion about women’s right to equal citizenship. Instead of prompting a reconsideration of a discriminatory law dating back to 1969, the proposal unleashed a wave of objections, many of them invoking demographic and security fears or tying children’s entitlement to their mothers’ nationality to the identities and backgrounds of their fathers.
There is a stark irony in watching Syrian women — ostensibly equal partners in building the new state — compelled to defend the most elementary aspects of their citizenship. A Syrian man may pass his nationality to his children whether they are born inside or outside the country. A Syrian woman enjoys no comparable right, except in narrowly defined circumstances. Her nationality, it seems, is insufficient on its own to confer identity upon her children. Her citizenship remains incomplete, requiring a man’s authority to give it full effect.
This issue concerns equality before the law, a principle enshrined in the Constitutional Declaration and repeatedly affirmed by Syrian President Ahmad al‑Sharaa. It is not a favour bestowed by those in power, nor a privilege to be dispensed according to political mood or prevailing social attitudes. If the new state is sincere in its desire to break with the legacy of authoritarianism and discrimination, then preserving this legal disparity, or subjecting its reform to political and security calculations, undermines the foundations of any credible attempt to build a state of equal citizenship.
Still more troubling is the nature of the campaign against the proposal. Rather than examining the legal provisions, their criteria and their safeguards, some opponents have portrayed the measure as a threat to Syria’s demographic composition or as an attempt to grant nationality to the children of foreign fighters. Such concerns may merit legal and security review, yet they cannot justify sweeping accusations against entire groups, nor can they serve as grounds for denying thousands of children a legal right because of their fathers’ nationality or conduct.
If a father has committed a crime, the law provides the means to hold him accountable. A child bears no criminal responsibility for a father’s actions and should never be condemned to lifelong consequences for an identity they did not choose. The state may establish clear procedures for verifying documents, marriages and applications. It cannot reasonably transform exceptional cases into a general rule or invoke security fears to perpetuate discrimination between male and female citizens.
Here the nationality debate intersects with the controversy over school curricula. The first raises the question of whether women possess the same right as men to transmit their nationality to their children. The second concerns how women are represented in textbooks, and whether their presence, participation and place in society are treated as natural facts or as elements subject to erasure or alteration to suit a particular ideological outlook.
No single directive need link the two controversies for their political significance to be evident. Their simultaneous emergence is sufficient to raise serious questions about the place accorded to women’s rights in the vision shaping Syria’s future. Is the country moving toward a state that seeks to free society from discrimination? Or is it witnessing the rise of an authority that speaks of political change while allowing old prejudices to reassert themselves as governing principles of public life?
One of the gravest dangers facing Syria after decades of authoritarian rule is that it may fail to establish genuinely new institutions and instead replace one system of exclusion with another. The vocabulary may change, yet the old mentality persists: determining who may speak, who may decide, who deserves the full protection of the law, and who must accept whatever rights the authorities choose to grant.
A modern state cannot be built on curricula that recoil from difference, laws that grant men rights withheld from women, or a political discourse that reduces citizenship to social, religious or familial affiliation. Syria requires a revolution in its understanding of citizenship itself, alongside the political revolution it has undergone. Citizenship is indivisible. How can we ask children to respect others while erasing those very people from their textbooks? How can we teach them equality when they see that their mothers lack the same right as their fathers to pass on their national identity?
The question those in power must confront today is whether they possess the political courage to defend a state founded on equal rights, even when those rights run against prevailing sentiment. The prospect of angering conservatives over curricular changes or legal reform should not outweigh that responsibility.
In 1949, Syrian women gained the right to vote, becoming the first women in the Arab world to secure that right. Today, nearly eight decades later, Syria finds itself debating the most elementary principles once more. The revolution has prevailed, and Syria is removing images of women from its schoolbooks.
I have never been a feminist activist, nor did I devote myself to campaigning for women’s rights during the revolution. I believed — mistakenly, as I now recognise — that when the revolution triumphed, its victory would belong to all Syrians, women and men alike.
Yet a revolution that fails to transform women’s lives, secure their rights, safeguard their full citizenship and guarantee their children’s equality before the law has not yet fulfilled one of its most essential promises.
What meaning can a new Syria claim if women are expected to share equally in its sacrifices and obligations, only to find themselves treated as second‑class citizens when it comes to their rights?
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
