Manama: Kuwait’s acting education minister has banned references to sects in forms to be filled by applicants.
In a decision sent to all departments and public and private schools in the country, Abdul Mohsin Al Mudeij said that no information about the sect should be required from anyone giving personal details.
“Considering the public interest and the imperatives of social security, there must be full compliance with the requirement not to ask for details about the sect,” the decision said. The information required in filling a form should be limited to religion, it said.
The minister’s move was triggered by reports that a private school in northern Kuwait had required students to include their sect in the registration application they were filling.
“Kuwait is used to tolerance and national unity and all Kuwaitis have a deep sense of citizenship under the banner of Kuwait,” the minister said. “The highest affiliation is always to the nation.”
Home to Sunnis and Shiites, Kuwait, like the other countries in the region, has been exerting special efforts to deal with the menacing phenomenon of sectarianism that hit local societies, mainly after the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq.
Attempts by moderates to confront the ominous onslaught have often failed to contain the phenomenon and observers say that developments in the Syrian civil war and in Iraq have become the latest indication of the gloomy spread of sectarianism.