Iraqi parents in Mosul are defying the Islamic State’s calls to send their children to school after the publication of a new religiously based curriculum.
Strict new rules for all schools within the self-declared caliphate, including a list of banned subjects, were posted on electricity poles and walls around the city with the demand that pupils report for the start of the new school year on September 9.
That date came and went, however, without any pupils showing up, a rare act of defiance against the extremists.
Parents in Mosul reached by phone said that while they may be unable to leave the city, they were reluctant to subject their children to brainwashing by its extremist ideology.
“My children are young enough that they can