A Critique of the Selection of Sufi Texts in Persian Literature Textbooks And its Implicit Role in Creating Sectarian Beliefs

School textbooks are undeniably crucial to the establishment of people’s beliefs and thoughts during their adolescence. This paper aims to examine and criticize the impact of Sufi literary texts selected for textbooks of Persian literature on students’ susceptibility to sectarian beliefs. Drawing on the descriptive, analytic, and critical method, we have scrutinized six volumes of Persian literature textbooks of the high school in Iran as well as sources of the history of Sufism and Sufi books. In this paper, we present materials that might lead to sectarian beliefs incompatible with the official denomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Shiism). We find that incorporation of certain texts from authors with Ash‘arite Sufi beliefs in school textbooks might negatively affect teenagers’ beliefs and performances, promoting a spirit of passivism and determinism in the Iranian Shiite community.