Major Publishers Protest Saudi Textbook Content

nationalreview.com ^ | 17OCT12 | Nina Shea

[bayouranger]

An appeal to the government of Saudi Arabia to stop publishing hate-filled textbooks was issued today by seven current and former heads of major American publishing houses. Leading it was Robert Bernstein, formerly chairman of Random House and founder of Human Rights Watch, who is now the chairman of Advancing Human Rights. He was joined by the publisher at Amazon, the publisher of Simon and Schuster, a Reuters editor-at-large, the editorial director of Broadside Books (HarperCollins), and other prominent publishers.

I have researched and written about the toxic content of school textbooks published by the Saudi Ministry of Education for almost a decade and have found that little has changed in them over this period. Last year, I had the opportunity as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to travel to Riyadh and meet with the Saudi minister of education, who is King Abdullah’s nephew and son-in-law, Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah Bin Muhammad al-Saud. The education minister acknowledged that 1–12 textbook reform was needed but indicated it was not a governmental priority. I also met with the Saudi justice minister Muhammad al-Issa and asked him why the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamously anti-Semitic fabrication at the time of the Russian revolution, is included in the textbook on Hadiths (traditions of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed) where it continues to be taught as historical fact. The Saudi justice minister said that the Protocols is treated as part of Islamic culture because it is a book that has long been found in plentiful supply in Saudi Arabia (one of the relatively few non-Muslim books to be so), and was a book that his father had in his home.

[bayouranger]

Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department has not held Saudi Arabia to its 2006 pledge to reform Saudi textbooks within two years.

Examples from the Saudi textbooks, some of which are included in the publishers’ appeal, follow:

1. “The Jews and the Christians are enemies of the believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims.”

2. “The struggle of this [Muslim] nation with the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills.”

3. “Do not kill what God has forbidden killing such as the Muslim or the infidel between whom and the Muslims there is a covenant or under protection, unless for just cause such as unbelief after belief, just punishment or adultery.”

4. “The apostate has two punishments; worldly and in the hereafter. Punishment in this life: Death if he does not repent.”

5. “Major polytheism is a reason to fight those that practice it.”

6. “Fighting the Infidels and the Polytheists has certain conditions and controls, including: That they be invited to Islam and they refuse to enter it and refuse to pay Jizya [a special tax] That Muslims have the power and the capacity to combat, That this be with the permission of the guardian and under his banner, That there be no guarantee between them and the Muslims not to combat.”

7. “The punishment of homosexuality is death. . . . Ibn Qudamah said: “The companions (of the Prophet) agreed unanimously on killing. Some of the Companions argued that he (a homosexual) is to be burned with fire. It has been said that he should be stoned, or thrown from a high place. Other things have also been said.”

8. “In Islamic law, (jihad) has two uses: 1. specific usage: which means: Exerting effort in fighting unbelievers and tyrants.”

9. “In the general usage, Jihad is divided into the following categories: . . . Wrestling with the unbelievers by calling them (to the faith) and fighting them.”

10. “As was cited in Ibn Abbas, and was said: The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.”

[Made In The USA]

Protest the textbooks... well that’s a start. How about protesting the violent bloodlusting cult?

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“who is King Abdullah’s nephew and son-in-law,”

[SpaceBar]

It will only end with a gamma ray burst.

[EdReform]

[Carry_Okie]

Islam holds that the Kaaba is protected by god, that nothing can defile it. My solution: destroy by ridicule that supposedly invulnerable central icon. Send a B2 from the central US, and carpet bomb it... with pigs. Dead pigs raining down from the sky, everywhere. Photograph the hell out of it. Then, amid all the screaming, wailing, and global outcry, give them 24 hours notice to get out of town. Make it really clear. Then level Mecca, completely, not a single standing stone. Show them what power means.

Then, and only then, invalidate Islam for ever by exposing the lie that is the Koran with the archaeological record (that Yemeni copy would do nicely). Render them empty and defeated. Then send missionaries to save them from their miserable existence.

[agere_contra]

And do it on 9/11

[gr8eman]

It’s all George Bush’s fault. All we had to do after 9/11 is broadcast psyops that Allah was pissed and then systematically nuke it all down from Afghanistan to Zanzibar.

[Captain PJ]

I like it.

[MamaTexan]

I have researched and written about the toxic content of school textbooks published by the Saudi Ministry of Education for almost a decade and have found that little has changed in them over this period.

The excuse from the Ministry of disinformation is basically 'there are a lot of them and there has been for a long time'.

LOL! They're IN one of the richest places in the world and someone can't step up and buy a few thousand books instead of that new Rolls or yacht they saw?

Pul-ese!

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15 of the 19 terrorists that took out the World Trade Center were from Saudi Arabia.

Buy a clue, people.

These are NOT our 'friends'.

[MamaTexan]

Nah, we need to revive the Reagan era joke.

What's flat and black and glows in the dark?

Saudi Arabia 30 minutes after Romney's sworn in.

[Carry_Okie]

What's flat and black and glows in the dark?

Our enemy is not a nation. It is a religion. Muslims from Indonesia to Detroit need to see the fraud under which they are living for what it is. They need to be converted in heart, not just in fear.

[MamaTexan]

Muslims from Indonesia to Detroit need to see the fraud under which they are living for what it is. They need to be converted in heart, not just in fear.

I'll agree with you on that.

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Our enemy is not a nation. It is a religion.

And as a nation who acknowledges the right of people to follow their own conscious, we have ZERO authority to deny that right to anyone else.

The Constitution protects religion, and nowhere is the legitimate authority given to declare war on an ideology, no matter how abhorrent we believe that ideology to be. The only authority granted is to declare war on another nation.

The Constitution outlines Declarations of War. They are not Resolutions, they are not Proclamations....they are Declarations.

It is a legal term with a legal meaning and legal procedures to go with it.

Not to mention the rather commonsensical problem that by declaring war on a religion, you in essence cripple your own ability to win simply because you can't tell who the 'enemy' is just by looking.

It's a little late after-the-fact, ya know. Particularly when lying to non believers IS part of their religion.

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I'm not trying to be rude or anything. I just want people to take a step back and take a long hard look at exactly what this 'war' is costing.

[Taxman]

Islam is 15% religion and 85% political, social and economic.

To call Islam a “religion” is to defame the word!

Islam is really a death cult.

[Taxman]

Read my post #14, and then check out http://www.politicalislam.com

That web site will open your eyes, VERY WIDE!

[Carry_Okie]

Islam is 15% religion and 85% political, social and economic.

So is Judeo-Christianity, that is, if one takes the Torah at its Word.

[Taxman]

The trap you have fallen into is that Moslems make war on ALL non-Moslems.

A “religion” that calls for the death or conversion of the entire world’s population, and that has murdered 270 million people simply because they have different religious beliefs is hardly a religion, IMHO.

Islam is a death cult, and has been since 622 AD.

Judaism and Christianity are not death cults.

[Carry_Okie]

The trap you have fallen into is that Moslems make war on ALL non-Moslems.

NO. The trap you have fallen into is that you didn't read my tag line on the last few posts.

A “religion” that calls for the death or conversion of the entire world’s population, and that has murdered 270 million people simply because they have different religious beliefs is hardly a religion, IMHO.

It is hardly "humble" to resort to a subjective definition of the term "religion." Your differentiating attribute from Judeo-Christianity stated above was that you believe Islam to be more political than religious. ,a href="http://wwww.shemitta.com">Having written a rather pivotal book about the political attributes of a particular law in Exodus 23, I do have the authority to refute that. Too bad for that argument, sirrah.

Worse, the Children of Israel were commanded by G_d to perform total genocide on more than one occasion by the very metrics you propose as unique to Islam. So you'd better hurry up and get a grip on the actual distinctions between the two. I suggest a rather thorough study of the Hebrew in Genesis 16.

Judaism and Christianity are not death cults.

Of course not, but then, you clearly don't know what you are talking about, much less the understand what I posted.

[Taxman]

You are correct, I did not read your tag line. We agree more than we disagree.

My argument is that Islam is not a religion — a belief system that calls for the death or conversion of all the peoples of the world is hardly a religion, irregardless of whether it is my opinion.

Last time I checked, Jews and Christians are not murdering people just because they refuse to convert to Judaism or Christianity!

Please provide a reference to your “pivotal book” re: Exodus 23.

My reading of Genesis 16 does not seem to be applicable in this instance.

I am glad that we agree that Judaism and Christianity are not death cults.

[Carry_Okie]

Islam passes every test as a religion. It is simply a violent, satanic, death worship of a religion. Nevertheless, it is still a religion by the usual anthropological understanding of the term. Still, I think Islam undeserving of Constitutional protections, simply because its adherents have no intention of abiding by the social contract that is First Amendment free exercise, but then, neither do the communists in the ACLU.

Please provide a reference to your “pivotal book” re: Exodus 23.

I did.

My reading of Genesis 16 does not seem to be applicable in this instance.

Of that I have little doubt. It takes delving into the lexicography of each Hebrew root. Effectively, Genesis 16:13 contains a strong suggestion that Islam is of Satan, particularly if one contrasts the symmetries in the visit of G_d to Sarai with that of the messenger of G_d to Hagar. The key distinction is that Hagar worships the angel and calls him by "the name of god." No other angel than Lucifer would have taken that without correcting her (think back to Revelation 22:8-9).

As to the prophecy about the "wild ass of a man" well, you'd have to understand a bit about the behavior of the desert wild ass to get a sense of that. One key is the name of Irad in Genesis 4. That root translates to either "wild ass" or "conceals oneself." The unifying attribute is that wild asses in that region seek shade from the noon day sun; they 'hide from the light,' in this case, the light of the Lord. Then there's the bit about how he will be after every man and shall dwell in the presence of his brethren. If you look at that sequence of roots, and particularly "yada" it means that HIS FEATURES will be in every man. How? Well, you do know that "yada" is the root for conception in all those genealogies. When he "dwells" in their tents, that could be pretty nasty, particularly if you recall the Arab trade in European girls for the slave trade.

Our problem is that our translators were spiritual men seeking spirituality in the Word. They were not the desert shepherds who wrote it. The more I study the Hebrew, the more I find that makes no sense at all, yet has a perfectly understandable rationale once one assumes the perspective of a pastoral culture.

I recommend to you using the Interlinear Scriptural Analyzer coupled with the Strong's number search of the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon.