Posted on 02/23/2003 5:50:42 PM PST by Destro
Posted on Fri, Feb. 21, 2003
Radical Islam is sanitized for American textbooks
By Suzanne Fields
WASHINGTON TIMES
One man's jihad can be another man's mission of distortion. The Islamist terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11 cited their murderous rampage as a "jihad." The suicide bombers who terrorize Israeli schools, restaurants and malls called their mission their "jihad." But American school kids might never know anything about it.
A lot has gone missing in our textbooks. "Patterns of History," for example, published by Houghton Mifflin and adopted as a world history textbook in high school classes in Texas and many other states, never even mentions the word.
A seventh-grade world history book by Houghton Mifflin, titled "Across the Centuries," defines "jihad" merely as a struggle for a Muslim "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." There's no mention of the fact that millions of Muslims - not all, but many millions - are taught to regard anything not under Muslim rule or control as "evil".
"Islam and the Textbooks," a 35-page report compiled by the American Textbook Council in New York, analyzes seven history textbooks widely used between the seventh and 12th grades and finds that millions of American schoolchildren are being cheated of accurate history. Politically correct advocacy groups have thoroughly intimidated teachers, administrators and school boards - and in a way that the most fundamentalist of Christians or the most orthodox of Jews never could.
Textbooks are big money. Publishers cower at the prospect of offending anyone with a megaphone, and the advocacy groups are skilled at manipulating the timid and the cowardly with easy accusations of "bigot" and "racist." Uninformed and uncritical teachers pass on their own ignorance with appeals to mushy sentiment disguised as tolerance.
Parents who think textbooks are written by fair but tough-minded scholars are unaware of how political process, not scholarship, produces their children's textbooks. There is neither understanding nor recognition of the distortion of Islam by radical Muslims and how they use this distortion to make war on America - and indeed on the millions of peaceful Muslims who do not share their distorted theology.
"On significant Islam-related subjects, textbooks omit, flatter, embellish and resort to happy talk, suspending criticism or harsh judgments that would raise provocative or even alarming questions," writes Gilbert Sewall, a former professor who heads the American Textbook Council (www.historytextbooks.org/islam).
You wouldn't even learn how Islamists frequently describe jihad in military terms, using passages from the Quran. Bernard Lewis, the author and scholar, says that "the object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law." You won't find this view, though widely shared by scholars, even acknowledged in the politically correct texts.
There's no acknowledgment that religious dogma is dictated by certain Islamic states, how freedom of religion and speech are alien concepts in most Islamic countries. Double standards are the norm in these textbooks; Judaism and Christianity get short shrift, as do Western secular institutions. Slavery is often presented as a peculiarly European and American institution. One text does not even mention that Islamic civilizations engaged in the slave trade. In another, where slavery is acknowledged, it's treated as a "benign institution" offering slaves the opportunity for "social mobility."
Textbooks that robustly discuss the awful condition of women that once prevailed in the West present severe contemporary restrictions on Islamic women as benign. "For some women," one textbook states, "the (hijab, or veil) symbolized resistance to unpopular governments."
A "bridal fair" of the Berbers in Morocco is portrayed as a quaint ritual of happy natives enjoying the party, without noting that fathers sell their daughters to their prospective husbands through negotiations over dowries. Upper-class women may be secluded in the home, but "in rural areas, peasant women continued to contribute to the economy in many ways." (Aren't they the lucky ones?)
The exceptional women in Islamic society who achieved great knowledge and power, such as Shajar, a 13th century freed slave who is said to have become a ruler of Egypt, are presented as typical. Maisuna, a Bedouin poetess, is portrayed in one text as a proto-feminist (sort of like Gloria Steinem in a burqa).
The Council on Islamic Education in Orange County, Calif., is particularly intimidating to publishers. It has warned scholars and public officials that those who do not see eye-to-eye with its positions will be cited as racists, reactionaries and enemies of Islam. High-profile publishers and editors eagerly seek the council's imprimatur.
The American Textbook Council says the distortions, inaccuracies and omissions in the study of Islam are the result of complacency, not anti-Americanism. But its report suggests something worse than complacency is at work. It's the cheating of our children. The rest of us are cheated, too.
Contact Suzanne Fields at sfields1000@aol.com.
There you have it folks, all in a nutshell...The idea of our forefathers, in their wisdom, being raped in front of our eyes.
I am so sick of this shit that I'm....I'm....AAARRRGGGHHH!
FMCDH
Read David Pryce-Jones's book The Closed Circle.
Do they? But for those then contemporarily prized possessions that may have been coveted by other ancient Hebrews,
how have The Ten Commandments changed over such time?
No, the problem is with Islam. Read The Sword of the Prophet, Islam Unveiled, or Why I am not a Muslim.
Islam has a number of basic requirements which dogmatically drive it toward fundamentalism. The few secular Islamic nations have succeeded by ignoring what Islam requires.
In the end, religion is successful and good to the extent it resonates with its culture while hewing to and successfully propagating and inculcating truths which are universal.
A typically generous interpretation of religion in general by someone raised in the liberal democratic west. I commend you for your charity, which has--unfortunately--nothing to do with Islam. The thought process is something like this: Judeo-Christian law and Hellenistic culture has produced a tolerant and equitable society. Therefore religion is good. Therefore, all religions are good. Therefore, in particular, Islam is good.
This isn't reasoning, it's wishful thinking. Read the Koran, read the Examples, read the history of the first four Caliphates and finally, read the story of Mohammed's life. You will be truly astounded at how vicious, intolerant, and degrading this "religion" is.
As an agnostic, I often get into discussions with Evangelical Christians. Sometimes here at FR. It's challenging, frustrating, and occasionally quite hostile, but I'm sure happy that I live in a country dominated by Christians. In an Islamic country, I would need to hide my beliefs, or die.
Apologists like to point to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the 100-Years War, Internecine fighting in Northern Ireland, etc, etc. But there's a significant difference between these and the crimes of Islam: the people doing those things weren't actually practicing Christianity. The people perpetrating the massacres of the Caliphate, the Ottoman Turks, the enslavement of modern Christians in Sudan, the suicide/homicide bombers, and on and on and on, are actually practicing Islam.
We often ask, "Why the lack of denunciations for 9/11 by moderate Islamic clerics?" The question is predicated on the mistaken belief that these crimes run against Islam. They don't. They are supported enthusiastically in the Koran and illustrated in the life and actions of Mohammed.
Know your enemy, my friend. Off the cuff opinions and generous platitudes are not going to help us win this war.
It's not useful for practical or propagandistic purposes to say that we're at war with Islam. But we are. And we are at war with Islam, not by choice, but because Islam is at war with mankind.
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