PrintMarch 9, 2009
US Public Schools Teaching Children Pro-Islamic Propaganda
Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus and the 9/11 murderers were not Islamic Fundamentalists but simply a generic "teams of terrorists." That's the caliber of politically corrected crap many of our children are being taught in American public schools -- and it's past time all parents took serious notice.
A five year study by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research cites hundreds of such errors and distortions found in "28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States." Their book, The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion, examines the pro-Islamic disinformation they uncovered, including the assertion that Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew.
Ybarra claims that the textbooks also treat Islam with special privilege and tend not to criticize or challenge it, as they do Judaism and Christianity. He offers this example from the glossary of World History: Continuity and Change:
It calls the Ten Commandments "moral laws Moses claimed to have received from the Hebrew God," while the entry for the Koran contains no such qualifier in saying it is the "Holy Book of Islam containing revelations received by Muhammad from God."
Education expert Gilbert T. Sewall, the director of the American Textbook Council, has also found a decidedly "whitewashed" version of Islam in school history books. Sewall told Fox News that pusillanimous "publishers have been pressured by Islamic activists to portray the religion in the most favorable light, while Islamic terrorism is downplayed or glossed over." He singles out the textbook World History: The Modern World for intentionally omitting the religion of the 9/11 hijackers: [my emphasis]
"On the morning of September 11, 2001, teams of terrorists hijacked four airplanes on the East Coast. Passengers challenged the hijackers on one flight, which they crashed on the way to its target. But one plane plunged in to the Pentagon in Virginia, and two others slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. More than 2,500 people were killed in the attacks."
No mention of Islamic Fundamentalists. No mention of jihad. No attempt to explain the identities or murderous motivations of the madmen who perpetrated the most horrific attack on our country ever.
And speaking of jihad, here's how Sewall described what the book History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond teaches students about the subject:
"Jihad is defined as a struggle within each individual to overcome difficulties and strive to please god. Sometimes it may be a physical struggle for protection against enemies," the book reads, noting that Islam teaches "that Muslims should fulfill jihad with the heart, tongue and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil."
Sounds almost like a Dr. Philism, doesn't it?
Of course, there's no suggestion of what those hands might do should the heart and tongue fail to resolve the "struggle." Nor that some of those hands have held long gleamless knives to slowly and agonizingly behead "infidels" or pressed the trigger to detonate shrapnel-filled suicide belts to burn, eviscerate, and terrorize even greater numbers of innocents.
According to Textbook League president William J. Bennetta, the book does, however, fabricate a pro-Muslim, anti-Judeo-Christian version of history and teaches children that only religious views held by Muslims are important. Bennetta accuses both the authors and publishers, the Teachers Curriculum Institute, of "subjecting students to Islamic indoctrination" by "relentlessly presenting Muslim religious tales and religious beliefs as matters of historical fact." He further accuses TCI - which provides schools a wide range of K-12 curricular programs -- of having "a close relationship with the Islamic Networks Group (ING), a Muslim propaganda agency based in San Jose, California."
And as far I can tell, both of the aforementioned books remain in active academic duty throughout our nation's public school systems. And, unfortunately, they share the shelves with many like-minded tomes.
Obviously, Islamic advocacy groups the likes of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claim legitimate (and some perhaps not so) motivation to advance positive perceptions of Muslims to our populace, and easily dupe PC academics to do so blindly. But there's little reasonable doubt that such liberal naivety also paves the way for those with intent of a more pernicious nature. Be they simply advocating creeping Sharia law in America or perhaps proselytizing or actually laying down cover for the most vile of terrorist activity, such interests would be greatly served by a generation of minds filtered of Islam's darker side.
And then there are the more immediately focused concerns. Is it any coincidence that our kids are now being taught that Jesus was a Palestinian and Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11 and jihad is but a harmless struggle of the heart? With the media already working their blatant bias on the parents, mightn't such skewed instruction of our progeny spark cunningly orchestrated dinner conversation regarding America's foreign policy stance on a particular Mideast powder keg?
Now, I'd venture to guess that those still with me these past 800 words or so aren't likely mind-clay for PC opinion-sculptors. But unless the protection of your children extends beyond the physical, you leave their emergent psyches susceptible to all manner of PC indoctrination -- including the latest multicultural claptrap. And while current events have moved the threat of a worldwide Sharia-based caliphate to the rear of the world stage, its persistent proponents continue to exploit the inane liberal tenet of "celebrating diversity."
Of course, public schools are hotbeds of such liberal idealism. And they're practically a second home to our kids. And, short our diligent oversight, teachers will invariably leave indelible leftie scars on a child's personal development. So now, more than ever, it's imperative we monitor school books, and stand up and scream at teachers, administrators, and superintendants should we discover any ideology beyond the sprinkling of liberal bias we reluctantly accept as inevitable.
Just as with curricular green globaloney, your best defense against scholastic Dhimmitude begins at home.
Discuss what they're being taught, and be prepared to teach them the truth. Teach them about Jesus, or Israel, or both. Once they're old enough to understand, teach them about 9/11. Teach them about Sharia and jihad and oppressed women and terrorism and honor killings and barbaric execution methods. Teach them that only just and nurturing cultures deserve to be celebrated, not diversity itself.
But above all, teach them how to recognize propaganda and to think for themselves.
Marc Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your comments.
