Your children may learn that Muslims discovered America

[FishForLunch]

April 16th, 2004


A Native American tribe has forced distributors of an Arab studies guide for American teachers to remove an inaccurate and absurd passage that Muslim explorers preceded Columbus to North America, and eventually became Algonquin chiefs named Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik!

The Middle East Policy Council, a Washington advocacy group that promotes this curriculum to school districts in 155 U.S. cities have apparently been somewhat unresponsive and dismissive of complaints. Ridiculous as this example is, it is illustrative of a far more disturbing development: the placement of propaganda in our schools by Muslim extremist groups. As the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation pointed out in a report issued this week titled, "The Stealth Curriculum:Manipulating America's History Teachers" these efforts are intended "to use America's public school classrooms to shape the minds of tomorrow's citizens by manipulating what today's teachers introducing into the lessons of today's children"

The American Textbook Council has played a leading role in resisting Arab efforts to supply propaganda to our schools, and recently published a report, "Islam and the Textbooks", by Gilbert T. Sewall, which reports this phenomenon. It can be found here.

These militants and their supporters have set their eyes on our children, and are attempting to brainwash them by supplying free textbooks which whitewash the truth regarding Muslim extremism, while promoting Arab and Palestinian political goals. These "teaching materials" also impugn and devalue America, Western nations, Israel. Judaism, and Christianity. The article, “Textbooks for Jihad,” found here is a good analysis of these developments .

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, some of whose members have been "outed" as terror supporters, has an active program to supply these this type of propaganda to libraries across the nation. Naturally, like schools, the librarians are more than happy to accept inexpensive, or free, material to fill their shelves. Yet these same books and audio-visual material are filling our children's minds with lies that are tantamount to propaganda that teach hate. Efforts should be made by local activists and PTA or PTO members to scrutinize the reading lists at our "educational" institutions

[Usually Lurkin]

everyone knows the (very scandanavian) Vikings discovered america.
And the germanic europeans earned it by killing everyone who was in their way.

(we can simplify the texbooks by just saying, "screw the natives, fair skin rules!!")

[dude1394]

The muslim culture seems to think very long term here. They are still thinking about how they got their rears kicked out of europe about 1000 years ago they have been smarting ever since. This kind of propoganda cannot be tolerated.

[Mavdog]

The author of this report is clearly anti-islamic...actually he's anti anything not western european.

"Concern about the ability and willingness of many domestic Muslims to assimilate that is, to put American constitutional values in front of their religion is not unfounded; Islam may favor resistance and separatism"

"Islamic organizations indignantly insist that Islam is a religion of peace"

His issues? The textbooks don't emphasize the violent concept of jihad enough, but a more personal relationship to dedication. They don't identify shar'ia as in his words "Sharia can be a system of religion-based behavioral control in which certain crimes are punishable by stoning, flogging, amputation, and beheading, punishments intended to inspire subjection and fear" but define it in less subjective connotation. Hmm, western societies didn't do anything like that did they? Yes, i believe they did.

The problem with how muslims treated slaves is a problem to Gilbert Sewell because "they omit any references to the downside of Muslim enslavement". I expect the student knows a "downside" exists from being a slave, wouldn't you? This position is taken in spite of Sewell acknowledging himself that ""These statements [in tne textbooks] are not exactly inaccurate" and that " Scholars agree that those millions who were enslaved by Muslims were accorded many more legal protections under Islamic law than they were in the Americas". If that's the case then teach it, but to Sewell the facts are an obstacle to his mission against islam.

Last, he doesn't see the textbooks going far enough in its portrying islam's mistreatment of women, preferring to focus on whatever negative he can put forth.

Why does he write the piece? It's clear in this statement from the report:
"As a result of revisionist demands made during the 1990s, students today are likely to obtain a rose-colored version of African, Middle Eastern, and Asian history. Textbook editors routinely adjust perspective and outlook to advance the illusion of cultural equivalency and demonstrate crosscultural and global sensitivity."
Yes, Sewell can't stand to see any "equivilency", European culture is supreme and without equal, all others should be reduced to a sidenote. How ethnocentric of him. That attitude shares much with those he purports to be against.