Islam and the Textbooks

Islam and the Textbooks surveys content in seven widely adopted world history textbooks used across the country in grades seven through twelve. It reviews coverage of jihad, sharia, slavery, status of women, and terrorism, comparing lesson content to prominent histories and recognized sources. It focuses on the high school textbooks adopted in Texas in 2002.

This review faults world history textbooks on one of the most complicated and important subjects teachers face in classrooms today. What may seem on the surface to be a minor curriculum controversy has far-reaching implications for civic education and the promotion of American constitutional values. Its main conclusions include: (1) world history textbooks hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West, (2) domestic educational activists, Muslim and non-Muslim, insist at once on harsh perspectives for the West while gilding the record of non-Western civilizations, (3) Islamic pressure groups and their allies seek to suppress critical analysis of Islam inside and outside classrooms, and distorted textbook content is one symptom of this phenomenon, and (4) publishers respond to pressure groups on account of political expediency and sales. As a result, they are giving American children and their teachers a misshapen view of the past and a false view of the future.

The Council compared the content of these sources to lessons and textual passages in seven widely adopted world history textbooks used between the seventh and twelfth grades. It also conducted an extensive web search of Islam-related source material intended for classroom use. The books surveyed include Prentice Hall s Connections to Today and McDougal Littell s Patterns of Interaction , two high school textbooks that lead the November 2002 Texas adoption list. What the comparison revealed were content distortions and inaccuracies that have not occurred by accident. These lessons and the process by which they are put into America s classrooms raise serious concerns about the integrity of world history as a subject.

U. S. officials have assured Muslims in word and deed that the U. S. is a tolerant and open- minded nation. They have stressed the distinction between apolitical Muslim citizens and a belligerent Islamic agenda, and they have avoided branding Islam as the enemy. But it is not without reason that many U. S. citizens sense that militant Islam s goals run counter to national and personal interest. 3 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. 4

The transcontinental Islamic retraction from the liberal democratic model challenges secular rationalism, consensual government, and individual liberty throughout the world. As the novelist Salman Rushdie writes, a paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, infidels, for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world. 7

Rushdie and other liberal Muslims call for the depoliticization of Islam. Like others, they make the important distinction between Islamic political projects and the more politically neutral Muslim religion. But this distinction is more easily urged than realized. This desire to talk about politics as being separate from Islam is something that Muslim scholars on the whole have never accepted, says Akbar Muhammad, a historian at the State University of New York at Binghamton and a board member of the Council on Islamic Education. 8

What may seem on the surface to be a minor curriculum controversy has far-reaching implications for civic education and the promotion of U. S. constitutional values. The only ideal remaining ( except in the Muslim world) is liberal democracy on the American model, and this ( as the Marxists were wont to say) is not by chance, the political philosopher Walter Berns noted in his 2001 book, Making Patriots. 9

Jihad In understanding the history and nature of Islam, the concept of jihad is uniquely important. The term embodies an element of friction that exists between many Muslims and non- believers --Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist --enmity grounded in Islamic desire for political and territorial power. Jihad in its historical usage refers almost exclusively to armed warfare by Muslims against non-Muslims. Most editorial boards have no difficulty digesting this idea, nor do the nation s political and military elites. On the other hand, many prominent academics deny any martial aspect of the Muslim faith, ignoring or dismissing violent Islamic jihads from Algeria to Indonesia and locating the problem in Western colonialism.

What is jihad? Bernard Lewis, writing in The Middle East , states: The term jihad , conventionally translated holy war , has the literal meaning of striving, more specifically, in the Qur anic phrase striving in the path of God ( ( fi sabil Allah ) . Some Muslim theologians, particularly in more modern times, have interpreted the duty of striving in the path of God in a spiritual and moral sense. . The overwhelming majority of early authorities, however, citing relevant passages in the Qur an and in the tradition, discuss jihad in military terms. Virtually every manual of shari a law has a chapter on jihad , which regulates in minute detail such matters as the opening, conduct, interruption and cessation of hostilities, and the allocation and division of booty. . . . Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad , was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad it was concerned primarily with the defence or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory. . . . The Muslim jihad , in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule. In the latter case, those who professed what Muslims recognized as a revealed religion were allowed to continue the practice of that religion, subject to the acceptance of certain fiscal and other disabilities. Those who did not, that is to say idolaters and polytheists, were given the choice of conversion, death or slavery. 10

Lewis concludes this passage, saying: The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law. World history textbooks fail to make this simple but ultra--important point. A 1999 Library of Congress report on global terrorism says of jihad in its glossary:

In U. S. classrooms, jihad is defanged or oversimplified. World history textbook editors formulate definitions uncritically, using guides issued by Islamic advocacy groups as their road maps. According to a Council on Islamic Education subject guide intended for publishers, jihad means struggle or exertion and refers to any spiritual, , moral or physical struggle, and struggle in the cause of God, which can take many forms. In the personal sphere, efforts such as obtaining an education, trying to quit smoking, or controlling one s temper are forms of jihad. 12

Islamic organizations indignantly insist that Islam is a religion of peace. Historical evidence often points to a different conclusion. Much is made of the Koranic injunction against attacks on innocent, unarmed people. Less is made the fact that enemies and infidels do not fall under the protective umbrella. The annihilation of Israel and the U. S. may be the just vision and dream. For Muslims who are devoted to victory over the satanic West, this definition of jihad fits quite well.

Sharia As in the case of jihad, Islamic holy law --sharia --is tailored and cut, making an appearance as an alternative legal system or perhaps as a lifestyle. Holy law is explained in abstract, sketchy, and cryptic language that fails to convey the truth of the matter. Of sharia, historically, Bernard Lewis says, In an Islamic state, there is in principle no law other than the shar ia, the Holy Law of Islam. Elsewhere, , he states, There is, for example, no distinction between canon law and civil law, between the law of the church and the law of the state, crucial in Christian history. There is only a single law, the sharia, accepted by Muslims as of divine origin and regulating all aspects of human life: civil, commercial, criminal, constitutional, as well as matters more specifically concerned with religion in the limited, Christian sense of that word. Lewis adds: The principal function of the Islamic state and society was to maintain and enforce these rules and that the idea that any group of persons, any kind of activities, or any part of human life is in any sense outside the scope of religious law and jurisdiction is alien to Muslim thought. 14

The Council on Islamic Education ignores all of this. Its construction of sharia is at once cryptic and lyrical: Literally the path, says one Council definition, this term refers to guidance from God to be used by Muslims to regulate their societal and personal affairs. The sharia is based upon the Qur an and the Sunni of Muhammad, and is interpreted by scholars in deliberating and deciding upon questions and issues of a legal nature. 15 At best, this is an incomplete explanation.

As world history textbooks would have it, slavery is a Western, European and American institution. By contrast, Islamic slavery does not exist or is presented as benign. In fact, by some accounts, from the tenth to the nineteenth century, a larger number of enslaved Africans moved north and east into the Muslim world than into the entire Western Hemisphere from the beginning of the Portuguese slave trade. Slavery was a central part of Islamic civilization, and it may be said that Arabs invented the African slave trade. Child tribute among Christians in the Balkans for centuries provided recruits for the Ottoman janissaries. The number of enslaved Africans transported to Muslim lands between the seventh and nineteenth century has been estimated to be as high as 14 million, a much higher figure than the one used in Patterns of Interaction . This compares to an estimated 11 million Africans shipped to the Western Hemisphere after 1650. Slavery in Africa and the Middle East did not disappear with the 1834 British imperial abolition but lasted into the twentieth century. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina remained strongholds of slavery and the slave trade throughout the nineteenth century.

What is missing from world history textbooks? That Muslim women today are seen by many men to be not much more than chattel; that, for these men, women are fit to be servants and breeders; and that a wife s autonomy is interpreted as a sign of female disobedience and disrespect. Patterns of Interaction includes a two-page four-color folio of photographs with educational captions of Wedding Rituals Around The World. ( ( Remember the kind of light, pictorial subject matter that textbook editors incline toward in the first place. ) A bridal fair among Berbers in Morocco is presented as a happy quirk of local custom in which courtship lasts three days. What goes unsaid is that such bridal fairs are essentially places where marriages are arranged and where fathers negotiate dowries ( essentially selling their daughters) . Grooms take home brides sheathed in burkas, henceforth to serve and obey and breed. Here is one more example of textbook unwillingness or inability to confront profound questions regarding the status of Muslim women, sidestepping the issues with the exotic and picturesque.

Why Textbooks Changed During the last decade, for good reasons, world history textbooks have rapidly expanded their coverage of non-Western civilizations. European political history, educators agree, is not a sufficient curriculum. State frameworks from California to Massachusetts have acted as incentives to improved scope and sequence. But what constitutes the right balance between Western and non-Western lessons continues to vex curriculum experts. Multicultural activists, academic scholars, and textbook editors, in the words of UCLA historian Gary B. Nash, are determined to redistribute historical capital and politicize historical content. 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 cross- cultural and global sensitivity.

Multiculturalism s universal appeal at the beginning of the 1990s lay in its pledge to broaden the nation s understanding of the past and improve the balance of old and new history. A dozen years later, social studies curricula may present Western civilization, the American nation, and industrial democracy as negative and exploitative historical forces. Constitutional values such as government by consent, rule of law, a loyal opposition, separation of church and state, and human rights go unnoticed or are shown up for their lapses, even as most American parents, voters, and school boards still believe the nation to be a sentinel of opportunity and freedom.

A large part of Islamic political action in the U. S. involves the symbolism of contemporary victimization, using discrimination and abrogation of civil rights as chips. . Lecturing other Americans on the historical evils of xenophobia and racism is a versatile and reliable political tool. Organized Muslims assert they are persecuted, mocked and ridiculed, stereotyped, subjected to smear campaigns, and victimized by hate crimes. Anti-Muslim McCarthyism is in the air, , according to the Committee on American-Islamic Relations ( CAIR) , a view echoed by Stanford historian Joel Beinin, president of the Middle East Studies Association. 20 Historians and foreign policy specialists who describe dire aspects of Islam risk ad hominem attacks as Zionists, imperialists, and bigots.

Recovering History If world history is to examine all cultures, non-Western civilizations should be subject to the same standards of achievement and criticism, codes of right and wrong, and ideals of social justice as the West. But this is not the case, and the resulting double standard leads to evasions and lies in lessons involving the Third World. Textbook editors tread lightly on Islamic ( and other non-Western) institutions that would be vigorously condemned if they were practiced in the Western world. Why are these text producers suspending or contradicting their principles? The apparent answer is that multiculturalism and cross-cultural sensitivity trump all other themes in today s social studies and civic education. Thus, doctored curricula and altered world history textbooks prevail.

How world history textbooks confect Islam and how this happens are dual concerns. The corruption of history and social studies textbooks suggests a more obvious civic problem than it did before the 2001 air attacks on New York City and Washington. Not too long ago, who are we as a nation seemed to be an important but essentially academic question. . Now it appears to be a public matter whose answer will in part determine the United States vitality in the future, its outlook toward power, and its definition of an international role in the twenty-first century. If not the Council on Islamic Education or Council on American-Islamic Relations, some force in the nation s Muslim educational community should help textbook editors explain Islam, not try to trim history in order to inflate and misrepresent its intentions and institutions.

How Islamic civilization chooses to co-exist with the world community and the U. S. in the twenty-first century has major implications for national and international security. A failure to face this fact may tranquilize domestic anxiety and advance the idea of human fellowship. Domestic Islamists and their allies seek to dampen critical analysis of Islam inside and outside the classroom. Distorted world history textbooks are a symptom of this phenomenon.

In American classrooms, it is complacency, not anti-Americanism, that is ascendant. Students and teachers alike are sedated by textbook happy talk. They encounter and take as truth an incomplete, shallow or falsified version of Islamic society and law. In brief sections on terrorism, world history textbooks cite examples of Japan, Northern Ireland, Oklahoma City, blending militant Islam by nation and incident into a global stew. These evasions make it difficult or impossible for teachers and students to grasp the broad nature of global security and geopolitical conflict.

Senate Panel Hears that Ignorance of U.S. History Poses Major Security Threat

He said only three colleges in the United States require a course on the Constitution in order to graduate -- and those are the three major military academies (the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs).

Who Will Defend American Values? Eighty-four percent of college students today do not believe that Western culture is superior to Arab culture according to a newly released poll funded by Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (a project by Empower.org) and former Secretary of Education William Bennett.

Considered by Empower America to be "the single most extensive survey of college students' attitudes about terrorism, the Middle East and the Bush administration this year," the poll reveals that high percentages of college students quite simply lack any pride in their country.

According to the poll, 70 percent of American college students would not serve in the armed forces if sent abroad, while 48 percent openly declared that they would evade a draft.

Rather than holding terrorists solely responsible for their actions on September 11, college students partially blamed the U.S. government for the attacks, as 57 percent of college students stated that United States policies are "at least somewhat responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks."

"Think Like a Muslim" Could it be that an important textbook is proselytizing American 12-year-olds to convert to Islam?

"'Become a Muslim Warrior.'"Militant Islamic lobbying groups want Islam taught as the true religion, not as an academic subject. They take advantage of this indulgence, exerting pressure on school systems and on textbook writers. Not surprisingly, Interaction Publishers thanks two militant Islamic organizations by name (the Islamic Education and Information Center and the Council on Islamic Education) for their "many suggestions."

Islamic Law & its Challenge To Western Civilization
What is Jihad - article by Daniel Pipes One answer came last week, when Saddam Hussein had his Islamic leaders appeal to Muslims worldwide to join his jihad to defeat the "wicked Americans" should they attack Iraq; then he himself threatened the United States with jihad.
America, Islam, Jihad, and Terrorism I believe that Muslims will one day detonate a nuclear warhead, or warheads, in large American cities.
Jihad: The Teachings of Islam from its primary sources - the Qur ... [Note: This is a 26 page study. Please don't begin unless you intend to carefully and fully read all these verses from the Quran and the traditions on the subject of Jihad. It is my intent simply to make it possible for you to make your own judgment as to the teaching of Islam about Jihad.]
The [Suicide] Jihad Menace - article by Daniel Pipes ...Islamists consider suicide as not just legitimate but highly commendable when undertaken for reasons of jihad (sacred war). Going into war knowing with certainty that one will die, they argue, is not suicide (intihar) but martyrdom (istishhad), a much-praised form of self-sacrifice in the path of God, a way to win the eternal affection of the houris in paradise.
The Sources and Tenets of Shi'ite Islam Redemption through suffering has thus become one of the major tenets of Shi'ite Islam, although it is not redemption through the vicarious atonement wrought through the sufferings of another, as in Christianity.

Islam's Immigrant Invasion of Europe: What sense is there in respecting those who don’t respect us?

Westerners think mistakenly that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are similar religions that hold slightly different doctrines about salvation and God's nature. This is a profound mistake. The sacred texts of these religions make very different statements about government, economics, and nations. Islam Review - Presented by The Pen vs. the Sword Featured ... *****Islam: the Facade, the Facts
The Attack On The World Trade Center And The Pentagon

Secularists

are Muslims who do not have a knowledge of the contents of the Quran and only know a verse or two to justify enjoying their life such as: "Wealth and children are the adornment of the life of this world" (Surat AI-Kahf 18:46).

Moderates

know the Quran but seek to make their faith relevant to modern life. They try to reconcile the contradicting verses in the Quran in such a way that Muslims may tolerate Jews and Christians living among them. They emphasize the verses that came to the Prophet Muhammad when he was weak militarily and in need of the support of Jews and Christians.

Does Islam Promote Peace? Are Muslims for peace because of Islam or in spite of Islam?

Islam means Peace, so they tell us! Several articles by Silas investigate aspects of Muhammad's life and actions that raise questions regarding his prophethood which is the core doctrine of Islam: Muhammad and the Death of Kinana, The Death of Muhammad, Muhammad, Aisha, Islam, and Child Brides. Further: A Rebuttal of Jamal Badawi's "Wife Beating".

Being a non-Muslim under Islamic rule:The theory and the reality ...

The central goal of Islam is to establish Islamic law in every country, and this is the declared purpose of many Islamic organizations also in the USA and in Europe. What could the implications be for your life? What can we learn from the past?

Rights of Non-Muslims in an Islamic State
The Unveiling of Pakistan exposes the current cruel reality
Muhammad's letter to the Julanda Brothers of Oman
The Jizyah Tax: Equality And Dignity Under Islamic Law?
The Massacres of the Khilafah
The Exclusion of the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula
The Process of Islamization in Egypt
The Punishment of the Apostate According to Islamic Law by Abul Ala Mawdudi
also discusses many general issues of non-Muslims in an Islamic state
Section One and Two of Behind the Veil
Project: Open Book (On the current persecution of Christians in the Islamic world)
To Kill and To Die In The Name of Allah