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Islam is one of the most important issues of our time, but you wouldn't know it from reading a high school textbook. What students learn makes it almost impossible to understand Islam in history or the world today, much less what fuels Islam's challenge to peace and international security. A review of leading textbooks used in New York City and nationwide reveals they deliberately misrepresent Islamic history, jihad, Islamic law (sharia), global terrorism, and more. Thinking that jihad is "holy war" is wrong, students are told. Instead textbooks insist it is merely an effort to improve oneself and society. "Muslims...

Governor vetoes climate change curriculum California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools' curriculum. The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject. In January, the state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, by a 26-13 vote. Only two Republicans supported the proposal. In his veto statement, Schwarzenegger said he supported education that spotlights the dangers of climate change. However, the Republican...

Islamofascism: A new study confirms our "ally" Saudi Arabia is still poisoning young Muslim minds with anti-Western textbooks. So? Its hate-filled graduates are enrolling at our colleges.The Hudson Institute reviewed the 2007-08 textbooks distributed by the Saudi Ministry of Education and found that, despite promised reforms, the kingdom still teaches students to "hate the infidels." The texts assert that it's "permissible" for a Muslim to kill an "apostate," an "adulterer," a "homosexual," as well as non-Muslims practicing "polytheism," or Christianity. The violent ideology is introduced in a religion textbook in the first grade and reinforced and developed in following years...

Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice exams, the bane of any fourth-grader's existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report last week by the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, it seems that the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education finds them useful, too. Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence," in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God: Q....

WASHINGTON — Two years after protracted American-Saudi negotiations persuaded the State Department that the Saudis would remove religious intolerance from their national textbooks, a new study finds the books still portray non-Sunni Muslims as the enemies of true believers. The report from the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute finds that the Saudi textbooks are filled with the austere supremacism of the Wahhabi sect of Islam, despite promises from the Kingdom in 2006 to alter them. For example, a textbook for 10th graders on Islamic jurisprudence not only says it is permissible in Islam to murder a homosexual,...

Despite a promise to remove attacks on other faiths from the public school curriculum, Saudi Arabia's state-produced textbooks still refer to Jews and Christians as apes and swine, insist that Jews conspire to take over the world and on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill the Jews, says the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. The textbooks, used by five million students in the kingdom every year, as well as in many Saudi-funded institutions outside the country, also attack homosexuals and Muslims who do not practice a fundamentalist form of Islam....

By Jerry Markon and Ben Hubbard Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, July 15, 2008; Page B01 A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. Saudi officials acknowledged that the textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy had contained inflammatory material since at least the mid-1990s but said they ordered revisions in...

American School Books Redefine 'Jihad' to Exclude Violence -- Where is Media? By Warner Todd Huston | June 8, 2008 - 21:49 ET In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam...

(CNSNews.com) - Religious textbooks at the Islamic Saudi Academy (IPA) in Fairfax, Va., which have sparked controversy for content that allegedly promotes violence and hatred toward non-Muslims, will be rewritten and reissued by the time students return to school in the fall, said school officials. "We hope the books will be clean from any kind of misunderstanding that people think about," the head of Islamic teachings at the academy, who asked not to be named, told Cybercast News Service on Tuesday. The IPA official, however, denied that the books used until now contain lessons that teach children to hate non-Muslims...

State Department officials said Thursday they have no plans to close a Saudi-financed Islamic school in Northern Virginia that has failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in textbooks. "They told us they would revise the textbooks by the 2008 school year," State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said. "We don't plan to take additional action apart from the discussions that have been going on with the Saudi government." Results released Wednesday from a federal investigation into the Islamic Saudi Academy - with campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax - found textbooks at the 900-student private school had passages that blame the...

In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam of all outrage and violence. Will the media follow this story and report that our children are being exposed to Islamic propaganda like...

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal investigation released Wednesday. Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists."

The books say it’s OK for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts McLEAN, Va. - Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal investigation released Wednesday. Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists." The passages were found in selected textbooks used during the 2007-08 school year by the Islamic Saudi Academy, which teaches 900 students in...

A textbook monitoring group said that Maryland middle and high school students will be required to read about Islamic teachings that have been dumbed down and are products of political correctness. According to the New York Examiner, a new report issued by the American Textbook Council said that administrators who approved books for use in the Montgomery County school district caved into pressure by pro-Islamic groups seeking to present a less violent interpretation of Islam. Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, stated that, for example, the definition of jihad has gone through "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation...

A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history. "Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths." Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing...

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country. “ ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ are regular words that have now been drafted into the rhetorical arsenal of creationists,” said Kathy Miller, director of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that promotes religious freedom. The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase...

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge. Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.” The words are “strengths and weaknesses.” Starting this summer, the state education board will...

TIPP CITY, Ohio — When 83-year-old Edmund Jackson uses a hand trimmer to clip the grass, one of the 22 pieces of shrapnel in his right arm dances under the skin of his wrist. ---- snip ---- The schoolbook program is designed to spark greater interest in history by giving students an emotional connection to it and showing them it’s made by real people like themselves.

NEW YORK — Can it be true? That Islamic schools in the United States teach hatred towards American Christians and Jews? The Washington Post on Monday revealed that one such school outside Washington, D.C., uses textbooks teaching 11th graders that "the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews." Other accredited Islamic schools in America have world maps on classroom walls that exclude Israel. Some such schools promote class discussions that portray Usama bin Laden as "simply the victim of … prejudice" against...

History textbooks being used by hundreds of thousands of public school students across the U.S. are blatantly promoting Islam, according to a new report by an independent organization that researches and reviews textbooks. WND has reported several times on issues involving the promotion of Islam in public school texts, including a recent situation in which California parents complained their children were being taught that "jihad" to Muslims means "doing good works. The new report is from the American Textbook Council, which was established in 1989 as an independent national research organization to review social studies textbooks and advance the quality...

One of the authors of "Mosaic of Thought" has apologized for mistakenly writing that Spartanburg was the scene of some violent incidents during the desegregation era. Inaccurate college textbook slams Spartanburg Violent integration incidents occurred in another city; errors to be fixed in 2nd edition By Linda Conley Published: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | Updated: 9:16 am Picture this: A teacher is discussing with her students the violence and unrest that occurred in America when public schools integrated almost 40 years ago. The example she is using from her class textbook is the violence that occurred in Spartanburg County. The...

College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell “unbundled” versions of the books — minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-expensive titles. The bill is a good first step. But colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway...

It seems like a distant past now, but when Sen. Barack Obama delivered his "A More Perfect Union" speech in mid-March, commentators were quick to call it "historic." Now, though, as we are — or he is — knee deep in "bitterness" and loss in Pennsylvania, chances may be slimmer that his speech will make it into mainstream history textbooks. "At this point, it's too early to tell if it's soft soap or historic," says Gil Sewell, president of the American Textbook Council, a New York-based nonprofit group that reviews history and social studies textbooks. "I don't think the speech...

An advanced textbook on American government is drawing criticism from scholars for alleged errors concerning climate change and separation of church and state. The advanced textbook in question is called American Government (Houghton Mifflin) and was authored by James Q. Wilson and John J. Dilulio, Jr. Associated Press reports that a New Jersey high school student pointed out apparent errors in the textbook to the Center for Inquiry, which then released a "scathing report." Under criticism are statements that cause students to question whether the debate over "global warming" is really over, and whether the issue of "separation of church...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

A former teacher at an Islamic school, who alleged that it taught an offensive and racist view of non-Muslims, has been awarded £70,000 by an employment tribunal after winning his case for unfair dismissal. Colin Cook told the tribunal in Watford that pupils were taught from Arabic books that likened Jews and Christians to “monkeys” and “pigs” at The King Fahad Academy, which is funded and run by the Saudi Arabian Government. The tribunal ruled that Mr Cook, a British Muslim, was unfairly dismissed from his £36,000-a-year post at the school in Acton, West London, in December 2006 after blowing...

Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded. They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools. Student Matthew LaClair of Kearny, N.J., recently brought his concerns to the attention of the Center for...

McGraw-Hill Cos. spent $960,000 lobbying the government in 2007 on a range of issues including education and oversight of credit-rating agencies. According to a disclosure form posted Feb. 14 by the Senate's public records office, McGraw-Hill spent $440,000 in the first half of 2007 and $520,000 in the second half on lobbying. McGraw-Hill, which publishes textbooks and rates credit quality, lobbied on issues including the protection of intellectual property, No Child Left Behind and legislation affecting oversight of credit-rating agencies.

The St. Lucie County School District and the Consulate General of Mexico in Miami plan to announce Monday a plan to distribute free Spanish-language textbooks to five schools, create some sister-schools and, perhaps, expand after-school tutoring options for parents with limited English-speaking abilities. The partnership was established by the district's Hispanic Advisory Council. The Consul General of Mexico in Miami, Juan Miguel Gutierrez Tinoco, is scheduled to attend a press conference and ceremony at 5 p.m. Monday at the school district offices in Fort Pierce in which he will deliver the textbooks and discuss the partnership. He also plans to...

I was sorting out some papers over the weekend ... and came upon one of my favorites. It's a page out of an "Activity Book" published by Harcourt Brace, now called Harcourt Education. This page is entitled "Rights & Wrongs" and comes from the Harcourt social studies textbook "United States in Modern Times." The heading for this page says: "In the late eighteenth century many people complained that the Constitution did not list rights of the people. So the authors of the Constitution decided to write a Bill of Rights. These first ten amendments to the Constitution state simply and...

(IsraelNN.com) A leader of Mahmoud Abbas's US-backed Fatah party has come out in support of the terrorist war being fought against US and British forces in Iraq. PA text books for school children also push attacks on American and British forces Mahmoud Ismail, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, expressed his support for the war on the US during an interview on official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV, which is under the control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. The clip was recorded and translated by Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors incitement on PA television. Ismail further defined the US -Britain...

A London school attended by the children of notorious hate preachers was forced to shred 2,000 textbooks used to poison pupils' minds after a public outcry, an employment tribunal has heard. Colin Cook, who formerly taught English at the King Fahad Academy in Acton, told a tribunal how pupils as young as five were taught from Arabic textbooks describing Jews as " monkeys" and Christians as "pigs". Under public pressure the academy agreed to destroy the books - but not before photocopying them for future use, he told the Watford tribunal. He also claimed that headteacher Dr Sumaya Alyusuf had...

School Textbooks Latest Target of Sexual Apartheid January 25, 2008 Adnkronos International ­ AKI Iranian authorities are looking at new restrictions that will create different school textbooks for boys and girls. Ali Reza Ali Ahmadi, responsible to the interim public education minister, told a seminar on textbooks there was a need to provide students with books according to "the requirements of age and sex" to satisfy their particular needs. "The spiritual, physical, and mental needs of boys and girls are not identical, and therefore textbooks that give them information cannot be the same," Ali Ahmadi told the seminar. "The goal...

According to M. J. Mcdermott, a meteorologist and Q13 Fox News (Seattle) weather reporter, the ongoing American mathematic illiteracy may be the result of misguided “reformed math” curriculum which fails to teach students the internationally recognized, efficient multiplication and division algorithms that older generations of Americans learned. Instead, children are encouraged to problem-solve without first developing efficient problem-solving techniques in multiplication and division. Math by CalculatorAs McDermott notes in her video, textbooks such as the 4th and 5th grade versions of Everyday Mathematics devote copious pages to non-germane topics such as a full-color 48-page world atlas to assist students in...

AUSTIN – Proposed math books for elementary school children and their teachers have resulted in one computation that publishers would just as soon erase – 109,263. That's the number of errors that were uncovered in proposed math textbooks that are under review by the State Board of Education for distribution to schools in the fall of 2008. The total number of errors was nearly five times the total for last year, thanks to one publisher whose books contained more than 86,000 errors – 79 percent of the total. Publishers will have until the spring to clean their books up. After...

Still not satisfied with the treatment of religions in her son's seventh-grade textbook, Korina Self aired her concerns Tuesday night at Lodi Unified's board meeting. Backed by nearly a dozen family members and friends, Self delivered a prepared statement asking the board to remove the book "History Alive!: The Medieval World and Beyond" from classrooms. "To know that a textbook was selected and put into use by our district that is blatantly one-sided, whitewashed, and that our children are being spoon-fed this information with sugar on top ... I feel is negligent and intolerable," Self said. Self stopped to gather...

TOKYO -- More than 100,000 people protested Saturday in southern Japan against the central government's order to modify school textbooks which say the country's army forced civilians to commit mass suicide at the end of World War II. Publishers of history textbooks were ordered in December to modify sections that said the Japanese army _ faced with an impending U.S. invasion in 1945 _ handed out grenades to residents in Okinawa and ordered them to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Americans.

As schools citywide open their doors today, a group critical of a new Arabic-language public school is stepping up its opposition efforts, broadening its campaign to target national school curricula.The group, a coalition of community members, parents, and organizations called Citizens for American Values in Public Education, is seeking to stop the national use of textbooks that address Middle Eastern studies in ways the group says are too narrowly focused on Islamic culture. The coalition is an outgrowth of the group Stop the Madrassa, which has strongly opposed the creation of an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn, the Khalil Gibran International...

Norma Gabler, who spent much of the past 46 years fighting for accuracy in textbooks, has died in Phoenix at the age of 84. Gabler and her husband, Mel, founded Educational Research Analysts, a nonprofit that describes itself as a conservation (sic) Christian organization. They began their crusade against textbook errors in 1961 after finding mistakes in their son's textbooks. Mel Gabler died in 2004. .... (A son) said his parents' work led to changes in the way textbooks were adopted. He said some publishers would submit their books to his parents before the approval process began so they could...

[snip] One book sold on the account, "Men, Women and Chainsaws," is an academic text about gender roles in horror films. The book advances the feminist theory of a "Final Woman" in modern slasher films, the idea that while many victims die at the hands of a killer, one plucky, independent woman always survives. Among the actresses cited in the book are Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween," Betsy Palmer in "Friday the 13th" and Jennifer Jason Leigh in "Eyes of A Stranger." ABCNews has learned the book was used in an academic course called "Contemporary Horror" which was taught at...

--snip--Sadly, my generation has spawned self-loathing Americans who actually believe that this country is evil. They have neither respect nor love for this nation. Rather they are being taught by today's academic community that America and its institutions should be held in contempt. --snip--

Just saw this on National live Japanese TV a few minutes ago. Our mouths dropped open in partial disbelief, but also with a cynical sense of "well, there they go again".The Japanese Government announced tonight that they are instructing all Japanese textbook publishing companies who produce history books for school children, to specifically take out an reference to "Japanese Imperial Army forcing Okinawa civilians to commit mass suicide during the Okinawa Campaign". This, however, is a historic truth, and well documented by the American military forces and Japanese/Okinawan survivors and eyewitnesses. It is history. But now the current Japanese...

Alert Abbas to PA textbooks [Palestinian 12th grade textbooks teach hating Israel, pursuing its destruction - religious duties.] By HAVIV RETTIG Talkbacks for this article: 11 "You can't have agreements while this kind of hatred is inculcated in the children," Knesset Education Committee Chairman Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad) said on Tuesday after seeing new 12th-grade textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority late last year. "I intend to demand from Prime Minister [Ehud Olmert] that he present the findings [of a new report on the textbooks] to Abu Mazen [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] at their next meeting," Melchior said. Melchior's statements at...

Homosexuality 101 – Coming to a School Near You Last night a good friend of mine called me in a panic. During a recent trip to the local zoo with her two young daughters they saw two men sitting on a wall making out. Her older daughter – being an inquisitive seven year old – asked her what the men where doing. Naturally she was appalled at both the lack of discretion displayed by the men, and the prospect of explaining to her child what they were doing. I jokingly told her not to say anything because her daughter’s school...

Islam is being taught in the nation's public schools as a religion to be embraced because "organized Islamists have gained control of textbook content," according to an organization that analyzes textbooks. The American Textbook Council has concluded that the situation is the consequence of "the interplay of determined Islamic political activists, textbook editors, and multiculturally minded social studies curriculum planners." It has gone so far that correcting the situation now becomes a problem, because "educational publishers and educational organizations have bought into claims propounded by Islamists – and have themselves become agents of misinformation." That comes from Gilbert T. Sewall,...

Clemson Board Member Les McCraw of Greenville (“Tension Inevitable at Great Universities” August 30) is to be congratulated for entering the debate now raging over the freshman campus-wide reading, “Truth and Beauty.” The content of education is important and board members should be paying attention to it. McCraw’s approach to the controversy comes in the form of a response to Professor J. David Woodard’s article (Clemson reading assignment offers no moral standard, August 25). Alas, Mr. McCraw’s contribution to the debate does not do much to help us appreciate “Truth and Beauty” but only tells us why Woodard’s comments should...

Knight Moves University officials continue to demonstrate hostility towards Catholicism that borders on persecution. We have posted stories on the failure of college administrators to take action when student newspapers publish sacrilegious cartoons. Their declarations of support for freedom of the press would be more believable if they took the same approach towards sketches that offend Islamic and Gay Rights groups. Add to the mix the University of Wisconsin’s attempt to ban the Knights of Columbus. The Catholic fraternity is already invisible enough on cutting-edge campuses loosely affiliated with the Church, such as Georgetown’s. “Although the Knights have been a...

Two professors recently warned readers to beware of the Israeli Lobby in the United States. Although they admitted that this network has not been much in evidence on American campuses, they did note the efforts of Jewish philanthropists to redress the imbalance of so-called Middle East Studies Departments. As we pointed out, that fundraising effort is dwarfed by those with deep pockets who support the status quo in higher education. Meanwhile, The Jewish Week in New York is warning students that they could expect more conflict in the coming school year. Their concerns are probably well-founded. Middle East studies courses...

SACRAMENTO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have barred textbooks from using language that would be discriminatory to gays, saying the state's education laws already prevent discrimination. The bill's author, state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, called the veto "inexplicable." Kuehl's bill initially would have required California's social science textbooks to include the historical contributions of homosexuals, but the state Assembly amended it at her request in an effort to avoid a veto from the Republican governor. The final version of SB 1437 would have prohibited any negative portrayal of homosexuals in textbooks and other instructional material, expanding current...

Not too long ago I wrote an article entitled Women’s MisStudies about a debate between Professor Mike Adams of University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Dean Gay L. Gullickson of University of Maryland College Park. The debate was over Women’s Studies programs and Women’s Resource Centers. Included in my article was this passage: “I was able to ask Gullickson how she can say that women’s studies is good for research when, as Carrie Lukas points out in her new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism, these texts have misinformation and missing information that women need to make...