Posted on 10/11/2006 9:36:20 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
GENEVA - The Muslim world and the West have a big communication problem.
While most Americans tune into the news and scratch their heads over Muslims rioting in the streets about cartoons, Muslims across the globe learn much of what they know about our culture from one of the most popular shows in the world - "Jerry Springer."
American students can come to an understanding of the faith if they know the similarities between Islam, Christianity and Judaism and can distinguish between historic Islam and the relatively recent rise of violent fundamentalism, said Audrey Shabbas, an Islamic scholar and director of Arab World and Islamic Resources, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating American students about Islam.
Shabbas explained the history and provided resources for around 20 teachers from area school districts Tuesday during a workshop hosted by Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
"We need to understand that Islam is part of the Judeo-Christian heritage, it's not a religion out of left field," said Shabbas, a University of California at Berkeley-educated teacher and Shia Muslim.
Many of the teachers described the session as an eye-opening experience that will help them deal with a complex and difficult topic.
Muslims believe that Mohammed, the 7th century A.D. founder of the faith, is the last in a line of prophets that began with Abraham and continued through Moses, David and Jesus. The Koran, the Muslim holy book, contains what Muslims believe is the literal word of God revealed to Mohammed through the direct intervention of the Archangel Gabriel.
Muslims have a great reverence for other holy texts, Shabbas said, and Koran describes three other books that contain the eternal truth: The Torah, the Psalms and the Gospels.
"You can't be a good Muslim if you don't love Jesus," Shabbas said.
One of the most important points in understanding Islam is understanding who Muslims are, Shabbas said.
While Arab sheiks might be the first image that comes to mind, the vast majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims live outside of the Middle East, she said. Most Muslims live in Asia, with the highest population residing in Indonesia. Furthermore, not all Arabs are Muslims, she said, adding that there are numerous Christian and Jewish Arabs in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Muslims are not all uniformly pious, Shabbas said.
"Students need to know that just because someone calls themselves a Muslim doesn't mean that they follow Islam," she said, likening many Muslims to Catholics who retain their identity but stopped attending Mass.
Contrary to popular belief, Islam is not a historically violent religion, Shabbas said, with nearly all reputable scholars rejecting the notion that Islam was spread by the sword. When Mohammed returned to Mecca from Medina, she said, keepers of the city laid down their arms and let in the throng.
"It was one of the greatest acts of non-violence," Shabbas said.
Muslim armies did fight, but these were conflicts over territory, not religion, she said.
Just as teachers don't categorize the Holocaust as an event driven by Christians in a predominantly Christian country, neither should they ascribe religious meaning behind the terrorist attacks of today, she said.
Shabbas rejects the idea of "a clash of civilizations," arguing instead that organizations like al-Qaida and the Taliban espouse perverted versions of Islam and have killed many more Muslims who don't agree with them than Christians or Jews, she said.
She also drew a distinction between the terrorist network and Iraqis fighting a "legitimate struggle against an illegal occupation."
"There are a lot of people in the world who are ticked off at the last few decades of American foreign policy, not just Muslims," she said.
Among the texts and reference books arrayed on a table at the front of the classroom was a Harper's Magazine article by George McGovern and William Polk titled "The Way out of War," a point-by-point exit strategy from Iraq. Shabbas urged everyone to read it.
Teachers who attended the free workshop said that they were surprised to learn a few things about Islam and will definitely bring some of the ideas back to the classroom.
"This has challenged some of the preconceived notions that I had," said Bernie Wegman, a ninth- and 10th-grade global history teacher at Romulus Central School.
He said he was interested to hear that most Middle Easterners identify themselves based on language rather than religion. Turkish-speaking Muslims in Turkey, for instance, have a completely different history and experience than Arabic-speaking Jordanians.
"The textbooks just kind of lump them together," he said.
Wegman and other teachers agreed that its hard to teach complicated issues such as Islam in the current climate.
"It's a tough sell, with the media being the way it is," said Chris DePalma, a high school social studies teacher at Marcus Whitman. "With a president as war-like as ours, I get a lot of comments like 'Why don't we just nuke them all?'"
He added that, with American soldiers in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan, it can be hard to get students to open their minds and "get an unbiased opinion."
Tuesday's session was the first in a three-part Asia Teaching Partnership, said Sherry Gibbon, a member of the Colleges' education faculty and director of the program. Next month, teachers will learn about Vietnam and Southeast Asia and then China in December. The series, the result of a partnership between the Colleges and the Wayne-Finger Lakes Teacher Resource Center, is designed with the state Regents test in mind.
Learning all about glorious Islam, TROP(tm) while getting their throats cut, figuratively, and eventually, literally.
Your child can now learn how to blow up one another. What a country!!
No they don't. Everybody is communicating quite clearly, actually.
What we have here is not failure to communicate. What we have here is what my college sociology professor called "an ultimate ethical disagreement."
"Ms Crabapple, can you explain something? If a woman is raped in a Muslim country, why is the punishment to publicly execute her?"
"I'm confused, Ms Crabapple: when Mohammad married his 6-year-old wife, he waited until she was 9 before he had sex with her. Did he really think that 6 was too young but that 9 was a good age for that?"
Hahahahaha! Just like two peas in a pod!
Another of Mohammad's lies.
Hah!
"There are a lot of people in the world who are ticked off at the last few decades of American foreign policy, not just Muslims," she said.
This is my favorite part -- support for the noble "freedom fighters" and "minutemen" working to free Iraq from the evil imperialist crusaders and their Zionist overlords.
No, Chris. Nice try.
Truth is, with neoliberal teachers like you slamming everything conservative, Republican or Christian, and letting their students know what they'd better not ever say, it's impossible for students to feel free and unthreatened to truly open up. Their grades can suffer, and they know it.
And Chris, you know it's true.
VOUCHERS!
732 - Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe.
These liberal teachers will be so surprised to learn that gay rights and abortion are taboo in the Islamic World.
Yes. So?
SATAN is part of the Judeo-Christian heritage, too...
So, where does this leave us?
I learned everything I needed to know about Muslim culture on 9/11.
What ever happened to seperation of church and state?
Since when did the elites' ever promote an understanding of Christianity?
Are these liberals secretly fascinated with Ilsam and their culture of death? or are they cowards too afraid to confront evil?
I see liberal bash Christians but never criticize
one facet of Islam.
If Muslims want to pray in classrooms will the liberal
establishment protest? I doubt it.
If that were true, they would pay attention to what Jesus said about who He was.
Islam has the same problem with Jesus as the new-agers and the secular-humanists. All want to make him a prophet/avatar/great moral teacher--some status less than God incarnate. So they revere a theoretical Jesus that had nothing to do with the historic Jesus.
Jesus said he was much more than a prophet--he claimed that all power of judgment over creation had been given to Him by the Father, for example. Pretty big claim. So he was either crazy, a liar, or he was the Son of God. The muslims deny that and reserve all judgment to Allah.
So why do the muslims/new-agers/secular humanists bother to 'revere' or 'respect' a prophet/avatar/great-moral-teacher who was either crazy or a liar?
The reason, of course, is they can't ignore Him. His three year ministry was the biggest inflection point in human history. So they seek to include Him but to minimize Him.
Crusades.
Oooh. Lezbos in burquas. Now there's an interesting combo...
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