SPREADING ISLAM THROUGH CHRISTIAN & PUBLIC SCHOOLS
By Berit Kjos
November 11, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
"Medieval and Early Modern Times captures each student's imagination by starting every chapter with a story." The McDougal-Littell Website
"While seventh-grade textbooks describe Islam in glowing language, they portray Christianity in harsh light.... Islam is featured as a model of interfaith tolerance...." The American Textbook Council, [2]
"When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them.."[3] Qur'an [Sura] 9:5
Our friend Tom enrolled his seventh grade son in a local Christian school this year. But he felt a bit uneasy when he saw the new history text. And as he leafed through the pages of World History: Medieval and Early Modern Times (a standard nationwide textbook), his concern grew.
The dramatic images, evocative suggestions and interesting group assignments would probably prevent boredom, but what would his son actually learn? How accurate were the lessons? And most important: What kinds of values would they instill?
Page 4 (in the section on "Strategies") told students to "Try to visualize the people, places, and events you read about."[4] With all the inspiring stories and pictures, that should be easy! Group dialogue and peer consensus would help seal those biased impressions! This was not what Tom expected from a Christian school!
The first unit dealt with the Roman Empire. It had nothing nice to say about Christianity -- not a word about the courage, commitment and charity of the persecuted Christians.
The second unit covered "The Growth of Islam." It began with an inspirational story that built a positive context for the rest of the chapter: Thirteen-year-old Ayesha and her family went on a hajj [pilgrimage] with "nearly 100,000" fellow Muslims ("a gross exaggeration"[2,p.19]) to Mecca back in 632 A.D. After the long, hot journey, "Ayesha tells [her brother] Yazid that the trip has been very hard, but it was also satisfying. They agree with their parents that being near Muhammad was especially meaningful."[4,p.83]
This warm introduction to Muhammad was followed by stirring descriptions of Islam's miraculous beginnings, noble beliefs, vast conquests, amazing scientific discoveries, and exceptional tolerance toward unbelievers. But were they true?
The facts are far less flattering. Back in the 7th century, large Muslim armies fanned out in different directions, forcing their way through the Middle East, Central Asia, northern Africa and southern Europe. Resisters were massacred or enslaved, while the vast "unbelieving" masses became taxpaying subjects at the mercy of Muslim rulers. Jews and Christians [dhimmis] were held captive to the demeaning rules of dhimmitude ["protection']. Here's a brief explanation from "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance,"
"Jews and Christians are termed 'People of the Book' in the Qur’an—that is, communities that have received a genuine revelation from Allah. That’s why they’re offered this 'protection' in an Islamic state. However, the Qur’an also teaches that both Jews and Christians have incurred the curse of Allah (Sura 5:60 and others) for their refusal to receive Muhammad as a legitimate prophet and his Qur’an as a book from Allah.... In fact, the Sharia dictates that such a 'protection' agreement... 'is only valid when the subject peoples follow the rules of Islam..."[5]
Those rules included special dhimmi clothing that shows the Christian's low social status, humble submission to Muslims everywhere, a ban on evangelizing or building new churches, and many others. The constant threat of punishment (i.e. loss of "protection" which often meant death or slavery) -- along with the crushing tax for "unbelievers" -- broke down resistance to Islamic conversion. In vast regions around the Mediterranean, Christian communities were virtually wiped out.
Yet the textbook tells students that the conquered masses were generally impressed by Islam and willingly converted:
"For more than 20 years, Muhammad had spread the word of Allah across the Arabian peninsula. He had begun to establish a Muslim Empire. ... Islam brought order, justice, and hope of heaven into their lives."[4,p.99]
"There was much blending of cultures under Muslim rule. Over time, many peoples in Muslim-ruled territories converted to Islam. They were attracted by Islam's message of equality and hope for salvation."[4,p.101]
To make sure students don't miss that last point, it's repeated on page 105:
"By 661, the Muslim Empire had been expanded to nearly four times its size by Muhammad's successors. It then included all of Southwest Asia and stretched into North Africa. ... Many conquered people became Muslims. They found Islam's message of equality and hope attractive."
Tom was stunned! Why this idealization of Islam? There was no such support for "Christianity." [See note] In the section on the Crusades (to retake the "Holy Land"), Christians were presented as violent attackers. The fact that Jerusalem was central to both Jewish and Christian history was ignored. While most Crusaders tended to be mercenaries rather than "Christians," such bias against any semblance of "Christianity" is striking.
References to slavery were just as misleading. "While Christian belligerence is magnified, Islamic inequality, subjugation, and enslavement get the airbrush," wrote Gilbert T. Sewall in an excellent report titled "Islam in the Classroom: What the textbooks tell us." After examining the six main World History texts for junior high students, he and The American Textbook Council concluded that--
"Textbooks mention Islamic slavery only obliquely... or not at all. Enslaved Africans and Slavs were transported to Muslim lands from the eighth century on. Slaves were accumulated through conquest, tribute, and sale....
"Muslim enslavement went on from the Balkans to Africa and Central Asia, and the estimated fourteen million slaves taken captive by Muslim rulers all over the world was a larger population than the eleven million Africans exported to the New World before 1850. In the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, in the late nineteenth century, an estimated twenty-five thousand slaves were traded annually."[2,p.23]
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In the chapters on "European Renaissance and Reformation" the light of political correctness shone briefly on the Protestant Church. To help students internalize a new view of Christianity, the text included a story about Martin Luther -- an excerpt from a biographical children's book by the notoriously liberal pastor, Harry Emerson Fosdick. Dr. Fosdick led Manhattan's large interdenominational Riverside Church built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. No wonder his excerpts misrepresented the courage and convictions behind Luther's battle against theological corruption. Missing were Luther's famous words, "Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God." [4] [4,p.467-469]
In contrast to the negative and confusing treatment of Christianity, the "Five Pillars of Islam" got plenty of positive attention. This set of basic rules was repeated several times throughout the book. Page 95 explains their significance:
"Muslims try to connect their personal and religious lives. They live their religion and serve their community by following the Five Pillars of Islam. These are the five duties all Muslims must perform to demonstrate their submission to the will of God."
"Muslims believe the Quran is the word of God as revealed to Muhammad. Jews and Christians also believe that God's word is revealed in their holy books. But Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the final book. They also think that Muhammad is the last prophet."[4]
Since Muhammad was the "last prophet," his teachings supposedly supersede the teachings of Jesus. And in spite of the textbook's assurances of hope and tolerance, Islam's global aims and militant threats are every bit as real today as in the seventh century. Whether living in the East or the West, its leaders still envision global Islamic dominion and religious supremacy -- and the Qur'an still calls Muhammad's followers to jihad:
"And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah." (Sura 2.193, 8.39)
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah... out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection." (Sura 9.29)
"Surely Allah loves those who fight in His way..." (Sura 61.4)
"...surely the unbelievers are your open enemy." (Sura 4:101)
"They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them..." (Sura 4:89) [3]
This recent article from the British Times Online illustrates this ongoing threat:
"The first brick was thrown through the sitting room window at one in the morning, waking Nissar Hussein, his wife and five children with a terrifying start.... The victim of a three-year campaign of religious hatred, Mr. Hussein’s car has also been rammed and torched.... His car, walls and windows have been daubed in graffiti: 'Christian bastard'....
"Mr. Hussein... is one of a growing number of former Muslims in Britain who face not just being shunned by family and community, but attacked, kidnapped, and in some cases killed. There is even a secret underground network to support and protect those who leave Islam.... For police, religious authorities and politicians, it is an issue so sensitive that they are accused by victims of refusing to respond to appeals for help....
"Muslims who lose their faith face execution or imprisonment, in line with traditional Muslim teaching in many Islamic countries including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Yemen. In the Netherlands, the former Muslim MP Ayan Hirsi Ali had to go into hiding after renouncing her faith on television....
"Yasmin [another convert to Christianity] has helped to set up a series of support groups across England, who have adopted a method of operating normally associated with dissidents in dictatorships, not democracies.... The family of an 18-year-old girl whom Yasmin was helping found that she had been hiding a Bible in her room, and visiting church secretly. 'I tried to do as much as possible to help her, but they took her to Pakistan ‘on holiday’. Three weeks later, she was drowned..."[6]
Why? How can this be happening in Europe! What has happened to Western objectivity, conviction and freedom?
The American Textbook Council helps answer that question. After a thorough examination of the primary US textbooks and their publishers, it concluded that--
"Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade. Willingly, they adjust the definition of jihad and Sharia or remove these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths that the editors fear activists will contest. Explicit facts that non-Muslims might find disturbing are varnished or deleted....Terrorism and Islam are uncoupled and the ultimate dangers of Islamic militancy hidden from view.
"None of this is accidental. Islamic organizations, willing to sow misinformation, are active in curriculum politics. These activists are eager to expunge any critical thought about Islam from textbooks and all public discourse. They are succeeding, assisted by partisan scholars and associations. It is not remarkable that Islamic organizations would try to use ready-made American political movements such as multiculturalism to adjust the history curriculum to their advantage. It is alarming that so many individuals with the power to shape the curriculum are willfully blind to or openly sympathetic with these efforts.
"Multiculturalists are determined that social studies curricula do not transmit 'Eurocentric'... presuppositions about Western history and society. Middle East centers on campuses promote an uncritical view of Islam, often with a caustic anti-Western spin. Historians actively interested in taking world history curricula in this direction are prominent in textbook authorship. Encouraged to do so by reputable authorities, textbook publishers court the Council on Islamic Education and other Muslim organizations—or at least try to appease them."[2,p.9]
In this context of global change, "Christians" such as Harry Emerson Fosdick fit right in. Like Muslims, he accepted the reality of a "Jesus" but denied His deity, resurrection, and miraculous birth. No wonder he was favored by the Rockefellers. He was no threat to their vision of socialist unity.
Though Islam is incompatible with the vision of multicultural solidarity, it's still one of the world's most effective weapons in its battle against absolute Truth. It provides globalist change agents with (1) an energizing crisis, (2) the diversity and tension needed to stimulate the dialectic process, and (3) an active partner in the war against Biblical Christianity.
Why is this important?
A spiritual war is raging! And the primary target in today's march toward a New World Order is Biblical Truth. It's no accident that the European media describes Christians as "hardliners" and "fighters"[7] but hardly dare mention the violent power behind the rising Muslim establishment. Or that the British government now allows Muslims to impose Sharia in their communities.[8] Or that countless critics have been assaulted or killed for their convictions. Or that "Hate Crime" laws may soon silence American dissenters.[9]
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Let me repeat two Scriptures that I often quote these days. We can't afford to ignore them:
"...we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand..." Ephesians 6:10-12
"Do not be discouraged... For the battle is not yours, but God’s.” 2 Chronicles 20:15
Footnotes:
** Explaining our references to "Christianity: In the textbooks, as well as in our culture, Christianity means different things. While the references to Islam refer to a religious and political system based on the Qur'an, the historical meaning of Christianity varies. It may mean "cultural Christianity," politicized Christianity, or Biblical Christianity. See Biblical versus Cultural Christianity
Endnotes:
1,
World
History: Medieval and Early Modern Times
2,
Islam in the
classroom
3,
The
Holy Qur'an, University of Virginia Library
4,
World History: Medieval and Early Modern (McDougal Littell, 2008.)
5,
The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims, edited
by Robert Spencer (Prometheus Books, 2005), p. 535
6,
Muslim
apostates cast out and at risk from faith and family
7,
Germany: Evangelicals
Portrayed as Dangerous Elements
8,
Sharia
courts operating in Britain
9,
Why
"Hate crime" laws would ban Biblical Christianity
� 2008 Berit Kjos - All Rights Reserved
