| Submit your comments on this article |
| Fifth Column |
| Scottsdale, AZ: sneaking Islam past parents |
| 2005-02-28 |
| "My child is in the 7th grade in Scottsdale, Arizona. The school's officially adopted social studies textbook is titled Across the Centuries and is published by Houghton Mifflin. However, Across the Centuries has been shelved and the school is piloting a brand new book from Teacher's Curriculum Institute, aka TCI, titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond (this book is not permitted to go home). In my opinion, this book is highly biased towards Islam, historically incorrect and also includes fake history along with Islamic religious proselytizing and indoctrination techniques. The school has spent approximately 5 weeks of the third quarter grading period teaching Islam to 12 and 13 year olds. The children had to write a full biography on the life of Muhammad, using the information from the textbook - an extremely indoctrinating exercise. This biography will be a large portion of their grade for the 8 week period... The school hosted two professional Muslim speakers, from the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona, to speak to all 7th grade social studies classes. This took one whole day. The Muslim speakers brought prayer rugs and taught the children to pray the Muslim way. I also believe that there were recitations from the Koran and possibly an Islamic "fashion show". To the best of my knowledge, in this Islamic program, there are none of the negative aspects of Islam touched upon. It is my opinion that in the book, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, Christians are trounced and portrayed as murderers of the Muslim and Jewish people. The Jewish people are only mentioned, and very briefly, in order to be victimized, persecuted and murdered by the Christians. All the while, Islam builds great and grand new empires, has many great and wonderful achievements in architecture, education, science, geography, mathematics, medicine, literature, art and music, and ultimately rules benevolently over the Jewish and Christian people..." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #17 How about ... Recall election "snuck past" the members of the school board who voted for the Islamic cirriculum. No one on the board thought anything was wrong until they showed up for work one day, and thier personal belongings were carelessly tossed into a box, and set in the hallway. The security guard came up and told them the former board members had two minutes to leave the building ... |
| Posted by: BigEd 2005-02-28 4:05:24 PM |
| #16 Parents are not involved enough yet the school doesn't allow the kids to take the book home? Contradiction? Fear of being caught? |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-02-28 2:40:35 PM |
| #15 I bet the excuse is that they only have one classroom set, blah...blah....blah. |
| Posted by: Desert Blondie 2005-02-28 2:30:21 PM |
| #14 Not to worry folks. The ACLU will be all over the school reminding them, through a law suit, of the "separation of religion and state" clause found in their copy of the Constitution. YEAH! RIGHT! |
| Posted by: GK 2005-02-28 1:37:31 PM |
| #13 Crazy Fool - lol! not allowed to bring the books home? Where's the tar and feathers. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-02-28 1:33:40 PM |
| #12 After History, the children have Music class where they're taught the invaluable achievements of gangsta rap. |
| Posted by: shellback 2005-02-28 1:28:01 PM |
| #11 If the children are not allowed to bring that book home, what other books are they not allowed to bring home? Time to run for the school board. |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-02-28 12:41:17 PM |
| #10 http://www.historytextbooks.org/islam.htm Islamic organizations act as domestic textbook "censors." Strictly speaking, since only governments censor books, the Islamists are merely agents of suppression, using educational publishers to do their bidding. But for years, publishers have ignored -- "stonewalled" -- those who have pressed them about motives, funding, legal status, and strong-arm tactics on the part of their Muslim "consultants." ... Anyone who is interested in world history or how Islam is covered in social studies classes should pay attention to a new seventh grade history textbook, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond. The textbook and its instructional materials are now being piloted in Scottsdale, Arizona. The program is almost certainly to be submitted in the important California adoption this spring. The publisher is Teachers' Curriculum Institute, a privately held company trying to break into the lucrative California textbook market. Based in Palo Alto and Sacramento, TCI's greatest advantage is being local. The student edition is an ill-written product printed on the cheap. Accompanying instructional materials are simply amateurish. By comparison, the Council on Islamic Education-inspired and often criticized Houghton Mifflin textbook for seventh graders, Across the Centuries, is an elegant tome with superior content, lessons, and instructional activities, on Islam and other subjects in medieval and world history. According to the History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond front matter, the chief author-advisor on Islam is Ayad Al-Qazzaz, professor of sociology at California State University, Sacramento. Al Quazzaz is a Muslim apologist, a frequent speaker in Northern California school districts promoting Islam and Arab causes. Al-Qazzaz also co-wrote AWAIR's Arab World Notebook. AWAIR stands for Arab World and Islamic Resources, an opaque, proselytizing "non-profit organization" that conducts teacher workshops and sells supplementary materials to schools. AWAIR is just as hermetic as the Orange County-California based Council on Islamic Education. An aggressive, organized effort to whitewash Islam permeates social studies textbooks. The passages below are instructive examples of misinformation directed at twelve-year-olds and their teachers. This classroom initiative is part of what Jon D. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard University, identifies as "a cottage industry [that] has sprung up to define jihad exclusively as an internal struggle to gain self-mastery in order to act morally." With History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, TCI will try later this year to sell a textbook to California schools that takes dictation from Islamist sources and advancing classroom fabrications of Islam. The proximate question is whether the state's department of education and state school board will let this happen. more at link. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-02-28 11:45:01 AM |
| #9 students read and learn about the contributions of Muslims to world civilization in such areas as science, geography, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, art, and literature Must be a very thin book, unless, as someone mentioned, its full of bullshit. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-02-28 11:36:57 AM |
| #8 Nambi-pambi multicultural BS of the first order. Do you suppose they have chapters on women's rights under Islam, jihad for the modern Muslim, beheading technigues, suicide martyrs and the 72 virgins, and bombs for children and the retarded? Do those chapters go before or after the half page chapter on "Contributions of Muslims to World Civilization?" |
| Posted by: Hank 2005-02-28 11:36:25 AM |
| #7 "I don't even want to think about the bullshit in Lesson 10..." This is the kind of crap we get when we put idiots in charge of educating our children-- idiots who view life as an extension of Sesame Street. Idiots who believe "if only we try harder to understand these nice, gentle Muslims and be tolerant of them, then they won't hate us so much and keep trying to kill us". They don't want us to be more understanding and tolerant: THEY WANT US TO BOW DOWN TO THEIR HATEFUL GOD, OR DIE. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-02-28 11:27:03 AM |
| #6 Doc, be glad you aren't. It might be fun for you, but your kids pay the price. And the union stewards make sure they do. But, you're still paying taxes and don't have kids they can hold hostage. I'm sure some of your neighbors with kids would be happy to tell you what to sound off about. Sic 'em. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-02-28 11:18:10 AM |
| #5 Here's the contents of the program: http://www.teachtci.com/curriculum/mwh/mwh_toc.asp Muhammad does get early and intensive coverage [a whole "lesson" (chapter) on him alone], while Jesus disappears somewhere into the fall of the Roman empire. Lesson 8 covers "expansion of Muslim rule" while Lesson 32 tackles "the spread of Protestantism". Protestantism is made to sound like a disease and is far enough in the program that in may not get covered at all. Islam basically gets Lessons 7 through 15. Christianity is not directly mentioned by name in the Table of Contents, but must be covered in Lessons 3, 31, and 32. I don't even want to think about the bullshit in Lesson 10: "...students read and learn about the contributions of Muslims to world civilization in such areas as science, geography, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, art, and literature..." |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-02-28 11:15:33 AM |
| #4 And a bit of perspective about schools - Billy Gates says they're a one on a five-point scale. My sister, the teacher, complains parents don't care at all, and a recent Time magazine article features parents who interfer WAY too much, to make sure little Johnnie's self esteem isn't damged. A little bit of truth in all of it! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-02-28 10:48:38 AM |
| #3 I lived in Moracco for six months and wish evey Christian knew as much about Islam as I do - which is not much, BTW. I do not object to teaching a bit about other religions. It will be more useful and horizon-broadening than "Creation Science", for example. As usual, tho, everyone puts their own spin on it. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-02-28 10:44:02 AM |
| #2 s'okay. Just let 'em teach Islam with the same skill that they teach Math, English, and Science and maybe the kids will grow to hate Islam too. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-02-28 10:31:38 AM |
| #1 I almost wish I was back in high school, or married and with kids in the public school system, so I could get in there and mix it up with the idiots who want to teach this crap in taxpayer-funded educational institutions. |
| Posted by: The Doctor 2005-02-28 10:20:39 AM |