Distortions, Whitewashing and Pro-Islamic Bias Found In American Public School Textbooks
The information below is an excerpt from a summary that can be found on the website of the American Textbook Council. The website states: “The American Textbook Council is an independent national research organization established in 1989 to review the history and social studies textbooks used in the nation's schools.” To read more about ATC’s reviews of textbooks and how they treat Islam go to historytextbooks.org
The biased and politically correct treatment of Islam in school textbooks is very alarming because of the impact this is having on both the knowledge base and attitudes of American children.
The American Textbook Council examined the coverage of Islam in seven widely adopted world history textbooks used in grades seven through twelve. In February 2003, it published its findings in a review, Islam and the Textbooks.
Since 2003, several reports have documented bias and evasions in world history textbooks. Textbooks misrepresent Islam past and present, critics agree. They contain fallacies and untruths about jihad, sharia, slavery, status of Muslim women, terrorism, and international security. [emphasis added]
These reviews independently reach the same conclusions. Most conspicuously, history textbooks whitewash the meaning of jihad. Houghton Mifflin's seventh-grade text, Across the Centuries, has come in for singular criticism. Houghton Mifflin's books dominate the nation's largest state, but they are in no way worse on this score than competing textbooks. Textbooks make no distinction between sharia and Western law, and they pretend that women are making great strides in the Islamic world, when all evidence indicates otherwise. Social studies textbooks ignore the global ambitions of militant Islam. They fail to explain that Muslim terrorists seek to destroy the United States and Israel. They omit geopolitical goals that include theocracy and world domination by religion.
Islamic organizations led by the Council on Islamic Education 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. Publishers ignore those who press them about motives, funding, legal status, and strong-arm tactics on the part of their Muslim "consultants."
The latest evidence of Islamist influence is California's adoption of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond. The publisher is Teachers' Curriculum Institute, a privately held company trying to gain part of 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 a solid and sometimes rich introduction to world history from Islam to the Enlightenment.
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.
With History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, TCI is trying to sell a textbook to California schools that takes dictation from Islamist sources. The proximate question is whether the state's department of education and state school board will let this happen. |
