Tuesday 7 April 2009

Ibrahim: "Textbook Lies About Islam"

Raymond Ibrahim, editor and translator of The Al-Qaeda Reader, has a good piece at Pajamas Media on the whitewashing of Islam in American schools. Ibrahim observes:

"...from American junior high texts obfuscating the motivation of 9/11 to censored intelligence analysts who cannot prefix more meaningful adjectives to the word “terrorist,” until Islamic ideologies are addressed forthrightly, the U.S. — leadership and lay alike — will remain philosophically unprepared against the threat of radical Islam. Objective knowledge — properly taught and disseminated — is the first step to formulating any long-term strategy. When knowledge is unshackled from the bonds of political correctness and wishful thinking, strategies will naturally present themselves as common sense.

"Bottom line: if children are sheltered from ugly truths today, how can they ever be expected to confront them as adults tomorrow?"

In his recent book Stealth Jihad, Robert Spencer demonstrates that such whitewashing is in part facilitated by Muslim groups themselves, who deliberately obfuscate accurate teaching of Islamic doctrines such as jihad, and peddle ahistorical myths such as the "Golden Age" of tolerance in medieval Muslim Spain. Spencer summarises:

"With the mandate of 'tolerance' robbing many educators of their ability to evaluate non-Western cultures critically, teachers are highly susceptible to an organised campaign by US-based Islamic organisations and their primary benefactor, Saudi Arabia, to present a view of Islam that whitewashes its violent history and intolerant religious imperatives.

"Meanwhile, in America's Islamic academies, teaching materials, some direct from Saudi Arabia, instill unequivocal hatred toward non-Muslims and a deep suspicion of Western culture. But one would never know that such attitudes even exist among Muslims from reading the lessons placed in mainstream public schools by US-based Islamic groups. In contrast to the antagonistic teachings found at Islamic academies, these groups ensure that the Islamic instruction in public schools presents a picture of Islam that is so pristine and peaceful that it sometimes crosses the boundary from mere pro-Muslim bias into outright Islamic proselytising." (p.189-90)

Finally, in 2005 Bat Ye'or observed in her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis that:

"The Muslim version of history is now being taught and accepted in Europe and America, while more accurate treatments such as historian Paul Fregosi's book Jihad in the West faced a wall of opposition. Mainstream views of jihad gloss over its fanaticism and such practises as enslavement and massacre. The responsibility for the jihad wars' atrocities is attributed to Christian resistance to Islamisation and to the iniquitous Crusades - but not to the concepts of jihad and dar al-harb, the land of war where the infidels must be subdued...There is no doubt that this chorus of tearful contrition helps to strengthen the Muslim opinion that Islamic jihad is a liberating and peaceful favour granted to the infidels." (p.195)

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