By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--October 16, 2015
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Islamophobes like Rep. Butt fail to recognize that there is a big difference between teaching students about religion as an important part of world history and promoting particular religious beliefs. The education of children in Tennessee should not be delayed because of anti-Muslim bigotry.Bigotry, of course, has nothing to do with it. As Owens writes:
Complaining parents from across Tennessee have expressed alarm in recent weeks because their children in public middle schools are learning about the Five Pillars of Islam in a world history and social studies classes. (The first and most important pillar is roughly translated as: "There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.") At the same time, the parents say, the course material pointedly ignores Christianity.One of those worried parents, Brandee Porterfield, who has a daughter in the 7th grade at Spring Hill Middle School in Spring Hill, Tenn., complained when her child came home with schoolwork focused on Islam's central tenets, including the Five Pillars of Islam. As Owens notes, Porterfield was alarmed that her daughter was directed by her teacher to write a truncated version of the first pillar, known as the shahada. Porterfield said the teacher directed the child to write: "Allah is the only God." Porterfield, who appears to be just one of many angry parents around Spring Hill, said she accepts that knowing something about Islam is essential to grasping world history. But she was alarmed that Christianity was excluded from her daughter's studies. "I have big problem with that. From a historical point of view, that's a lot of history these kids are missing," Porterfield said. "Also, for them to spend three weeks on Islam after having skipped Christianity, it seems to be that they are making a choice about which religion to discuss." One of the taxpayer-supported agents of this Muslim indoctrination, Metro Nashville Public Schools social studies teacher Kyle Alexander, is a living, breathing example of the problem. In an interview with the Tennessean, he defended inflating the accomplishments of the Islamic world before captive, impressionable 12-year-olds. Demonstrating a superficial, politically correct understanding of Islam, he said, "[t]he reality is the Muslim world brought us algebra, 'One Thousand and One Nights,' and some can argue it helped bring about the Renaissance. There is a lot of influence that that part of the world had on world history." While it is true that Muslim countries had an impact on world history, it isn't quite as Alexander described. For example, algebra. President Obama made the same claim in his fact-averse 2009 speech in Cairo that was calculated to flatter Muslims. As Ann Coulter indignantly retorted at the time:
Operating on the liberal premise that what Arabs really respect is weakness, Obama listed Muslims' historical contributions to mankind, such as algebra (actually, that was the ancient Babylonians), the compass (that was the Chinese), pens (the Chinese again), and medical discoveries (would that be clitorectomies?).Education officials have been taking their cues from the White House. Throughout his presidency Barack Hussein Obama, who has described the Muslim call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset," has been obsessed with boosting self-esteem in the most backward countries on the planet. The president even made the space agency NASA into a Muslim outreach organization. NASA chief Charles Bolden told Al-Jazeera in 2010 that he was tasked "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering." Michael Griffin, who ran NASA during George W. Bush's presidency, shot back:
NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go. That's what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA's purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics.The kind of indoctrination Griffin references is legion. Universities, think tanks, and media outlets are armed to the teeth with Islamic propaganda, some of which is funded by U.S. taxpayers and Islamists overseas. For all we know, public school teaching plans in Tennessee and other states are already being based on these heavily biased materials. Islamophile Carl W. Ernst, Kenan Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides a resource page on so-called Islamophobia on his taxpayer-supported website. It encourages readers to gorge themselves on self-serving drivel from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for American Progress. It refers readers to the Bridge Initiative: A Research Project on Islamophobia at the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, the Institute for South Asia Studies offers "K-14" lesson plans. Resources for combating Islamophobia abound on the Internet. There is the University of Pittsburgh-based three-state Consortium for Educational Resources on Islamic Studies (CERIS). There is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) booklet, "Guidelines for Educators on Countering Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims: Addressing Islamophobia through Education." There is the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. There is "Teaching Tolerance," a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. There is the teacher guide, "Islam in Asia: People, Practices, Tradition," put out jointly by the University of Washington and the Seattle Times. Portland State University provides "Middle East Teaching Tools: Resources for Educators," which is intended "to support education about the Middle East at the K-12 level." There are resource pages on the website of Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and on the websites of many other institutions of higher learning. In "Islam: Empire of Faith," taxpayer-supported PBS soothingly reassures Americans that "[i]n contrast to many other religions, the basic practice of Islam is simplicity itself. The believer worships God directly without the intercession of priests or clergy or saints." PBS even provides suggested lesson plans for 5th graders. Meanwhile, there have been other incidents involving the teaching of Islam in Tennessee. As Owens reports:
Since the fracas about Islam in middle school erupted across Tennessee earlier this school year, state education officials have insisted that the Islam curriculum is purely secular and designed to inform students about history. Last month Maury County Public Schools middle school supervisor Jan Hanvey told The Daily Herald, a newspaper out of Columbia, Tenn., that students learn about the Five Pillars of Islam during a one-day segment of the seventh-grade curriculum. Students also study Buddhism and Hinduism, the former social studies teacher noted. However, at no point do Tennessee middle school students study Christianity per se. There is not, for example, one class day dedicated to the basic Jesus story. Hanvey promised that Maury County students would eventually come across a reference to Christianity when history teachers reach the "Age of Exploration" in eighth grade. Then, students will hear about Christians persecuting other Christians in some countries in Western Europe.
Oh Americans, if your armed forces land in Iraq once again, this will mean a new phase in targeting you--your tourist resorts, your embassies in our Arab capitals, your diplomatic delegations, your universities and schools, your coffee shops and restaurants, your airplanes and ships, your shops and companies. [...] If a single American plane flies over Iraq in order to strike at ISIS, it will be one of our most obligatory religious duties to support the nucleus of the righteous caliphate, by turning all the American embassies and interests into legitimate targets. Play a role in defending the nucleus of the caliphate!The U.S. has yet to re-invade Iraq, but it has been carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State. As you read this, would-be killers may be preparing to honor the cleric's wishes. Although it happened in France, one young would-be terrorist just took action for Allah in school. The Daily Mail (UK) is reporting that a 15-year-old student attacked his teacher in a French classroom while screaming the jihadist battle cry "Allahu Akbar." The unidentified pupil shot his teacher with a BB gun after reportedly "devising a plan to kill his literature tutor and die a martyr." A week after devising the plan, the boy "brought a knife and airsoft gun and grenade to Oehmichen Technical School in the city of Chalons-en-Champagne, France." And when it happens again, stateside or not, young American public school students will be asked to define deviancy down as they ponder the real "root causes" behind the attack and are cautioned against judging the terrorists too harshly. Islamophobia, U.S. foreign policy, the continuing, stubborn existence of Israel, capitalism, the exploitation of the Third World, poverty, or unemployment drove the jihadists, youngsters will be told. But the clock is ticking. As Muslim values are inculcated in young Americans, toleration of Islamism is likely to spread. In fairly short order it may be too late to retrieve young American minds from error.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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