California Schools Proselytize for Allah
By Kalavai Venkat
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=3546
FrontPageMagazine.com
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
If your child is unfortunate enough to study in
California, he or she will be taught Islam is a fountain
of modernity, liberty, and feminism. More importantly, he
will be taught every aspect of the Islamic faith is
historically accurate.
The Houghton-Mifflin textbook, currently in use in many
schools, lists one Shabbir Mansuri, Founding Director of
Council on Islamic Education, as its consultant. Mansuri
is a businessman [1] with a degree in chemical
engineering, and not an academic. That did not prevent
the California State Board of Education (SBE) from
inviting Mansuri to a closed-door meeting, apparently to
advise the board on Hindu edits, on January 6, 2006.
Revelation as history
The textbook presents Islamic beliefs as verifiable
history. A paragraph, introducing the origins of the
Quran, begins innocuously, "The first verses of the
Quran, believed by Muslims to be the written record of
God's words," and makes the subtle shift to add, "were
revealed to him at that time." From there on, the
textbook abandons any pretense of objectivity and begins
indoctrination [2]:
Then, in the cave, something more far-reaching
happened. A being he [Prophet Muhammad] later
identified as the angel Gabriel, or Jibril [juhBREEL]
in Arabic, came to him, telling him to read, or
recite. Trembling, Muhammad responded that he didn't
know how to read or what to read. [p. 58]
As the text progresses, the authors are absolutely
convinced that revelations to Muhammad were indeed
historical events: "Muhammad's revelations occurred from
610 until his death in 632." [p. 61]
For the followers of Islam, the Quran completes the
earlier revelations of Old Testament prophets and
Jesus. The Quran is the final revelation, just as
Muhammad is the final prophet...But Muslims considered
these other religions [Christianity and Judaism] to be
less correct. That is because the Quran teaches that
the Bible has suffered loss and change with time. [p.
62]
California children will now grow up assured that
revelations are a historically verifiable phenomenon --
and other faiths (perhaps those of their families for
generations) are inferior.
Holy Muhammad
Textbook authors portray Prophet Muhammad as a righteous
and just man and demonize those who refused to follow the
diktats of Muhammad -- even if these people may never
have existed:
Failing to convince Muhammad and his followers to give
up their beliefs, the Quraysh leaders refused to trade
with them, causing the Muslims great suffering...
Quraysh leaders plotted to kill Muhammad. [p. 59]
The basis for this "fact" is a 16th century Islamic
hagiographic text written by chronicler, Ibn al Dayba',
who accuses the Quraysh of treachery after admitting that
the Quraysh feared violence at the hands of Muslims.
[Motzki, Harald: The Biography of Muhammad -- the Issue
of the Sources, p. 163]. Textbook writers did not bother
to ascertain facts when they decided to demonize the
Quraysh, solely based on this dubious claim.
The demonizing of the Quraysh is contrasted with the
complete sanitizing of Muhammad's conduct, after he
seized Mecca in 630 A.D.:
One of the first things Muhammad did was to forgive
all those who had opposed Muslims for long. He also
removed the idols from the Kabah. [p. 60]
Muhammad "forgave" these less powerful people by invading
their shrines and desecrating their idols. Likewise, a
proposed textbook from Prentice-Hall depicts Muhammad as
a virtuous man who militated against "depraved" pre-
Islamic society:
But he [Muhammad] was critical of Meccan society. All
around him, he saw greed, corruption and violence.
Arab traditions of honor and duty were being ignored.
[p. 69]
Historical facts about how Muhammad and his party raided
caravans and butchered defenseless people are now
interpreted as the struggle of a righteous man against
the knave.
Whitewashing Terrorism
The textbook also apologizes for the violent Muslim
terrorism of jihad:
An Islamic term that is often misunderstood is jihad
[jeeHUHD]. It means "to struggle," to do one's best to
resist temptation and overcome evil. [p. 64]
Having disingenuously defined jihad, the textbook
continues with the sleight of hand:
The Quran and Sunna allow self-defense and
participation in military conflict, but restrict it to
the right to defend against aggression and
persecution, Jihad, for example, was first carried out
against the Meccans who had forbidden Muslims to
practice or preach their religion.
In the early periods of Islamic conquest, Muslim forces
gave others 24 hours to choose between Islam and death.
California students now learn that Muhammad's demolishing
the idols of Kaba after terrorizing his opponents was as
much "self-defense" as "forgiveness."
Islam, the tolerant religion
In the Orwellian world of California textbooks,
destroying idols is self-defense, and forced marriage and
conversion are tolerance:
While Islam forbade forced religious observance in the
600s, most rulers in the world at the time decided
what religion their subjects would follow and
persecuted those who refused. [p. 64]
Muhammad attacked the Jewish settlement of Khaybar,
looted its wealth, massacred most of its men, and took as
his "wife" [read: sex slave] the beautiful 17-year-old
Safiyyah b. Huyayy, who had been wed for merely a month
when Muhammad massacred her husband and father in cold
blood. [Lings, M.: Muhammad, His Life Based on the
Earliest Sources, p. 268] What does one make of the
Quranic injunction urging Muslims to slay the pagans
[9:5] [3]?
The Prentice-Hall textbook has similar things to say
about the spread of Islam:
Another factor helping Arabs was their tolerance for
other religions. The Arabs generally allowed people to
practice their own customs and beliefs. Before
capturing Damascus, the Arab general Khalid ibn al-
Walid made the following promise:
"This is what Khalid would grant the inhabitants of
Damascus if he enters therein: he promises to give
them security for their lives, property, and churches.
Their city wall shall not be demolished, neither shall
any Muslim be quartered in their houses. Thereunto we
give them the pact of Allah and the protection of His
Prophet. So long as they pay the poll tax, nothing but
good shall befall them." [p. 79]
Islam spread by imposing the debilitating poll tax, or
jizya, on those who refused to convert to Islam under
duress. They were reduced to dhimmitude, and in places
like India, Syria, and Egypt, subject to terrible
humiliations. They were nearly as "tolerant" as the
Taliban.
Islam for progressive women
Islam did not just grant rights to infidels; it was also
a forerunner of Gloria Steinem:
In contrast to some other societies of the time,
Muslim women were also given clear rights in marriage
and the right to an education. They had the right to
control the earnings from their work, to make
contracts, and to serve as witnesses in court. [p. 64]
Marital rights for Muslim women came with a few
insignificant caveats:
If the wives of Muhammad do not "behave" themselves,
Allah will replace them with others [66:5] [4]. You
cannot possess a woman against her will, except when she
is "guilty" of lewdness [4:19] [5]. Since, Islam ordains
a woman to be veiled [24:31, 33:59] [6] [7], she should
have been prone to be charged with "lewdness" as often as
a man wishes. It does not appear that the lovely maidens
with wide eyes and fair complexion who dwell in the
Islamic heaven enjoy any marital rights, as Allah has
reserved them [44:54] [8] for the fidayeen, who are on
the Islamic heaven-bound cargo, post-mortem, after
crashing a 747 into some infidel's skyscraper. Of course,
while a woman is married, she is a tilth unto her
husband, who can go to her as he wills [2:223] [9].
So what if the textbook does not reveal that a woman
"enjoys" half the property rights as a man [4:176] [10],
or that a woman's worth is half of a man's [2:282] [11]?
These are minor compromises one needs to make to
transform Islam into a feminist religion for progressive
women.
And Californian school children.
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- - -
Kalavai Venkat is an India-born, Silicon Valley-based
orthodox, practising, agnostic Hindu.
mailto:kalavai.venkat@gmail.com
FOOTNOTES
[1]
http://www.cie.org/ItemDetail.aspx?id=N&m_id=80&item_id=151&cat_id=116
[2]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/websat/Helper/editor/www.abcusd.k12.ca.us/.../Across%20the%20Centuries/%20HMSS%20Files/Chapter%2003/Chapter%203-Lesson%202.htm
[3]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html
[4]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/066.qmt.html
[5]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html
[6]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/024.qmt.html
[7]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/033.qmt.html
[8]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/044.qmt.html
[9]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/002.qmt.html
[10]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html
[11]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/002.qmt.html
More at:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21197
Facts about terrorist Islam and Muslims:
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/a5ljc
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
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