Starting in the summer of 2001, the American Textbook Council undertook a comprehensive textbook review in world history. World history is a controversial social studies mandate that is rapidly expanding at the state level. Islam and the Textbooks grows out of this larger work still in progress surveying many aspects of world history textbook content.
How widely adopted world history textbooks cover Islam and the history of the Middle East is a timely and important subject for students to learn about. On account of geopolitics and globalization, they should know something about the religion and its domain. The Council's findings and conclusions rely on respected historians and standard sources, prominent articles and essays, and diverse bulletins.
The Council compared the content of these sources to lessons and textual passages in seven widely adopted world history textbooks used between the seventh and twelfth grades. It also conducted an extensive web search of Islam-related source material intended for classroom use. The books surveyed include Prentice Hall's Connections to Today and McDougal Littell's Patterns of Interaction, two high school textbooks that lead the November 2002 Texas adoption list.
What the comparison revealed were content distortions and inaccuracies that have not occurred by accident. These lessons and the process by which they are put into America's classrooms raise serious concerns about the integrity of world history as a subject.
The complicated subject of Islam has captured the attention of teachers and professors, public policy experts, and religious organizations. This is not surprising in light of twenty-first century geopolitics. But few teachers have at their disposal anything more than a faint knowledge of Islam. Generally speaking, they do not feel comfortable teaching about religion and try to avoid all aspects of the subject. But state mandates expect or require them to teach something about Islam. Texas, for example, mandates a world cultures course for the state's sixth graders.
How classrooms deal with Islamic aggression is an unresolved school-related question of great importance. It is complicated by pressure from educational groups which assume that geopolitical problems originate in U.S. policy and its exertion of power abroad.
The National Association of School Psychologists declares that "history shows us that intolerance only causes harm. Some of our country's darkest moments resulted from prejudice and intolerance for our own people because Americans acted out of fear. We must not repeat terrible mistakes such as our treatment of Japanese Americans and Arab Americans during times of war." Teachers and parents are urged to "discuss historical instances of American intolerance. Internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf War are obvious examples."
These formulations are open to question, but constrained by such premises and claims, instructors fall back on the themes of tolerance and apology. Such sentiment may be a commendable aim in itself, but in the case of Islam, perhaps more so than other areas of social studies, these are lessons that skirt the reality of international affairs and threats to world peace.
U.S. officials have assured Muslims in word and deed that the U.S. is a tolerant and openminded nation. They have stressed the distinction between apolitical Muslim citizens and a belligerent Islamic agenda, and they have avoided branding Islam as the enemy. But it is not without reason that many U.S. citizens sense that militant Islam's goals run counter to national and personal interest. Concern about the ability and willingness of many domestic Muslims to assimilate -- that is, to put American constitutional values in front of their religion -- is not unfounded; Islam may favor resistance and separatism.
Worldwide and in the United States, "mainstream Islamic thought and political practice have developed in a way compatible with international law and orderly, peaceful interaction with non-Muslim nations," Rutgers religion professor James Turner Johnson has said. Islam has as many ideological, spiritual and geographic variations as Christianity and other world religions do. Some Muslims are virtually secularized. Others are not. Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia, each has a distinctive history. Within the same country, some Muslims are co-operative and co-existent with other cultures and others are at odds with them.
"Most Muslims in principle applaud the decision to present more material on Islam and Islamic history," Fred M. Donner of the University of Chicago noted in 1992. "Nonetheless, their approval is constrained by their own strong views on how this material should be presented."
As Donner put the matter, "Muslims are sensitive and view any perceived criticism of the prophet's life or character as an attack on Islam itself. Some Muslims are so sensitive about certain points that they may view a fairly straightforward factual presentation as hostile. For example, they resent the suggestion that Islam is a ‘religion of violence,' an image dating back to the Middle Ages in Western writings.
This literature has presented the faith as ‘imposed by the sword,' spread by military conquests in ‘holy wars,' and forced on conquered opponents at the threat of ‘conversion or death.' . . . Of course, one does not wish to over-emphasize military episodes, but to eliminate such references altogether would simply be to replace the stereotype of a ‘religion of violence' with an apologetic view that Islam is an early form of pacifism."
The transcontinental Islamic retraction from the liberal democratic model challenges secular rationalism, consensual government, and individual liberty throughout the world. As the novelist Salman Rushdie writes, a "paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, ‘infidels,' for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world."
Rushdie and other liberal Muslims call for the depoliticization of Islam. Like others, they make the important distinction between Islamic political projects and the more politically neutral Muslim religion. But this distinction is more easily urged than realized. "This desire to talk about politics as being separate from Islam is something that Muslim scholars on the whole have never accepted," says Akbar Muhammad, a historian at the State University of New York at Binghamton and a board member of the Council on Islamic Education.
What may seem on the surface to be a minor curriculum controversy has far-reaching implications for civic education and the promotion of U.S. constitutional values. "The only ideal remaining (except in the Muslim world) is liberal democracy on the American model, and this (as the Marxists were wont to say) is not by chance," the political philosopher Walter Berns noted in his 2001 book, Making Patriots. But first, before reflecting on what Berns was driving at, consider what the textbooks say.
II. What the Textbooks Say
Since Donner registered his concerns, the coverage of Islam in world history textbooks has expanded and in some respects improved, offering students a detailed look at the Muslim world through the centuries, one that explains its origins and tenets, including the difference between the Sunni and Shiite sects, and one that dwells on the splendors of Islamic art and architecture, learning and science, medicine and knowledge through the ages. But on significant Islam-related subjects, textbooks omit, flatter, embellish, and resort to happy talk, suspending criticism or harsh judgments that would raise provocative or even alarming questions.
In Part Two, I will discuss two of the four significant Islam-related subjects and how they are covered in our textbooks.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Editor Gilbert T. Sewall is Director of the American Textbook Council, a former history instructor at Phillips Academy and an education editor at Newsweek. The American Textbook Council is an independent New York-based research organization established in 1989. "Islam And The Textbooks," by Gilbert T. Sewall, is a Report Of The American Textbook Council.