A review of leading textbooks used in New York City and nationwide reveals they deliberately misrepresent Islamic history, jihad, Islamic law (sharia), global terrorism, and more.
Thinking that jihad is “holy war” is wrong, students are told. Instead textbooks insist it is merely an effort to improve oneself and society.
“Muslims should fulfill jihad with the heart, tongue, and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil. The tongue may convince others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research. Hands may perform good works and correct wrongs,” chimes one popular California textbook called “History Alive!”
A widely used Houghton Mifflin textbook titled “Across the Centuries” defines jihad as an “inner struggle” to “do one’s best to resist temptation and overcome evil.”
In spite of centuries of Islamic conquest and bloodshed, there’s never any hint of aggression toward the “infidel.” Illiberality and oppression are willfully ignored. “Traditionally, in Islamic countries women are not expected to read or write. Today, Muslim women are pursuing educations and new career opportunities. While Islamists call for a return to tradition, many Muslims embrace a mixture of traditional and modern ways,” asserts Prentice Hall’s “World History,” a high school textbook popular in New York City and suburban schools.
The tinny phrase “career opportunities” aside, the word tradition or a variation of it is used over and over, yet students never get the slightest idea of what these “traditions” are or what “return to tradition” means.
Textbooks sidestep centuries-long Islamic slavery that occurred on a massive scale on different continents. They do not mention the execution of homosexuals in today’s Islamic Republic of Iran.
Instead, the textbooks talk about how the Middle Ages constitute a golden age of Islamic tolerance. A seventh-grade Prentice Hall textbook calls medieval Islamic Spain a “multicultural society.” Meanwhile, in all the textbooks, the Crusades have been re-written into a story of Christian massacres of Muslims and Jews.