HOW would you like it if your child’s social studies text books contained flawed chapters that had an inherent Islamic agenda that tries to demean Christianity and fuel anti-Semitism?
Two organizations in the US have come together to highlight the Islamic agenda at work in editorializing in school textbooks used in Florida’s public schools.
Christian Action Network and Citizens for National Security worked together to examine the issue of skewed history or patently wrong and unsubstantiated things being touted as facts in school children’s textbooks.
Some of the methods of distortion in Florida’s K-12 History and Geography textbooks, according to a report published by Citizens for National Security, a public charity, include fictional narrative, fictional cause and effect, bias, slant and innuendo.
For instance, the children are told the following things through their history and geography textbooks:
- Jesus was a “Palestinian Jew” who grew up in Galilee amidst “militant Zealots.”
- It was “a few followers” of Jesus who “spread the story” about his resurrection.
- While Islamic Arab warriors “rarely imposed their religion by force,” Christian monks “by contrast,” were busy converting “peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.”
- Israel is to blame for terrorist attacks by Palestinians because they were “angered over the loss of their territory.”
- While Jesus is “believed” by followers to be the messiah, it’s a fact that “Gabriel continued to send revelations to Muhammad over 22 years.”
- When the Jewish state of Israel was born in 1948, the nation and its neighbors “went to war.”
In a report published by WND, Martin Mawyer, president of Christian Action Network, said, “We found some very skeptical phrasing meant to cast doubt on the historical accuracy of the Bible.”
Mawyer said the finding was that students “aren’t being taught about the theological motivations behind radical Islam.”
“The impression students are given is that terrorists are misguided fighters against Western imperialism and aggression, who are only wrong in their approach,” he said. “It was amazing how many times the word ‘Palestine’ was used, making it sound like Israel was built on top of a conquered country.”
In ‘Modern World History: Patterns of Interaction’, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/McDougal Littell, the following line occurs: ‘Muhammad’s teachings, which are the revealed word of God…, are found in the holy book called the Qur’an.”
In the same book, however, the birth of Jesus Christ and His resurrection appear with appropriate qualifiers as if the author(s) of the book were in doubt of the historicity of both the events.
The following are the lines that talk about the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ:
“According to the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth was born around 6 to 4 B.C.”
“According to Jesus’ followers, he rose from the dead….”
In the book titled ‘The Earth and Its People: A Global History’, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, the spiritual experience of Muhammad is described as follows:
“During one night vigil, known to later tradition as the ‘Night of Power and Excellence’,“a being whom Muhammad later understood to be the angel Gabriel (Jibra’il in Arabic) spoke to him…”.
However, Jesus is mentioned as follows in the same book:
“[Jesus] was essentially a rabbi, or teacher, and that, offended…by the perfunctory nature of mainstream Jewish religious practices in his time, he prescribed a return to the personal faith and spirituality of an earlier age.”
According to Mawyer, while the sampling comes from texts used in Florida, the issue of pro-Islam bias has national ramifications.
Bill Saxton, chairman of Citizens for National Security, explained: “Florida is the third largest purchaser of textbooks in the United States with an estimated $267 million budget for instructional materials,” Saxton said. “Textbooks used in Florida become adopted curriculum standards for the entire country.”
The WND report said the campaign to publicize the findings already has already begun. CAN has distributed the full report to 500 school superintendents around the country. Download the report
