Islam and American Textbooks

Read Gilbert T. Sewall's study, ISLAM IN THE CLASSROOM: WHAT THE TEXTBOOKS TELL US.

SUMMARY

ISLAM IN THE CLASSROOM: WHAT THE TEXTBOOKS TELL US samples ten widely adopted
junior and senior high school history textbooks. The review asks:

• How do today’s history textbooks characterize Islam’s foundations and creeds?

• What changes have occurred in textbook material written before 2001? What additions
have been made?

• What do textbooks say about terrorism? What do they say about the September 11 air
attack on the United States? About weapons of mass destruction? Do textbooks outline
Islamic challenges to global security? Do they describe and explain looming dangers to the United States and world?

The review concludes that:

• Many political and religious groups try to use the textbook process to their advantage, but the deficiencies in Islam-related lessons are uniquely disturbing. History textbooks present an incomplete and confected view of Islam that misrepresents its foundations and challenges to international security.

• Misinformation about Islam is more pronounced in junior high school textbooks than high school textbooks.

• Outright textbook errors about Islam are not the main problem. The more serious failure is the presence of disputed definitions and claims that are presented as established facts.

• Deficiencies about Islam in textbooks copyrighted before 2001 persist and in some
cases have grown worse. Instead of making corrections or adjusting contested facts,
publishers and editors defend misinformation and content evasions against the record.
Biases persist. Silences are profound and intentional.

• Islamic activists use multiculturalism and ready-made American political movements,
especially those on campus, to advance and justify the makeover of Islam-related
textbook content.

• Particular fault rests with the publishing corporations, boards of directors, and
executives who decide what editorial policies their companies will pursue. Publishers have developed new world and U.S. history textbooks at three different grade levels. Errors about Islam that occurred in older textbooks have not been corrected but reiterated. Publishers have learned of contested facts and have had the time to correct imbalances. But instead of making changes, they have sustained errors or, in deliberate acts of self-censorship, have removed controversial material.

___________________

More distortions-- Authors Warn That Many Textbooks Distort Religion

Jesus was a Palestinian? That's what one public school textbook says.

Although Jesus lived in a region known in his time as Palestine, the use of the term "Palestinian," with its modern connotations, is among the hundreds of textbook flaws cited in a recent five-year study of educational anti-Semitism detailed in the book "The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion."

Authors Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found some 500 imperfections and distortions concerning religion in 28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States.

Ybarra, a research associate at the institute, called the above example "shocking."

A "true or false" question on the origins of Christianity asserted that "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus." The teacher's edition says this is "true."

But even though Jesus is the founder of Christianity, the question ignores the fact that he was Jewish. And Ybarra said, "The Christian scriptures say that he preached in Judea and Galilee, not Palestine," a term that was used at the time as a less specific description of the broader region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Ybarra says part of the problem is that publishers employ or contract with writers who are not experts in the subject, or they may use out-of-date information. Or they may bow to special interest groups.

"They're under pressure from all kinds of minority groups, religious groups, and they try to satisfy everyone and that results in content that is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator," he said. "And so, in that process, things can be missed. Errors can survive."

Ybarra also claims that the textbooks tend not to treat Christianity, Judaism and Islam equally.

"Islam has a privileged position," he said. "It's not critiqued or criticized or qualified, whereas Judaism and Christianity are."

One example is in the glossary of "World History: Continuity and Change." It calls the Ten Commandments "moral laws Moses claimed to have received from the Hebrew God," while the entry for the Koran contains no such qualifier in saying it is the "Holy Book of Islam containing revelations received by Muhammad from God."