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Islamists wage 'soft jihad' to give students sanitized view of Islam

Dr. Karen Gushta - Guest Columnist - 3/18/2011 10:15:00 AM

There was plenty of drama at the Homeland Security Committee hearing earlier this month with
Rep. Keith Ellison's (D-Minn.) tearful testimony leading media coverage. Ellison, the first
Muslim-American to be elected to Congress, was among those Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) invited
to testify at the March 10 hearing to investigate possible terrorist recruitment within the
American Muslim community. Ellison complained to the committee that the proceeding was "the
very heart of scapegoating."

 Nevertheless, committee chairman King has declared that the hearings will continue. The
committee will investigate radicalization of Muslim Americans in U.S. prisons, strategies of al-
Qaeda and other organizations to recruit Americans, and how the Department of Homeland
Security plans to address the "increasing radicalization of individuals within the United States,"
reported Yahoo News.
 
King's committee should also investigate the Islamist indoctrination taking place in America's
schools.
 
The fact is, government schools have been using textbooks that glorify Islam and denigrate
Christianity for some time. Such materials give children a favorable view of Islam and a negative
view of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian heritage.
 
In June 2008, after two years of painstaking study, the American Textbook Council (founded in
1989 as an independent national research organization) released a 48-page report entitled "Islam
in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us." The report summarized the Council's detailed
evaluation of the major history and social science texts in use in government schools in 2006.
 
Of particular significance is the portion of the Council's report regarding seventh-grade world
history textbooks, since many seventh-grade curricula, following the lead of California schools,
now require students to receive instruction and engage in activities to learn about Islamic history,
culture, the Qur'an, and the religious practices of Muslims.
 
The report notes that "textbooks reviewed avoid all conflict and bloodshed in describing Islam's
push out of Arabia and rapid conquest of most of the Mediterranean world. They fail to explain
how Islam spread in the seventh and eighth centuries. Islam appears out of nowhere, spreads
smoothly and by implication without conflict. Once it was common to say that Islam was spread
by the sword. Now, textbooks implied, it moved peacefully, with traders. Islam is brought to
apparently willing populations."
 
It was the Clinton administration that opened the door to teaching about the history and religious
practices of Muslims. In 1995, President Bill Clinton directed his Secretary of Education,
Richard W. Riley, to prepare guidelines for religious expression and activities in America's
schools. The guidelines, set forth in "Religious Expression in Public Schools," declared that
government schools may not provide religious instruction as such, but they may "teach about
religion." The kicker, however, as ACT! for America has reported, was the additional statement
that "...students generally do not have a Federal right to be excused from lessons that may be
inconsistent with their religious beliefs or practices" [emphasis added].
 
Thus, parents who may object to their children being compelled to assume a Muslim name and
recite prayers to Allah as part of their "learning activities" have no recourse and may not
withdraw their children from these activities.
 
One highly publicized case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006, but the Court
rejected the appeal "without comment" and let stand the ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco in favor of the school district.
 
The suit brought by Christian students and their parents challenged the content of a seventh-
grade history course at Excelsior Middle School in Byron, California, in the fall of 2001. The
teacher was supposedly following an instructional guide when she told students they would
pretend to be Muslims for three weeks in order to learn what Muslims believe. According to
news reports, during this time they were required to wear Muslim dress, memorize verses from
the Qur'an, pray to Allah, simulate Ramadan by fasting, use the phrase "Allah Akbar" (Allah is
great), and play "jihad games."
 
The federal judge in the Ninth Circuit ruled that such activities constitute teaching "about
religion" and declared the program devoid of "any devotional or religious intent," and therefore
educational, not religious in nature.
 
Stories of similar cases rarely get reported. But one writer, Cinnamon Stillwell, shared a number
of examples of Islamist influence in schools in a 2008 opinion article in The San Francisco
Chronicle. In "Islam in America's Public Schools: Education or Indoctrination?" Stillwell writes:
"Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the 'soft jihad' into America's classrooms and
children in K-12 are the first casualties. Whether it is textbooks, curriculum, classroom exercises,
film screenings, speakers or teacher training, public education in America is under assault."
 
What can parents do? The first step is to find out what's happening in your child's school. Take a
look at the textbooks for history, geography and/or social studies. Gateways to Better Education
has an excellent article, "How to Evaluate Your Child's Textbooks," that will help you identify
the assumptions, biases, and opinions disguised as facts that result in unbalanced and slanted
textbooks. Find out if your child's textbooks are presenting a "politically correct" view of Islam
while denigrating Christianity and the Judeo-Christian heritage.
 
Equip yourself with the facts of what's happening in your children's school and classrooms and
then speak to the appropriate teacher and the school principal. You'll find additional pointers on
how to do so at the Gateways to Better Education website.
 
As parents and concerned citizens, we cannot sit idly by. As Stillwell writes: "Probably the
single greatest weapon in the arsenal of those trying to fight the misuse of America's public
schools is community involvement." Over 80 percent of Christian parents send their children to
government-controlled schools. If even 20 percent of these parents took an active role in the fight
against indoctrination in the public schools, substantial improvements would be made.
 
Are you willing to be a part of that 20 percent?

Dr. Karen Gushta is research coordinator at Coral Ridge Ministries and author of "The War on Children: How
Pop Culture and Public Schools Put Our Kids at Risk." She is a career educator who has taught at all levels in both
public and Christian schools in America and overseas. Dr. Gushta served as the first international director of Kid's
Evangelism Explosion.