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Houghton Mifflin's Islamic Connection
William J. Bennetta
In a recent review, I showed that Prentice Hall's high-school book
World Cultures: A Global Mosaic serves as a vehicle for Muslim
propaganda. Long passages in World Cultures are devoted to
promoting Islam, to making American students embrace Islamic religious
beliefs, and to winning converts for Allah. In these passages, Muslim
myths are disguised as historical information, Muslim superstitions
are disguised as facts, and both the origin and the content of Islam
are cloaked in seductive lies [see note 1].
Prentice Hall clearly is disseminating religious-indoctrination
material produced by some Muslim pressure group, but nowhere in
World Cultures has Prentice Hall provided any clue to the pressure
group's identity.
Houghton Mifflin, the publisher of a 7th-grade textbook called
Across the Centuries, has been less discreet. Across the
Centuries is freighted with Muslim religious propaganda, much like
the stuff in World Cultures -- but in the case of Across the
Centuries, we can infer where the propaganda originated. When we
look at the list of "Consultants" shown on the book's copyright page,
we find "Shabbir Mansuri, Founding Director, Council on Islamic
Education, Fountain Valley, California." And when we look at the
lesson titled "Muhammad and Islam," in the book's third chapter, we
discover what the word "Education" apparently means to Mansuri and his
Council.
The "Muhammad and Islam" lesson begins, on pages 58 and 59, with a
lengthy bout of Koran-thumping. Islamic woo-woo is peddled as history,
and claims such as these are peddled as facts:
 | In AD 610 Muhammad met a "being" whom he later "identified" as
"the angel Gabriel, or Jibril (juh BREEL) in Arabic." (How
Muhammad performed that feat of identification isn't explained.)
|
| "From Jerusalem, both Muhammad and Gabriel ascended into heaven,
where Muhammad spoke to God."
|
| Muhammad's God, Allah, was the same as the "God of other
monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity." (To create the
impression that Islam is compatible with Judaism and with
Christianity, Muslim propagandists in America continually publicize
the claim that Allah is the same God who is worshiped by the Jews
and the Christians. Their claim is absurd. For more about this, see
my review of Prentice Hall's World Cultures.)
|
| Gabriel told Muhammad that Muhammad's God had created man "from
a clot of congealed blood." (Across the Centuries thus
conveys to students a claim which appears in sura 96 of the Koran.
Across the Centuries doesn't disclose that this superstition
involving blood is contradicted by other notions that appear in
other suras. In sura 6, for example, we read that man was made from
clay -- and in sura 18, we see that man was made "from dust, then
from a drop.")
|
| Gabriel provided Muhammad with "revelations" which "confirmed"
that Muhammad was "the last messenger in a long line of prophets
sent by God." (It is important, apparently, for students to learn
that one lump of woo-woo can be "confirmed" by other lumps of
woo-woo -- but it is not important, apparently, for students to
understand that the "long line of prophets" which culminated in
Muhammad included all the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, along with
Jesus of Nazareth. Muslims contend that Muhammad, in his role as
"the last messenger," has superseded all of those earlier figures,
but this isn't explained in Across the Centuries.) |
On page 60 students read a paragraph about the Ka'bah, the big
Muslim shrine at Mecca:
One of the first things Muhammad did [after he captured Mecca]
was to forgive all those who had opposed Muslims for so long. He
also removed the idols from the Ka'bah. Thus the Ka'bah was again
dedicated to the one God, as it had been in the time of Abraham. The
area around the Ka'bah became the first mosque, or Muslim house of
worship.
Again, Houghton Mifflin and the Council on Islamic Education are
deluding students and are parading religious myths in the garb of
history. *Abraham is a mythical character who appears in many stories
in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. Although those stories in
Genesis do not suggest any connection between Abraham and Mecca, the
Muslims have worked Abraham into one of their own myths about the
origins of the Ka'bah -- myths in which the Ka'bah is built and
rebuilt, at Mecca, by a succession of legendary figures [note 2]. In
the passage that I've quoted from Across the Centuries, the
phrase "in the time Abraham" is a pseudohistorical absurdity, and so
is the linking of Abraham with "the one God." The Hebrew Bible's first
suggestions of monotheism appear not in stories about Abraham but in
stories about a later character, Moses, who is the hero of the Book of
Exodus.
[*Clearly BlessedCause and The
Textbook League disagree about the facts of Biblical Abraham and
Christianity] On page 61, students read about the
Koran:
Muhammad's revelations occurred from 610 until his death in
632. Although he was not literate himself, Muhammad had his
revelations written down by his companions. Many of them memorized
the whole Qur'an [Koran] and recited it in his presence. By the time
of his death, all the revelations had been compiled into one
collection, the Qur'an.
That is another Islamic myth: Muslims claim that the text of the
Koran was checked and verified by Muhammad himself, and that it
therefore must be an inerrant record of the "revelations" that
Muhammad received, through Gabriel, from Allah. In truth, however, the
origins of the Koran are unknown. As I noted in my review of Prentice
Hall's World Cultures, scholars haven't been able to determine
when the Koran's various parts were written, or who wrote them, or how
many versions were written and rewritten before the final, canonized
version was assembled.
Later in Houghton Mifflin's "Muhammad and Islam" lesson, the notion
that Islam is compatible with Judaism and Christianity is bolstered by
the deceptive claim that "Many prophets and holy people who are
important figures in the Bible are also described [sic] in the
Qur'an" and by the statement that "Christians and Jews are respected
as 'people of the book' by Muslims, and all their prophets are
revered." (Muslim propagandists in America often publicize the claim
that Muhammad called Jews and Christians "people of the book" and
awarded them special protection, but the propagandists never describe
how Muhammad "protected" Jewish and Christian communities during his
conquests: If he didn't destroy them outright, he robbed them, put
them under Muslim governance, and compelled them to make regular
payments of tribute to Muslim collectors. Nor do the propagandists
tell about the Koran's declaration that Muslims must not accept Jews
or Christians as allies or friends [note 3] --
"O believers, do not hold Jews and Christians as your allies.
They are allies of one another; and anyone who makes them his friends
is surely one of them; and God does not guide the unjust.")
Near the end of the "Muhammad and Islam" lesson, a coat of
whitewash is applied to a notorious Islamic expression:
An Islamic term that is often misunderstood is jihad (jee
HUHD). The term means "to struggle," to do one's best to resist
temptation and to overcome evil. [page 64]
By whom is jihad "often misunderstood"? Historically, the
word jihad has been associated with Muslim wars against
infidels, and anybody who can read a newspaper knows that some of
today's most conspicuous Muslims use jihad, quite
unambiguously, to signify the business of destroying disbelievers and
destroying the disbelievers' institutions. These Muslims understand
what they mean by jihad, and so do we. Resisting temptation
isn't what they have in mind.
I have shown, I believe, that what Houghton Mifflin seeks to pass
off as a history lesson is an exercise in deception, religious
preaching, myth-mongering, and religious indoctrination. I now assert
that Across the Centuries is unfit for use in any public school
in this country, because the Supreme Court of the United States has
declared that it is illegal for a public school to deliver instruction
"tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or
dogma" [note 4]. The "Muhammad and Islam" lesson
in Across the Centuries fits that description to perfection.
Postscript Across the
Centuries has been adopted for use in the public schools of
California -- so we again have seen how the California State Board of
Education, during its textbook-adoption proceedings, protects the
interests of big schoolbook companies while it scorns the interests of
students and (if need be) spurns the law of the land. Houghton Mifflin
and the Council on Islamic Education have friends in Sacramento.
Notes
- See
"Promoting Islam in American Schoolrooms" in The Textbook
Letter, March-April 2000.
- See "Appendix II. -- The Bayt Ullah" in Volume 2 of Richard F.
Burton's renowned Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah
and Meccah, originally published in 1855. A paperback edition
has been issued by Dover Publications and can be obtained easily.
Teachers who must compose lessons about Islam should be sure to read
Burton's superb memoir, which includes accounts of many Islamic
superstitions that Burton encountered when he went to Arabia in
1853, adopted the role of a Muslim pilgrim, and visited such
attractions as the Ka'bah, the tomb of Muhammad, and the tomb of "no
less a personage than Sittna Hawwa, the Mother of mankind."
- See the Koran 5:51 (i.e., sura 5, verse 51).
- See the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v. Aguillard
(1987).
See: Islamic Simulation
Review also by The Textbook League
William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the
California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League,
and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes often about
the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in
schoolbooks.
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