Scholastic joins education industry's campaign for Islam

Scholastic joins education industry's campaign for Islam
Publication for elementary students promotes Americans in madrassas
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Posted: January 3, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The Junior Scholastic "news magazine" that is written for elementary students and used in thousands of public schools across the United States has published an article promoting "madrassa" school life for American children who are Muslims, much to the outrage of some parents.

"Remember way back in grade school and getting Junior Scholastic magazine in school? Well here is an example of what JS has devolved into. Force-feeding the barbaric propaganda of Islamic madrassas down the throats of my 7th and 4th graders. Disgusting," a father wrote WND about the issue, published in November.

Scholastic spokeswoman Jennifer Slackman told WND there are very few topics the magazine will not cover if they are brought up in classrooms or coming up in current events.

The particular story, "Inside a Madrasa, U.S. kids talk about their daily lives at an Islamic school in Pakistan," was written by Cassandra Nelson in view of "helping students learn about the world they live in. That world does include religion and a variety of cultures," Slackman told WND.

However, WND has reported that Islamic factions now are taking part in the development and editing processes for textbooks in U.S. public schools, how some schools have required students to "become Muslim" and memorize the "Five Pillars of Islam" during their public school coursework, and how a man once arrested as a terror suspect for allegedly trying to transport $340,000 from a group tied to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi helped write the "Religious Expression in Public Schools" guidelines issued by President Clinton during his tenure in office.

"The article tells of Noor (now 15) who grew up in Atlanta, Ga. A 'few' years ago his family traveled to Pakistan on vacation with his father and just before heading back to the U.S. his father drops him in the Pakistani madrassa to rot for the last 3 years or so. … Where are the child advocacy lawyers when you need them!! Can these parents be brought up on charges?" the concerned parent wrote.

"The Junior Scholastic article then mentions this little lovely tidbit of information about the pursuit of knowledge. 'I never planned on reading or memorizing the Koran' Noor tells JS (Junior Scholastic). 'I wanted to go to school in America and become something big. But now I've missed so much school [back home], I will never be able to catch up,'" the parent said.

The article talks about how female students follow "strict codes of behavior and dress," and it lists a "typical day" at the school, which runs from a 4:30 a.m. wakeup call to an 11 p.m. bedtime, and includes time for morning prayers, lessons from the Quran, classes on Islamic law, classes on memorization of the Quran, classes on Islamic history, midday prayers, afternoon prayers, evening prayers, late-evening prayers, and more lessons from the Quran.

"Sharia (Islamic religious law) and democracy cannot coexist in the same space and time," the concerned parent wrote. "The PC mentality is going to cost us a lot of U.S. lives, probably ultimately to the point that we'll lose one of our cities to a jihadist nuclear weapon of some sort."

As far as this promotion in U.S. public schools? "All religions are equally valid. Uh-huh, yeah right. Let's have a show of hands of people who want their daughter to be subjected to a Sharia-following Muslim husband," he said. "Sharia-endorsing mosques and their members in the U.S. should be ostracized and blackballed like communists during the '50s."

The article minimizes the admitted use of such schools to train youth in a hatred of Christianity and the West, quoting a 15-year-old student from Chicago that, "We learn about mercy and love here. You won't find any hate."

This even though the Quran contains instructions to "behead" infidels and accept them only if they follow Islam.

"There is no terrorism in Islam. Anyone who commits violent attacks in the name of Islam is wrong. Most Muslims want a world that is peaceful, in which there is no terrorism and people live together without fighting. We want a world where the teachings of Allah [God] are followed – a world in which people are modest in attitude and appearances," the magazine quotes Mohammad Yusef saying.

The Junior Scholastic article was accompanied by an available online teacher's edition showing how to promote the study of the madrassa: "We hope readers will enjoy this visit to a foreign school – which begins with a headmaster's wake-up calls at 4:30 a.m.," wrote Suzanne McCabe, editor at Scholastic.

The magazine's goals are to have students in U.S. public schools "describe a typical school day" at the madrassa and references additional materials including a text titled, "Ten Things to Know about Islam."

It also has a crossword puzzle teaching children the "Muslims' name for God" and the rules of the religious schools. And another proposed project has students compare their own lives and schools to those of the madrassa students.

The concerned parent said he would agree with John Lewis, an assistant professor of history at Ashland University, who said America needs to destroy Islam as a political influence.

Lewis presented his arguments at the Ayn Rand Institute's OCON conference "The Jihad Against the West" in Boston in October. In an article in The Objective Standard, he elaborated:

He said the terrorist attacks on the U.S. came from foreign governments that "have sponsored such attacks for years" and were motivated by "a militaristic, religious-political ideology that values war as a demonstration of loyalty to a deity, demands obedience to its spokesmen, and imposes its edicts over millions of people."

"Thousands of individuals, indoctrinated as youths, are eager to engage in suicide attacks," he wrote. "The enemy's children and soldiers memorize words such as these: The battlefield is where our army displays its true character, conquering whenever it attacks, winning whenever it engages in combat, in order to spread our deity's reign far and wide, so that the enemy may look up in awe to his august virtues.'"

He said that the children are taught from the Quran such mandates as: "[F]ight and slay the unbelievers wherever you find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war; but if they repent, and practice our way, then accept them. …"

He wrote that a strong offense doesn't create new enemies; it defeats existing foes, and "all-out force against fanatical killers is both practical and moral."

He said the conflict between Islam and Christian is not a clash between civilizations, "it is a clash between civilization and barbarism. Until civilized people assert themselves with a depth of moral confidence exceeding that projected by those who submit to the 'will of Allah,' America will remain permanently on the defensive, in a state of moral dhimmitude, and the war will continue to its logical conclusion: a mushroom cloud over America."

The concerned parent told WND that Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, who has told militant Islamics that if they don't agree with the freedoms basic to Australia, they should leave, "seems to be the only intelligent leader of the free world. Why don't we loan him our military for a few months?"

A recent report in the Irish Times also noted that Colin Powell, who was secretary of state in 2004 when he made the statement, called madrassas breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists." Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had questioned: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Earlier, WND reported that The American Textbook Council found that textbooks for children in U.S. public schools these days reflect "the interplay of determined Islamic political activists, textbook editors, and multiculturally minded social studies curriculum planners."

It has gone so far that correcting the situation now becomes a problem, because "educational publishers and educational organizations have bought into claims propounded by Islamists – and have themselves become agents of misinformation."

That comes from Gilbert T. Sewall, who wrote the organization's report on Islam and textbooks. And Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes even has repeatedly expressed concern about the "privileging of Islam in the United States" and warns the stakes go well beyond 7th-grade texts. His opinion of Houghton Mifflin's "Across the Centuries"? Full of "apologetics."

Sewall said his study showed world history textbooks "hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West" even while "Islamic pressure groups and their allies seek to suppress the critical analysis of Islam inside and outside classrooms.

"Textbook editors seem not to recognize that a school-related Islamic agenda in the U.S. uses multiculturalism as a device to guarantee a purely favorable and uncritical view of all things Muslim. At extremes, the report suggested, multiculturalism contributes to a form of peaceable cultural jihad meant to discredit or 'problematize' European civilization in favor of non-Western cultures," he wrote.