Indoctrination is defined as “teaching someone to accept doctrines uncritically.” One website described indoctrination as brain washing, and said the term implies long term and subtle methods.
Twelve years have passed since the 9/11-terror attack on the United States by Muslim Jihadists. Since that time not only has the U.S. media and government sterilized the language used when addressing Islamic terrorism, but U.S. students are being taught a sanitized version of history.
A report by Citizens for National Security published in 2011 revealed that many U.S. textbooks teach today’s students that the 9/11 attacks were in response with U.S. foreign policies. In fact, Martin Mawyer, of the Christian Action Network said, “The impression students are given is that terrorists are misguided fighters against Western imperialism and aggression, who are only wrong in their approach.”
Edmund Burke said, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” It is certainly important to teach western students about Islam, but it is vital that students are taught history without bias especially when dealing with Islam and its political doctrine of conquest.
ACT for America reviewed thirty-eight, 6th through 12th grade textbooks and their treatment of Islam. Some of their major findings in various textbooks included that the doctrine of jihad was omitted, incorrectly defined, inaccurately described or understated. Women’s rights were misrepresented. The Islamic slave trade was either omitted altogether or minimized in contrast to the Atlantic slave trade. And the texts gave a false historical narrative of the Crusades leaving out the Islamic aggression in prior centuries.
There was even a revision of history that portrayed Islam as preceding Judaism and Christianity in history, making Muslims the indigenous people of the Holy Land. In addition there was a revisionist view that the nation of Israel was created out of world guilt over the Holocaust, and that the Arabs living in the region were forced to give up their land (even though most of the land was purchased from them).
The bias in textbooks against the nation of Israel is not only in the United States. An English language textbook designed for foreign students and immigrants to the United Kingdom refers to the nation of Israel as “Occupied Palestine” on a map of the Middle Eastern region. A Lebanese media empire controls the textbook’s publisher, Garnet Education.
Parents and grandparents need to be watchful and take the time to know exactly what their children are being taught regarding Islam. After parent complaints in Georgia, a middle school was forced to adjust their curriculum. As part of an assignment for 7th graders regarding school uniforms, a comparison was made between the uniforms and Islamic dress. The curriculum included a letter from a fictitious Saudi Arabian woman describing her Islamic dress, the abuyah and how she felt comfortable wearing it. However the letter goes on to say, “I have seen pictures of women in the West and find their dress to be horribly immodest…Women in the West do not have the protection of the Sharia as we do here. If our marriage has problems, my husband can take another wife rather than divorce me, and I would still be cared for…I feel very fortunate that we have the Sharia.”
Prayer Points:
Education is essential! Pray that school boards, principals, and teachers will become educated to the differences between Islamic sharia law and the freedoms of our western nations – and then teach what is fact and not just what seems “politically correct”.
Pray that children will be educated – and not indoctrinated – in their schools and that parents will insist that revisionist history be exposed and the truth be taught.
Ask God to help Christian parents to be open, receive understanding and become educated regarding the teachings of Islam. Pray He will give them His grace to teach the truth about Islam and its history to their children and others.
Best Current News 