This is a large post, about 40 pages.

This article shows just how much censorship has taken place when it comes to teaching our children about Islam, this study albeit on American textbooks and textbooks used in America I feel most certainly mirrors the way children in the UK are taught about Islam.

The study exposes the fear of criticism of Islam, the misrepresentation of the facts concerning Islam and the sugar candy way in which Islam is presented to young people from the ages of 7 to 18 in US schools

I am certain the same thing happens in UK schools, is it any wonder that our young people think  Islam is OK and poses no threat.

I hope this report is made available to UK schools, if there are any teachers out there who read this blog please print this report off and take it to your education committee, this may produce constructive changes in the way Islam is taught in our schools.



ISLAM IN THE Classroom

WHAT THE TEXTBOOKS TELL US

GILBERT T. SEWALL

AMERICAN TEXTBOOK COUNCIL
2008

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The American Textbook Council was established in 1989 as an independent national
research organization to review social studies textbooks and advance the quality of
instructional materials in history. The council endorses the production of textbooks that
embody vivid narrative style, stress significant people and events, and promote better
understanding of all cultures, including our own, on the principle that improved textbooks
will advance the curriculum, stimulate student learning, and encourage educational
achievement for children of all backgrounds. The council acts as a clearinghouse for
information about social studies textbooks and educational publishing in general. It has
published numerous history textbook reviews and other curriculum studies. Consulted by
educators and policymakers at all levels, it provides detailed information and textbook
reviews for individuals and groups interested in improving educational materials. The
American Textbook Council thanks the Searle Freedom Trust, Achelis and Bodman
Foundations, Stuart Family Foundation, and other funders for their support in this two-
year project. The report is indebted to Janie White and other parents who first called
attention to the problem. I thank Daniel M. Bessner, Gary Pennell and Thomas L.
Madden in particular for their early reviews. The inquiry and report benefit from the
insights of Alexander Joffe and Susan Goldsmith as well as from the suggestions of
Victor Porlier, Polly Kummel, and Stapley Emberling. Any claims made or conclusions
drawn from many internal and external reviews are my own.

G.T.S.
ISLAM IN THE CLASSROOM: WHAT THE TEXTBOOKS TELL US

© 2008

American Textbook Council
475 Riverside Drive, Room 1948
New York, New York 10115

 (212) 870-2760 
email: atc@columbia.edu

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CONTENTS

Textbooks Reviewed 4
Summary 5
Introduction 7
Islam’s Foundations and Past 10
Islam, Terrorism and Global Security 23
Conclusions 35
References 40

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TEXTBOOKS REVIEWED

This review samples ten of the nation’s most widely used junior and senior high school
history textbooks. Seventh-grade world histories cover the centuries from the fall of the
Roman Empire to the democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century. High school
world histories feature times since 1800, with lengthy sections on events and conflicts
worldwide since 1945. U.S. histories for high school students focus on the twentieth
century. The junior high school textbooks examined are designed for seventh-graders
using multigrade social studies programs in California and other states. These volumes
cover Islam’s foundations and history before 1800. The high school world history and

U.S. history editions examined are those tailored to California standards. They contain
or originate text that is repeated in national editions. Next to no text variations exist
between the volumes reviewed and other recently copyrighted editions of the same titles.
In the last five years, since the American Textbook Council last appraised how textbooks
treat Islam, a new generation of textbooks has been written and published. The findings
here draw on multiple internal and external reviews commissioned by the American
Textbook Council from historians, teachers, and international relations experts. They
compare what respected historians say about Islam in authoritative histories to what is
being said in textbooks. The review relies in several places on the Middle East expert
Bernard Lewis for authoritative definitions. For an acute account of Islam-related
historiographic controversies, including where Lewis stands within them, see Robert
Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (Overlook, 2006).
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL (World History)

Jackson J. Spielvogel, Medieval and Early Modern Times (Glencoe, 2006).
Stanley M. Bernstein and Richard Shek, Medieval to Early Modern Times (Holt Rinehart
Winston, 2006).
Douglas Carnine, Carlos Cortés, Kenneth R. Curtis, and Anita T. Robinson, World

History: Medieval and Early Modern Times (McDougal Littell, 2006).
Dianne Hart, Medieval and Early Modern Times (Prentice Hall, 2006).
Bert Bower and Jim Lobdell, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond (Teachers’

Curriculum Institute, 2005).

HIGH SCHOOL (World and American History)

Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler, World History: The Modern World (Prentice

Hall, 2007).
Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History: Modern Times (Glencoe, 2006).
Andrew Cayton, Elisabeth Israels Perry, Linda Reed, and Allan M. Winkler, America:

Pathways to the Present (Prentice Hall, 2003, 2005, 2007).
Joyce Appelby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald

A. Ritchie, The American Vision: Modern Times (Glencoe, 2006).
Gerald A. Danzer, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Larry S. Krieger, Louis E. Wilson, and Nancy
Woloch, The Americans: Reconstruction to the Twenty-first Century (McDougal
Littell, 2006).

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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.

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ISLAM IN THE CLASSROOM: WHAT THE TEXTBOOKS TELL US

INTRODUCTION

AT THE END OF 2005 a major publishing event occurred in California. After a lengthy
process the state adopted newly developed—not merely revised—world history
textbooks. California has unique power to shape the content of textbooks across the
country, and publishers make every effort to join its state-approved list of books for
grades kindergarten through eight. Publishers Prentice Hall (Pearson), Glencoe
(McGraw-Hill), Holt Rinehart (then an imprint of Reed Elsevier, now of Houghton
Mifflin), McDougal Littell (Houghton Mifflin), and Teachers’ Curriculum Institute all
received approval. The next year, local school districts across the state, selecting from
this list, bought and put new social studies books into classrooms.

Not everybody was happy with the new books. Parents in Lodi, California,
complained to school officials about the brightly titled volume History Alive! The
Medieval World and Beyond that had been purchased for seventh-grade classrooms. This
book is produced by the Teachers’ Curriculum Institute—despite its name, an aggressive
privately held California-based educational publisher—noteworthy for its rapidly
expanding popularity among textbook buyers. (The company claims that its books are
adopted in one-third of California’s almost one thousand school districts.) For TCI
“diversity” is the sell, and it is a good one. Curriculum supervisors at the district level
rarely apply any other criterion in textbook selection. In recasting world history TCI
pushes the boundaries of multiculturalism to a degree the larger publishers do not.

The Lodi parents were not objecting to a word or two that they took out of
context but to a textbook long on chapters filled with adulatory lessons on Islam. In a
passage meant to explain jihad, they encountered this: “Muslims should fulfill jihad with
the heart, tongue, and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil. The
tongue may convince others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research.
Hands may perform good works and correct wrongs.” There was puffery and
misinformation. Muhammad “taught equality,” said one chapter summary. “He told
followers to share their wealth and to care for the less fortunate in society.”

In Lodi some of the parents objected on religious grounds, motivated by their
awareness that educators and courts have minimized the story of Christianity in the
curriculum. Others had different reasons. One thoughtful parent was disturbed by the
“unrestrained admiration” that the textbook lavished on Islam in contrast to a sketchy and
unsympathetic view of Europe and Western civilization. By late 2007 a heated
community controversy had developed, fanned by an Associated Press report and Fox
News national television feature on the uproar.

This was not the first time TCI had encountered local resistance and parental
objections. In the academic year 2004–2005, History Alive! had been piloted in
Scottsdale, Arizona, before the high-stakes California adoption. When parents
complained about coverage of Islam—six months before California approved the
textbook—Scottsdale officials pulled the book from local schools. They did not do so
willingly. In Arizona, as in California, district administrators had selected the textbook
for piloting and classroom use. The curriculum specialists who made the textbook
selections had known little about Islam, but they were committed to “diversity education”
and had bought TCI’s promises that it delivered a better curriculum.

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It is not surprising that Arizona and California administrators would resist
criticism of the books that they had selected. Long before the textbooks had arrived in
Lodi classrooms, layer after layer of the local education bureaucracy had invested in
History Alive! The Lodi Unified School District had formed a local selection committee,
urged by the San Joaquin County Department of Education to use a “rubric” of “content
assessment, differentiation for special populations, and peripheral materials.” (Peripheral
materials are the CDs and lesson supplements that accompany student textbooks and
teachers’ editions.)

This committee sent a recommendation to the local social studies “articulation
committee,” made up of secondary school social studies teachers, and to secondary
school principals. Then a curriculum council of teachers, site administrators, district
administrators, and selected parents gave their approval to the choice. Finally, the local
board of education approved it. According to parents who complained about the textbook,
each group pointed to the other as the deciding agent, and one principal thanked the
unhappy parents for their support. School districts receive all kinds of complaints about
textbooks, of course, some of them “fringy” along those of merit. So in Lodi and
Scottsdale official indifference and hostility to parental complaints prevailed. Parents
claim the school districts brushed them off or labeled them as racists.

In Lodi some unhappy parents sought relief by bringing their complaints to the
attention of national television news reporters; others were just trying to get local
educators to recognize there was a problem. While some parent protests were ill informed
or self-promotional, by no means all of them were. The complaints were not confined to
Lodi. “I am concerned at the subtle hostility being directed my way now from officials at
the school and school district, and am also afraid that it is creating an adversarial situation
that will negatively impact my own child,” said a parent in Marin County, California,
who objected to the content of lessons on Islam in the seventh-grade Houghton Mifflin
volume.

To what extent were these parents justified in their concerns, not about one book
but several? To answer this question it is necessary to review a new generation of
textbooks purchased by junior and senior high schools since 2003, asking these
questions:

• 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 the 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 highlight Islamic challenges to global security? Do
they describe and explain looming dangers to the United States and world?
There is surely no more perplexing an aspect of the history curriculum than
Islam. For good reason. Views and definitions clash as in no other textbook subject. The
propositions that inform the work of John Esposito, Albert Hourani, Samuel Huntington,
Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Edward Said, some of the most prominent Middle East
historians and experts of our age—constitute an oeuvre of stunning, often hostile,
polarities. Crafting accurate and meaningful lessons for teenagers and their teachers in a
few words is a daunting task for editors, especially when political differences run high.
California’s guidelines for evaluating instructional materials for social content forbid

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“adverse reflection” on religion as well as many other aspects of human life.1 Whatever
“adverse reflection” is, such a mandate may be conceptually at odds with historical and
geopolitical actuality.

Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade.
Willingly, they adjust the definition of jihad and sharia or remove these words from
lessons to avoid inconvenient truths that the editors fear activists will contest. Explicit
facts that non-Muslims might find disturbing are varnished or deleted. Textbooks pare to
a minimum such touchy subjects as Israel and oil as agents of change in the Middle East
since 1945. Terrorism and Islam are uncoupled and the ultimate dangers of Islamic
militancy hidden from view.

None of this is accidental. Islamic organizations, willing to sow misinformation,
are active in curriculum politics. These activists are eager to expunge any critical thought
about Islam from textbooks and all public discourse. They are succeeding, assisted by
partisan scholars and associations. It is not remarkable that Islamic organizations would
try to use ready-made American political movements such as multiculturalism to adjust
the history curriculum to their advantage. It is alarming that so many individuals with the
power to shape the curriculum are willfully blind to or openly sympathetic with these
efforts.

These distortions and biases about Islam in history textbooks could not prevail
were it not for the all-important bridge between Islamist activists and multicultural
organizations on and off campus. Both are eager to restrict what textbooks say about
Islam. Multiculturalists are determined that social studies curricula do not transmit
“Eurocentric” or “triumphalist” presuppositions about Western history and society.
Middle East centers on campuses promote an uncritical view of Islam, often with a
caustic anti-Western spin. Historians actively interested in taking world history curricula
in this direction are prominent in textbook authorship. Encouraged to do so by reputable
authorities, textbook publishers court the Council on Islamic Education and other Muslim
organizations—or at least try to appease them. This legitimacy is bestowed in spite of
longstanding questions about sources of funding and degree of control over publishers.

•

There are differences among the textbooks reviewed. Among the five mass-market
seventh-grade world histories adopted by California and examined here, the Prentice Hall
volume is easily the best designed and most visually coherent. That does not mean its
content on Islam is somehow superior. To describe medieval Spain, in a glaring and
anachronistic modern construct, the book labels Islamic Andalusia a “multicultural
society.” The Glencoe volume’s comic book–like graphics and abbreviated content make
it a substandard text overall, but its relatively neutral treatment of Islam does not fall into
the fawning excesses of the Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s History Alive!

On terrorism and U.S. foreign policy, American history textbooks for high school
students exhibit less variation than world history texts. All the texts reviewed cover
September 11 and U.S. policy in the Middle East more sharply than world history
textbooks do. When it comes to high school world history textbooks, McGraw-Hill’s
Modern Times—the California version of the flagship high school world history text,
World History—is better organized than Pearson Prentice Hall’s The Modern World,
which itself is a spin-off of World History: Connections to Today, the dominant world
history textbook for high school students nationwide. Each textbook covers terrorism and

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Middle Eastern conflict. Major variations of quality are apparent in both texts, and
general appraisal is impossible: some passages are solid and others unacceptable.

Even under the best circumstances, compressing and simplifying complicated
content for students and their instructors in world history courses is a challenge. The
results are often a disaster. The Modern World, for example, describes the Wahhabi sect
in one word, “strict.” Take the complexities that lie at the center of the Sunni and Shiite
schism. Textbooks cannot convey the subject in a sentence or two, and even if they could,
the student audience does not have the background or maturity to grasp the significance
of the split.2

But even when all this is taken into account, the misinformation surrounding
Islam in textbooks is disturbing, more so because much of it is intentional. Although
publishers have developed new world and U.S. history textbooks at three different grade
levels since 2003, they did not use the intervening five years to correct factual
information or right the imbalances. They have allowed the errors to remain or have
removed controversial material. Instead of making changes, they have sustained errors or,
in deliberate acts of self-censorship, have removed controversial material. Deficiencies
are more evident at the seventh-grade level than at the high school level. Why?

ISLAM’S FOUNDATIONS AND PAST

Seventh-grade world history textbooks introduce Islam’s origins, creeds, and core beliefs
as a blend of history and scripture, weaving together revelation, legend, and fact.
“Muslims believe that God had spoken to Muhammad through the angel,” says the Holt
book before going on to explain that “Muhammad reported new revelations about rules
for Muslim government, society, and worship. God told Muhammad that Muslims should
face Mecca when they pray.” Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s History Alive! features a
passage set off in large print and italics, a Muslim prayer from the Qur’an:

Recite—in the name of thy Lord!
Who created man from blood coagulated.
Recite! Thy Lord is wondrous kind,
Who by the pen has taught mankind things they knew
not.

In its narration of Islam’s foundation story, the Prentice Hall volume concludes
with a variant translation of the same extract, this time set off in heavy boldface type:

Seeking peace of mind, Muhammad retreated to a cave to think and
reflect. One night in 610, according to Islamic beliefs, Muhammad had a
vision and began to receive revelations. The angel Gabriel appeared
before him and told him to spread God’s word:

Proclaim in the name of your Lord who created!
Created man from a clot of blood.
Proclaim: Your Lord is the Most Generous,
Who teaches by the pen;
Teaches man what he knew not. (Qur’an 96:1–3)

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To set the scene of the origins of Islam and the teachings of Muhammad, the
McDougal Littell volume features a lavishly illustrated page. Its central organizing motif
is an inspirational but fictionalized tale about a seventh-century Muslim family traveling
on the first hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca and the religious experience of two seventh-
century children, Ayesha and Yazid. It states, “Nearly 100,000 have gathered for the
journey.” The very size of the pilgrimage is a gross exaggeration. “Ayesha and Yazid
stand with their parents for hours, praying in the blistering sun. But that memory soon
fades when the sister and brother learn that they will spend the evening camping under
the stars.” Ayesha and Yazid camping under the stars, under the watchful eye of the
Prophet. The children later “agree with their parents that being near Muhammad was
especially meaningful.” The enthusiasm of this invented story contrasts with standard
textbook diction, which rarely expresses much emotion.

TCI’s lessons on Islam’s foundations are more wordy, detailed, and complex,
containing stilted language that seem scripted or borrowed from devotional, not
historical, material. The chapter entitled “The Prophet Muhammad” begins with the story
of Abraham and Hagar in the desert:

Makkah (Mecca) was an ancient place of worship. According to Arab
and Muslim tradition, many centuries before Muhammad was born, it
was here that God tested the faith of the prophet Abraham by
commanding that he leave his wife Hagar and baby Ishmael in a desolate
valley. As Abraham’s wife desperately searched for water, a miracle
happened. A spring bubbled up at her son’s feet. The spring became
known as Zamzam. Over time, people settled near it, and Abraham built
a house of worship called the Ka’ba.

Such detail runs through entire chapters of History Alive! Seventeen pages after
this passage, the book reminds students of this foundation story in an extensive section on
the Five Pillars. It continues its storytelling in ornate, enthusiastic language:

The Fifth Pillar of Faith is hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy city of
Makkah. . . . Upon arrival, Muslims announce their presence with these
words: “Here I am, O God, at thy command!” They go to the great
Mosque, which houses the Ka’ba. . . . Muslims believe that Abraham
built the Ka’ba as a shrine to honor God. The pilgrims circle the Ka’ba
seven times, which is a ritual mentioned in the Qur’an. Next, they run
along a passage between two small hills, as did Hagar, Abraham’s wife,
when she searched for water for her baby Ishmael. As you may
remember, Muslims believe that a spring called Zamzam miraculously
appeared at Hagar’s feet. The pilgrims drink from the Zamzam well.

In the Holt seventh-grade volume two pages highlight a long prayer from the
Qur’an to Allah “the Merciful.” The format is identical to that used on pages in the Holt
sixth-grade volume that cover the Bible.3 This device typifies the ruling editorial
principle of cultural equivalency: equal time for equal faiths, two pages each, using the
same layout. One aspect of the scriptural quotations is strikingly different. The biblical
passages are ethical teachings canonical in the Western tradition. The Qur’anic passage is
poetic and devotional, more like the Lord’s Prayer or Apostles Creed. It begins:

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In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

It is the Merciful who has taught the Qur’an.

He created man and taught him articulate speech.

The sun and the moon pursue their ordered course. The plants and

the trees bow down in adoration.

In Islam this prayer serves a purpose different from ethical teaching—veneration and
adoration of the Prophet—a difference that textbooks leave unexamined and unstated.

Among the textbooks examined, the editorial caution that marks coverage of
Christian and Jewish beliefs vanishes in presenting Islam’s foundations. With material
laden with angels, revelations, miracles, prayers, and sacred exclamations; the story of
the Zamzam well; and the titles “Messenger of God” and “Prophet of Islam,” the seventh-
grade textbooks cross the line into something other than history, that is, scripture or myth.

Lavish textbook praise of Islam continues after the presentation of these
foundation stories. Some textbooks provide glowing declarations of Muslim social
conscience. The Holt volume, trying to summarize Islam’s organizing principle, says:
“People should help the poor.” It adds: “Helping and caring for others is important in
Islam.” Muhammad “taught equality,” says Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s History
Alive! “He told followers to share their wealth and to care for the less fortunate in
society.” The Holt seventh-grade volume says, “Fasting also reminds Muslims of people
in the world who struggle to get enough food.” TCI says, “Muhammad told his followers
to make sure their guests never left a table hungry.” The textbook continues, noting that
Muhammad learned “about Arab traditions, such as being kind to strangers and helping
orphans, widows, and other needy members of society.” These effusive formulations stop
just short of invention and raise questions about the sources of information.

The textbooks feature manifold contributions of Islam to the arts and science,
expanding coverage to a degree that seems out of proportion to the relative slimness of
the material that the same volumes dedicate to European achievements. TCI devotes
thirteen text-heavy pages to textiles, calligraphy, design, books, city building,
architecture, mathematics, medicine, polo, and chess, some of it spun like cotton candy:

Singing was an essential part of Muslim Spain’s musical culture.
Musicians and poets worked together to create songs about love, nature,
and the glory of the empire. Vocalists performed the songs accompanied
by such instruments as drums, flutes, and lutes. Although this music is
lost today, it undoubtedly influenced later musical forms in Europe and
North Africa.

Undoubtedly, the TCI volume declares. Yet the book acknowledges that the
music is lost and the claims are speculative. Empty text dilates Islamic achievements.

The seventh-grade world history 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 state that Islam was spread by the sword. Now,
textbooks imply, it moves peacefully with traders. Islam is “brought” to apparently

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willing populations. People adopt it freely. TCI says, “An Arab man named Muhammad
introduced Islam to the people of the Arabian peninsula.” The book continues, “Although
the first Muslims lived in Arabia, Islam spread through the Middle East.” But non-Arabs
did not passively “become” Muslim. They were conquered. Islam did not just spread. The
Arab-Islamic conquest ended many centuries of Greek culture and Christian worship in
the eastern Mediterranean. Sudden Muslim control of Syria, Egypt, and Persia was
followed by the Muslim conquest of western Africa, Spain, and the Indus Valley.

Textbooks are trying, perhaps, to correct a misconception. Historically, as a
conqueror, Islam was no crueler than its many adversaries. The notion that
Mohammedanism was a “religion of the sword” forced upon the masses by bloodthirsty
fanatics is based on a false reading of history that was discredited fifty years ago and is a
view rejected by contemporary specialists. Michel Gurfinkiel of the Jean-Jacques
Rousseau Institute notes that the Islamic empire that swept beyond Arabia and quickly
overran the mightiest powers of the day, Byzantium (Greece) and Persia, did so through
alliances with religious rebels and internal political factions that did not share the beliefs
of the regime. In Islam’s history the slaughter of conquered infidels was discouraged.
Sometimes the fate of the conquered was slavery. Sometimes it was limited tolerance by
the Islamic regime. In Islam’s early conquests Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were to
be the tax base of the state. One reason that conquered non-Arabic people became
Muslims was to avoid being taken as slaves or to have preferential rights under Muslim
law. Conversion gradually became a problem for the state as its tax base declined. Yet the
idea of Islamic belligerence has lingering currency, not without reason. Efraim Karsh of
King’s College London documents the long history of warring inclination and territorial
ambition that makes Islam unique among the world’s major faiths, and the Economist
magazine wonders, “Why is Islam involved in quite so many modern wars of religion?”4

Students receive a different message from textbooks, one that points in another
direction. As in the McDougal Littell volume, they read, “There was much blending of
cultures under Muslim rule. Over time, many peoples in Muslim-ruled territories
converted to Islam. They were attracted by Islam’s message of equality and hope for
salvation.” McDougal Littell’s Teacher’s Annotated Edition reiterates this theme, telling
instructors to stress that “many conquered people became Muslims [because] they found
Islam’s message of equality and hope attractive.” What, exactly, was this “message of
equality” and hope that teachers are told to stress?

In explaining jihad, several textbooks make an effort to cleanse it of belligerence.
Defining jihad is admittedly difficult, as definitions in circulation vary radically. The
common assertion now is that translating jihad as “holy war” is entirely wrong and that
old translations are incorrect. But in fact, authorities and scholarship of varying
perspectives conceive jihad to be a sacred obligation to extend Islam’s power—religious
and territorial—by persuasion or force.

Jihad is “sacred” or “holy” struggle. Jihad is also a “just struggle” against the
disbeliever. It is a religious struggle. A religion professor and college textbook author,
Jamal J. Elias, says, “The concept of jihad covers all activities that either defend Islam or
else further its cause.” Jihad is constructed as a “holy war” in much Muslim scripture.
Historically, jihad involves efforts to subjugate or convert, impose sharia, and take
political and military control over non-Muslim territory. Today, in government circles, in
the foreign policy establishment, in the international community, among newswriters and
editorialists and academics, that is how the word jihad is used. It is how Middle Eastern
terrorists and Al Qaeda use the term. When Saddam Hussein was executed in 2006, his

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final words were: “I am a militant and I have no fear for myself. I have spent my life in
jihad and fighting aggression.”5

Islamic scripture is inconsistent toward infidels, but a harsh, punitive, and
aggressive voice, not a charitable or kindly one, prevails. Sam Harris, author of The End
of Faith, observes that punishment and humiliation are leitmotifs in Qur’anic scripture.
Given radical Islam’s mind-set, and observing the contemporary clash of the Sunni and
Shia sects, Harris wonders why U.S. religious moderates and cultural leaders refuse to
look critically at the element of violence inherent in the Islamic project.6 The idea that
Islam is a peaceful religion merely hijacked by a few extremists, Harris and others warn,
is a dangerous fantasy. “Fighting is prescribed for you” (2:216) and “Slay the infidel
wherever you find them” (4:89) are only two of many suras that suggest a degree of
intolerance and aggression.7 Yet the Islamic organizations that act as academic reviewers
for textbook publishers assure editors that jihad is something entirely different. It is a
struggle against evil impulses, they say, misunderstood by the rest of us and in no way
bellicose. To characterize jihad as holy war, they insist, would be a grave textbook error,
yet a 2007 Pentagon-based study shows almost conclusively that Islamic law sanctions
violence and that the Islamist threat to world security has a doctrinal basis.8

New definitions of jihad started to circulate in U.S. history textbooks and
classrooms in the 1990s. The engine was a 1994 Council on Islamic Education “guide”
for publishers that maintained jihad meant “‘to exert oneself’ or ‘to strive.’ Other
meanings include ‘endeavor, strain, effort, diligence, struggle. . . .’ It should not be
understood to mean ‘holy war,’ a common misrepresentation.” Soon, jihad underwent a
definitional overhaul. In this amazing cultural reorchestration, the pioneer was a
Houghton Mifflin world history textbook, Across the Centuries, still firmly established in
junior high schools. Across the Centuries said jihad is a struggle “to do one’s best to
resist temptation and overcome evil.” Jihad was reimagined as an “inner struggle” and
element of Muslim self-improvement. These changes reflected the intersection of
multiculturalism, suddenly a trendy social studies construct, and Houghton Mifflin’s
commercial ambitions in social studies. Then and later, appearing from nowhere, the
California-based Council on Islamic Education would become a fixture on the textbook
scene.

Change was soon evident as well among high school textbooks. From 2001 on,
Connections to Today, Prentice Hall’s market-dominant high school world history then
and now, and several spin-off versions customized for California and other states, listed
Shabbir Mansuri and Susan Douglass of the Council on Islamic Education as academic
reviewers. The textbook says: “Some Muslims look on jihad, or effort in God’s service,
as another duty. Jihad has often been mistakenly translated simply as ‘holy war.’ In fact,
it may include acts of charity or an inner struggle to achieve spiritual peace, as well as
any battle in defense of Islam.” As early as 2002 another high-profile textbook, Patterns
of Interaction, a high school world history textbook published by Houghton Mifflin under
the McDougal Littell imprint, did not mention jihad. Houghton Mifflin’s multigrade
series then dropped jihad from textbooks; by 2005 Houghton Mifflin had apparently
removed jihad from its entire series of social studies textbooks. The advisory role of the
Council on Islamic Education in making these editorial decisions remains unclear.

But this was only the beginning. Among the history textbooks adopted by
California in 2005, some definitions of jihad are more extreme and less valid. History
Alive, the TCI textbook that Lodi and Scottsdale parents so objected to, provides the most
detailed—and misleading—definition of jihad among seventh-grade textbooks reviewed:

15

The word jihad means “to strive.” Jihad represents the human struggle to
overcome difficulties and do things that are pleasing to God. Muslims
strive to respond positively to personal difficulties as well as worldly
challenges. For instance, they might work to become better people,
reform society, or correct injustice.

Then, in the next paragraph, which differentiates the “lesser” and “greater” jihad,
the textbook tangles the subject and also seems slightly deceptive:

Jihad has always been an important Islamic concept. One hadith, or
account of Muhammad, tells about the prophet’s return from a battle. He
declared that he and his men had carried out the “lesser jihad,” the
external struggle against oppression. The “greater jihad,” he said, was the
fight against evil within oneself. Examples of the greater jihad include
working hard for a goal, giving up a bad habit, getting an education, or
obeying your parents when you may not want to.

Continuing the definition, TCI lapses into florid prose that invites questions
about textual sources and scripting:

Another hadith says that Muslims should fulfill jihad with the heart,
tongue, and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil.
The tongue may convince others to take up worthy causes, such as
funding medical research. Hands may perform good works and correct
wrongs.

Then it continues:

Sometimes, however, jihad becomes a physical struggle. The Qur’an tells
Muslims to fight to protect themselves from those who would do them
harm or to right a terrible wrong.

TCI leaves “those who would do them harm” and “right a terrible wrong” to the
reader’s imagination. The textbook’s chapter summary reads: “Muslims also have the
duty of jihad, or striving to overcome challenges as they strive to please God.” Since TCI
describes jihad as being “the struggle against oppression,” students who hear of repeated
Islamic calls to jihad against Christians and Jews that include the destruction of the
United States and Israel must wonder who and what is at fault.

Other seventh-grade textbook definitions of jihad are ambivalent. The Holt
volume defines jihad most accurately among the textbooks reviewed as “to make an
effort, or to struggle. Jihad refers to the inner struggle people go through in their effort to
obey God and behave according to Islamic ways. Jihad can also mean the struggle to
defend the Muslim community, or, historically, to convert people to Islam. The word has
also been translated as holy war.” The Prentice Hall volume offers a more acceptable and
informative passage despite the unadorned declaration of Islamic tolerance:

16

The successful spread of Islam and Muslim rule was based on several

factors. One was the decline of the Byzantine and Persian empires. Years

of warfare had left these empires weak and vulnerable.

A second factor in the Muslims’ success was the skill of Arab

armies. They were expert in the use of soldiers on horseback. They

struck quickly and with deadly force in harsh desert environments.

A third factor was the energy and religious zeal of Arab warriors.

They fought under the banner of jihad or “holy struggle.” In Arabic,

jihad refers to striving hard in God’s cause. Sometimes it means a

person’s internal struggle to live by Muslim principles. But it can also

mean waging war to spread the Islamic faith.

Another factor helping the Arabs was their tolerance for other

religions.

A final factor in the Muslim’s success was the rapid appeal of

Islam itself. Islam offered followers a direct path to God and salvation.

The Holt and Prentice Hall definitions of jihad may be imperfect, yet they
provide essential definitions that the Glencoe and McDougal Littell seventh-grade
volumes do not. These two latter volumes fail to acknowledge jihad. The material has
simply been deleted. This deliberate omission required editorial self-censorship at
McGraw-Hill, and at Houghton Mifflin, where editors had previously whitewashed the
definition of jihad in Across the Centuries.

After jihad, in some textbooks, comes Islamic law, shariah, which textbooks spell
in a variety of ways. In their definitions, some textbooks lapse into intentional vagueness.
The Holt seventh-grade volume says Islamic law “makes no distinction between religious
beliefs and daily life.” This is absolutely correct, but the textbook does not explain what
this statement means. Shariah is a “law” very different from the one that Americans
understand. Separation of church and state is an alien concept to most Muslims. The
struggle against the infidel (jihad) is rooted in theological law (shariah). “Shari’ah sets
rewards for good behavior and punishments for crimes,” the Holt book says. What are
“good behavior” and “crimes”?

The volume does not explain, for example, that apostasy is officially a capital
crime. Renunciation of Islam may be regarded as treason, not an act of conscience or
personal choice. Nor does it explain, for example, that Saudi Arabia and Iran today exact
the death penalty for homosexuality. It does not point out that freedom of religion is
forbidden in nations throughout the Muslim world.

“The primary source of Islamic law is the Qur’an. Rules and precepts that are
clearly stated in the Qur’an are not open to debate and must be accepted at face value,”
Jamal J. Elias says. “The system of Islamic law, or Shari’a, attempts to regulate all
aspects of human life.” Bernard Lewis concurs in several passages:

•
In an Islamic state, there is in principle no law other than the shar’ia,
the Holy Law of Islam.
•
There is, for example, no distinction between canon law and civil law,
between the law of the church and the law of the state, crucial in
Christian history. There is only a single law, the shari’a, accepted by
Muslims as of divine origin and regulating all aspects of human life:
civil, commercial, criminal, constitutional, as well as matters more

17

specifically concerned with religion in the limited, Christian sense of that
word.

•
The principal function of the Islamic state and society was to maintain
and enforce these rules.
•
. . . the idea that any group of persons, any kind of activities, or any
part of human life is in any sense outside the scope of religious law and
jurisdiction is alien to Muslim thought.9
Any number of important study points thus cry for attention. Islamic law does not
have much capacity or desire to promote freedom of religion. It is not “tolerant” by
nature. The idea of Islamic coexistence with other systems of belief is at odds with
foundational beliefs as prescribed in the Qur’an (a revelation) and the Hadiths
(commentary on Muhammad). Sharia sanctions violence against nonbelievers. Deviations
from any Qur’anic declaration may be risky. They may be judged as violations of the
faith and subject to worldly punishment. Students learn none of this. What do they read
instead? The Prentice Hall seventh-grade volume states:

Muhammad taught that there was no difference between everyday life
and religious life. Living a proper life meant following God’s laws as
revealed in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. These laws are collected in the
Islamic law known as the Sharia. Sharia is an Arabic word meaning “the
way that leads to God.”

The Sharia was based on the Qur’an and Sunnah. But those
sources could not cover every situation that might come up. When in
doubt, Muslims turned to religious scholars. Their judgments also made
up part of the Sharia.

Muhammad himself saw the need for such judgments. In an
account from the Hadith, or written record of the Sunnah, Muhammad
asked a governor by what law he would rule. The governor answered:

“‘by the law of the Qur’an.’ ‘But if you do not find any
direction therein,’ asked the Prophet. ‘Then I will act
according to the Sunnah of the Prophet,’ was the reply.
‘But if you do not find direction in the Sunnah,’ he was
asked again. ‘Then I will exercise my judgment and act
on that,’ came the reply. The Prophet raised his hands
and said: ‘Praise be to Allah.’”

What does Prentice Hall mean when it says, “Muhammad taught that there was
no difference between everyday life and religious life”? Doesn’t a tale from the Hadith,
which is sacred commentary on Muhammad’s revelation, scripture that ends with the
declaration “Praise be to Allah,” carry a decidedly devotional finish? What is the
Sunnah? Have Islamic content providers prompted the editors here? Do the tone and
diction suggest an element of scripting? History Alive! contains detailed, arcane
information on Islamic schools of jurisprudence and legal viewpoints that for thirteenyear-
olds is conspicuously age-inappropriate. Of shariah and Islamic law, the volume
says:

18

Shari’ah covers Muslims’ duties toward God. It guides them in their
personal behavior and relationships with others. Shari’ah promotes
obedience to the Qur’an and respect for others. . . . Islamic law helped
Muslims live by the rules of the Qur’an. By the 19th century, however,
many Muslim regions had come under European rule. Western codes of
law soon replaced the Shari’ah except in matters of family law. Today,
most Muslim countries apply only some parts of Islamic law. But
Shari’ah continues to develop in response to modern ways of life and its
challenges.

The last sentence is ambiguous, and, as in many other textbooks, such vapid
phrases as “continues to develop in response to modern ways of life and its challenges”
substitute for insight and information. Some passages are meaningless. The chapter
summary concludes: “Shari’ah, or Islamic law, helps Muslims live by the teachings of the
Qur’an. It includes practices of daily life as well as the duty to respect others.” As in the
case of jihad, the Glencoe and the McDougal Littell seventh-grade volumes do not
mention shariah, omitting the topic in acts of deliberate self-censorship, fearing Islamist
pressure, more eager to avoid controversy than to complete the narrative or teach
students.

History textbooks highlight the theme of Islamic tolerance, celebrating what the
Prentice Hall volume ludicrously calls a “multicultural society.” Once non-Arabs have
been conquered, students learn, those societies and civilizations with non-Islamic systems
of belief live in a wonderland of interreligious cooperation. TCI describes how “a unique
culture flourished in cities like Cordoba and Toledo, where Muslims, Jews, and
Christians lived together in peace.” In the McDougal Littell volume, lesson titles include
the “Magic of Baghdad,” “The Glory of Cordoba,” “A Golden Age in the East,” “The
Legacy of the Muslim Golden Age,” and “A Golden Age for Jews.”

The accompanying Teacher’s Annotated Edition includes a catechistic set of
questions and answers that it labels an “Essential Question”:

Q: How did the caliphs who expanded the Muslim Empire treat those
they conquered?
A: They treated them with tolerance.
Review:

Q: Why were the caliphs tolerant of the people they conquered?
A: Because the Qur’an did not allow Muslims to force people to convert
to Islam.
At a time when intolerance marks Islamic cultures worldwide and
multiculturalism is a ruling idea in U.S. schools, these “wonderland-of-tolerance” tropes
constitute a major content distortion. To present Islam’s past exclusively through the lens
of “tolerance” and “equality,” indeed, as a unique triumph of interreligious harmony, is
seriously misleading. The McDougal Littell volume broadly states: “Muslim law requires
that Muslim leaders offer religious toleration.” When the Prentice Hall volume proclaims
medieval Spain to be a “multicultural society,” it illustrates the promiscuous application
of the multicultural label by and in school curriculums.

19

While seventh-grade textbooks describe Islam in glowing language, they portray

Christianity in harsh light. Students encounter a startling contrast. Islam is featured as a

model of interfaith tolerance; Christians wage wars of aggression and kill Jews. Islam

provides models of harmony and civilization. Anti-Semitism, the Inquisition, and wars of

religion bespot the Christian record. Textbooks do not lament the West’s loss of control

of three sides of the Mediterranean and Islam’s subsequent European incursions for

nearly a thousand years. Charles Martel is no longer a legend. The Reconquest and the

Siege of Vienna are no longer landmark events. In some cases textbook carelessness with

European history—matched by enthusiasm for non-Western history—is staggering. To

illustrate medieval domestic life in Europe, for example, TCI’s History Alive! chooses a

seventeenth-century Italian baroque painting by Saraceni, one that illustrates an obscure

moral allegory of a legendary fifth-century B.C. Roman king. Compounding the offense,

the textbook labels the painting a Caravaggio.

The Crusades, students learn from TCI, were “a terrible ordeal for many Muslims.
An unknown number of Muslims lost their lives in battles and massacres. Crusaders also
destroyed Muslim property.” TCI is correct to say the Crusades “began as a response to
the threat posed by the Seljuks.” But then the book contradicts itself. It describes the
Crusades as “religious wars launched against Muslims by European Christians.” When the
Seljuks or other Muslim groups attack Christian peoples, kill them, and take their lands,
the process is referred to as “building” an empire. Christian attempts to restore those lands
are labeled as “violent attacks” or “massacres.” A passage about the Second Crusade
characterizes Christians as “invaders”—something they would have denied—while the
Seljuks are simply “migrating” into Christian territories.

The treatment of the Crusades by History Alive! is riddled with major and minor
errors, according to the historian Thomas F. Madden. The pope “promised entry to heaven
to all who joined the fight.” Not so. The Crusaders wore red crosses, the book says. No,
only Templars did. Richard spent the majority of his reign on crusade. Again, incorrect.
Muslims “like Europeans, began to adopt a standing army,” the book states. There was no
such thing in the Middle Ages. Standing armies were a product of the seventeenth century.
In 1099 Jerusalem was captured; it did not surrender. “The victorious crusaders massacred
Muslims and Jews throughout the city. The survivors were sold into slavery,” the book
proclaims. In the eleventh century enslavement was a Muslim custom, not a Christian one.
The Children’s Crusade was not a march of “tens of thousands of peasant children,” as
TCI claims, nor a crusade. It was made up of adults, mostly poor. The story about
Marseilles merchants’ selling these people into slavery is a story, a tale. No historian
accepts its historicity.

TCI’s suggestion that the European economy developed liquid capital, banking,
and taxation on account of the Crusades is ridiculous, Madden continues. It is equally
absurd, he points out, to suggest that monarchs grew in power because nobles were
frequently away on crusade. The narrative is biased. For example, Saladin is praised for
not killing his prisoners in Jerusalem in 1187. What is left out is that Saladin had planned
to massacre the entire city, but the defenders threatened to destroy the Muslim holy sites
unless he agreed to allow the city to peacefully surrender to him.

The McDougal Littell textbook goes one step further than TCI in its revisionism.
It contains a section titled “Defending Muslim Spain,” forgetting that Muslims encroached
upon Christian territory, and not the other way around.10 “Christians are trounced and
portrayed as murderers of the Muslim and Jewish people,” one parent complained of
History Alive, objecting to bias. The Jews are “victimized, persecuted and murdered by the

20

Christians. All the while, Islam builds great and grand new empires, has many great and
wonderful achievements in architecture, education, science, geography, mathematics,
medicine, literature, art and music, and ultimately rules benevolently over the Jewish and
Christian people.”

In recasting the Crusades seventh-grade textbooks highlight Christian oppression

of the Jews. Textbooks give the impression of unadulterated and unrelenting, centuries-

long Christian anti-Semitism, and they put the subject into the center of the Middle Ages.

This is not an area of history with settled claims and agreement among historians.

Equally authoritative references exist to which historians and others point for verification.

But a number of textbook passages, reviewers found, were exaggerated and

disproportionate—and, in places, inaccurate. “Mobs of peasants turned on Jews who

would not instantly convert to Christianity. Thousands of Jews killed themselves and

their families in order to escape the Crusaders’ knives,” says the Glencoe text, for

example, combining sharp language with disputed fact. The McDougal Littell volume

claims that “Jews who faced persecution in Christian lands flocked to al-Andalus to enjoy

this freedom.” No, in fact, Jews who migrated (not “flocked”) to Andalusia did so to

escape persecution in Muslim lands. Seventh-grade textbooks also focus on anti-

Semitism in lessons on medieval trade and commerce. From the unrelieved picture, a

student or teacher would never know that few Jews lived in medieval Europe, that

Christians and European Jews could interact in mutual interest and even amity, especially

in trade and banking, or that Jews were not doomed to virulent Christian hatred.

History Alive! declares in bold strokes: “The violence unleashed by the Crusades

caused great suffering for the Jews. Crusaders in the Holy Land slaughtered Jews as well

as Muslims. Other Jews became slaves.” But when, precisely, did this general

slaughtering and enslaving occur? The short of it is that this didn’t really happen, or relies

entirely on slender, often contested sources. This passage, entitled “Impact on Jews as a

Group,” continues:

During the First Crusade, European Jews suffered a series of violent

persecutions. As Crusaders crossed northern France and Germany, some

of them murdered whole communities of Jews. They destroyed

synagogues and holy books. They looted homes and businesses. Some

Crusaders tortured Jews to make them accept Christianity.

Anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jews, spread among non-

crusaders as well. Religious prejudice combined with envy of Jews who

had become prosperous bankers and traders. Riots and massacres broke

out in a number of cities in Europe.

The point of the Crusades was not to massacre Jews but to confront Islam, which
had conquered Christian lands. The TCI volume, History Alive!, says Madden in his
review, leaves the impression that killing Jews was a regular part of crusading. It was not.
The killing of Jews was forbidden by church law, and those who engaged in it were
considered criminals. The Crusades were a response to jihad and the loss of Christian
territory. The history of the Jews and anti-Semitism is peripheral to the Crusades. There
is no doubt that the position of the Jews in Europe deteriorated sharply from the twelfth
century. Massacres occurred, and anti-Semitism was in certain times and locations
intense. But that is a different story, and the result is textbook distortion.

21

While Christian belligerence is magnified, Islamic inequality, subjugation, and
enslavement get the airbrush. Required to cover the status of women in the Islamic world,
history textbooks find themselves in a muddle. In a failed effort to cover two troubling
subjects—Islamic slavery and the subjugation of women—very quickly and as one, the
Holt seventh-grade volume lapses into incoherence:

Before Muhammad’s time many Arabs owned slaves. Although slavery
didn’t disappear among Muslims, the Qur’an encourages Muslims to free
slaves. Also, women in Arabia had few rights. The Qur’an describes
rights of women, including rights to own property, earn money, and get
an education. However, many Muslim women have fewer rights than
men.

The seventh-grade Prentice Hall volume introduces a section entitled “Men and
Women” with two paragraphs and a long set-off quotation in bold, not from a document
or highly authoritative source but from an extract from an otherwise unknown 1990 guide
published by the defunct Middle East Editorial Associates and written by someone named
John Sabini:

The Qur’an and the Sharia laid out clear roles for men and women. Men
were expected to support their families and to represent them in the
world. Women generally stayed at home, although some women rose to
important positions. In general, however, women had fewer rights than
men and occupied an inferior position. For example, a woman’s share of
an inheritance was only half that of a man’s.

Nevertheless, in many ways Islam improved conditions for
women. Before the development of Islam, Arabic women had virtually
no rights. Under the Sharia, women and men had religious equality.

“As Muhammad once said: “All people are equal as the
teeth of a comb. There is no claim of merit of an Arab
over a non-Arab, or of a white over a black, or of a male
over a female. Only God-fearing people will merit a
preference with God.” —John Sabini, Islam, A Primer

Who Sabini is, what he is trying to convey, and the relationship of the Sabini
material to the text immediately preceding it remain entirely unclear. Prentice Hall then
features a sidebar that runs for two-thirds of a page in high color with 111 words of text
on (as the book spells it) hijab, the Islamic veiling of women—material expressly
designed to link past and present:

PAST: The teachings of Muhammad state that women’s garments should
not attract attention. The female Muslim custom of hijab—wearing
garments that cover the head and body—was followed only by upper-
class women during the first few hundred years of Islam. In the Middle
Ages hijab became more common.
PRESENT: Hijab today ranges from colorful scarves to black robes.
Some women wear hijab, and some do not. Many wear hijab to follow

22

Muslim tradition. Others think it allows them to be judged for themselves
and not their bodies. In certain countries, the government requires
women to wear hijab. Why do you think only upper-class women wore
hijab in the early centuries of Islam?

This exercise is a total instructional failure. It contains vast misinformation in a
few words. It makes no sense. There is no subject, no connection between past and
present. It is vague. It does not begin to examine the emotional or psychological
dimensions of the veil or, for that matter, why the veil is of abiding interest in the West.
How can any student or teacher deduce an answer to the concluding study question?

At the high school level textbooks deal directly with the status of women in the
contemporary Islamic world. Starting with a misleading headline, “Women’s Options
Vary,” Prentice Hall’s The Modern World states:

Conditions for women vary greatly from country to country in the
modern Middle East. Women in most countries have won equality before
the law. Some women have entered professions such as law and
medicine. In Turkey, Syria, and Egypt, many urban women gave up the
tradition of hejab, or wearing the traditional Muslim headscarves and
loose-fitting, ankle-length garments meant to conceal.

On the other hand, religiously conservative Saudi Arabia and
Iran require women to wear hejab. In Saudi Arabia, women are not
allowed to drive. In many Islamic countries, girls are less likely to attend
school than boys. This is because of a traditional belief that girls do not
need an education for their expected role as wives and mothers. Muslim
women have begun to challenge this belief.

Yes and no, mainly no, as retrograde cultural forces in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and
Pakistan have in recent years discredited any embrace of Western ideas and social
practices. What does “challenge this belief” mean? How and to what degree? Textbooks
are not telling the truth if they fuzz the widespread gender-based subjugation that marks
Islamic societies. What does it mean to be forbidden by law to drive a car on account of
sex? Women in some Muslim countries who do not conform to strict social norms of
gender separation and housebound seclusion may be shunned, oppressed, or punished,
sometimes with quasi-legal sanction.

Instead of calling attention to these conditions and conventions, textbooks blur
the subject and as a result make no sense. Glencoe’s Modern Times says that “in the 19th
and 20th centuries, Muslim scholars began debating women’s roles. Many argued that
Muslims needed to rethink outdated interpretations that narrowed the lives of women. In
nations like Turkey and Iran, these debates led to an expansion of women’s rights and
freedoms.” The text concludes: “There has been a shift toward more traditional roles for
women. This trend is especially noticeable in Iran,” a gross understatement that typifies
textbook language designed to circumvent harsh truths. Textbooks fail to register any
objections to conditions of segregation, isolation, or enforced gender-based inferiority in
the Muslim world that may have its roots in religion.

Social studies textbooks do not raise the issue of homosexuality in the Muslim
world. As a matter of civil liberties, freedom, and due process, the subject is illustrative,
contrasting Islamic culture with one aspect of Western modernity. Most high school

23

students are not so sheltered that the subject needs to remain off-limits. The gruesome
video-recorded 2005 execution of two Iranian teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz
Marhoni, put to death for homosexual acts, is widely available on the Web and might
chill the heart of every U.S. progressive, educator or not. Classroom silence about this
kind of punishment, cruelty, and intolerance involves an element of cowardice. “One of
the most disgraceful developments of our time is that many Western authors and
intellectuals who pride themselves on being liberals have effectively aligned themselves
with an outrageously illiberal movement,” the cultural critic Bruce Bawer has asserted.11

Textbooks mention Islamic slavery only obliquely, as with the janissary soldiers,
or not at all. Enslaved Africans and Slavs were transported to Muslim lands from the
eighth century on. Slaves were accumulated through conquest, tribute, and sale. In
contrast to slavery in the Western Hemisphere, Islamic slavery did not have a racial
dimension and slaves could and did achieve a variety of social stations, some of them of
considerable power. Muslim enslavement went on from the Balkans to Africa and Central
Asia, and the estimated fourteen million slaves taken captive by Muslim rulers all over
the world was a larger population than the eleven million Africans exported to the New
World before 1850.

In the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, in the late nineteenth century, an
estimated twenty-five thousand slaves were traded annually. Vestiges of Islamic slavery
persist worldwide. Despite the Qur’anic virtue of manumission, Islam “accepted slavery,”
says the Columbia History of the World. “This institution left its mark on Islamic society
more than in the West—economically, through the profitable slave trade, socially,
through the institution of concubinage and the harem, and politically, as individual slaves
gained power as favorites, bodyguards, and rulers.”12 Islamic scripture and doctrine do
not condemn slavery or subjection.

If slavery looms large in Islam’s history, textbooks should highlight it as they do
slavery in the Western Hemisphere after 1500. World history textbooks describe in
agonizing detail the export of slaves from Africa to North America, the Caribbean, and
Brazil, and the history of slavery in the New World; slavery in the far-flung Islamic
world on several continents over the course of a millennium gets the airbrush. This
glaring imbalance reflects a prevailing editorial mind-set that is often more sensitive to
“cultural differences” than to accurate but disturbing perspectives that might elicit the
protests of Islamist activists and watchdogs.

ISLAM, TERRORISM AND GLOBAL SECURITY

Terrorism

The labels “terrorism” and “terrorist” are vague but pejorative. They are terms that are
affixed to violence aimed at civilians or civil security and directed against a regime.
Whether a nation can fight a “war against terrorism” is an open question, but politically
the United States is stuck with the phrase. Terrorist groups do not describe themselves as
terrorists. They see themselves as freedom fighters, guerrillas, paramilitaries, or as
“martyrs” carrying out God’s will. Organized terrorism requires cover, arms, and money.
Terrorists operate without a traditional military force.

These would seem to be essential starting points for any textbook discussion of
what terrorism is. But the central point that high school world history textbooks try to
make is that terrorism comes in many forms. Worldwide, in Ireland, Japan, Italy, among

24

the Basques, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, and Shining Path of Peru, students learn from
The Modern World, terrorists threaten different societies. This is not helpful for students
trying to grasp the geopolitical design of the twenty-first century, since intranational and
often nonreligious forms of terrorism differ from—they do not correspond to—Islamic
jihad, something that is transnational in scope and that occurs on a global scale. History
textbooks would do better to explain how Shining Path or the Irish Republican Army is
different from jihad.

In a section titled “Modern Terrorism,” Modern Times features a short, none-tooillustrative
quotation from an eyewitness of carnage at the 2002 bombings of tourists inBali, Indonesia, providing the entire contextual backup with the following text:

In the deadly Bali bombings, 200 people died. Similar events have fillednews reports in recent years. What is it that terrorists of recent decadeswant? Some are militant nationalists who want to create their own state
or expand national territory. The goal of the Irish Republican Army
(IRA), for example, is to unite Northern Ireland, which is now governedby Great Britain, with the Irish Republic. Since the 1970s, thousands of
people have died at the hands of IRA terrorists.

Other terrorists work for one nation to undermine the
government of another. This kind of terrorism is called state-sponsored
terrorism. Militant governments in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and NorthKorea have sponsored terrorist acts. There are also states that secretlyfinance, train, or hide terrorists.

Modern Times fails to identify what complaints gave rise to this incidence of
Islamic terrorism. If Modern Times is going to focus on Balinese terrorism, it needs toexplain that a relatively small number of Indonesian Islamists want to overthrow the
current Muslim regime, turn Indonesia into an Islamic state, and terrify Australia. As itstands, this passage adds up to nothing. It is a poor choice for a defining example ofIslamic terrorism. The 1997 massacre of tourists in Egypt or 2004 massacre of Beslan
schoolchildren by jihadi are better study examples of Islamic terrorism directed atinnocent civilians.

Having made a valuable point about state-sponsored terrorism, Glencoe’s
Modern Times broadens the subject, switching to a new section entitled “Islamic
Militants: A Clash of Cultures.” “Terrorist acts became more frequent in the latertwentieth century,” the text begins, abandoning the stated subject from the start. “Acts ofterror have become a regular aspect of modern society around the globe.” Then the book
continues:

Terrorism has been practiced since ancient times. In the modern period,
one example occurred in Russia in the late 1800s, when radical reformersbombed trains or assassinated officials to fight the czar’s repression.

The causes of recent world terrorism are complex. Some analystssay this terrorism is rooted in the clash of modern and Islamic cultures.
They argue that because many states in the former Ottoman Empire didnot modernize along Western lines, Muslims have not accommodated
their religious beliefs to the modern world. Other analysts note that theChristians and Muslims have viewed each other with hostility since at

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least the time of the Crusades. Others suggest that poverty and ignorancelie at the root of the problem—extremists find it easy to stir up
resentment against wealthy Western societies. Finally, some say
terrorism would be rare if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be solved.

The reference to “recent world terrorism”—editors do not want to label it
“Islamic terrorism”—lists views outsourced to unnamed “analysts,” letting Modern
Times’s editors off the hook. The text never clarifies what it means when it says,
“Muslims have not accommodated their religious beliefs to the modern world.” The idea
that “poverty and ignorance lie at the root of the problem” sounds plausible but is nottrue. Terrorists are rarely poor or ignorant. Who really believes that terrorism would goaway if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were resolved? Who pretends that this resolution is
an immediate po