By Tom Shuford
Columnist EdNews.org

To the perpetrators, the murder of 176 Russian school children at Beslan was acceptable because it was for a "just cause." That view is not unique to Chechen terrorists. A Muslim cleric in Britain shortly after the massacre proclaimed support for hostage-taking at British schools — for a just cause. See "Cleric supports targeting children."

I see a parallel between the propensity for unimaginable cruelty among Islamic extremists abroad and the disposition to intimidation among Muslim activists in America — as a tactic to silence critics. Case in point: the attack on critics of American textbooks' deferential portrait of Islam.

I am sharing an exchange below between George Clowes, managing editor of School Reform News, and Gibert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council. The American Textbook Council is an independent national research organization established in 1989 to review and monitor history textbooks used in U.S. schools.

The exchange is part of an interview that Clowes conducted with Sewall: "Textbooks: 'Where the Curriculum Meets the Child' — an interview with Gilbert T. Sewall," The Heartland Institute, 09/01/2004:

Clowes: ...you quoted Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis as saying, "We live in a time when great efforts are being made to falsify the record of the past to make history a tool of propaganda." You commented that Islamists have succeeded in doing this . . .

Sewall: ...When I published the World History Textbook Review report earlier this year, I mentioned Islam's special role in terrorism but otherwise didn't say much about it. That's because, when we issued a preliminary report on Islam last year . . . I came under vicious attack from the Islamists, in particular in a written response from the Council on Islamic Education (CIE).

I want as many people as possible to read their response, because I think it's lunacy. The person who wrote it is CIE's chief propagandist (1) . . . CIE has influenced publishers to keep certain information about Islam out of U.S. school textbooks.

For example, I looked at the textbook descriptions of jihad, sharia, Arabic slavery, and the treatment of women, and compared them with what well-respected scholarship said.

I found there were great variations. There were obvious fabrications, whitewash, airbrushing — call it what you will. When I pointed these variations out in the 2003 report Islam in the Textbooks, and explained that it had taken place because CIE had intimidated publishers, then I came under attack.

The Council on Islamic Education has been as aggressive as any single group in getting its particular view of history into U.S. textbooks . . .

* * *

In The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003), New York

University research professor Diane Ravitch fills out the picture as to how the Council on Islamic Education and other groups censor public school textbooks:

"The textbooks' treatment of religion is consistently deferential, even reverential . . . The treatment of Islam, for example, lacks any critical analysis. The texts stress that Islam is tolerant and egalitarian; that its body of laws (the Sharia) established a high standard of morality and ethics; and that Islam improved women's status . . ." p145

"The world history textbooks consistently shade or omit facts that might offend any racial, ethnic, or religious group. This does not occur by happenstance. Most of the books prominently identify an advisory board that includes representatives of religious and ethnic groups. Three publishers-Glencoe, Houghton-Mifflin, and Prentice-Hall-rely on the same individual from the Council on Islamic Education to review their Islamic content. This may account for the similarity of their material as their omission of anything that would enable students to understand conflicts between Islamic fundamentalism and Wester liberalism. Some textbooks have multicultural advisory committees that include representatives of Jewish, Ukrainian-American, Native-American, Asian-American, and Afrocentric organizations."

"Publishers that invite representatives of religious and ethnic groups to review their materials before publication are practicing self-censorship." p147

They are also craven. They are selling defective textbooks to weak customers that cannot critically evaluate their products. But that's common and within the American political tradition. The Council on Islamic Education's use of intimidation to silence critics of the practice — such as Gilbert Sewall — is an intolerable breach of that tradition.

Endnote

1) The Council on Islamic Education's response to Sewall has been removed from the Council's web site.

Tom Shuford [email protected] is a retired teacher living in Lenoir, NC.


Published September 9, 2004