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Jackie
Morrissey interviews Tony Paliuso and Margot Einstein regarding the
disinformation about Israel in the curriculum in Newton, MA schools.
(Click here to watch the interview)
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AMERICAN THINKER
Taqiyya for
Kids
By Janet Tassel
January 15, 2012
It was the first week in October in
Newton, an upscale suburb of Boston, and Tony Pagliuso's daughter, a sophomore
at Newton South High School, was visibly disturbed. When Tony asked her the
problem, she showed him a passage from the chapter she was assigned in her
World History Class. It was a chapter called "Women, an Essay," from
a supplemental text called The Arab World Notebook. In a paragraph
devoted to women "in the struggle for independence from colonial
powers," we find:
Over the past four decades, women
have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have
been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the
latest uprising, "intifada," in the Israeli occupied territories.
Pagliuso assured his daughter that
this was "total propaganda," and took the matter up with the young
teacher, a Miss Jessica Engel, who couldn't understand what all the fuss was
about. The material had been "vetted" and was deemed
"appropriate," she said, "and would stay in the curriculum.
After all, she continued, the head of the history department had gotten this
material at an outreach workshop of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at
Harvard!
Thence to the principal, Joel
Stembridge, who glared at Pagliuso and asked, "How do you pronounce
'Pagliuso'?" and dismissing him brusquely with a refusal to apologize,
added: "If you're unhappy with this, you should know that next year we're
planning to teach material that will be even more inflammatory to your
sensibilities." (Where is Ferris Bueller when you need him?) Since Miss
Jessica Engel had devoted one day each to Judaism and Christianity while
spending 2 ˝ weeks on Islam, Tony wasn't sure how much more inflammatory things
could get.
A couple of weeks later, nine
stalwart Newton citizens presented themselves at the Newton School Committee
meeting, where superintendent David Fleischman, and even the mayor, Setti
Warren, were present. The citizens were courteously received, and as it happens
Fleishman announced shortly thereafter that indeed the chapter "didn't
meet the learning goals of the class" and had been removed from the
curriculum.
"Didn't meet the learning
goals" is Eduspeak for "What the hell is this and how the hell did it
get in?" The answer to the latter is, as noted, Harvard, which, as it happens,
held a seminar on Israel and Palestine at Newton South in April 2011. And
Newton is far from the only community to take its lead on matters Islamic from
Harvard. Public and private schools all over Massachusetts send teachers
to the Outreach Center at Harvard for guidance and (free) materials. The
program, like the Center for Middle Eastern Studies itself, is heavily
Saudi-funded.
The answer to what it is can
be found in a number of places. In 2005, responding to a complaint from a
teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, the American Jewish Committee published a
thorough critique of the Notebook (the full report Propaganda,
Proselytizing, and Public Education, is available at the AJC website),
thanks to which Anchorage stopped using the book. As background, the AJC report
explains:
The Arab World Studies Notebook was
first published in 1990 under the title Arab World Notebook [apparently
Newton was using this edition], but was updated and republished in 1998 with
its current title. The funding for the publication was provided by the
Middle East Policy Council, formerly the Arab American Affairs Council....The
Notebook was published in conjunction with Arab World and Islamic Resources
(AWAIR), founded by Audrey Shabbas, who penned many of the articles...as well
as the editorial commentary throughout.
Who is this Audrey Shabbas?
The moving spirit behind AWAIR, she says all she wants from teachers is to
"let you step with me to the inside, to see what a Muslim worldview looks
like and feels like, so you can bring it back to your students." This from
an adoring 2002 interview posted, fittingly, at Saudi Aramco World.
A little earlier than the AJC's
report, in 2003, William J. Bennetta, president of The Textbook League,
produced a preliminary assessment of the Notebook. He gives a little
background:
The Middle East Policy Council, a
pressure group based in Washington. D.C...adopted its present name in
1991. The MEPC's activities include the sponsoring of "teacher
workshops" that allegedly equip educators to teach about "the Arab
World and Islam. AWAIR, which operates from Abiquiu, New Mexico,
distributes printed items and videos for "ALL LEVELS-Elementary to
College" and runs the "teacher workshops" sponsored by the
MEPC."
But on to the meat in Mr Bennetta's
scathing report:
The promotion of Islam in the Notebook
is unrestrained, and the religious-indoctrination material that the Notebook
dispenses is virulent. Muslim myths, including myths about how Islam and
the Koran originated, are retailed as matters of fact, while legitimate
historical appraisals of the origins of Islam and the Koran are excluded.
[Audrey] Shabbas wants to turn teachers into agents who, in their classrooms,
will present Muslim myths as "history," will endorse Muslim religious
claims, and will propagate Islamic fundamentalism. In a public-school setting,
the religious-indoctrination work which Shabbas wants teachers to perform would
clearly be illegal.
Or, in the words of Tony Pagliuso,
"total propaganda." What is striking, though, is how amateurish the
chapter on women is. Taqiyya -- telling falsehoods for Islam -- is a
well-known tool of Islamic propagandists, but this shoddy merchandise is so
riddled with lies and half-truths that no respectable Arab merchant in the shuk
would hang it in his market. Just a sample:
Women's Rights in Islam. There is no basis in Islam for the subjugation of women or
their relegation to a secondary role. Far in advance of women's emancipation in
Europe, Islam made revolutionary changes in the lives of women in 6th-century
Arabia.
The alert reader will observe that
there was no Islam yet in 6th-century Arabia, Muhammad himself
having been born in about 570, and having been tapped by the angel Gabriel no
earlier then about 609. Then too we think of the unpleasantries swept under the
Oriental carpet -- such as permissible rape, clitorectomies, honor killings,
child marriage, indeed the whole sorry gamut of women's trials under Islam,
including those specifically decreed by the Koran. As Robert Spencer sums
up:
--Women are inferior to men, and
must be ruled by them: "Men have authority over women because God has made
the one superior to the other" (4:34).
--It [the Koran] likens a woman to a
field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth
for you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223).
--It declares that a woman's legal
testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own
men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose,
for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her"
(2:282).
--It allows men to marry up to four
wives, and also to have sex with slave girls: "If ye fear that ye shall
not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or
three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with
them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will
be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3).
--It rules that a son's inheritance
should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you
as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that
of two females" (4:11).
--It allows for marriage to
pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures "shall
apply to those who have not yet menstruated" (65.4).
"Such a verse might have made
its way into the Koran," writes Spencer, "because of the notorious
fact that Muhammed himself had a child bride." That would be Aisha: As the
hadith says, "The prophet married her when she was six years old and he
consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained
with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)." Newton's Notebook
chapter mentions Aisha in passing, that she heroically promulgated
Islam after the Prophet's death, but neglects to tell us how old she was when
Muhammed found her, as the story goes, playing on a swing.
It turns out, not surprisingly, that
most of the Notebook is as slipshod, even farcical, as the chapter on
women. But it is no less dangerous for being slovenly. As the AJC report
confirms, "Teachers are subjected to heavy propaganda, both in the Notebook
and in the teacher workshops sponsored by MEPC and conducted by AWAIR, in
which the Notebook is the primary source material....The Notebook critiques
other educational materials for being Eurocentric; yet it provides students
with a completely Muslim-centered perspective."
Worst of all, educationally
speaking, in addition to inventing history, the Notebook is guilty of
two cardinal sins, according to the AJC: "It uses no qualifiers to
differentiate between fact and interpretation; and it fails to clarify that,
like the stories behind many other religions, some of the stories within
traditional Islam are disputed or unverifiable." The all-important
qualifier, "Muslims believe," or "Islam teaches that" is
entirely eliminated. Imagine all the Miss Engels in the world preaching to the
class, "And God chose Abraham." Or "Jesus performed
miracles."
Other innovations from the Notebook,
these concerning what the author calls "the Israeli 'fetish of
Jerusalem'":
When people talk of Jerusalem and
consider the historic rights over the city and claims to it, they are not
talking about the European-type colonial suburb-turned-city which foreign Jews
built next to the historic religious city-shrine, even though they called it
Jerusalem too. They are talking about the walled city, fully built up,
containing a small Jewish quarter, it is true, but almost exclusively a home to
Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs.
Yet the "Old City," the
Jerusalem that most people envisage when they think of the ancient city, is
Arab. Surrounding it are ubiquitous high-rises built for Israeli settlers
to strengthen Israeli control over the holy city.
Other colonial suburbs were built by
foreigners in Arab countries, but today no one suggests that Algiers, Tunis,
Casablanca, etc., may be rightfully claimed by the Europeans who settled there
during their colonial period of recent history. Only in the case of
Jerusalem does colonialist thinking still predominate.
How many high-school students would
be able to repudiate "facts" like these? Or total falsehoods such as,
"In 1948, between 50 and 70 percent of Palestine's Christians were driven
from their ancestral homes with the creation of the Jewish state"?
Moreover, in an earlier version, we
are told "that Yasir Arafat was president of a newly declared State of
Palestine, that the United Nations General Assembly had voted to recognize this
state in 1988, and that the Canaanites were the ancestors of many present-day
Palestinians." Sandra Stotsky, a professor at the University of
Arkansas, deals with these gems and others in her 2004 report for the Fordham
Foundation, The Stealth Curriculum, which has now been updated
for a new book published by Palgrave MacMillan. She points to one article,
ascribed to Audrey Shabbas and Abdallah Hakim Quick, titled "Early Muslim
Exploration Worldwide: Evidence of Muslims in the New World Before Columbus."
The article claims that
Muslims from Europe were the first
to sail across the Atlantic and land in the New World, starting in 889... [and
that]West African Muslims had not only spread throughout South and Central
America, but had also reached Canada, intermarrying with the Iroquois and
Algonquin nations so that, much later, early English explorers were to meet
Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn
Malik.
Stotsky interjects, "The
idea that English explorers met native Indian chiefs with Muslim names in the
middle of the Northeast woodlands sounds almost like something a Hollywood film
writer dreamed up for a spoof." (Mel Brooks, of course.) Interestingly
enough, the Algonquin Nation itself demanded a retraction of this "indefensible"
farce. But seriously, as Stotsky continues, "What is most astonishing
about this 'historical information' is that it seems not to have been
recognized as fake history by all the satisfied teachers that MEPC claims have
participated in its workshops over the years."
Ay, there's the rub. Thanks to
the Tony Pagliusos of this world, perhaps more parents will rear up on their
hind legs and shout, "Who's teaching my kids? And what in God's name are
they teaching?"
Newton School Committee meeting on October 24, 2011. Concerned citizens came before the committee to speak out about specific biased, untrue curriculum material that is being used in the Newton school district.
(Click here to watch the meeting. The speakers begin at 00:21:18)
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Harvard's Middle East Outreach Center: Propaganda for
Teachers
by Stephen Schwartz
American Thinker
February 5, 2012
In
2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal donated
$20 million dollars each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities. In the years
since, Georgetown has earned considerably more press for its use of the
prince's largesse, through which it renamed an extant center founded in 1993 as the
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).
This is due in no small part to the efforts of the center's director, John Louis
Esposito, America's foremost apologist for ultra-fundamentalist
Wahhabi Islam. The result of the Saudi-Esposito lash-up has been the emergence
of ACMCU as an academic institution that promotes vigorously the
"Palestinian narrative" and hostility to Israel.
Harvard's
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic
Studies Program has developed at a much slower pace, and as a result, it has
received considerably less media attention. Its director,
Ali Asani, is an Indian
Muslim from Kenya. As described on its website, the Harvard product of
Alwaleed's philanthropy "funds four new professorships promoting
scholarship and teaching about contemporary Islamic life and thought and Islam
beyond the Middle East." Yet only one chair had been filled as of the end
of 2011, with Malika Zeghal,
who was trained
in France, serving as Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal professor in contemporary
Islamic thought/life since 2009.
Zeghal is formally affiliated with Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Center
for European Studies. She was, to say the least, unprepared for the rise of
Islamist politics in the Arab states over the past year. In a Harvard event in
February 2011,
she
downplayed the role of radical movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in the
Arab upheavals, stating,
in the words of the Harvard Crimson:
(continue.....)
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CAMERA
January 12, 2012
Harvard University's Center for
Middle Eastern Studies Outreach Center is Mis-Educating Teachers on the Israeli‑Palestinian
Conflict
Harvard University's Middle Eastern
Studies' Outreach Center says its mission is to promote "a critical
understanding of the diversity of the Middle East region." But the
activities and record of its director and its programming reveal a pattern of
adhering to the Palestinian narrative of the conflict rather than presenting
diverse viewpoints.
Director Paul Beran is a longtime
activist in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel
and Center speakers on the Arab‑Israeli conflict have been accused of focusing
singularly on a Palestinian perspective while dismissing or ignoring the
Israeli position.
The Center's recommended readings
heavily favor anti‑Zionist writings, including works by the late Edward Said, a
Palestinian advocate, and former Israeli professor Ilan Pappé, the driving
force behind academic boycotts of Israel. The Center also recommends the
propaganda film Occupation 101, which features notorious defamers of
Israel like Noam Chomsky and Richard Falk.
A slide presentation on the Center's
Web site steers teachers to writings by the extremist Jewish Voice for Peace
(JVP), a group characterized by the ADL as one of the nation's leading anti‑Israel
organizations.
Another presentation, entitled
"Teaching Sense Making Around Israel/Palestine" rejects discussion of
Palestinian terrorism and the conflict's religious dimension as an
"unsophisticated" approach. The same presentation calls Israel a
regional "hegemon," ignoring the fact that Muslim and Arab
populations outnumber the Jewish state by 400 million to 8 million and possess
land area a thousand times greater.
The Outreach Center actively
promotes its program in the Boston area and provides unscholarly curricular
materials to public and private schools. Critics express concern that the
result will be a generation of students with a radically misguided understanding
of the Middle East.
Go here for CAMERA'S companion article:
"Harvard's Middle East Outreach Center Headed By BDS
Supporter"
CITIZENS FOR NATIONAL SECURITY RELEASES REPORT ON PRO-ISLAM
BIAS IN FLORIDA TEXTBOOKS
Report’s authors warn that the
problem has “national ramifications”
LYNCHBURG, VA, DECEMBER 5—The
Christian Action Network, a non-profit activist organization, is making
available a report, authored by Citizens for National Security based upon
research conducted by it, that exposes widespread bias in textbooks used in
Florida public schools. The organizations claim the textbooks favor Islam over
Christianity and Judaism and present an unfair view of history, particularly with
regard to the policies of the U.S. and Israel.
The report identifies approximately
30 textbooks used in Florida public schools with instances of bias,
inaccuracies and purposeful omissions. It alleges that students are being given
flawed information about the history of Islam, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, the Middle East, and extremist threats worldwide. It includes over
200 quotations from the list of textbooks that the organizations say are biased
and/or inaccurate.
One example in the report is when a
textbook states, “Women, as wives and mothers, have an honored position in
Saudi society.” Another states, “The land now called Palestine consists of
Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”
“Although agenda-based campaigns to
shape textbook content have existed for some time, the past decade has seen
particularly aggressive and intense overt and stealth efforts by proponents of
Islam to inject their beliefs into K-12 classrooms via textbooks,” according to
Dr. William A. Saxton, Chairman of Citizens for National Security.
The report is based on a sampling of
textbooks in Florida but Martin Mawyer, President of the Christian Action
Network, says the bias in them have “national ramifications.” “Florida is the
third largest purchaser of textbooks in the United States with an estimated
$267 million budget for instructional materials. Textbooks used in Florida help
to create curriculum standards for the entire country,” Dr. Saxton points out.
The Christian Action Network is
planning on distributing the report to concerned parents and teachers and the
media. “It is well-written and documented in a scholarly way because it was
written by academics. It will be a great tool for teachers, principals, school
administrators and parents,” said Mawyer.
The Christian Action Network is also
planning on releasing a documentary about the pro-Islam bias in the education
system and the influence of Islamists on college campuses and public
schools. The organization has previously released documentaries about
alleged terrorist training camps on U.S. soil and the Ground Zero Mosque.
CFNS - Citizens for National Security says, As part of its
campaign to saturate the nation with CFNS's Textbooks Report, CAN is
activating its 250,000 members to personally deliver it to education
officials and teachers in their local school districts. We have
encouraged our CFNS Members to take the same important action!
You will certainly want to read this
shocking report that is of great concern to all of us. To download and
print the full report, just go to https://cfns.us/CFNS-Textbook-Report-Signin.php. ;
We appreciate your support and welcome your involvement in this crucial
issue that affects all of us.
Nicholas
V. Martin
CFNS Director of Planning and Development
For a copy of the report, CLICK HERE
Islam in America's
public schools: Education or indoctrination?
June 11, 2008|
Cinnamon Stillwell
With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray,
it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war
has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists,
or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must
dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the
ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot.
Nowhere is this more evident than in
the educational realm. Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the
"soft jihad" into America's classrooms and children in K-12 are the
first casualties. Whether it is textbooks, curriculum, classroom exercises,
film screenings, speakers or teacher training, public education
in America is under assault.
Capitalizing on the post-9/11 demand
for Arabic instruction, some public, charter and voucher-funded private schools
are inappropriately using taxpayer dollars to implement a religious curriculum.
They are also bringing in outside speakers with Islamist ties or sympathies. As
a result, not only are children receiving a biased education, but possible
violations of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause abound. Consider the
following cases:
- Last month, students at Friendswood Junior High in
Houston were required to attend an "Islamic
Awareness" presentation during class time allotted for physical
education. The presentation involved two representatives from the Council
on American-Islamic Relations, an organization with a record of Islamist
statements and terrorism convictions. According to students, they were
taught that "there is one God, his name is Allah" and that
"Adam, Noah and Jesus are prophets." Students were also taught
about the Five Pillars of Islam and how to pray five times a day and wear
Islamic religious garb. Parents were not notified about the presentation
and it wasn't until a number of complaints arose that school officials
responded with an apologetic e-mail.
- Earlier this year at Lake Brantley High School in
Seminole County, Fla., speakers from the Academy for Learning Islam gave a
presentation to students about "cultural diversity"
that extended to a detailed discussion of the Quran and Islam. The school
neither screened the ALI speakers nor notified parents. After a number of complaints, local media coverage and a
subsequent investigation, the school district apologized for the
inappropriate presentation, admitting that it violated the law.
Subsequently, ALI was removed from the Seminole County
school system's Dividends and Speaker's Bureau.
- As reported by the Cabinet Press, a school project last year
at Amherst Middle School transformed "the quaint colonial town of
Amherst, N.H., into a Saudi Arabian Bedouin tent community." Male and
female students were segregated, with the girls hosting "hijab and
veil stations" and handing out the oppressive head-to-toe black
garment known as the abaya to female guests. Meanwhile, the boys
hosted food and Arabic dancing stations because, as explained in the
article, "the traditions of Saudi Arabia at this time prevent women
from participating in these public roles." An "Islamic religion
station" offered up a prayer rug, verses from the Quran, prayer items
and a compass pointed towards Mecca. The fact that female subjugation was
presented as a benign cultural practice and Islamic religious rituals were
promoted with public funds is cause for concern.
- Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a charter school in Inver
Grove Heights, Minn., came under recent scrutiny after Minneapolis
Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten brought
to light concerns about public funding for its overtly religious curriculum. The school
is housed in the Muslim
American Society's (the American branch of the Egyptian Islamist
group the Muslim Brotherhood) Minnesota building, alongside a mosque, and
the daily routine includes prayer, ritual washing, halal food preparation
and an after-school "Islamic studies" program. Kersten's columns
prompted the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to
issue a press release expressing its own
reservations about potential First Amendment violations. An investigation
initiated by the Minnesota Department of Education verified several of
Kersten's allegations and the school has since promised to make the
appropriate changes. In a bizarre twist, when a local television news crew
tried to
report on the findings from school grounds, school officials
confronted them and wrestled a camera away from one of its photographers,
injuring him in the process.
- The controversy surrounding the founding of New York
City's Arabic language public school, Khalil Gibran International Academy,
last year continues. Former principal Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser
was asked to step down after publicly defending
T-shirts produced by Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, an
organization with whom she shared office space, emblazoned with
"Intifada NYC." But KGIA has other troublesome associations. Its
advisory
board includes three imams, one of whom, New York University
Imam Khalid Latif, sent a threatening letter to the university's president
regarding a planned display of the Danish cartoons. Another, Shamsi Ali, runs
the Jamaica Muslim Center Quranic Memorization School in Queens, a replica
of the type of Pakistani madrassa (or school) counter-terrorism officials
have been warning about since 9/11. Accordingly, several parents founded Stop the
Madrassa: A Community Coalition to voice their contention that KGIA is an
inappropriate candidate for taxpayer funding.
Equally problematic are the
textbooks used in American public schools to teach Islam or Islamic history.
Organizations such as Southern California's Council on Islamic Education and Arabic World and Islamic Resources
are tasked with screening and editing these textbooks for public school
districts, but questions have been raised about the groups' scholarship and ideological
agenda. The American Textbook
Council, an organization that reviews history and social studies
textbooks used in American schools, and its director, Gilbert T.
Sewall, have produced a series of articles and reports
on Islam textbooks and the findings are damning. They include textbooks that
are factually inaccurate, misrepresent and in some cases, glorify Islam, or are
hostile to other religions. While teaching students about
Islam within a religious studies context may be appropriate, the purpose
becomes suspect when the texts involved are compromised in this manner.
Such are the complaints about "History Alive! The Medieval World
and Beyond," a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, to the point where parents in
the Scottsdale, Ariz., school district succeeded in having it removed from
the curriculum in 2005. TCI is based in Mountain View, and the
textbook is now being used in the state's public schools, where similar
concerns have arisen. A Marin County mother whose son has been assigned
"History Alive!" has been trying to mount an effort to call school officials' attention to the
problem. Similarly, a San Luis Obispo mother filed an
official complaint several years ago with her son's school
authorities over the use of Houghton Mifflin's middle school text, "Across
the Centuries," which has been widely criticized
for whitewashing Islamic history and glorifying Islam. Its inclusion in the Montgomery County, Md. public school curriculum
among other districts across the country, could lead to further objections.
But the forces in opposition are
powerful and plenty. They include public education bureaucrats and teachers
mired in naivete and political correctness, biased textbook publishers,
politicized professors and other experts tasked with helping states approve
textbooks, and at the top of the heap, billions of dollars in Saudi funding. These funds are pouring
into the coffers of various organs that design K-12 curricula. The resultant
material, not coincidentally, turns out to be inaccurate, biased and,
considering the Wahhabist strain of Islam promulgated by Saudi Arabia,
dangerous. And again, taxpayer dollars are involved. National Review Online
contributing editor Stanley Kurtz explains :
"The United States government
gives money — and a federal seal of approval — to a university Middle East
Studies center. That center offers a government-approved K-12 Middle East studies
curriculum to America's teachers. But in fact, that curriculum has been bought
and paid for by the Saudis, who may even have trained the personnel who operate
the university's outreach program. Meanwhile, the American government is asleep
at the wheel — paying scant attention to how its federally mandated public
outreach programs actually work. So without ever realizing it, America's
taxpayers end up subsidizing — and providing official federal approval for —
K-12 educational materials on the Middle East that have been created under
Saudi auspices. Game, set, match: Saudis."
Along with funding textbooks and
curricula, the Saudis are also involved in funding and designing training for
public school teachers. The Saudi funded Prince
Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at
Georgetown University now offers professional development workshops for K-12 teachers. The
workshops take place at the hosting institution and provide teachers with
classroom material. They are free of charge and ACMCU throws in lunch to boot.
But this generosity likely comes
with a catch, for the center is known for producing scholars and material with
a decidedly apologist bent, both toward the Saudi Royal Family and Islamic radicalism. It's no accident that ACMCU education
consultant Susan Douglass, according to her bio, has been "an affiliated scholar" with the
Council on Islamic Education "for over a decade." Douglass also
taught social studies at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Va., where her husband still
teaches. ISA has come under investigation for Saudi-provided textbooks and
curriculum that some have alleged promotes hatred and intolerance towards
non-Muslims. That someone with Douglass' problematic
associations would be in charge of
training public school teachers hardly inspires confidence in the system.
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