God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen - Jars of Clay - listen now

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Don't Get Complacent About American Freedom Either

The PC crowd is coming for your children here too...
A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history.

"Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths."

Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence. He cites Houghton Mifflin's popular middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been approved for use in Montgomery County Schools. It defines "jihad" as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."

"But that is, literally, the translation of jihad," said Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and acclaimed author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam." Aslan explained that the definition does not preclude a militant interpretation.

"How you interpret [jihad] is based on whatever your particular ideology, or world viewpoint, or even prejudice is," Aslan said. "But how you define jihad is set in stone."

A statement from Montgomery County Public Schools said that all text used by teachers had been properly vetted and were appropriate for classroom uses.
A rose by any other name...

0 comments:

Recent Comments

Contact Me

eMail:
cyberkevinblogs@gmail.com

MSN:
cyberkevinblogs

Google Chat:
cyberkevin1
Powered By Blogger

Label Cloud

Followers

. . .

. . .

. . .


stats

Blog Archive

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author. The author’s opinions do not represent those of his employers. All original material is copyrighted and property of the author. If you use it at least have the decency to give me credit for it. Don’t steal it or I reserve the right to sue you to heck and back, or worse. Other info may have been copyrighted by someone else; the author believes that such work as is quoted here does not exceed reasonable “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the United States Copyright Law as I understand it. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Opinions in comments or trackbacks are not mine, so if you have a problem with those, sorry, I can’t help you. Comments on this blog become the sole property of the blog, and may be reused or quoted on the blog or in any other media. Anyone mentioned in relation to a crime is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Contact: writetokevinp@gmail.com. All e-mails are presumed to be for publication on the site unless I am specifically and politely told otherwise - if you’re rude I’ll publish them just to hack you off. All comments are subject to deletion or revision should the author find them offensive or just simply not like you. Trolling will not be tolerated.

  © Blogger templates ProBlogger Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP