The
Textbook League Review Part 3
Pillars, Prayer Rugs, and a Flying Horse Too!
Phase 3 of ISLAM: A Simulation takes four days of class time
and is titled "Oasis Days."
At the start of Phase 3, the members of each team pick two or more
projects that they will develop into Festival Presentations. The
Festival Presentations will be delivered during Phase 4. Interact's
writers provide a list of 37 suggested projects, such as these:
Create a play, poem or presentation on the life of the ancient
Bedouins or nomads of the desert.
Prepare a play or discussion on the mystic Islamic group --
Sufis.
Prepare a presentation on the Five Pillars of Faith.
Prepare a presentation on the dromedary or camel, use slides,
pictures, etc.
Create a newspaper with headlines, photos, and articles.
Design a title page for the Qur'an using the proper designs and
writings. Then present information on the Qur'an itself.
Make a large tapestry [!] with Arabic scenes or perhaps verses
from the Qur'an.
Make and explain some examples of Arabic jewelry and describe the
significance.
Build a replica of the sacred Kaaba or a mosque or minaret.
Present information on the symbolism of Islamic architecture and a
history of the building you're presenting.
Become a Muslim warrior during the crusades or during an ancient
jihad. Explain weapons, tactics, etc.
After picking their projects, the students turn their attention to
Islam's Five Pillars of Faith -- professing, praying, fasting,
practicing charity, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca. To profess their
faith, the members of each city-team make a banner displaying the name
of their city and the Bismillah. (The Bismillah is the Koran's opening
invocation -- "In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.")
To simulate praying, each member of the team must memorize five
proverbs (chosen from a list of proverbs on page 3:12) and must
"analyze" at least one verse of the Koran (chosen from a list on pages
3:13 and 3:14). To simulate fasting, "each group should give up one
lunch or snack period to work on their Festival Presentation." To
practice charity, "Each person in the group must provide one service
for one of the following: community, school, faculty, administration,
rival group." There is no simulation of the fifth Pillar, the
pilgrimage to Mecca: The students are deemed to have made the
pilgrimage by participating in the caravan-race in Phase 2.
Next comes a lengthy role-playing activity in which selected
students impersonate six Muslims who were prominent at various times
between the middle the 7th century and the middle of the 11th century
[note 10]. Each of these six celebrities visits
each of the city-teams and answers questions. A script on page 3:27
provides the questions that must be posed to each celebrity, and
"profile sheets" on pages through 3:15 through 3:26 provide the
material that the celebrities will use in fashioning their replies.
Each celebrity's visit to each group ends with the prayer "Jazaak
Allahu khairun (may God bless you with the best of his rewards). Ma'a
salama (go with peace)."
During this exercise, all the students must be dressed in their
"Islamic" clothing. A note to the teacher says, "Stress that those
students who do not dress up will not be allowed to actively
participate and must sit at the back of the room."
The last segment of Phase 3 is titled "Introduction to Prophet
Muhammad." Now it is the teacher's turn to play a role -- the role of
a 7th-century person who was a friend of Muhammad. While the students
sit on simulated prayer rugs (which they have made by drawing abstract
designs on large sheets of paper), the teacher preaches to them,
voices devotional slogans [note 11], and
presents twenty items of "information." The twenty items are supplied
to the teacher on pages 3:6 and 3:7, in question-and-answer form. Here
are eight of them:
When and where was Prophet Muhammad born? Prophet
Muhammad was born in 570 in Makkah, which is about halfway down
western Arabia near the Red Sea. He was called al-Amin -- "the
trustworthy man," and his Arabic name means "highly praised."
Who were his mother and father and what clan and tribe was he
from? Prophet Muhammad's father died before he was born. His
name was Abdullah and was a trader from the clan of Hashim, which
belonged to the powerful tribe of the Quraysh. His mother's name was
Amina.
After Prophet Muhammad was orphaned, at age six, who raised
him? After Prophet Muhammad's mother died he was raised by his
grandfather, Abdul Muttalib, who died two years later. He was then
raised by his paternal uncle, Abu Talib, who reared him to manhood.
Prophet Muhammad is God's messenger and the final prophet. How
did God reveal His Message to him? God revealed His Message to
Prophet Muhammad through revelations and through Angel Gabriel. They
were written down during his lifetime and became the Holy Qur'an.
What will hell or heaven be like? According to the Qur'an,
Heaven will be a vast garden in which believers will be shaded with
large trees, dressed in silks, adorned with gems, and fed fruit by
rivers of milk and honey. Hell will be filled with burning heat,
your shoes will be made of fire, and you will drink boiling water.
Why is the sacred Kaaba in Makkah so important?
Originally built by Adam, who brought the Black Stone down with him
from Paradise, the Kaaba in Makkah was later rebuilt by Abraham and
his first son, Ismail. It is here that Muslims must make the hajj
pilgrimage once in their lifetime if they are physically and
financially able to do so.
Did Prophet Muhammad ever dream that Islam would be the second
largest religion in the world? He was always sure that Islam
was the world's most important religion.
Can you describe the occasion when Prophet Muhammad visited in
heaven? God transported Prophet Muhammad to Jerusalem where he
ascended from the Dome of the Rock to heaven upon the grand horse,
Buraq.
The mundane statements that constitute the first three items may
look like history, but they actually are Muslim myths that have no
historical foundation. Practically nothing is known about Muhammad's
life before he set himself up as a prophet. Even the claim that he was
born and reared in Mecca is unsupported by evidence [note 12].
The fourth item, too, is quite mythical, including the claim that
Muhammad's "revelations" were "written down during his lifetime and
became the Holy Qur'an." The origins and development of the Koran are
obscure, to say the least. The Koran didn't appear until the closing
years of the 7th century, decades after Muhammad died -- and even
then, apparently, its content hadn't been fixed [note 13].
The fifth and sixth items don't require comment; and the seventh
item, in which the prescribed "answer" obviously fails to meet the
question, is remarkable only for its silliness. The eighth item,
however, is a doozie that incorporates one of the Interact writers'
most laughable anachronisms. According to Muslim lore, Muhammad died
in 632 -- but the construction of the Dome of the Rock, the great
Muslim temple in Jerusalem, didn't begin until 685 or so, and it
wasn't completed until 691. Flying horse or no flying horse, Muhammad
couldn't have made any journeys, to anywhere, from the Dome of the
Rock.
The Black Stone Again
Phase 4 of ISLAM: A Simulation is called "Festival Days." It
consumes two days of class time. During Phase 4, the city-teams unveil
their Festival Presentations.
Phase 5, the climax of ISLAM: A
Simulation, is titled "Islamic Bowl." The Islamic Bowl is a
one-day contest, "designed to review important information," in which
selected members of the six city-teams compete for dirhams by trying
to answer questions posed by the teacher. The questions come from the
Quiz Cards that were used in Phase 2 -- so the class learns again that
"Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his prophet," that
Muhammad was called by God while meditating in a cave, that the Black
Stone was brought down from heaven by Adam, and so forth.
A note to the teacher says that the program may include "an
intermission for venders [sic] selling dates, goats [sic]
milk, etc."
At the finish of the Islamic Bowl, the teacher announces the name
of the city-team that has won, and then the teacher declares: "That's
all we have time for. So until next time, 'in sha Allah, assalam
aleikoom and Allahu akbar (God willing, may peace be with you, and
there is none greater than God Almighty)'."
Transcendent Malignancy
Page for page and ounce for ounce, ISLAM: A Simulation is
the most malignant product that I have seen during all my years as a
reviewer of instructional materials.
I have seen various schoolbooks and curriculum manuals which have
been designed to deceive students, but I cannot cite any other product
in which outright lies and other devices of deceit are as strongly
concentrated as they are in ISLAM: A Simulation. This
document's malignancy transcends mere deceit, however, for the
Interact writers have used their lies and other devices to mount a
sustained attack on rationality itself.
I have sought to emphasize, in this review, that Interact's program
requires a great deal of promotion and participation by the classroom
teacher -- the teacher who must serve as Interact's dupe, must carry
out Interact's instructions for bamboozling and deluding students, and
must even recount a flying-horse legend as if it were history. I now
assert that any teacher who would do such things should be sacked
forthwith. I assert that any teacher who would have anything to do
with Islam: A Simulation should be fired before the day is out.
Islam: A Simulation has no place in any legitimate school, and
neither does any teacher who is so ignorant and so stupid that he
cannot recognize Interact's manual of rubbish for what it is.
Interact's Links to Muslim Agencies
The first page of Interact's manual carries an introductory
statement which acknowledges that two Muslim agencies were involved in
the genesis of ISLAM: A Simulation. The names of the agencies
are given as "the Islamic Education and Information Center (San Jose,
California)" and "the Council of [sic] Islamic Education (Los
Angeles)."
I haven't encountered the Islamic Education and Information Center
heretofore, but I know of the second outfit -- the Council on Islamic
Education -- because its name appears in several schoolbooks that
falsify the history of Islam, spread Muslim propaganda, and subject
students to Muslim indoctrination. One such book is Across the
Centuries [note 14], published by Houghton
Mifflin: The list of "Consultants" displayed on the copyright page of
Across the Centuries includes "Shabbir Mansuri, Founding
Director, Council on Islamic Education, Fountain Valley, California."
Another such book is Prentice Hall World History: Connections to
Today [note 15]. The list of "Content
Reviewers" on page iv of Prentice Hall World History:
Connections to Today includes "Shabbir Mansuri, Director, Council
on Islamic Education, Fountain Valley, California" and another CIE
luminary, Susan Douglass [note 16].
Notes
- The students pick their new names from a list given on page
1:14.
- Here is the prayer --
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to God, The Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds;
Most Gracious, Most Merciful;
Master of the Day of Judgment;
Thee do we worship,
And Thine aid we seek,
Show us the straight path,
The way on [sic] those whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace.
Those whose portion is not wrath,
And who go not astray.
Amen
The handout that displays the prayer also urges students to "try
using phrases in speech such as 'in sha Allah' or 'God willing.'"
- Muslims have a series of myths in which the Kaaba is built and
rebuilt by a succession of legendary characters. Adam, Abraham and
Ismail (Ishmael) are figures that have been absorbed into Muslim
lore from the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. The myths of the
Kaaba's origins (along with some Muslim tales about the Kaaba's
magical powers) are summarized in Volume 2 of Richard F. Burton's
brilliant Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and
Meccah. (See "Appendix II. -- The Bayt Ullah.") First published
in 1855, the Personal Narrative includes accounts of many
Islamic superstitions that Burton encountered when he journeyed to
Arabia in 1853 and adopted the role of a Muslim pilgrim. A paperback
edition has been issued by Dover Publications and can be obtained
easily.
- The writers of ISLAM: A Simulation mention the Black
Stone several times, but they don't describe it. The Black Stone is
a small fetish that lies embedded in a wall of the Kaaba, with one
of its surfaces exposed. The exposed surface of the stone is roughly
circular and about seven inches wide. Burton (see note 4, above)
described it thus: "It appeared to me a common aërolite [meteorite]
covered with a thick slaggy coating, glossy and pitch-like, worn and
polished."
- In Muslim lore, jinns are spirits that inhabit Earth, assume
various forms, and exercise supernatural powers.
- See One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American
Society, by Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman, published in
1993 by Harmony Books. Kosmin and Lachman present and analyze
statistics based on the National Survey of Religious Identification,
conducted in 1990.
- See, for example, the Koran 4:157 (which tells that Jesus wasn't
crucified) or 9:31 (in which the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus
is denounced).
- The phrase "Arabic money" is nonsense. The word dirham
denotes any of several monetary units that are used in the Middle
East -- Iraq has a dirham, Kuwait has a dirham, Libya has a dirham,
Morocco has a dirham, Qatar has a dirham, and Tunisia has a dirham.
These national dirhams vary in worth and are not universally
equivalent to each other.
- Five of the six are caliphs. The sixth is the physician and
philosopher Ibn Sinna (980-1037), known in the West as Avicenna.
- A direction to the teacher says, "To give extra flavor to the
presentation, you should use proper phrases like 'God willing' and
'Allah has power over all things,' as well as quote appropriate
proverbs."
- See The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy
Book and The Quest for the Historical Muhammad -- two
collections of scholarly articles edited by Ibn Warraq and published
by Prometheus Books (Amherst, New York). The first collection was
issued in 1998, the second in 2000. Both deserve the attention of
every teacher who proposes to inform students about Islam and the
Koran.
- See the first of the books cited in note 12, and see Toby
Lester's article "What Is the Koran?" in The Atlantic Monthly,
January 1999.
- See the analytical article "Houghton Mifflin's Islamic
Connection" at
http://www.textbookleague.org/centu.htm on this Web site.
- See "Religious preaching makes these books unfit for use in
public schools" at
http://www.textbookleague.org/sp-nogo.htm on this Web site.
Douglass is one of the CIE's "affiliated scholars." In Prentice
Hall's book, her connection with the CIE isn't disclosed. She is
listed as "Susan Douglass, Educational Consultant, Falls Church,
Virginia."
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William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the
California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League,
and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes often about
the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in
schoolbooks.
[Please note: The Textbook League is a secular organization.
BlessedCause does not agree with all non-Christian statements]
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