Eight years after the atrocities of 9/11,
Americans need to know what public school textbooks are teaching
about Islam, radical Islam, and terrorism. The big three textbook
states--those that set standards for content because publishers
aim to capture their large sales, California, Texas, and
Florida--are currently preparing for new textbooks, to be
introduced in 2010-13. These books are likely to shape the content
of public instruction for several years to come. At this point in
a complex process of drafting and adopting "standards," then
"frameworks," and finally texts, with time for public comment and
revision at each stage, the outlook in both Texas and Florida
seems quite encouraging, while California's effort appears
regrettably stuck in a pre-9/11 mindset.
In the past, American textbooks were prone to two great
pitfalls: Either they dealt with Islam superficially or they
presented it in the manner preferred and promoted by well-funded
defenders of Islamic extremism. A hallmark of that latter view is
an emphasis on the unity of Islam, which is portrayed as simple,
monolithic, and benign. The wide range of belief and practice
between Sunni, Shia, and Sufi Islam, to name only the best-known
variations, is downplayed, and the problems of Islam, especially
violent jihad, are simply left out. Some of the current efforts at
revising textbooks successfully avoid these mistakes.
The Texas Education Agency issued its proposed new standards
for world history at the end of July. The deadline for public
comment was October 9, and the approval process is now under way.
The revised standards are posted in an 18-page document at
ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/WorldHistory073109.pdf.
Especially by comparison with the last Texas standards, issued in
1998, they mostly reflect a post-9/11 outlook.
For example, the old Texas standards called for students to be
able to
identify changes that resulted from important turning points
in world history such as the development of farming; the Mongol
invasions; the development of cities; the European age of
exploration and colonization; the scientific and industrial
revolutions; the political revolutions of the 18th, 19th, and
20th centuries; and the world wars of the 20th century.
Islam went unmentioned. The new proposed standards, if adopted,
will have pupils in Texas learn to
identify major causes and describe the major effects of the
following important turning points in world history from
600-1450: The spread of Christianity, the decline of Rome and
the formation of Medieval Europe; the development of Islamic
Caliphates and their impact on Asia, Africa and Europe; the
Mongol invasions and [their] impact on Europe, China, India and
southwest Asia.
In addition, the proposed standards will require -students to
identify major causes and describe the major effects that
resulted from the following important turning points in world
history from 1450-1750: the rise of the Ottoman empire, the
influence of the Ming dynasty on world trade, European
exploration and the Columbian exchange, European expansion, the
Renaissance and its impact on the arts, government and
intellectual thought, the Reformation, the decline of the Roman
Catholic church and the creation of the protestant faith.
The new specifications not only broaden the study of Western
culture, but also turn attention to the Islamic caliphates and the
effects on them of the Mongol invasions. Perhaps teachers will use
the Mongol subjugation of Baghdad in 1258 to illustrate how Islam
grew from a religious community focused on the core Arab lands to
one in which new developments arose within Persian, Turkic,
Indian, and other non-Arab cultures. Study of the Ottomans is even
more useful for dispelling the erroneous idea that Islam is simply
"the Arab religion."
Similarly, the old Texas standards prescribed that the student
"understand how, as a result of the collapse of the Western Roman
Empire, new political, economic, and social systems evolved,
creating a new civilization in Western Europe." The student was
expected to: "(A) compare medieval Europe with previous
civilizations; (B) describe the major characteristics of the
political system of feudalism, the economic system of manorialism,
and the authority exerted by the Roman Catholic Church." Again,
Islam was missing.
The proposed new standards include the following addition:
"Trace the development of Islam as unifying political, economic,
and social factors in Europe, Asia, and Northern and
Eastern Africa." While the inclusion of Islam is welcome, this
particular addition is problematic. Describing Islam as "unifying"
typically reflects the ideal of a -single, indivisible Islamic
global community or ummah, a concept consistently promoted
by Muslim radicals. History, even as written by classical Muslim
historians, shows that Islam cannot be described simply as
"unifying," unless unification refers purely to territorial
conquest. Islamic societies have remained deeply divided, within
and without, over theological differences, language, customs,
political rivalries, relations with non-Muslims, and other issues.
It is crucial that American students learn that, like the other
"universal" religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism, Islam
has no single, homogenous, unitary, or exclusively legitimate
expression. The term "unifying" would be better deleted from the
standards.
Another improvement in the Texas standards involves modern
totalitarianism. The old standards required students to
"understand the impact of totalitarianism in the 20th century" and
mentioned "nazism-fascism in Germany, Italy, and Japan; the rise
of communism in the Soviet Union; and the Cold War." They called
for analyzing "the nature of totalitarian regimes in China, Nazi
Germany, and the Soviet Union." The new standards include much
more detail regarding the effects of World War I; the Russian
revolutions; the Great Depression and German, Soviet, and American
responses to it; the personalities of the main global leaders
during World War II; the Holocaust, the Cold War, and
decolonization.
But in addition, the new standards demand that students
understand the impact of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism
and terrorism and the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians
and the Israelis in the second half of the twentieth century.
The student is expected to: (A) explain the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism in the second half of the twentieth century; and
(B) explain the origins and global consequences of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and (C) explain the global
response to terrorism from September 11, 2001 to the present.
Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism are properly considered in
the context of modern totalitarianism. But if this addition to the
Texas standards is positive, it also elicits one caveat. The new
language could suggest a causal link between the conflict over
territory in Israel and the Palestinian lands and the emergence of
Islamic fundamentalism. Some Westerners have come to believe the
Israeli-Palestinian wars are motivated by religious hostility and
that actions by the West and Israel have brought about the growth
of Islamic fundamentalism. It is appropriate for American students
to be exposed to the alternative view: that Islamic fundamentalism
has been introduced into the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation by
powerful radical interests, especially those financed by Saudi
Arabia and Iran, aggravating the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
In yet another improvement, language that formerly called for
comprehension of the cultures of East and West has been
supplemented with the following: "Explain how Islam influences law
and government in the Muslim world." This opens an opportunity to
explore an important area of conflict between moderate and radical
Islam that should be thoroughly understood by American students.
Radical Muslims--whether in power in countries like Saudi Arabia,
Iran, and Sudan and in parts of Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Malaysia, and Indonesia, or competing for power in places like
Egypt, North Africa, and the Palestinian territories--demand that
law and government be guided exclusively by religious sources,
typically of a rigid and retrograde nature. In other Muslim
countries, however, Islam plays a major social but limited legal
role and does not ordain a system of governance. These include
Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Muslim states of the
Balkans, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. The 138 million Muslims
of India--the third largest Muslim population in the world--have
lived as citizens of an officially secular democracy for more than
half a century. Appreciating these different approaches to law and
government is critical to understanding the conflicts within
present-day Islam.
These improvements in the Texas textbook standards may at first
seem trivial, but their value is illuminated by comparison with
the standards recently issued in Florida and California.
The Florida Department of Education released its new social
studies standards in December 2008. They are accessible to the
public through a complex series of prompts at
www.floridastandards.org. At some points, Florida's new standards
are more direct about the problems of Islam than those in Texas.
Florida's standards prescribe study of "the relationship
between government and religion in Islam." In addition, they
require students to "determine the causes, effects, and extent of
Islamic military expansion through Central Asia, North Africa, and
the Iberian Peninsula" and to "describe key economic, political,
and social developments in Islamic history. . . . Examples are
growth of the caliphate, division of Sunni and Shia, role of
trade, dhimmitude, Islamic slave trade." Under these standards,
students would be introduced to aspects of Islamic history that
have generated critical literature. The concept of dhimmitude, for
instance, as a description of the inferior social status of
non-Muslims in an Islamic social system, is subject to
considerable scholarly debate. But precisely such contested issues
should be examined for an understanding of relations between
Muslims and the rest of the world. The inclusion of Muslim
involvement in slave trading is perhaps even more important, in
that it has habitually been ignored in American schools.
California's Department of Education, by contrast, seems to
have made no progress. One senses an effort in the wake of the
terrorist attacks to present Islam as utterly harmless. The
state's financial crisis has caused it to suspend the public
review of its new textbook standards and frameworks, but a revised
framework was released in July 2009, accessible at
www.cde.ca.gov/ci/hs/cf/.
READ MORE
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/274numfk.asp?pg=1
Stephen Schwartz, a frequent contributor, is the author of
The Two Faces of Islam and The Other Islam: Sufism and
the Road to Global Harmony.
