The Great American Textbook Mystery--Who Brought Down the World Trade Center?

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Gilbert T. Sewall is director of the American Textbook Council (ATC). It’s an independent New York-based research organization. It was established in 1989.The Council reviews history textbooks and assorted educational materials. For Islam in the Classroom they reviewed ten widely used junior and senior high textbooks. Among them was World History: The Modern World by Prentiss Hall.

Sewall called Prentiss Hall’s handling of the attack on the World Trade Center ‘dismaying.’ There wasn’t much there, little in the way of content. It might as well have been a preliminary police report. “On the morning of September 11, 2001,” said Prentiss Hall, “teams of terrorists hijacked four airplanes on the East Coast.” Two planes hit the World Trade Center, one struck the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. After that Opie was on his own.

Who were the terrorists? Prentiss Hall didn’t say. They could have been anybody; they could have been Bubba and Billy Bob; they could have been Hans and Fritz; they could have been what were left of the Capone gang getting belated revenge on Eliot Ness; it could have been the Tasmanian devil; it could have been Mossad. It could have been Jihadists. Jihadists? Now that’s an idea! But Prentiss Hall would not use Jihadists. It would be politically incorrect; it would anger a very small segment of the American population and might jeopardize Prentiss Hall’s position in any future Caliphate.

From the description in Prentiss Hall’s The Modern World, Sewall concluded, “Why September 11 happened is hard to understand.”

The Council’s report, Islam in the Classroom, was highly critical of the textbook publishing industry. “Islamist activists,” it said, “use multiculturalism and ready-made American political movements, especially those on campus, to advance and justify uncritical Islam-related content makeover in history textbooks…Disputed definitions and claims are presented as established facts…Editors defend misinformation…Silences are prolonged and intentional…Errors about Islam have not been corrected but reiterated.”

Thomas Jefferson learned about Islam from his slaves; Muslims discovered America and taught Native-Americans crop rotation; Jihad is an internal struggle and has noting to do with violence. The sooner Americans understand the real Jihad the sooner the world will be at peace.

Daisy Khan is executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). “I firmly believe,” says Khan, “that the core values of Islam—faith in and obedience to the Divine, reverence for individual rights and communal well-being, compassion and justice, respect for pluralism and diversity—are entirely resonant with American values.”

If individual rights and respect for pluralism and diversity are core values of Islam why haven’t they been enacted in Muslim countries? Khan doesn’t say.

But when it comes to teaching about Islam, Khan insists, “the more important issue is American values of tolerance, respect and understanding which can best be imparted with accurate information about the religion.”

Tolerance…respect…understanding! If America is to tolerate, respect and understand Islam it must be accurately informed about the religion. (There appears to be no need to accurately inform the Muslim World about America) Tolerance, respect and understanding—it’s a two-way street. The traffic must be in both directions. Is it?

ASMA is doing its best. Their Mission, as elucidated on their website, is to “collaborate with other faith-based organizations to build relationships of trust through dialogue and educations, honoring the diversity of faiths, sharing commonalities and celebrating differences.”

Did the celebrating Jihadists go too far at Mumbai, at Bali, at London, at the World Trade Center?

To lay the blame for these unfortunate tragedies on Jihad say the apologists is to completely misunderstand Islam. Jihad is the internal struggle that goes on inside every Muslim between good and evil. It has absolutely nothing to do with violence. It’s about knowledge. Yes, knowledge.

“Knowledge,” explains ASMA, “is intimately related to action. Our actions will reflect what we know or don’t know, and our actions will ultimately lead us toward God’s acceptance (paradise) or land us in the depths of God’s rejection (hell). The knowledge and discernment of right from wrong is perhaps the most profound characteristic of our personal lifelong jihad (struggle).

To know right from wrong—that is Jihad. That is ASMA’s story and they are sticking to it. What does the Qur’an say?

Noble Qur’an: 2:190 Footnote: “Jihad is holy fighting in Allah’s Cause with full force of numbers and weaponry. It is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars. By Jihad Islam is established, Allah’s word it made superior (which means only Allah has the right to be worshipped), and Islam is propagated. By abandoning Jihad Islam is destroyed and Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim. He who tries to escape from this duty, or does not fulfill this duty, dies as a hypocrite.”

Qur’an: 47:4 “Thus you are commanded by Allah to continue carrying out Jihad against the unbelieving infidels until they submit to Islam.”

Is there a disconnection between ASMA and the Qur’an? “Jihad is holy fighting in Allah’s Cause…(Jihad) is one of its pillars…By Jihad Islam is established.” Is ASMA practicing taqiyya behind an Abrahamist façade? It would appear so.

Ms Khan told FOX News, “I think there is an unbalanced portrayal of Islam seen mostly through a political lens, but that is not the reality of who a majority of Muslims are.”

There will be no accurate portrayal of Muslims in America or anywhere else as long as Daisy Khan and Ingrid Mattson and their friends run interference for the Jihadists and Muslim intellectuals persist in blaming economics, politics and poverty and not religion for keeping the United States and the Muslim world at each other’s throats.

Opie Taylor was five-years-old when he begin his inner struggle. Should he skip school? Should he hide Barney’s bullet? Should he tie a tin can to the dog’s tail? He didn’t call it Jihad. He wouldn’t have known what Jihad was—it was his conscience. When he did something bad, he had no excuse and Aunt Bea would say, “Opie, you have got to change your ways.”

It’s time Islam changed its ways. Fourteen-hundred-year-old kids are out of place in the 21^st Century. To the non-Muslim World Jihad has always been a dirty word. Chuck it, get rid of it; never mention it again. Try a bit of transparency; openness will set one free. But then Islam wouldn’t be Islam