Tiny Minority of Extremists Alert. "Most Islamic studies teachers oppose pluralism, survey finds," by Abdul Khalik for the Jakarta Post, November 26 (thanks to Kyros):
Most Islamic studies teachers in public and private schools in Java oppose pluralism, tending toward radicalism and conservatism, according to a survey released in Jakarta on Tuesday.
The study shows 62.4 percent of the surveyed Islamic teachers, including those from Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah — the country’s two largest Muslim organizations — reject the notion of having non-Muslim leaders.
The survey was conducted last month by the Center for Islamic and Society Studies (PPIM) at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, involving some 500 Islamic studies teachers throughout Java.
It reveals 68.6 percent of the respondents are opposed to non-Muslims becoming their school principle and 33.8 percent are opposed to having non-Muslim teachers at their schools.
Some 73.1 percent of the teachers don’t want followers of other religions to build their houses of worship in their neighborhoods, it found.
Some 85.6 percent of the teachers prohibit their students from celebrating big events perceived as Western traditions, while 87 percent tell their students not to learn about other religions.
Some 48 percent of the teachers would prefer for female and male students to be separated into different classrooms.
PPIM director Jajat Burhanudin said the teachers’ anti-pluralist views would be reflected in their lessons and contribute to growing conservatism and radicalism among Muslims in the country.
“I think they play a key role in promoting conservatism and radicalism among Muslims nowadays. You can’t say now that conservatism and radicalism only develop on the streets like what has been campaigned by the FPI (the Islam Defenders Front), but rather deep within the education (system),” he said, referring to a radical Islamic group.
Jajat said such intolerance threatened the civil and political rights of citizens of other religions.
The survey also shows 75.4 percent of the respondents ask their students to call on non-Muslim teachers to convert to Islam, while 61.1 percent reject a new Islamic sect.
In line with their strict beliefs, 67.4 percent said they felt more Muslim than Indonesian.
The majority of the respondents also support the adoption of sharia law in the country to help fight crime.
According to the survey, 58.9 percent of the respondents back rajam (stoning) as a punishment for all kinds of criminal and 47.5 percent said the punishment for theft should be having one hand cut off, while 21.3 percent want the death sentence for those who convert from Islam.
Only 3 percent of the teachers said they felt it was their duty to produce tolerant students.
With 44.9 percent of the respondents claiming themselves members of Nahdlatul Ulama and 23.8 percent supporters of Muhammadiyah, Jajat said the two moderate organizations had failed to establish their values at the grassroots.
“Moderation and pluralism are only embraced by their elites. I am afraid that this kind of phenomenon has contributed to increasing radicalism and even terrorism in our country,” he said.
They oppose this in the ummah but are all for it in the West in order to advance their agenda. Yet again Koranism proves to be the leader in hypocrisy even as its book condemns it.
conservatism and radicalism = real Islam
moderation and pluralism = Islam lite or apostacy
And that's why their college graduates write things like "their school principle" and "58.9 percent of the respondents back rajam (stoning) as a punishment for all kinds of criminal." The interesting thing is that apparently you can be a citizen of your nation or you can be a Muslim, but not both. At least they're honest. And like Western educators, 87% of their teachers don't want them to learn about other religions, and for the same reasons. If we learn about Islam then we will hate it, and if we learn about other religions we will realize that Islam is not only evil and crazy, but also a huge crock, in the few cases of folks to whom the kindergarten-level scientific errors don't provide adequate proof. If we learn about history on our own we will realize that we have been lied to all our lives. Hey, maybe every professor I've ever had is a closet Muslim, not just the Chair of my department.
I have put up many postings about what might be called "the Indonesia problem," with special reference to Barack Obama and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom have been influenced, in what they "know" or rather what they think they know, about Islam and about Muslims, by their different stays in Indonesia. Barack Obama was a mere child, when a student, between the ages of 6 and 10, at a very liberal (by Muslim standards) and unrepresentative schoo, and situation, in Indonesia some forty years ago, when Islam had not yet fully come back (and it is still on its way) either from the inheritance of Dutch rule (which helped weaken Islam and even allowed for the spread of Christianity), or from the inheritance of the secular nationalists (Suharto, Sukarno) who had been the heroes of newly-independent Indonesia, and there could still be found in Indonesia, as in parts of West Africa, a more easygoing, syncretistic version of Islam, one that was made possible not only by the power held by Europeans being in control for so long, but even more importantly, by local customs and traditions of a still significant number of non-Muslims (including animists in West Africa, and Hindus in Indonesia), to whose non-Islamic or pre-Islamic histories appeal could be made.
And if Obama thinks he "knows about Islam" from his understandably sweet memories of childhood (who does not remember the years of elementary school fondly?) in Indonesia, he is not nearly as blameworthy as naive Paul Wolfowitz, who "learned about Islam" (and hence about the possibilities for bringing Democracy and Freedom and Good Government and Toys and Good Things To Eat To The Boys and Girls On The Other Side Of The Mountain) in Indonesia as well, but this time as the get-out-of-the-embassy can-do American Ambassador, being carefully told by his Indonesian interlocutors just what he wanted to hear (and even, of course, how much some of them wished ardently to establish relations with Israel).
And then there is the very special case of Wahid, the sometime leader of a very large Muslim group, who is indeed well-disposed toward Israel, but not that is despite the fact that he considers himself a Muslim, and because of the fact that as a student in Baghdad, he happened to meet, and was befriended by, one of the last remaining Jews in Iraq, and from him learned something of the status and treatment of Jews in Muslim Iraq, and in Islam.
It is too late for a change in Paul Wolfowitz's understanding of Islam (one that has been contributed to by his Arab girlfriend, herself quick to defend Islam when she senses it is under attack -- she reacted with near-hysteria to a talk she attended by Andrew Bostom last year, and Wolfowitz had to calm her down -- it must have been a revelation for him) to affect policy. But it is not too late, it is just in time, if he can do it, for Barack Obama to now set himself to school, along with his foreign policy staff, to find out not what "impressions" of this or that leader or time spent with plausible fellows telling them a plausible tale, can contribute to their understanding of Islam, but what first-hand familiarity with the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and armed with the exegetical commentaries by Western scholars of Islam (that means no espositos and no armstrongs and no defenders-of-the-faith among the Muslims and non-Mulsims of MESA Nostra, but rather studying what those in the Great Age of Islamic Scholarship, from 1870 to 1970, wrote and preserved), and with what the defectors from the Army of Islam -- Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Magdi Allam, and dozens or hundreds of others -- can testify to, directly or indirectly, and invaluably, about the reality of what Islam teaches, indoctrinates, inculcates, and always, alas, will.
Here is one of those "how the example of Indonesia misleads" postings:
"Those who learned what they know about Islam, had their experience of a Muslim country, in Indonesia 40 years ago, or 30, at a time when the miasma of renewed fanatical fervor had not yet spread throughout the land, should take a look again. Take a look, for example, at what has been happening to the Christians in Molucca, to their children and their churches. Or read the reports of the Barnabas Foundation. Or see if the Hindus in Bali feel quite as secure, with Muslim masters in Jakarta and a Muslim-run army, than they once did, when nationalist leaders, and the afterglow of independence from the Dutch, of a different kind were in command. Or see if Christians, Hindus, and the most "secular" of Muslims miss the days when that admirable personage, the inimitable Wahid, was the head of one of the largest political groupings.
And what Americans learned so much of what they know about Islam (and the rest they have received from their long and earnest talks with informants, in the case of one of them Rashid Khalidi, an islamochristian and fellow faculty member at the Univeristy of Chicago, intent on sweetly propagandizing and spreading the Gospel of Said, and in the case of the other, his Arab girlfriend) from the times they spent, one more misleading than the next, in Indonesia? And what they thought they were seeing -- Islam as (they thought) it is ordinarily practiced, in time and space -- but really did not see at all, for one was a child, and saw as a child, and the other was the American ambassador, and saw as....an American ambassador usually sees things -- they did not see, and worse was yet to come.
For later, the one who had been a child in Indonesia, and thought as a child, was told a little more about Islam, by Rashidi (and even listened to a bit of Edward Said whenever the latter came to town). He learned, that young Barack Obama, he learned from Rashidi and others (see the report by an indignant Abimunah, about how thoroughly on the "Palestinian" side Barack Obama had been -- had been, that is, before this current campaign) nothing about Islam save that it was a religion, and a good one, learned nothing about its politics or geopolitics, but did lear that Islam had nothing to do (when it has everything to do)with the Arab war on Israel, for this is what he was told. Rashidi found him to be an easy mark, as did Abu Abimunah, found him so willing to listen, so unskeptical, so naturally sympathetic to the "legitimate rights" of the "national liberation" struggle" of the carefully-invented "Palestinian people," which is how the Saids and Rashidis and Abimunahs of this world have for several decades, ably assisted by an army of Western hirelings of the Arabs, and by those who, in the media, some of them ignorant, many of them lazy, some touched early on in their lives by the magic wand of antisemitism, all collaborated eagerly in repackaging what had always been a classic Jihad against Israel, as something else, a "struggle" of a "tiny people" (there are Arabs and Kurds in Iraq; there are Arabs and Berbers in Morocco and Algeria; there are Arabs and black Africans in the Sudan; but when you get to the subject of Israel, the "Arabs" disappear and become, presto-chango, "Palestinians" -- indeed, one sometimes reads or hears the nonsensical phrase "Arab and 'Palestinians.'"
And the other one, the one who also learned about Islam in Indonesia (quondam East Indies), not a budding politician but a weapons systems analyst who knew and understood little (as Richard Pipes, who knew him on Team B, told an interviewer from The Boston Globe) about the importance of history, the influence of what Pipes called "culture" on the minds, and hearts, and therefore on the behavior, of men, that one, called Paul Wolfowitz, just like the Barack Obama whom we were just discussing, found an Arab girlfriend who turned out to be a sly defender of Islam as she helped persuade him that, since Islam itself was not dangerous, and therefore one need not think, or come close to thinking, about ways in Iraq to -- as I like to put it -- "weaken the Camp of Islam" -- but was easily manipulated, and the charm of a Chalabi did not hurt, to think only of how to bring democracy to Muslims, to the non-existent "Iraqi people," supposedly ready and eager for it (and never mind what attitudes and doctrines Islam inculcates that make "democracy" almost impossible to transplant, and even where in a Muslim land it has been temporarily achieved by constraints put on Islam, difficult to maintain for a long period).
But without his childhood experience of Indonesia, would Barack Obama be as naive about Islam as he apparently still is? And would Paul Wolfowitz have been as naive about Iraq, and what would constitute goals both attainable, and sensible, had he not served as the cosseted and therefore largely blind ambassador to Jakarta?
What a role Indonesia has played, so unwittingly, in furthering the misundertanding of Islam. Will it continue to play that role?
Given the decapatition of Christian schoolgirls, and the bombing in Bali, and the destruction of thousands of churches, and such hard-to-overlook events as this attack on a Christian school that resulted in hundreds of Christian children being wounded, it looks as if it may not.
But the damage that a "taste of Indonesia once upon a time" has done, in the minds of Obama and Wolfowitz -- peas in a pod on this though you won't find this mentioned, for obvious reasons, by the supporters and well-wishers of either man -- has already had its effects, in policies promoted and executed in Iraq, by Wolfowitz and policies now naively planned, for Afghanistan, by the Young Lochinvar just back from his star turn as Leader of The Western World -- no, make that Leader of the Entire Why-Can't-We-All-Get-Along World -- a post for which many of us did not realize was available, much less that it was one for which he, Barack Obama, turned out to be running.
[Posted by: Hugh at July 29, 2008]
Thank you for the repost, Hugh. Excellent as always. Indonesia has done a lot of damage in favor of Islam's disinformation campaign. Take a stroll through Indonesia Matters. The blog posts consist of well-written articles, thoughtfully presented, full of topical items. Then go down to the comments section and watch Islam rear its ugly head all over the place, or check out the archives. Denial, supremacy, and Judeophobia would be the most salient characteristics. They deny that anything Islamic happens, like Christan girls getting beheaded, 99% of the little girls being genitally mutilated (as even the New York Times will tell you), or imams buying 12 year olds as sex slaves, while simultaneously de facto admitting that they happen so that they can blame the West, the Arabs, and the Joooooos, all of whom are so inferior, just like Arabs blame 9/11 on the Joooos while de facto owning up to it so that they can comment on how well-executed it all was. A few stories jump out at you here and there, stories about Hizb-ut-Tahrir gaining ground with the support of women who like being beaten 4th wives, about hudood punishments in Aceh, and stories like the one above.
These are only Islamist study treacher it doesnot cover other treacher like math and science treach. In americia than Muslim Woman won the Rhodes Scholarship. So stop your hate monger Huge we cannot
have than war world to make your anti-islam hate monger who along behind bar for they evil way.
I had some Christian African friends in Khartoum who ran a private school. They told me that many Muslims prefer to put their children in the Christians' school because, as they, the Muslims, themselves said, "Christians are not hypocrites".
(So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Defender!)
How many Muslims only tolerate their religion, but do not like it?
P.S. They also liked the free mixing of boys and girls. And the superior education.
In our Islamist school we have afew non-muslim. They mother and father donot like the broken down public school. They just donot have to attend Islamist study class or attend prayer service. Thereb is reasonly dispince in our school compare to public school where if 2 5 year old have than fist fight they called the city police department to arrest the kids and then it go into the state criminal system where the minium age to be charge with than crime is 8 year old. Judge donot know what to do, this cost both set of parent thousand's
Cont above of dollars in legal fee. Our Islamist once have 2 5 year old have than fist fight two treacher seperate the two boys and kept seperate for the whole school day and the next day where friend again. Some arab christian want a childern to learm arabic language which our school treach also.
"Survey finds most Islamic studies teachers oppose pluralism"
so do most, if not all, Muslim dominated countries...in fact, Muslims oppose pluralism with great violence and do so willingly...
The Myth of Islamic schools in America:
"“Muslim schools in the United States teach tolerance of Judaism and other faiths, and promote coexistence with Israel.”
FACT
While it is well-known that many Muslim schools in Arab and Islamic countries indoctrinate students with hatred of Jews and Israel, it was only recently revealed that similar teachings are prevalent in the United States. Islamic schools in Virginia, for example, have maps of the Middle East in their classrooms that are missing Israel. On one map, Israel was blackened out and replaced with "Palestine." An 11th grade textbook teaches that one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him."36
The attacks are not only against Jews, but also Christians. Students are taught, for example that the Day of Judgment won't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross, and converts everyone to Islam.
The private schools are legally allowed to teach whatever they want as long as they meet state requirements.
A Los Angeles Muslim foundation insinuated similar hateful views into the public schools. The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 copies of a translation of the Koran that contained footnotes describing Jews as “arrogant” and “people without faith.”37 After discovering the anti-Semitic passages, the books were removed. "