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Not Muslims after all
This is what happens when Muslim advocacy groups vet textbooks, which is happening all over. From the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
An Indian tribe has forced distributors of an Arab studies guide for U.S. teachers to remove an inaccurate passage that says Muslim explorers preceded Christopher Columbus to North America and became Algonquin chiefs.Peter DiGangi, director of Canada's Algonquin Nation Secretariat in Quebec, called claims in the book, the "Arab World Studies Notebook," "preposterous" and "outlandish," saying nothing in the tribe's written or oral history support them.
The 540-page book says the Muslim explorers married into the Algonquin tribe, resulting in 17th-century tribal chiefs named Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik.
Mr. DiGangi said the guide's author and editor, Audrey Shabbas, and the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a Washington advocacy group that promoted the curriculum to school districts in 155 U.S. cities, have been unresponsive to his concerns since November.
But Ms. Shabbas said this week the passage was removed immediately from subsequent copies, and that she was "giving careful and thoughtful attention" on how to notify the 1,200 teachers who have been given copies of the book in the past five years.
"As the editor of the 'Notebook,' when I heard from Mr. DiGangi that a citation in the work was not borne out by either Native American written records or by oral traditions, I was grateful that the statement could so easily be removed," she said.
She did not explain how the false information got into the curriculum.
"There was no [scholarly] peer review," said Mr. DiGangi, who says he was never contacted after lodging his complaint. "It was so outlandish. It never should have gone to press."
Jon Roth, MEPC's program manager, yesterday said the group has decided to remove the two-page chapter called "Early Muslim Exploration Worldwide: Evidence of Muslims in the New World Before Columbus."
"It is not, nor has it ever been, our intention to spread lies or untruths," Mr. Roth said.
Meanwhile, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation this week issued a report that is critical of "Arab World Studies Notebook."
The study, titled "The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America's History Teachers," reviewed many curriculum supplements and "professional development" programs aimed at schoolteachers.
"It appeared that the creation and dissemination of these materials, often through professional development institutes and [teacher] in-service programs, had fallen into the eager hands of interest groups and ideologues yearning to use America's public school classrooms to shape the minds of tomorrow's citizens by manipulating what today's teachers are introducing into the lessons of today's children," the Fordham study concluded.
Mr. Roth said the "Arab World Studies Notebook" is the primary reference text used in the council's program of teacher workshops conducted by Ms. Shabbas, which have numbered more than 268 in 155 cities since 1987.
The book, offered at a markdown of $15 from $49.95, has 90 readings and lesson plans covering the history and culture of the Arab world, the broader Middle East and Islam worldwide. "A lot of teachers use it," Mr. Roth said.
Chester E. Finn Jr., Fordham Foundation president, said the new "cottage industry" of "predigested supplemental materials" and professional development for history and social studies teachers was intended to help teachers who had little or no background in certain areas, and because textbooks are often insufficient.
"How could we expect them to handle complicated and emotionally charged subjects like the Holocaust and figure out what lessons to learn about it? To escort youngsters safely through the thicket of political correctness and ethnic politics that now surrounds such benign holidays as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving?" he asks in the preface of the foundation's report.
The void in teachers' knowledge and instructional materials has been filled by publishers, universities, research groups and think tanks, advocacy groups, cable networks, film producers and itinerant teacher trainers, Mr. Finn said.
"We know staggeringly little about how good these materials and workshops are — how accurate they are, whether the information they present is balanced and accurate. We know even less about the efficacy, value or intellectual integrity of innumerable workshops, institutes and training programs in which teachers participate," he said.
The report, written by Sandra Stotsky, former senior associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, described the "Arab World Studies Notebook" as "propaganda."
The chapter written by Ms. Shabbas and Abdallah Hakim Quick claims that Muslims from Europe were the first to sail across the Atlantic and land in the New World, starting in 889, the report says.
"The idea that English explorers met native Indian chiefs with Muslim names in the middle of the Northeast woodlands sounds almost like something a Hollywood film writer dreamed up for a spoof," the report says.
The current 1998 edition of the "Notebook" has "no evidence or documentation to support key historical 'facts' that serve to advance their political views or religious beliefs," the report says.
"One can only wonder if this has ever been questioned by the teachers who use its materials, or if they feel they must agree to any claim made by Muslims as an 'alternative perspective' or risk being labeled insensitive, Eurocentric, or racist."
ADDENDUM: Here's the actual textbook online. A choice quote:
Clearly, knowledge of the presence of Islam in the Americas was known by early Spanish and Portuguese explorers. A case can be made for thinking of the whole colonization of the Americas by the Spanish as an extension of the "Reconquest." Informed by explorers and soliders of the influence of Islam, Ferdinand issued a series of edicts in order to stop the flow of Muslims and Morisocos – free or enslaved – to the Americas, to prevent those already here from teaching Islam, and to "win back" the Muslim native Indian populations.
The colonization of the Americas was an extension of the Reconquista? Then according to Islamic law both North and South America, like Spain, belong by right to Islam.
Posted by Robert at April 16, 2004 6:54 AM
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They seem to try it on in every country . . .
Posted by: AStext at April 16, 2004 7:47 AMPeter DiGangi, director of Canada's Algonquin Nation Secretariat in Quebec, likely represents the more sophisticated response of Canada's First Nations to Islam. That is, currently, there are approximately one million First Nations citizens in Canada, who are the recipients of $7.5B annual federal funding through the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Countless other billions are spent on these people through other federal and provincial programs.
Contrast this with the 700,000 muslims currently in Canada. As the attached link indicates, this a rapidly-politicizing group that will be seeking any amount of change through the democratic process in Canada- including, one may be sure, the review (leading to eventual elimination) of funding to Canada's (predominantly) Christian and animist First Nations.
I am not at all surprised by Mr. DiGangi's response. Just read ElMasry's piece:
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040415/COMASRY15//
Posted by: Earl at April 16, 2004 8:39 AMThis is just another attempt by the Arabs to change history. They have successfully bullied many of the major companies to list a vast portion of the citied in Israel as 'Occupied Terrorities'. Can't you just SEE general tele listing Miami as an "Occupied Terrority" or any of the other parts of the US that were taken by war. Did Lincoln return the South after the Civil War? I can positively state "HE DID NOT!" so why should Israel return the land they won after the Arabs attacked them? "If someone claims something often enough and with enough vigor, someone WILL believe it, report it and make it into history". A favorite saying of my Grandmother.Smart lady!
Posted by: Kat at April 16, 2004 9:46 AMThey need to keep Islam out of the classrooms of our children, period. Especially when they lie. The try to rewrite history to make the appearance that they were the first settlers everywhere in the world.
Is this lunacy ever going to stop?
Posted by: D.C. Watson at April 16, 2004 10:12 AMRecall how the Soviets used to claim how they had invented most of the good things the West was using. Islam suffers from the same alienation from reality. And, then there is the Islamic ethical doctrine of sinless, so to speak, lying to their enemies. We can laugh at their faking it, as well as so much of what they believe and do. We should not, however, allow them to get away with their fifth column activities. Opposing them in the textbook world are people woefully ignorant, and they inhabit our Achilles' hell--our schools and the entire educational system.
Posted by: Ilhad at April 16, 2004 10:29 AMYikes - I didn't realize that I am now living Dar al Islam since they discovered Canada first. Must inform my wife to don her burqua.
Seriously, just what kind of shit are these people smoking - must be that good B.C. bud. Correct me if I'm wrong but the Arabs weren't noted for being great seamen like the Vikings or Europeans after the Renaissance. I seem to remember reading somewhere they didn't even understand or endeavour to sail to windward - the dhows trading between Arabia and Africa used the prevailing trade winds for each trip.
Posted by: John B at April 16, 2004 10:44 AMFascist/Stalinist Lesson #22 on how to conquer
your foe: Re-write their history!
Logically there is no need to claim intermarriage with Algonquin tribes. In Islam, everyone, since time began, has been born a Muslim. It is only the foolishness of others, including our benighted and cruel parents, who have caused us to stray from the true path. Muslims must rectify this state of affairs, by seizing control, through military or demographic conquest, of all lands, so that non-Muslims may be subjugated, and the conditions for Islam to prevail -- well, prevail.
So it was simply de trop for the textbook propagandists to be so busy. They really needn't have bothered to claim that Muslims had come to America first, or married into Algonquin tribes. Abraham was a Muslim, so was Moses, and Jesus. But so was not every Algonquin, but every Wampanoag in Massachusetts, and every Miq'maq (the Canadianly, and therefore orthographically correct version of Micmac), and every Apache, and Sioux, and Inca, and Maya, and Italian, and Welsh, and English, and Bantu, and Kwa, and Ibo, and Ewe, and Han, and Tibetan, and Hindu and --- well, it would take Dr. Seuss to offer lilting rhymes for each, but you get the point -- we are all Muslims who fell away. The world belongs to Allah. They are his lands and we are all his people And if we refsue to recognize that we are his people, ungrateful Kuffar that some insist on remaining, why then we should be killed, or if we are "Protected Peoples" then subject to a regime of permanent humiliation, degradation, and insecurity. Got that? What's not to like?
"Avec approbation et privilege du roi" used to be stamped on all pre-Revolutionary French books, as a kind of anacrusis, an approving preliminary thrum by the government on the publisher's borrowed lyre. Could Ms. Shabbas not simply have written, in islamically correct fashion, that "Everyone discussed in this textbook was born a Muslim. Unfortunately, some were ungrateful and chose not to recognize it." It could have saved everyone at the Thomas Earlham Foundation so much time, and bother. And why, Ms. Shabbas, pick on the poor Algonguins, for God's sake? What did they do to be singled out as Muslims? They, and the Wampanoags, and the Sioux, and the Apaches, and the Inuit, and the Incas, and the Mayas, and the Bretons, and the Corsicans, and the French, and the Irish, and the Welsh, and English, and the Greeks, and the Italians, and the Bantu, and the Zulu, and the Ibo, and the Ewe, and the Pundits, and the Unscheduled Classes, and the Tibetans, and the people of Han, and the Mongols, and the Japanese, and the hairy Ainu, and the Tunguz, and the Gilyak, and the Bats, and the the...well, everyone, and everyone's brother, and even the Ruritanians and the Paphlagonians and the dripping inhabitants of Atlantis, were all originally Muslims, right? And for some reason many of them were diverted from the True (dare one say Shining) Path by their parents and other bad influences. Now that Islam has invited itself everywhere, and smiling mosques are coming to a country, or a county, or a petit coin near you, and the solace of da'wa will be everywhere instantly on offer, the possibility of mass "reversion" (one does not "convert," rather one "reverts" to Islam) is finally here. All people are born into Islam, some people forget and attain Islam later, and still others -- you and I, or our posterity -- have Islam thrust upon them.
Checker Finn, or rather Fact-Checker Finn, take note.
I wish stories like this would generate one tenth the outrage we see when some local school board mandates teaching Creationism in biology.
John B: (Maybe someone could name a sloop after you...)
The Arabs were pretty decent sailors for their time in the 5th through 13th centuries. They were good at navigation, though not the best at shiphandling. Of course, they STAYED at 13th century abilities while Europe forged ahead.
this is part and parcel of the diabolical multiculty revisionist history plot that teaches that ancient egyptians were black-skinned in our african-american studies departments.
"The idea that English explorers met native Indian chiefs with Muslim names in the middle of the Northeast woodlands sounds almost like something a Hollywood film writer dreamed up for a spoof," the report says.
if only this were true. through disney's fraudulent movie "the alamo" and oliver stone's revisionist movies, hollywood has shown itself only too willing to present falsehood as historical fact. the above quote would have been better if it referred to a "monty python spoof."
Posted by: ted at April 16, 2004 11:52 AMArabs haven't done a damn good thing in their whole rotten history. Claiming others greatness as theirs is their latest whitewash of their total uselessness in history. (I say useless, not worthless, to the ones thinking of calling it racist)
Posted by: Ricky Vandal at April 16, 2004 12:21 PMWasn't this a Mel Brooks movie?
Posted by: daybrother at April 16, 2004 12:26 PMThis is chilling. This time someone caught the problem and had the power to correct it. How many places was it not caught?
I have seen books in my local university library that completely whitewash the Muslim treatment of women and the scriptural support for the idea that women are intellectually defective and intellectually inferior to men. Anyone reading those books would not be aware of the legally condoned honor killing in Jordan, or many other oppressive measures upheld in Muslim lands.
CAIR and the Saudis are constantly funding these things all over the country and we have no unified method or unified and focused organization to take them on.
Posted by: Athena at April 16, 2004 1:14 PMWhy are there teachers in our schools who do not know that this is b*llshit?
Or who, if they do know, don't care enough to bring it up?
Posted by: Ian Wood at April 16, 2004 10:59 PMThese people are delusional. I visit a Brit chatroom and someone claimed Mary wore Islamic dress.
I pointed out to her that if anything, muslims are wearing Jewish dress since Mary came wayyy before Mohammed.
I've also heard this, but didn't know it was in writing.
Posted by: Sandy P. at April 16, 2004 11:24 PMThe Grand Mufti of Australia and NZ tried a similar trick on Australia, using the fact that some older aboriginals in central Australia told him they had heard their grandparents talking about 'wiling' that sounded just like the Muslim call to prayer.
Apparently this was proof that Islam had discovered Australia first.
Of course it would have helped if the Mufti wasn't utterly ignorant of history, if he had done even the most cursory of reading he'd have worked out that the call to prayer came over with Afghan camel drivers, imported by the Brits who, along with their camels opened up much of central Australia.
Posted by: Harry Tuttle at April 17, 2004 12:18 AMi think they must be thinking of the piri reis [sp] map google it its an ancient mystery anyhoo it was drawn by a 15th century turkish admiral showing the antartic land mass [under the ice] and parts of the americas unexplored by europeans piri reis claimed to use much older maps to compile this one
just felt like tossing in my .02 cents worth
Posted by: jimmytheclaw at April 17, 2004 12:34 AMI have heard a local Muslim professor say that Columbus saw the domes of mosques as he passed Cuba. I have also read that theory that certain American Indian tribes in southeast USA retained Arabic words and methods of prayer similar to that in Islam. There is also a theory that a group of dark haired, dark skinned people, mainly in Tennessee and Kentucky, known as the Melungeons, were descended from early Arab explorers and that Abraham Lincoln can be counted as a Melungeon and, therefore, as an Arab and son of Islam. Of course, these are completely unfounded theories, but who knows when they could find their way into our children's history books. All it might take is one history conference with one victim/historian.
Posted by: elizabeth at April 17, 2004 12:57 AMElizabeth and others - All it takes is state-mandated textbooks, policies: "these are the ones we use," "we teach what is in the books," "clear other information through your lead teacher," "don't confuse the children with 'extraneous' information," "parents will be be confused and angry if you give children contradictory information that's not in the book," "it's not your job to politicize or to determine what is appropriate or inappropriate," "don't cause waves, controversial topics aren't appropriate for this age group, let them talk about this in college," etc. Teachers that do know better are beaten down and silenced by school boards and administrations that are either ignorant, frightened, or complicit.
Posted by: epg at April 17, 2004 6:06 AMSandy P.
Check out Bat Ye'or's book Dhimmitude. She explains that Muslims claim to "own" Judaism and Christianity. They claim that an authentic God interacted with jews and christians but that jews and christians did not respond faithfully and that jewish and christian scripture is a false statement of the interaction between God and Mankind.
They claim Abraham was the first Muslim. So although it is absurd, Muslims believe they have the right to claim ownership of activities that pre-dated Mohammed's life, if such a person actually lived.
It is a powerfully subversive idea. Islam is really a pastiche of ideas copied from Judaism and Christianity and so it is easy for Muslim proslytizers to confuse non-Muslims about what the believe.
I recently saw an article in an Canadian newspapers about inter-faith "dialogue" between Anglicans and Muslims. They Anglicans breathlessly pointed out that there were similarities between Christianity and Islam in that some of the physical positions adopted by Muslims during prayer was in some way similar to those adopted by Christians. Later at the same event the Muslims showed a film about the alleged mistreatment of Muslims in America after 9/11.
By the way the "mistreatment" that these films depict was the apprehension of Muslim men who wer in the United States illegally. In immigration law, the government does not have to charge you with the crime of illegal entry and prove its case as it does in a standard domestic crime by a citizen. All that the government had to do is establish that you lack the legal authorization to be in this country, then it can detain you. In other words, thousands of illegal Muslim immigrants, most of them young males were detained after 9/11 and then deported. I would say that this was one of the ways in which America helped prevent another attack. The films try to suggest that illegal aliens have some type of "right" to a full trial on the issue of whether they are here legally. You either have a immigration documentation or you don't.
Posted by: Athena at April 17, 2004 8:28 AMIt is clear that Muslm revisionism is no different from holocaust revisionism.
By claiming every country in the world was once islamic , they can justifiably be brought back into the Calipahate rather than conquered.
This propaganda is of course aimed primarily at tne Muslim immigrants in those countries to convince then that they are reclaiming what was "stolen" from them.
in the case of israel the Arabic lies and revisionism are widely accepted by the Academia of the west.
But of course when the lies are aimed at our own country , we are quick to expose them as such !
This exposes our own hypocrisy and antisemetism.
"Clearly, knowledge of the presence of Islam in the Americas was known by early Spanish and Portuguese explorers."
Knowledge was known?
There's something wrong with any teacher or school administrator who would think this was acceptable writing...not even considering the content.
Posted by: David Foster at April 18, 2004 1:08 AMConsidering the similarity between the landsscape on Mars, as photgraphed by US spacecraft, and the Saudi dessert, the next claim will probably be that muslims have already been on Mars as well.
Posted by: Prithivi at April 19, 2004 5:01 AMHere are some critical comments & rebuttals on those silly 'pre-columbian americas teeming with muslim life' claims:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=12226&highlight=#12226
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=12234&highlight=#12234
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=86947&highlight=#86947
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=13825&highlight=#13825
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=82554&highlight=#82554
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=82778&highlight=#82778
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=13483&highlight=#13483
enjoy :-D
Posted by: CroMagnon at April 20, 2004 8:51 PMThe Piri Reis that jimmytheclaw referenced above was created 21 years after Columbus sailed to the Americas. I've read where it has been theorized that Columbus had spoken with Basque and Breton fishermen who had been sailing to N. American for years to fish for a season...not sure if that's true. What I am sure is true is that it is preposterous for Muslims to claim that the Piri Reis proves they had prior knowledge of the Americas. Actually, if I'm trying to be logical about the Piri Reis...I figure the information was obtained partially from a N. European source (which would explain the seeming designation of Antarctic under ice...as N. Europeans would have been familiar with an Arctic under ice...and being logical thinkers would assume that the same would hold true on the other end of the sphere). Just my two cents...but I don't think the Piri Reis proves anyting except that Muslims are liars (by order of the holy book the Koran).
Posted by: Jesse Long at April 21, 2004 2:54 PM
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