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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Hugh Fitzgerald: What Do French Textbooks Teach About Islam? (Part I)

Oct 5, 2016 12:54 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

barbara-lefebvre

The historian Barbara Lefebvre took it upon herself to find out what is taught about Islam to students in French middle and secondary schools. What she discovered was not surprising, but deeply disturbing nonetheless. And her close analysis may encourage others — in Germany, in Great Britain, in Sweden, in the U.S. – to engage in a similar examination of what young people in the West are now being taught about Islam.

It takes the form of a detailed answer to a question posed by the leading center-right newspaper Le Figaro:

What is the purpose of the history taught in schools? Is it to teach us to “live together” or to instruct pupils?

Barbara LEFEBVRE: History as taught in our schools, defined by the official curricula and faithfully transcribed in textbooks, is not history as taught in the universities. It is not a history in which the present-day historiographical debates, often virulent, are treated. It is the story of the past reflecting the state of research where there is academic consensus. History in the schools serves a positive goal: to transmit to pupils factual knowledge, based on critical analysis of the sources. One hopes, possibly naively, that later on the students will exercise their critical reason and think for themselves. Yet this discipline is most often used to impose value judgments on pupils. Today the problem is aggravated because of the crisis of identity and of massive de-culturation.

It is interesting to study the new history syllabus that the present government wants to impose, the major themes of which are, however, recycled from previous syllabi. A lot of noise for nothing? Not really, for France is now at a breaking point on the question of national identity. How history is presented in the schools is a sensitive area on which we can have an effect, and though the fire has been simmering since 2000, with the attacks of 2015 and the grotesque business of the burkini, the pressure-cooker is really beginning to whistle. The tension is due to the pressure exercised by a tyrannical minority of political Islamists, some of whom who are being presented as “moderates” and thus legitimized by the government, who treat with opprobrium a silent majority of Muslims who are often non-observant or even non-believers, but who are used for political ends. The teaching of religion, in this case Islam, has never been as necessary and as demanding. Now if one wishes to fight, as is claimed, against a politico-religious ideology, it is especially important not to hide troublesome things under the rug, which leads us to teach a history of Muslim civilization without any warts, sometimes bordering on apologetics, all in the service of dogmatically glorifying this whole business of “living together.”

I base my observations on the 2016 programs of study and the official resources to be found online, and then I’ve observed how these programs have been transposed in the school textbooks for the 7th grade that are most in use [published by Hachette, Belin, Bordas, Hatier]. What do these programs say?

“The study of religion… allows pupils to better situate, and understand, present-day debates,” with an approach which must not be too fixated on such a long period. That’s it. To approach the question with notions of theocracy and of “contact” between the Western and Byzantine Christians and Islam is judicious, but one has a right to be disturbed by the explicit intent of these programs to spend more time on “peaceful contacts” such as commerce and the sciences, rather than the warring contacts, that is to say, the Crusades and the Jihad. The war between Christians and Muslims dominates the history of the Middle Ages and even beyond, in the form of Muslim raids on the Mediterranean shores of Europe. Minimizing the effect not just of these facts, but of their social and cultural effects in the two civilizational spaces, Muslim and Christian, reveals the political message here: “relations between the Christian and the Muslim worlds are not limited to military clashes,” the curricula insist.

On the question of contacts, the official instructions call for teachers to “balance things, by not giving too much weight to the “study of events that put too much emphasis on bellicose contacts.” And thus one proceeds to the construction of social and cultural representations, and in this the 2016 school program is scarcely different from that favored by the Third Republic and its famous “our ancestors the Gauls,” regarded with such contempt by today’s educational establishment. The only difference being that present-day school history presumes to represent an objectivity in the service of multicultural progressivism, an aim that the Third Republic did not have, for it wanted to create a French people, from its various elements, without distinguishing origin or social class. I want to raise another point: the creators of this history curriculum, who defend a “global approach to historical facts,” a constant leitmotiv in the official instructions, want very much to offer a “mixed history.” By that is meant that “the conditions and actions of women and men of a certain period will be treated in the same way.” But curiously, about the condition of women under medieval Islam, silence reigns. In fact, none of the textbooks say anything about women [Belin] in Islam except for one regent of the Ayyoubide dynasty in the 13th century, as if this singular exception could be used to describe the place of women in Islam. What would one think of a historian who described the condition of women in France at the end of the 16th century by giving the example of Catherine de Medici?

The liberty accorded to teachers is a liberty of how to teach, one must remember, not what to teach. It is not a liberty of interpreting the curriculum as one pleases. The official curricula insist on a historiographical orientation: thus one is required to treat the battle of Poitiers as less important than it was, almost as if it were an anecdote, and in fact, some of the textbooks no longer even mention it. At the same time, teachers are required to study the friendship between Charlemagne and the Abbassid caliph al-Rashid, whose name is associated with the Thousand and One Nights, where he appears as the perfect caliph. This is an idealized version of the reign of the Al-Rashids, dating from the 8th and 9th centuries, since the historians today distinguish the myth of the ideal Caliph presented by Arabic literature with the historical record showing that he weakened the power of the Abbasid caliphate, as the recurrent uprisings during his reign testify, and the troubles on the edges of his empire, and the violent civil war that followed his reign. Besides, his so-called “friendship” with Charlemagne was only a diplomatic friendship, motivated by the shared desire to oppose the Byzantine Empire and the Omayyad emir of Cordoba.

Certainly, in a school textbook, one doesn’t expect to go into detail about the academic debates on the historicity of Mohammed, and the reliability of the facts of his life, but nonetheless it is surprising how little there is about him in the textbooks. Let me sum up what the pupil is told about Mohammed: he was a merchant, who travelled by camel caravan, received a visit from the angel Gabriel in about 610, and founded the first Muslim community and firmly established monotheism with the taking of Mecca from the pagan Arabs in 630. Everything seemed to happen without any major obstacle: Islam spread itself through conquest and everyone was happy to submit! One of the textbooks, the one that is published by Belin, doesn’t even present Mohammed as a head of state and commander of the armies of Islam. However, the figure of the Prophet, the unsurpassable model of the Perfect Muslim, surely merits a closer look at his manner of living, all the more so since his private life was made public by his disciples,and held up, in the Qur’an and the Hadith, as a model to be followed. His life is well known to all practicing Muslims, but students in French schools will not learn what all Muslims know of the exemplary life of Mohammed. Perhaps this absence of biographical information is to be explained by the difference between Western notions of what constitutes an irreproachable man of faith and head of state, and the Muslim view of the Prophet as the Perfect Man?

But everything is a matter of interpretation, and the life of Mohammed, most human in its darker side, should be placed in his historical context, precisely to counter the narrative of political Islam that produces these Jihadists, who hammer home the notion that nothing in the Qur’an is to be “interpreted” away, and tell fellow Muslims that they should live “like the Prophet.” It would be salutary to stop this practice of not talking about certain things in order not to offend the delicate sensibilities of certain pupils and their families, and instead, to deal with the facts and place them within a rational framework rather than filter them through the demands of an ideology.

The way that the conquests of Mohammed and his successors are presented [in the history curriculum] reveals the indulgence with which the politico-juridical side of Islamic history is treated. Every possible means are employed to “balance” the story and to avoid a “violent” presentation of the Muslim conquests. But the series of abridgements and outright omissions in the textbooks leads to historical falsehood. For example, when one reads that in 630 Mohammed and his followers “re-took the city of Mecca” [Bordas], using that verb suggests to pupils that Mecca in some sense already belonged to the Muslims, that what they did was only a legitimate re-taking of what had been theirs. But Mohammed before 630 was never in possession of Mecca; he even had to flee the city in 622 with his 70 followers, accused of disturbing the public order in pagan Mecca.

Yet another illustration of an abridgement that constitutes a falsehood is the way that Mohammed’s capture of cities and territories is presented as having occurred without any resistance. All of the history textbooks for French pupils now suggest that the Muslim conquest was so rapid because it was easy. If the conquest of Arabia was so rapid, it is because Mohammed had only to capture an oasis, which would then give him control of all the territory – hundreds of kilometers in every direction – that depended on that oasis. Similarly, in the Middle East and North Africa, internal divisions among the locals, including both political and theological disputes, allowed the Arab armies to quickly take possession of centers of power. Nonetheless, there was popular resistance [to Mohammed] in Arabia, where resistance by the Jews, in particular, is known from Arab sources, as well as in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Only the textbook published by Hatier attempts to offer – just a little — about the military dimension of Islam’s conquests.

The objectives of the Muslim conquerors are never made clear to pupils, though territorial conquest and the birth of Islam go hand-in-hand, and Mohammed’s statements in the Qur’an and Sunna are unambiguous: Islam is a proselytizing religion, with the vocation of enlightening humanity, and territorial conquest is the principal means to that end. This fusion of the political and the religious ought to be emphasized if one wants to make sense of certain statements by today’s fundamentalists, in order to deconstruct them. Here the concept of Jihad should be addressed: it has, since the beginnings of Islam, provided religious justification for conquest of the imperialist type – at the time entirely commonplace – consisting of pillaging, massacres, and colonization. The work of Sabrina Mervin is used many times to describe the conquest, but what she wrote was not factual history. It is, rather, intended to be a study of Islamic doctrines through history and the present. In Mervin’s preface, she emphasizes that her book does not claim to trace “the political or social history of the Muslim world,” but that is exactly what excerpts from her book are used for in the textbooks, distorting her work. The excerpts that were taken from her book depict Islam as a perfect theocratic project, realized without any obstacle, and describes a “social representation” of this project by Muslim theologians. In the Hachette textbook, there is even worse: “The Muslim caliphs took control of vast territories peopled by nomads. In order to better control these nomads, they developed cities ruled by emirs.” Now in what sense were the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East in the pre-Islamic period [of Judaism, Christianity, or the Persian or Roman Empires], who for centuries had lived a settled existence, having developed a high level of urban civilization – in what sense were any of these “nomads” comparable to the Bedouin tribes of Arabia Islamised by Mohammed? Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Yarmouk, Cairo, Mosul and many other cities, were not, to my knowledge, founded by Arab conquerors. The Muslim conquerors did redesign some aspects of the urban landscape in order to better Islamize its inhabitants, but did not found any of these cities that retained many traces, especially archeological, of their glorious pre-Islamic past. It is errors like this in the textbooks that leave one perplexed.

 

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, France, War is deceit, willful ignorance Tagged With: Barbara Lefebvre


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Comments

  1. Johan elzinga says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 1:28 pm

    The ban of the depiction of people and animals in art and science has greatly impeded progress of muslim societies beyond the medieval state they are obviously still in. Thank you Hugh, for taking the time to investigate in-depth how politically correct lies influence and impede the way vulnarable children- who will soon be ignorant adults – will be able to judge facts about islam. Our way of being politically correct can be likened to the build-in impediment within islamic culture to evolve by this ban on depiction of men and animals within art and science. The effect on society is to be stuck in some immobile state.

    • t. says

      Oct 5, 2016 at 4:00 pm

      Even long before getting to read this article, about what is taught about Islam in school text books, in France, I suspected that something peculiar regarding Islam is present over there. Here is what happened.

      I had the chance to talk to many people from France, ages 20-45 years old, in the last five years, and every time I started to talk about the subject of Islam or its clear role in terrorist attacks, the conversation literally went silent or the person I was talking to, started clearing Islam of any link to all the terrorist acts that took place in France and Belgium, in recent years. The last one I talked to was a college professor who immediately started to absolve Islam of any responsibility for the mayhem that has been going over there, for some years now!

      • gravenimage says

        Oct 5, 2016 at 9:23 pm

        You find this same thing in most of the West–not just France. Infidels are in willful denial over the threat of Islam, and do not even want anyone to mention it to them. If you do, often you will be met by an embarrassed silence.

        • t. says

          Oct 5, 2016 at 11:11 pm

          That’s exactly it, “embarrassed silence”!

        • Gen Jones says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 10:04 am

          Or met with anger and a judgemental tone accusing you of racism, or dread of dread, a Fox News watcher! It’s not much solace that your accuser is deeply ignorant of Islam’s history or tenets. They have a bizarre pride in that ignorance. Because their coworker or that lovely guy at the deli are just so nice. Besides, George Bush …….

        • gravenimage says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 3:23 pm

          Also true, Gen.

        • Shane says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 4:44 pm

          The left is on the side of Islam because they have the same enemies; Christianity, the USA, and Western Civilization.

  2. Sam says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 2:55 pm

    How will, changing history and lying about it to give a better picture for all cultures and ideologies, help anything. Truth will always surface anyhow. Why do these people have to be so stupid and blindfolded voluntarily?

  3. Mirren10 says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 4:04 pm

    ”It is errors like this in the textbooks that leave one perplexed.”

    ‘errors’ = *deliberate misrepresentation*.

    Barbara Lefebvre shouldn’t be ‘perplexed’. She should be furiously angry.

    • Angemon says

      Oct 5, 2016 at 7:04 pm

      Indeed.

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 5, 2016 at 9:25 pm

      Yes–these are not “errors”, but deliberate whitewash.

  4. Emilie Green says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 4:36 pm

    Marine Le Pen has a running mate in her bid for the French presidency. [That is, if their political system calls for running mates.]

    Bravo to this woman. Truth is always good to hear, even if it causes discomfit. With truth, you know where you stand, and what you have to do to deal with it.

    • harbidoll says

      Oct 6, 2016 at 3:56 am

      the Truth will set You Free!

  5. reyol says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 5:51 pm

    If you rewrite history, you can erase the very need for borders and redefine the parameters of present day reality. Borders are determined by history. Nations are defined by their borders. Laws determine who can live on one side of the border or the other. But if the next generation of citizens only learn a “live together” history, then, perhaps, those citizens will do away with the borders because, you know, borders are exclusive and dividing. And the next generation, whether here in the States or in France KNOWS that exclusion is wrong and judging anyone is hatred.

    • simpleton1 says

      Oct 5, 2016 at 8:45 pm

      Perhaps there are more modern versions of the issues .:-)

      It appears to be very colonial for such a new country singing wondrous Marine Battle Hymns “to the shores of Tripoli”.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Barbary_War
      As some would say, the story is always written by the victors, as denoted and reasoned by wiki above, and really it was the USA looking to go to war and developing a war ministry and industry, playing on the fears of its voting populace.

      Just getting with it for these modern time as it is always known that victors interpret the history 🙂

      • reyol says

        Oct 6, 2016 at 3:02 pm

        Sounds like you are a proud recipient of a modern indoctrinary education with “live together” history courses if the verse, “to the shores of Tripoli” shocks you so much. Do you know what this “wonderous” hymn is about? Our new country had a militia army and a harbor defense navy and couldn’t do anything at all about the incessant piratical raids on our shipping by the Mohammedans. So our new country had no choice but to build a high seas navy and an amphibious force called the Marines. To this day, Marine recruits learn these verses and that the Marines are an “amphibious force in readiness”. The war industry is post WWII and has nothing to do with this nineteenth century history. So you just go on getting with it for these modern times. Maybe the free flow of pathogens and terrorists across open borders will leave you something – maybe nothing.

        • simpleton1 says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 4:27 pm

          Apologies to reyol, and it seems that it did not come across as intended., The smiley face I guess did not really denote sarcasm, ;and probably came across as my arrogance.
          I was being sarcastic.and hopefully ahead of time for the American education system.

          I have meet a number of young Americans who fully support Palestinians, and also seem very ok with islam.. Fortunately there does seem an awakening, but whether it is enough remains to be seen.
          Their surprise and excuses for the Barbary Wars can be astounding, and I take some fun, rubbing of their noses in their history…

          Quite opposite as to how Keith Ellison used the Thomas Jefferson koran to rub the nose of all Americans, swearing to uphold the Constitution then also later on Bill Maher show wished that the whole Democrat party to subvert the 2nd amendment.

          At this stage the it seems correct in wiki, but for how long, and I get the feeling that it is not taught in American schools and more importantly, what Thomas Jefferson learnt from that koran.
          Even the dragging out of those wars and then the 2nd war is a real lesson about islam, appeasement, politics and how to win.

          That would prove of great value today, particularly to politicians, but they are only elected by the public who overall, are not that well educated in the critical areas of history.
          So as often said, they then get the politicians they deserve.

          Rightly at least one politician seems to be prepared to open the can of worms, and I hope the back ground of islam that he has touched on, is truly opened up, not only for the states, but the world.

          Long live free speech ! ! ! as intended in the 1st amendment.

        • gravenimage says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 7:28 pm

          simpleton1, my apologies–I missed the sarcasm in your first post. You are quite right that the loathsome Keith Ellison grotesquely misused Jefferson’s Koran–which he never should have been allowed to use in the first place–implying that Jefferson was a fan of that foul creed. Instead, he read the Qur’an to learn about the danger of Islam.

      • gravenimage says

        Oct 6, 2016 at 3:34 pm

        The aptly named simpleton1 wrote:

        Perhaps there are more modern versions of the issues .:-)

        It appears to be very colonial for such a new country singing wondrous Marine Battle Hymns “to the shores of Tripoli”…really it was the USA looking to go to war and developing a war ministry and industry, playing on the fears of its voting populace.
        ……………………………..

        Does the witless simpleton1 have any idea what this was about? The Muslim Barbary Pirates were attacking our ships and enslaving our crews because as an independent nation we were no longer under the imperfect protection of Britain paying “tribute” money to these thugs. For us, it would quite literally have taken more than our entire GDP at the time.

        So simpleton1 considers concern over our people being *sold into slavery* to be some sort of ‘warmongering’? Does he believe–as Muslims do–that they have the right to seize our goods and *enslave us*?

        All we did was stop the pirates–then get out. We did not conquer these countries. We did not colonize them.

        But simpleton1 appears to believe that this was wrong, and that we could only prove we were good people by happily seeing our people enslaved by Muslims. *Ugh*.

        • simpleton1 says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 5:16 pm

          Apologies to gravenimage, I should have used more sarc signs
          see above apology to reyol

          The reference by Eisenhower to the military industry complex is just one sentence,which is often over played. But read the whole paragraph,and that will give the context of the problem.
          http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

          Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

          I think there is another elite that is driving things, in particular in the educations system that Hugh Fitsgerald is exposing.

          Those wiki articles do still show the back ground of the Barbary Wars,but the weight of how, if it is taught is twisted into a PC&MC educations syllabus complex on industrial proportions.:-)

          I live far from the States.
          Often young Americans and Europeans I meet, have such different views of their own history that I wonder who is teaching them.
          The Americans seem to have a guilt about the slave trade, though are proud of the sacrifice to free them. They are so surprised when I question them’ who enslaved and sold the slaves, how long had a slave trade industry operated?, and the numbers trafficked to where? and that holy book actively condones slavery.

          I accept that the states were essential in both world wars, yet it was Churchill that managed to hold Britain out, and the fortunate sense of Roosevelt to find things how to do the end run of assistance, lend lease, of naval ships until the end of 1941

          There seems to be a naivety that comes through, and so not really understanding history as it is now cut up by political correctness & multicultural etc..

          I do appreciate your comments now and in general.

        • simpleton1 says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 6:00 pm

          The Barbary wars are a good place for Americans to learn of islam, the koran and how it was all countered. To appreciate the years/time involved, the resolve that was needed to get it sorted.

          Being so far back in history the partisanship of political parties is not really at that fore front. and as mentioned the cost of tributes and ransoms was unreal. in a way by overplaying their hand.
          That activated things to be decisive, after Jefferson asked the question, “what drives them to….” and so then read the koran.

          That is what every one should do, and with freedom of speech to discuss all of that with hadiths and sira, comic strips, cartoons articles,billboards etc. so even muslims will learn all of their religion This what educations should be about, 😉

          Yet that cost can also be seen in the indirect costs we have world wide in security systems in just travel alone, and now any festive occasion or sporting event etc. All of us quietly bleeding from that cost.
          And other costs to us being charged to us, to benefit islam, like halal certification.

        • gravenimage says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 8:24 pm

          simpleton1 wrote:

          Apologies to gravenimage, I should have used more sarc signs
          see above apology to reyol
          ……………………….

          I’m sorry, simpleton1–I missed the sarcasm. My apologies.

          It is only because you actually do hear this sort of bs that I took it seriously here.

          More:

          I think there is another elite that is driving things, in particular in the educations system that Hugh Fitsgerald is exposing.
          ……………………….

          Yes–the educational systems through much of the West is very Leftist, and all too often whitewashes Islam.

          More:

          Those wiki articles do still show the back ground of the Barbary Wars,but the weight of how, if it is taught is twisted into a PC&MC educations syllabus complex on industrial proportions.:-)
          ……………………….

          Often this history is not taught here at all. I only learned about this as an adult myself.

          More:

          I live far from the States.
          Often young Americans and Europeans I meet, have such different views of their own history that I wonder who is teaching them.
          The Americans seem to have a guilt about the slave trade, though are proud of the sacrifice to free them. They are so surprised when I question them’ who enslaved and sold the slaves, how long had a slave trade industry operated?, and the numbers trafficked to where? and that holy book actively condones slavery.
          ……………………….

          Yes–while the history of slavery is taught here–in its rough outlines, at least–*very* few are aware of the Islamic slave trade, their role in the Atlantic slave trade, or, that while slavery was ended in the West–at great cost in the US–that slavery never really ended in the Muslim world.

          There were still open slave markets in Riyadh when I was a small child–and Saudi Arabia only ended slavery–on paper, at least–under pressure from the US in the early ’60s. Mauritania did not outlaw slavery until *2008*–and rather than enforcing that law, they harass anti-slavery activists:

          “Islamic Republic of Mauritania intensifies crackdown on anti-slavery activists”

          https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/09/islamic-republic-of-mauritania-intensifies-crackdown-on-anti-slavery-activists

          Where do you live?

          More:

          I accept that the states were essential in both world wars, yet it was Churchill that managed to hold Britain out, and the fortunate sense of Roosevelt to find things how to do the end run of assistance, lend lease, of naval ships until the end of 1941

          There seems to be a naivety that comes through, and so not really understanding history as it is now cut up by political correctness & multicultural etc..
          ……………………….

          Churchill is a particular hero of mine. I’m American, but my mother and aunt served in the British army as young women during WWII. My mother went through the London Blitz.

          Especially here in the States, history is woefully neglected in the schools–and often when it Is taught, it is “politically correct” and skewed.

          There are quite a few people here at Jihad Watch who know a great deal about history, but it is sadly rarer in the general population.

          Some kids are not even learning about 9/11.

          More:

          The Barbary wars are a good place for Americans to learn of islam, the koran and how it was all countered. To appreciate the years/time involved, the resolve that was needed to get it sorted.
          ……………………….

          These lessons *were* learned–and then they were largely forgotten. This is true not just in the US, but throughout the West.

          More:

          Being so far back in history the partisanship of political parties is not really at that fore front. and as mentioned the cost of tributes and ransoms was unreal. in a way by overplaying their hand.
          That activated things to be decisive, after Jefferson asked the question, “what drives them to….” and so then read the koran.

          That is what every one should do, and with freedom of speech to discuss all of that with hadiths and sira, comic strips, cartoons articles,billboards etc. so even muslims will learn all of their religion This what educations should be about, ?
          ……………………….

          Some us are learning about Islam. I read the Qur’an soon after 9/11–I wanted to see if terrorism really was condoned in that book. I had assumed there might be a violent passage or two–but I was *shocked* by what the Qur’an and the other texts of Islam actually called for.

          More:

          Yet that cost can also be seen in the indirect costs we have world wide in security systems in just travel alone, and now any festive occasion or sporting event etc. All of us quietly bleeding from that cost.
          And other costs to us being charged to us, to benefit islam, like halal certification.
          ……………………….

          We have isolated Islam before–after the Barbary Wars, in fact, until about fifty years ago–and the West was safer from Islam than at any time in our history.

          While circumstances are different now, I believe we can do this again.

          More:

          I do appreciate your comments now and in general.
          ……………………….

          Thank you for your kind words. Again, sorry for misreading your first post.

        • simpleton1 says

          Oct 6, 2016 at 11:18 pm

          Thanks gravenimage for your fulsome reply,and many things bring a wry smile of agreement, so do not be sorry, as I should have noted more strongly the sarc. or even put another comment to say it was.

          It is that sometimes to have conversation with young ones, you have to be subtle in agreement with them, and try and put the right simple questions back to them, to ponder a bit about, before you then tease out the answer.
          Otherwise you are just considered a racist fuddy duddy right winger and basically they do not listen, or more importantly think and reason, and arouse a curiosity for the truth.

          Before concluding, I am not a school teacher and nor had university studies
          Worked across on the Pacific ocean, a few years with a number of nationalities, up through the islands and off the coast of South America and landed in Panama, Mexico and California, in ;my younger days..
          Now back working on the land for many a year.and have meet many young back packers with as you noted; that amazing bs purporting it is the truth

          Changes have been happening in my country for about 20 years and economically since 1984, leading a free market system.
          We are lucky we are a “back water” and considered to be 20 30 years behind the times, yet in other ways it is considered to be a test bed for new political and technological concepts too.
          Now it is where a polygamist husband can hit one of so called wives with a hammer and still be discharged with out conviction this past week..

          I did have questions about the thinking of middle eastern people and nearby south asian peoples, particularly not being far away from East Timor at the time when it was invaded in 1975.
          Only after 9/11 did I search and it so naturally aligned with some previous experiences and stories from others.that completed the circle.

          Always good good to chat, as we keep on learning, reaffirming, seeing different angles, and hopefully influencing people to seek and find truths in many things, as well as with in ourselves.

    • Adrian Johnson says

      Oct 6, 2016 at 10:02 am

      If borders are “exclusive and dividing”, then the same logic says the boundaries between my land and my neighbours is just as undesirable. How convenient for a government then, to expropriate anybody’s property for any reason to break down boundaries and exclusions “for the good of society”! That sounds like Fascism or Marxist style socialism to me. But then that’s the EUssr for you.
      People need to be reminded that when they vote for one political candidate over another that by so doing they are being “judgemental”. People confuse being “discriminating” with being discriminatory. If you are not discriminating, you are indiscriminate, and that results in being imprudent and making imprudent decisions. I hate to tell you this, but imprudent decisions can kill you. . . .

      • reyol says

        Oct 6, 2016 at 3:04 pm

        Yes they can.

  6. Wellington says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 7:50 pm

    To cut to the quick, Islam still gets a pass in the West.

    But it shouldn’t. In a sane West it wouldn’t. But then the West right now isn’t sane. Nope, it isn’t.

    • Michael says

      Oct 5, 2016 at 8:35 pm

      Do they even teach about Charles Martel anymore? Or, has he become a politically awkward figure, best left unmentioned?

      • Wellington says

        Oct 5, 2016 at 9:18 pm

        Martel by today’s idiotic standards would be classed as an Islamophobe.

        Instructive when the eight century beats the twenty-first century in common sense and a disinclination towards suicidal behavior. Very.

      • Adrian Johnson says

        Oct 6, 2016 at 10:06 am

        Yup — he’s right down there with Santiago Matamoros, patron of Spain during the Reconquista. (another non-PC historical fact.) Any day now, I expect a PC capaign to change the name of Matamoros, Texas to something more acceptable –“Merkel”, Texas, for instance?

  7. Kay says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 8:04 pm

    Even when I was in school, which was a good many decades ago, we were taught a very benign Islam (and nothing at all about the Crusades). Honestly it was easy to confuse Hinduism and Islam– both were far away and foreign.
    But that ignorance is likely biting us now in all the “progressives” and others who equate all religions.

  8. gravenimage says

    Oct 5, 2016 at 9:21 pm

    Hugh Fitzgerald: What Do French Textbooks Teach About Islam? (Part I)
    …………………

    Sounds like the same general whitewash of Islam one finds in most of the West.

    It would be better if Infidel children were taught nothing at all.

    • Gen Jones says

      Oct 6, 2016 at 10:22 am

      I wonder about that too Graven. I do see hope in that most adolescents rebel and even enjoy being contrary and at some point they will stumble across a compelling opinion on the internet and discover the truth about Islam and it will be cool or cutting edge to be Islamosavvy.

      • gravenimage says

        Oct 6, 2016 at 3:40 pm

        Well, I hope so, Gen. But many kids do indeed seem to be indoctrinated by this whitewash. For many–not all, thank goodness!–the contrariness of adolescence is more about sneaking smokes and ignoring curfew than about actual independent thought.

  9. Matthieu Baudin says

    Oct 6, 2016 at 5:33 am

    “… History in the schools serves a positive goal: to transmit to pupils factual knowledge, based on critical analysis of the sources. One hopes, possibly naively, that later on the students will exercise their critical reason and think for themselves. Yet this discipline is most often used to impose value judgements on pupils…”

    To my mind, the quickest way to get some grit and substance into the curriculum, helping students to exercise their critical reason, would be to make available to students, historical analysis undertaken by scholars who are also apostates from Islam. Wouldn’t this be an honest approach; students could compare and contrast, instead of being served a carefully guided and selected sampling?

    • Adrian Johnson says

      Oct 6, 2016 at 10:08 am

      Dangerous.
      Don’t you know Truth is dangerous, and must be restricted or rationed? It enables people to learn from the mistakes of the past. And we don’t want that, do we ?

  10. Florida Jim says

    Oct 6, 2016 at 10:24 am

    What muslims teach all over the world are lies about the host country, Israel, America and any potential enemies, which is everyone sooner or later.However his is no different than Democrats teach throughout America and Europe about enemies of Democrats i.e. honest hardworking taxpayers who are Conservative Christians mostly. Christians and Democrats are anathema to one another Democrats bow to Satan Conservatives to Jesus Christ.Brainwashing by Democrats against anyone with a differing viewpoint is no different in America or Muslims across the world.
    “The Closing Of The American Mind” By Allen Bloom explains all this and it was written in 1987 after 20 years of brainwashing which n ow has 30 more years still brainwashing students.

  11. Dick Bulova says

    Oct 7, 2016 at 2:59 pm

    I graduated from high school in 1955. Although American History was a required subject, we never were told about racial segregation, religious discrimination or the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Only years later, at the university, did i learn about these.

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