A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Three Flathead women with concerns over the treatment of Islam in public schools are forming the Truth in Montana Textbooks Association. TMTA does not yet have a website, but spokeswoman Linda Sauer, of Dayton, says one is coming soon, and recommends visiting the Truth in Texas Textbooks website to get a sense of what TMTA’s website might resemble.
Sauer and her colleagues, Davida Constant, Kalispell, and Caroline Solomon, Bigfork, are members of the Flathead chapter of Act! for America, a controversial national organization known for its dim view of Islam and concerns that American practitioners of Islam may pose a threat to national security. They can be reached at fvactschool@gmail.com.
Sauer, et al, announced in a letter-to-the-editor published in the 2 June Daily InterLake that they were forming TMTA. Referring to a meeting they had with local school superintendents on 14 May concerning the teaching of world religions in local schools, they wrote:
The superintendents repeatedly stated, “We do not have these problems in Montana.” The local schools have not yet been asked to provide halal food, prayer rooms, or special consideration during the month of Ramadan, but this is happening with increasing frequency in other states. It is prudent to ask how such requests for special accommodation will be answered in Montana when the time comes.
Nationally, school districts are quick to please the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Islamic organizations to force teachers who distribute factual information to students regarding Islam to either resign, at best, or be fired at worst.
People who dare not agree with the Islamic agenda are called Islamophobic, anti-Muslim bigots. The truth is, proponents of Islam are making every effort to marginalize and silence those who cling to American values and traditions. If these forces are not at work here in the state of Montana already, and that’s arguable, it’s just a matter of time.
Another topic which generated a number of questions for the panel was textbook selection. This is of concern because there are a number of history and social studies textbooks in use across the country, which have been reported in multiple textbook studies to contain misinformation, particularly with regard to Islam. One book in particular, World History: Patterns of Interaction, is currently in use in School District 5 (Kalispell).
Act! for America Education has a textbook review project (full report, PDF) and a 38-page report (PDF) on World History: Patterns of Interaction. Both documents are impressively footnoted. I recommend reading both reports, but caution readers to read the textbooks in question and not just rely on the excerpts presented in the reports.
Act! for America is run by its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, a Maronite Christian from Lebanon. In 2011, the Nasville Tennessean reported that:
ACT! for America is the brainchild of Hanah Kahwagi Tudor, a Lebanese Christian who fled her homeland during that country’s civil war, which raged from 1975 to 1990.
Tudor, who goes by the pseudonym Brigitte Gabriel, first moved to Israel, where she worked for a television network owned by Pat Robertson.
She married a co-worker named Charles Tudor, a former cameraman for Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Jim and Tammy Show . The couple eventually settled in Virginia Beach.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she began speaking out about terrorism. She wrote two books — They Must Be Stopped and Because They Hate — which became best-sellers.
In books and speeches, Tudor says that Islamic terrorists took over her home country, and she wants to stop them before they take over America.
In a story published in 2011, the New York Times reported:
Ms. Gabriel, 46, who uses a pseudonym, casts her organization as a nonpartisan, nonreligious national security group. Yet the organization draws on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and Tea Party Republicans.
She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion. She has found a receptive audience among Americans who are legitimately worried about the spread of terrorism.
But some of those who work in counterterrorism say that speakers like Ms. Gabriel are spreading distortion and fear, and are doing the country a disservice by failing to make distinctions between Muslims who are potentially dangerous and those who are not.
Politico published a story on Gabriel in 2011, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) published a dossier on her in 2013. There are reports of varying credibility that she’s an apologist for the fascist inspired Kataeb Party in Lebanon.
Public schools emerged in the 19th Century in part so that children could read the Bible. Indoctrination in Christianity often was part of the curriculum, and a not insignificant number of Americans still believe that public school curricula should be consistent with Christian teachings and values. Most public schools, the Flathead’s among them, adopt a secular approach to teaching religion, describing the world’s major religions in terms as neutral as possible. That’s a tricky task, not an easy one.
Making that task even trickier is the split between the mainstream view that Islam is a peaceful religion whose reputation is marred by Islamic fundamentalists who justify terrorist acts by citing Islamic theology, and Act! for America’s view that Islam is inherently friendly to, and approving of, terrorism and the most bloody and gruesome kinds of violence. That split comes into the classroom as a dispute over whether terrorist acts against America and Americans, the prime case being the 9/11 attacks, are the acts of Islam itself or just the acts of deranged Muslims who are dishonoring their religion. One view indicts all adherents of Islam, the other indicts only the terrorists.
How a textbook presents the 9/11 attacks will be of particular interest to TMTA, and should be of interest to everyone. I would not present the attacks as an indictment of Islam, but I certainly would report that 15 of the 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were associated with Saudi Arabia (see the 9/11 commission’s report), that Saudi Arabia is home to the Whahabi variant of Islam, and that one of the hijackers’ grievances was their fear that the American military presence in that kingdom of God, sand, and oil, was corrupting their religion. Omitting that information would be academic malpractice.
Thus far, I have not reviewed textbooks for their treatment of Islam, or for that matter, of any other subject. I believe that task is best left to our elected education officials and the experts and professional educators they hire. In other words, through experience I’ve learned to generally trust these people, and on many, but not all, things to defer to their judgement.
But I retain the right to review textbooks and present my findings and recommendations to our decision makers. The women creating TMTA are exercising the same right that I have, that we all have. What they’re doing will outrage some and make others uneasy. There’s a potential for an ugly dispute and some spirited school board elections next year. There’s also a potential for a mutual and constructive learning experience, which is what I hope emerges from this situation.