I’ve featured the writer Chauncey Tinker of the Participator blog previously. This writer is sharp, curious and well-informed about some of the problems that are afflicting the world today. In this piece, which I would thoroughly recommend reading in its full form, looks at the ongoing and serious problem of pro Islamic propaganda being foisted onto our children in our schools. Now as I have said before at this blog, I have no real objections about older children being taught about what others believe, after all it’s often handy to know what makes Sikhs, or Jews or Christians or even Muslims what they are. Because those of us with a religious faith consider ourselves the product of the deity to which we own fealty, then what we believe makes us who we are and that is something worth learning and understanding.
But, the main problem with how Islam is being taught in our schools is that Islam is not being taught honestly, it is too often being promoted to children. Schools have also been caught out whitewashing the life of Mohammed and in one case I came across recently (I think it was on a Simon Harris video), making direct equivalent comparisons between Jesus and Mohammed. Even though I’m not a Christian, I find that drawing such an equivalence is both offensive and profoundly dishonest.
In this short piece by Chauncey Tinker the writer decries the sanitised and dishonest picture of Islam that is being forced on our children. It is difficult to disagree with Chauncey that our school children are indeed being misled by their teachers and their schools about the true nature of Mohammed.
Chauncey Tinker of the Participator said:
One of the most disturbing things that is going on in our schools today is the false teaching about the Islamic religion. An article appeared in the Courier in January singing the praises of a “charity” that has been giving “educational” presentations in the Dundee area:
to address misconceptions pupils may have about Islam
…
students initially link Islam with things like terrorism but the overwhelming majority say they have a better understanding of the religion following the presentation
…
1,500 people have witnessed the group’s presentations
Chauncey then went on to link to the original story about the pro Islam propaganda charity and their work in schools. The writer asked whether the idea of ‘a better understanding’ of Islam included the exhortations to violence contained in Islamic scripture and gave examples of the passages that call for violence in the here and now. Chauncey said the teachers and the shamefully dishonest Islamic ‘educational’ charities are whitewashing the true nature of the Islamic founder Mohammed.
Chauncey concluded by saying that our children are being given a prescribed way to speak about Islam and to think about Islam. They said:
Instead of just teaching children how to think for themselves, modern “education” is teaching them what to think. In this case its very much the wrong thing to think because such peaceful “interpretations” of the Islamic texts rely on selective quotations from the texts (a practice known as “cherry picking verses”), and the avoidance of the great number of verses that undermine this narrative.
What’s worse, they are not just teaching children the wrong THING to think, they are teaching them the wrong WAY to think, because they are encouraging them to discount any evidence that does not fit a theory.
The writer is correct both in saying that a sanitised version of Islam and the true nature of this ideology’s vile and violent ‘prophet’ Mohammed is being glossed over in order to tell our children that Islam is not a problem. Sadly the evidence tells us otherwise. Although there are many individual Muslims who are fine people and who would never harm another human being, we should not forget that because Islam is a violent and fascistic ideology, it will have a propensity to produce violent and aggressive people. Not every Muslim will be violent or misogynistic or a fascistic religious imperialist, just as there were probably a few members of the Nazi party in Germany who didn’t really hate Jews that much, but because of the nature of Islamic theology, a significant number will be wrong ‘uns. There are a great number of countries and regions that have become violent, uncivilised crapholes because of the influence of Islam, such as Pakistan, Islamic Africa and the Islamic enclaves in the West, and this should tell us a lot about the societies and cultures that Islam creates.
To give children such a dishonest view of the ideology of Islam is an act of extreme and damaging dishonesty. I would never tell my child to go and pet a poisonous snake because of the risk to their life, yet our children are being repeatedly being told by their teachers that a dangerous and poisonous ideology called Islam, is fluffy and harmless. That is the equivalent of telling a toddler to cuddle a Cobra. This lying propaganda about Islam that is being forced on our children is wrong and it needs to stop and stop very soon. But the only way we will stop it is we as parents protest en masse about it. At present individual complainants can be brushed off by the school or even threatened and intimidated with the school’s Prevent duty or with social services. Parents need to stand with each other to protest this sort of horrific dishonesty about Islam going on in our schools. As individuals we can be bullied but together we can force the issue of pro Islamic propaganda further into the public eye and hopefully get the Islamic propagandists out of our children’s schools.
Links
Link to original Chauncey Tinker article
The Participator main site
Quite often, teachers have no idea about Islam either and believe “all religions are the same.”
Or, they are leftist in their leaning and delighted to teach this whitewashed version (still lack of knowledge), which is so full of fabrications that deviate from the official islamic version (I once saw stories I had no idea of the source because I could not recognise the vision Mohammed in them, e.g, he was kind to women, animals etc)
Steps for teaching, I said: (In these times, it is difficult to declare out against religion in the classroom, especially one, but…)
1. To a class of non-muslim children, I confirmed they were not muslims for them (not for me). Then I told them not to call Mohammed the prophet because i said that is what only believers call him, i.e muslims. I corrected a teaching aid, which repeatedly called him prophet. Also, note to muslims that only they believe Mohammed to be prophet, no other religion does
2. You encourage the students to read other sources; These are only one version of story and you can find out totally different stories in other books where Mohammed is shown differently, like the koran. “Here he looks like he is good but in other stories it is not so…”