🚀 go-pugleaf

Home schooling gets another shot in the arm: "Up until last year Douglass
taught social studies at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., which
teaches Wahhabism through textbooks that condemn Jews and Christians as
infidels and enemies of Islam. Her husband, Usama Amer, still teaches at the
grades 2-12 school, a spokeswoman there confirmed. Both are practicing
Muslims."  A couple of generations ago they'd have considered themselves
lucky to get off with a tar-and-feather party.


Look who's teaching Johnny about Islam

Saudi-funded Islamic activists have final say in shaping public-school
lessons on religions

May 3, 2004

By Paul Sperry

WASHINGTON -- A top textbook consultant shaping classroom education on Islam
in American public schools recently worked for a school funded and
controlled by the Saudi government, which propagates a rigidly anti-Western
strain of Islam, a WorldNetDaily investigation reveals.

The consultant, Susan L. Douglass, has also praised Pakistan's madrassa
schools as "proud symbols of learning," even after the U.S. government
blamed them for fueling the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Douglass, routinely described as a "scholar" or "historian," has edited
manuscripts of world history textbooks used by middle and high school
students across the country. She's also advised state education boards on
curriculum standards dealing with world religion, and has helped train
thousands of public school teachers on Islamic instruction.

In effect, she is responsible for teaching millions of American children
about Islam, experts say, while operating in relative obscurity.

WorldNetDaily has learned that up until last year Douglass taught social
studies at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., which teaches
Wahhabism through textbooks that condemn Jews and Christians as infidels and
enemies of Islam. Her husband, Usama Amer, still teaches at the grades 2-12
school, a spokeswoman there confirmed. Both are practicing Muslims.

The Saudi government funds the school, which has a sister campus in Fairfax,
Va.

"It is a school that is under the auspices of the Saudi Embassy," said Ali
al-Ahmed, executive director of the Washington-based Saudi Institute, a
leading Saudi opposition group. "So the minister of education appoints the
principal of the school, and the teachers are paid by the Saudi government."

He says many of the academy's textbooks he has reviewed contain passages
promoting hatred of non-Muslims. For example, the eleventh-grade text says
one sign of the Day of Judgment will be when Muslims 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."

Al-Ahmed, a Shiite Muslim born in predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia,
says the school's religious curriculum was written by Sheik Saleh al-Fawzan,
a senior member of the Saudi religious council, who he said has "encouraged
war against unbelievers." Al-Fawzan has authored textbooks used in Saudi
schools.

A report released last year by the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom found that the Saudi Ministry of Education publishes texts
presenting Islam as "the only true religion" and denouncing all other
religions as "invalid" and "misguided."

"Christians and Jews repeatedly are labeled as infidels and enemies of Islam
who should not be befriended or emulated, and are referred to in
eighth-grade textbooks as 'apes and pigs,'" the report said. In addition, it
found that "some Saudi government-funded textbooks used in North American
Islamic schools have been found to encourage incitement to violence again
non-Muslims."

Critics complain that Douglass, who taught at the Saudi academy for at least
a decade, has convinced American textbook publishers and educators to gloss
over the violent aspects of Islam to make the faith more appealing to
non-Muslim children. The units on Islam reviewed by WND appear to give a
glowing and largely uncritical view of the faith.



http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38304