You might have already heard last week was "Islamofascism Awareness Week",organized by former Maoist extremist and now RW extremist David Horowitz.
But Islamofascism Awareness week, a warped 'teach-in' at Universities about how liberals are helping promote America's demise at the hands of Islam, the Ayatollahs, and their -terrierists- er, umm, terrorists, is only part of an ongoing propaganda campaign already long underway. In fact this campaign has been viral in its dissemination throughout the RW media network of the blogosphere, talk radio and Fox TV News.
One element of this campaign is the bizarre charge, believed by wingers plugged into their media, that hateful Anti-American Islamic madrassa style teachings are being created in our public schools and universities (of course with the help of enabling evil liberals). This diary explores this bizarre charge and its source.
Madrassas in American public schools -- RW tin foil gets big propaganda boost.
A few days ago, I read a wingnut's letter to the editor of my local paper in a liberal North CA city, alleging he had a list of
public "schools around the country where the Muslim religion is taught... indoctrination into Islam, paid for our tax dollars." (sic)
(I can't get a link to the letter in that paper's website as their website's search mechanism sucks big time, my apologies).
I did some research to find the source of the winger's accusations which are becoming prominent in RW media circles to the point it filters down to followers who write letters to the editor of local papers. In fact, these accusations are daily headlines at Michelle Malkin's site, and are also promoted regularly by Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Fox TV News. Yes, they are all ridiculous, but more importantly, they are part of a deliberate agenda to promote this 'story' in RW media to the point their followers become believers of it.
An organization called stopthemadrassa.com is among a network producing similar viral accusations making the rounds of RW media outlets (websites, talk radio, Fox TV), along with Daniel Pipes, who is a member of stopthemadrassa's advisory board, and Austin Miles, a RW Christianist preacher.
More about the source of this RW hoax story
stopthemadrassa.com has on its advisory board Neocon propagandists (surprise, surprise) such as Daniel Pipes and Frank Gaffney, and the Thomas More Law Centerthat promotes Christianity in the schools. Citizens for American Values in Public Education is another astroturf organization with similar aims to stopthemadrassa and a virtually identical lineup on its board of advisors. Daniel Pipes has been promoting many accusations of Islamization of U.S. schools (and of other U.S. institutions) on his website, search it and you'll find many more such articles that when you read them thoroughly, simply cite benign and harmless educational curricula as something sinister. The creepy Pipes wrote that Japanese Internment camps were a good thing, and that Israel should militarily defeat palestinians and subdue the middle east. His father was also a Neocon on Cheney's infamous Team Bthat falsified the Soviet threat. Daniel Pipes is now part of Rudy Guiliani's foreign policy team filled up by a boatload of Neocons. Interestingly, the viral rumor campaign against fictional Islam in American public schools is an example of the tight collaboration between Christian Right extremists and opportunistic Neocons. In fact, much of the source of these nonsensical charges are hatched and spread by RW Christian preachers whining about the non existant inclusion of Islam in public schools and the exclusion of victimized wingnut Christianism.
In fact, the 'factual' source of much of this viral campaign is a tirade by bizarre RW Reverend Austin Miles, a minister in the dominionist megachurch Assemblies of God, who at one point quit and wrote a book criticizing the Assemblies and preachers such as Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, but in recent years has 'returned to the fold' of the Assemblies of God huckster ministry where the money flows. In researching this diary, Austin Miles' tirade was repeatedly cited by RW sites as the source for 'reporting' about this topic:
As children return to school this week, following the Christmas break, 7th graders in a growing number of public schools, who are not permitted to wear a cross or speak the name of Jesus, will be required to attend an intensive three week course on Islam; a course in which students are mandated to learn the tenets of Islam, study the important figures of the faith, wear a robe, adopt a Muslim name and stage their own Jihad...
The public schools in California so stealthily slipped this course into the 7th grade curriculum that even another 7th grade teacher, Elizabeth Christina Lemings, was totally in the dark that this was being taught...
"We could never teach Christianity like this," Lemings said to ANS during an on-site interview. "We can’t even mention the name of Jesus in the public schools, but over there...," she pointed to the building next to hers, "they teach Islam as the true religion, and students are taught about Islam and how to pray to Allah."
Lemings, in her second year of teaching in the Byron (Northern California) Union School District, has been a Christian since 1987. The government school system requires that she teach evolution in her science class with no reference to creationism or any contrasting viewpoint to Darwin’s theory. She quickly learned that God and Christianity are out (forbidden) but that Islam is in.
The textbook used for the Islamic course, Across The Centuries, is published by Houghton-Mifflin (Boston, Ma.). It is described as a Social Studies/History book and has been adopted by the California School System...
Nancie Castro, the principal at the middle school,
denies the children were taught to pray or that any of the children was required to participate in the cultural activities of wearing Middle-Eastern clothing or choosing a Moslem name. She told the Contra Costa Times that wearing the clothing was something offered for extra credit... Castro says that when the flyers about the course were sent to parents, three families asked that their children be exempted from that particular portion of the studies and they were given alternate assignments.
Peggy Green, the Superintendent of the Byron Union School district says that the school is merely reflecting the California guidelines for seventh grade and that the students are learning about Islam in the same way that they learn about Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and other major religions. She says that individual teachers will augment the curriculum with various activities and games, including dressing-up and role playing, in order to stimulate class discussion.... Green says she and her staff have been fielding calls and other messages to the school about the controversy, many of which have been malignant and threatening.
And to what does Austin Miles attribute his accusations?
So why would the American Public School System and the politicians want to further the Islamic faith, push to have it become the One World Religion and nix Christianity?
Simple. Christians cannot be enslaved. Islam, an oppressive religion of control, cruelty and fear does enslave, which can keep people subdued. This is precisely what the future leaders of the One World Order want to achieve. And the misinformed, make nice, politically correct crowd seem eager to help them accomplish it.
But the greatest driving factor in all of this is money. There are the profiteers and politicians who stand to grow in unspeakable wealth and power by cooperating with the Arabs and finding favor by helping them and their pagan religion take control. They have no compunction in selling us out, and our freedom, to accomplish their goals. These greedy, self-serving investors stand salivating on both sides of the oil pump.
Riggghhht. That makes as much sense as this comedic rant on conspiracies does.
As a sidebar to this topic, atheist activist Michael Newdow who went to the courts over the phrase 'under god' in the public school pledge to the constitution, successfully sued and won a $1million judgment against Miles Austin for libel in falsely accusing him of perjury and in regard to his daughter's emotional suffering over the pledge issue.
Read the rest of Austin's article and you'll see how unfactual it is, yet the RW bases an entire campaign on this as well as Daniel Pipes' cherry picked fear mongerings about 'American madrassas', public schools and universities course content on Islam. These accusations by Austin, an uncredible, nutty RW propagandist minister has been sourced and made the rounds by the RW Investor's Business Daily and wingers such as my local wingnut letter writer, RW bloggers, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, stopthemadrassa.com., and prompted stories on Fox TV's O'Reilly Factor and even Paula Zahn on CNN.
Of course, the 'facts' cited by Miles and Pipes as horror stories, such as the Houghton Mifflin Social Studies textbook, used in elementary public schools, titled Across the Centuries is obviously completely harmless and benign upon scrutiny. In fact, it is revealing that in doing the research for this diary, it was impossible to find even any more damning so-called made up 'facts' of madrassa infiltration of American schools other than the Pipes' inflation of academic studies into sinister content and Austin's odd tirade.
Yet it is presented by RW bloggers such as Malkin in a manner in which their followers immediately recognize the entire 'issue' as a given factual reality that horrible multicultaralist liberals are turning our schools into madrassas. Naturally, it's no surprise wingers would be manipulated into distorting reality into their fantasy world. In a sign of Bush's unpopularity, even Neocon stopthemadrassa.com takes a bunch of shots at George W. Bush for cozying up to and making nice with American muslims in moments of tolerance in between Dubya's mental illness of delusions as the Great Decider.
There is much more of course to this story about the U.S. madrassa hoax and folks who look into it could have material for more diaries, but what I have presented will suffice for this diary.
Why should we care?
Why should we care about a bunch of wingnuts believing some stupid propaganda flung at them by a bunch of Neocon & Christianist creeps?
The creation of alternative media sources as a propaganda tool for the indoctrination of the faithful poses a number of problems for our society, in particular the radicalization of a RW minority population that can be manipulated to support and/or create violence, oppression, and even genocide. This alternative media as we know is becoming mainstream, and I have no doubt the eventual intent is for it to become the dominant and only media.
There is also the small matter of our tax dollars being funnelled through military media disinformation programs. These should be investigated to see whether our tax dollars are funding such vile propaganda.
A fascinating hypocritical side light to this is Daniel Pipes' defense of an Islamic terrorist organization . that suits Neocon's plans.
Perhaps the indefinite detention, torture and loss of civil liberties face by some American muslims is related to their demonization, as well as difficulties faced by real Muslim American children in real American schools. We also have seen the hysteria by wingers over Laura Bush's wearing a headscarf in Damascus... when in Rome... but not for wingers spoon fed from anti-Muslim hysteria.
In contrast to the ludicrous accusations of RW activists to drum up war on terror fears in their base, what is often the reality for muslim children in America is that they are the target of violence to the point that they are home schooled rather than having their experience be the protection and enshrinement of Islam in American public schools.
Hmm... could there be some cause and effect at work here? No, must be simply a coincidence in a random universe.