PBS, the un-American classroom

By Tabitha Korol 

Soon after the horrific bombing of the World Trade Center, I happened upon a television production of the history of Islam presented by PBS, an American public broadcaster and television program distributor, self-declared as “America’s largest classroom.”  This trusted provider of television programming reaches 350 member-television stations, educational institutions, non-profit groups tied to public schools, college educational institutions, and state-government-owned or -related entities.  The narrator of the History of Islam, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, was already recognized for his outrageous proposal to establish a triumphal rabat-style mosque on Ground Zero. He’d hoped to name it Córdoba to echo Islam’s conquest of Spain in 711 AD.

Rauf presented the spread of Islam as the color of butter spread across the pastel map, as though untold thousands had not been enslaved or slaughtered by the ferocious and determined warlord, Mohammed.  Conquest was achieved by the merciless decapitation of 800 Jewish men, the rape and sexual enslavement of their women and children, the pillaging of the metalworks and crafts of the town’s Jews, Christians, and pagans who had been living in harmony. PBS was permitting itself to be used to promote a false narrative that concealed the true purpose of Islam and its continued bloody methods of conquest.

Christian Action Network, in 2017, revealed the introduction of the Islamic indoctrination program, “Access Islam,” by the U.S. Department of Education to public schools, when no similar material for Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism exists.  PBS provides “the largest classroom” for teaching these “educational” resources to schools and libraries, replacing the term “Religion of Peace” with “Empire of Faith.”  Americans for Peace and Tolerance has investigated and reported the world studies and history books in use today, and confirms that they embrace radical social activism, ideological indoctrination, and coerced conformity.  The textbooks and PBS’s films are replete with erroneous information, demonize Israel and America while glorifying Islam, and encourage fealty to Islam and identification with radical jihadists.  This is brazen-faced stealth jihad against our own country done without fear of negative consequence.

The social studies lesson plan for grades 5 – 12 begins with the Five Pillars of Islam, enhanced by the BBC’s supplemental visual material for easy memorization and scrupulous study.  This is total immersion into Islamic vocabulary with intense thought and discussion, acting out and reciting prayer, learning and performing customs along with changes of dress, and comparing superficial information of Judaism and Christianity with the favored Islam.  In addition to the books, papers, computer, and visual aids, students “fulfill their duty” with “impromptu” visits into the Islamic community, without parental consent.  Thus, they learn to feel like a Muslim (assuming the false victimization), view the world from a Muslim perspective (that all the world is Muslim and must be retrieved), think like a Muslim (lay blame elsewhere and justify abuse on women and the west), and to BE a Muslim (be a jihadi warrior).

Under the first pillar of faith, students must learn the Islamic calligraphy and memorize the shahada, a proclamation of faith and fidelity to Islam, despite their family’s beliefs.

·         PBS’s an online film about the Ten Commandments of Judaism does not equal in depth of experience the Pillars of Faith. Whereas the former operates at a purely informational level, the latter is indoctrinal, proselytizing, so that the child is imbued with the beliefs and views.

The second pillar is prayer, its importance, the words, sounds, movements, direction and frequency, an unparalleled intimate engagement.

·         This stage does not reveal the violent Islamic verses calling for jihad (warfare against non-Muslims) as a permanent obligation upon the Muslim community until the world is conquered for Islam (9:5, 9:29, and others), or the commands to wage war against non-Muslims until they: (1) convert to Islam, (2) pay the jizya (poll tax) and submit to sharia, or (3) are killed.

The third pillar is Zakat or almsgiving, with a video for media interaction, questions and answers.  They review the purpose of donations, the amount of charity, relationship between prayer and money, and why this differs from ordinary charity.

·         However, it is not made clear that zakat or charity is designated only for Muslims, never for the infidel.  Hence, while Israel, the US, and other western civilizations are first responders to tend others in times of natural disasters, Islamic countries do not respond with manpower or funds.

The fourth pillar, fasting, brings the discussion of the month-long holiday of Ramadan, its guidelines for fasting, challenges, and spiritual rules.

·         They do not learn that Ramadan mandates daily and increased attacks on hapless Christians and Jews in Israel, the Arab Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and throughout Asia, with each year’s death toll superseding the previous one.  The Bible’s tales of violence provide lessons to be learned; the Koran’s are open-ended, everlasting decrees of exhortation to violence.  The Muslim community has a responsibility to wage war against the unbelievers. 

·         Students are not told about the inhumane, torturous pain purposely inflicted on animals en route to their slaughter for Islam’s holiday celebrations.  Halal may be falsely compared to kashruth (Kosher), but a cardinal tenet of the Jewish faith is shechita – the swift and painless dispatch of the animal, marked by compassion and consideration for its welfare.  In many instances, animals are accorded the same sensitivity as for human beings.

The fifth pillar is the compulsory pilgrimage or Hajj to Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, which was Mohammed’s failed courtship of the Meccan Jews and his humiliation that now requires revenge and subservience of non-Muslims.  PBS presents a compulsory “virtual Hajj.”

• WGBH, PBS’s Boston Public Radio, provides “the journey,” the purpose of the special clothing, the gravity of the experience, and how it would feel to make the trek to Arabia. The children are forced to “live” the experience over their own religious and national birthright, to “feel” disdain and disrespect for their parents’ heritage and country, to “become” stealth warriors. Until they are sufficient in number to take up arms and overthrow America’s government, students are encouraged to meet with local Islamic clerics and to leave class for political riots and marches.

 The sixth pillar, not revealed to the infidel, is jihad, which guides the thought and life of every Muslim, from the pregnant woman who will deliver the next jihadi warrior to the child who is taught to dedicate his life to martyrdom for conquest. Military might is the base for their ideology, the origin of Islam, the sine qua non of the faith, which is why the Islamic culture cannot adapt and accept ideas of modernity and secular government.

·         Despite the misleading term “inner struggle,” jihad is their eternal war against the non-Islamic world.  Lessons encourage the children to identify with jihadis and justify martyrdom.

·         Portraying Islam as the religion of peace is utter deception.   Daniel Pipes explains that jihadists understand the terms with its “usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history” as “the compulsory effort to forcibly expand Muslim territory and influence.” “It is the boldly offensive intent to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world,” – war, dispossession, slavery, and death for its victims.  Islamic imperialism.

·         An Iraqi cleric in Baghdad, during a November 9, 2002, sermonized, “We challenge [President George W] Bush and the Americans with our words, before challenging [them] with our weapons . . . We are patient . . . and we will fight them with all kinds of weapons.  Jihad, Jihad, Jihad, Jihad. . . .” He exhorted all Muslims to “welcome death, welcome martyrdom for the cause for Allah.”

·         Beginning with the very young, jihadis are taught to hate Jews and are praised for becoming suicide bombers, dying for martyrdom.  “The day of Jihad is the day of blood.” The foremost Egyptian cleric of Al Azhar University urged Palestinians to intensify their suicide attacks against Israeli women and children – murder for the sake of their deity, with all manner of rewards in the next world.

The study of the Pillars of Islam is but one facet of what is being taught in our public schools today and what is supported by PBS’s “largest classroom” through lessons, plans and films.

In closing: An Olmsted Falls, Ohio, mother noted that her 7^th grader was required to memorize the 5 Pillars of Islam and watch a proselytizing video, “30 Days: Muslims and America,” and asked the teacher if they were also to memorize the 10 Commandments and any other religion’s major core beliefs.  When she learned they were not, and asked the school district to remove and replace the video with an objective historic film, her request was denied by the superintendent and Board of Education.  She pursued the matter further with the state school board, state senator, representative, Ohio Department of Education and Ohio’s Governor Kasich, asking also that that the Israelites be added to the Ohio Standards.

It took more than a year and a half of discussion, discord, assistance, legal intervention by the Thomas More Law Center, and involvement by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to exact the changes in accordance with the parent’s constitutional right to free speech and duty to oversee her children’s education.  The school system replaced the Islamic film and agreed to add the study of the ancient Israelites, including Abram and Moses, to the curriculum, thereby giving credibility to the Jewish people on their land and their bestowal of the Ten Commandments and morality to a world of impiety.  One outraged and dedicated parent was able to pave the way and show us that it could be done.