Public Schools: Key Site for 'Soft Jihad'

Public Schools: Key Site for 'Soft Jihad'

The followers of Mohammed have a long tradition of taking the children of Christians and indoctrinating them to become fanatical soldiers. Called “Janissaries” (new soldiers), these children, as Dr. D. James Kennedy explained in his sermon "Training Your Children," “had been taken as young children and had been taught the doctrines of Mohammedanism, and when they grew older, they were taught the arts of warfare.” In 1453, when Constantinople was sacked, 20,000 of these children of Christians, turned into rapacious warriors, led the charge.

When Dr. Kennedy preached his sermon in 1993, he used the example of the Janissaries to show how humanist teaching was carrying away the children of Christians. In 2011, we are beginning to see the earlier history of the Janissaries being repeated as children in public schools are now being “taught the doctrines of Mohammedanism,” while their own Christian religion is defamed.

In some instances students have been required to participate in learning activities in which, as reported by WorldNetDaily, they pretend they're Muslims, wear Islamic garb, memorize verses from the Quran, pray to Allah and even play “jihad games.”

Cinnamon Stillwell wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the “soft jihad” into America's classrooms and children in K-12 are the first casualties. Whether it is textbooks, curriculum, classroom exercises, film screenings, speakers or teacher training, public education in America is under assault."

Whether the term is “soft jihad” or “cognitive warfare” — as I wrote about in a previous column — it is a form of indoctrination directed against our children, who are not equipped to dispute it or to disagree with it.

In his book Stealth Jihad, Robert Spencer credits the “credo of multiculturalism” for materials that “present a view of Islam that whitewashes its violent history and intolerant religious imperatives.” While Islamic academies in America use teaching materials that “instill unequivocal hatred toward non-Muslims and a deep suspicion of Western culture,” U.S.-based Islamic groups provide materials for Islamic instruction in public schools, says Spencer, that present “a picture of Islam that is so pristine and peaceful that it sometimes crosses the boundary from mere pro-Muslim bias into outright Islamic proselytizing.”

Spencer cites the study released in 2008 by the American Textbook Council that reviewed ten of the most commonly used middle school and high school social studies textbooks. According to the Council, “while seventh-grade textbooks describe Islam in glowing language, they portray Christianity in harsh light. Students encounter a startling contrast. Islam is featured as a model of interfaith tolerance; Christians wage wars of aggression and kill Jews. Islam provides models of harmony and civilization. Anti-Semitism, the Inquisition, and wars of religion bespot the Christian record.” The effect, according to Spencer, is to “transform many public school textbooks into proselytizing tracts.”

In these textbooks, the term "jihad" is also sanitized of any associations with violence or bloodshed. They define it as a struggle “to do one’s best to resist temptation and overcome evil” or as “effort in God’s service” or even “the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that are pleasing to God.”

But as Brigitte Gabriel writes in her book, They Must Be Stopped, “the Koran informs its followers that there is always a holy war being fought, and instructs its followers to participate … and when you examine the history of Islam and the commandments of the Koran that endorse jihad as a military tool, it becomes clear that the term ‘jihad’ refers mostly to war against non-believers.”

Gabriel points out that the objective of military jihad “is not only to convert people to Islam, but also to gain political control and exercise Islamic authority over a population so that society lives and abides by the principles of Islam.”

If children are not taught the true meaning of “jihad” they will not be equipped to oppose it, and in fact may even become unwitting proponents of the ideology of political domination that is rooted within the religion itself.

According to Gabriel, over the course of 1400 years of Islamic rule and jihad, Mohammedans killed 270 million people across the globe: 120 million Africans, 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus and 10 million Buddhists. These numbers support the claim of Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations that “Islam has bloody borders.”

Here in America, the blood of Americans has already been shed by Mohammedans whose goal is to gain political control and exercise Islamic authority over us. Where they cannot achieve that goal by killing us, they are using “civilization jihad” or “stealth jihad” in an effort to destroy “the Western civilization from within” as is stated in an “Explanatory Memorandum” to members of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The memorandum proclaimed that Muslim brothers in North America “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house [the House of War] by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

The seriousness of their intent cannot be minimized. So what can parents and grandparents do? The first step is to find out what’s happening in your child's or grandchild’s school. Take a look at the textbooks for history, geography and/or social studies. Are they presenting a “politically correct” view of Islam, while denigrating Christianity and the Judeo-Christian heritage? The Gateways to Better Education website has a helpful guide to assist you: How to Evaluate Your Child’s Textbooks.

If you find this kind of material in your child’s or grandchild’s textbooks, bring it to the attention of their teacher and the school principal and refer them to some of the resources included in this article.

If we don’t act now, we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame if the next Janissaries turn out to be our own children or grandchildren.

Dr. Karen Gushta is a writer and researcher for Truth in Action Ministries (formerly Coral Ridge Ministries). She writes for the news page of TruthInAction.org. and the Impact newsletter and is author of The War on Children and co-author of Ten Truths About Socialism. As a career educator, Dr. Gushta taught kindergarten to graduate teacher education in both public and Christian schools in America and overseas. She has Masters Degrees in both Elementary Education and Christianity and Culture, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education.

Publication date: September 22, 2011

Public Schools: Key Site for 'Soft Jihad'