Fellow citizens, set aside for a moment concerns about right and wrong or violating fundamental principles of our freedoms in the case of Baltimore County Muslim parents upset at erroneous, bigoted curricula in public schools.
Don?t even fret over insensitive, un-American, insulting and just plain false information about Islam believers being foisted upon unsuspecting students in the county.
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Before we even get to those complaints, valid as they are, we must deal with the fact that our collective national ignorance of Islam constitutes a strategic threat to the United States of America. Our ignorance aids our enemies and weakens us.
The depth of our ignorance prevents us from even knowing who our enemies and allies actually are in this terrible war of 1,000 years. In fact, most Americans think it just started in 2001. Most Americans, including many at the highest levels of government, don?t know whom and how to fight, or where to get help. Our truly heroic soldiers and Marines suffer and die as a result every day.
We don?t know the difference between Sunni or Shiite or why it matters. Too many of us don?t know that hundreds of millions of Muslims fear the radical fundamentalists who profane Islam, the Holy Quran and teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.
They have more to lose if the fundamentalists prevail than does the West. They can be valuable allies in the eternal struggle of reason against the forces of hate.
That is why four years of effort by Muslim activists in Baltimore County to correct what is taught about Islam to middle and high school students is more than a mere local issue.
Bash Pharoan, Baltimore chapter president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Mohammed Jameel, Baltimore County Muslim Council director, say the comparative World Religions course is wrong on many levels.
The national scope of our collective, dangerous national ignorance is illuminated by the recent letter sent to constituents by Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode condemning the first Muslim elected to Congress.
Pharoan, a surgeon whose children graduated from Baltimore County schools, said, “Goode?s statements show that he is not an educated person in regards to Islam. I think the root of the problem is really in the public school system.
“What we teach about Arabs and Muslims in school affects the beliefs people hold when they grow up and become congressmen ? and presidents.”
The curriculum fails to teach that Islam specifically forbids suicides, the killing of innocents and the conversion of others against their will, facts that certainly are important in formulating policy to deal with complex world realities today.
Unfortunately, those bloody realities probably will remain unresolved when the students of today are the leaders of tomorrow.
Now is the time to ensure our leaders of tomorrow have accurate knowledge of the world, a world whose population includes more than a billion Muslims, 5 million in the United States. Remedial education of current leaders such as Goode is not a bad idea either.
The inescapable fact is that ignorance always is weakness, knowledge strength.
