House of Eratosthenes

We do use books that call Jews ‘apes’ admits head of Islamic school

The principal of an Islamic school has admitted that it uses textbooks which describe Jews as “apes” and Christians as “pigs” and has refused to withdraw them.

Dr Sumaya Alyusuf confirmed that the offending books exist after former teacher Colin Cook, 57, alleged that children as young as five are taught from racist materials at the King Fahd Academy in Acton.

In an interview on BBC2’s Newsnight, Dr Alyusuf was asked by Jeremy Paxman whether she recognised the books.

She said: “Yes, I do recognise these books, of course. We have these books in our school. These books have good chapters that can be used by the teachers. It depends on the objectives the teacher wants to achieve.”

In another exchange, Dr Alyusuf insisted the books should not be scrapped, saying that allegedly racist sections had been “misinterpreted”.

The school is owned, funded and run by the government of Saudi Arabia. Mr Paxman asked: “Will you now remove this nonsense from the Saudi Ministry of Education from your school?”

Dr Alyusuf replied: “Just to reiterate what I said earlier, there are chapters from these books that are used and that will serve our objectives. But we don’t teach hatred towards Judaism or Christianity – on the contrary.”

It would appear the above is in response to this. I await additional information on how, exactly, this was “misinterpreted.” And what objectives are being served.

I just gotta believe there’d be some discussion about that already if we were talking about a Catholic school using derogatory epithets to describe Muslims. I gotta believe the discussion would be pretty intense without my even asking for it…as in, hard to avoid.

Update 2-8-07: Okay…twenty-four hours ago Google did not yet pick up the following, but it did by yesterday afternoon. Dr. Alyusuf is deploying the Bill Clinton two-pronged defense of “he didn’t do it, even if he did it isn’t wrong, it isn’t wrong because everybody does it, people do it all the time, and he doesn’t.”

The pages didn’t say what you think you said because they were taking out of context…AND…they have been ripped out.

However, she said that the material had now been torn out. “The press interest in these unused chapters has shocked us,” she added. Dr Alyusuf said that, since the claims emerged, pupils and parents had been abused by local residents.

The school said that the allegations made by Mr Cook in his claim for unfair dismissal were absurd. Mr Cook, who worked at the school for 19 years and educated his two daughters there, had never made complaints over racist teaching materials before, a spokesman added.

If there is an encyclopedia somewhere about “ways to get away with it” Dr. Alyusuf must be making a point of hitting each and every single entry therein. She’s using ALL the tropes and obfuscating every way she can. She’s making a suggestion that more harm has been done by people paying attention to the passages, than by people previously ignoring the issue altogether. She’s used the “context” thing, she’s done the “you’re the first one who’s ever complained” deal — which needs no definition to anyone who’s ever called a tech support line.

I’m keeping in mind all we have here, is one guy saying things are the way he says they are. Or were. It could be nothing more than an urban legend.

But the way Dr. Alyusuf has chosen to manage her P.R. makes me deeply suspicious.

I could chalk it up to the way the story is written. It’s quite bad. I don’t know why these things that people say are so important to the story, and yet, I have to be given high-level general explanations of what these people said…as opposed to some good hard quotes. This trend is repeated over here, and the last two paragraphs…well, they just raise more questions in my mind.

Alyusuf said the controversial chapters had never been taught at the school and that the quote was based on a mis-translation that appeared only as an explanatory footnote.

However, she said the offending pages had now been cut out of the textbooks, and she had informed the Saudi Department of Education of the decision.

If it’s an explanatory footnote that never had been taught anyway, why tell the Saudi Department of Education? Do they have partial ownership of some textbooks that are being carved up? That would make sense. Kinda. Story behind the first link says the school gets “£4 million a year from the Saudi royal family” so maybe this is something they’re required to do.

Just say so.

It kinda looks like she’s saying “we’ve asked the Saudis for their consent to stop calling jews ‘pigs’ and we’re waiting to see if they approve.”

Remember when conservative talk radio was linked to the Oklahoma City bombing? The argument was that Rush Limbaugh was doing his show three hours a day…and then among his twenty million listeners, would be a few slope-foreheaded unhinged rednecks who just got angrier and angrier, and eventually loaded fertilizer on a truck somewhere.

My whole issue is with the double standard. Has it been addressed now that the “offending pages” have been “ripped out”? No, not by a damn sight. Every single time I’ve heard President Bush got some of our troops killed in Iraq…I only have to do a little bit of digging to find out it was someone else who did the killing. The Iraqis who get killed, the Israelis who get killed…it’s all done by knuckle-dragging, unhinged lunatics. And when & where I get to learn a bit more about said lunatics — invariably, I find out they’ve been lunatics for a long, long time. Since a young age. Raised that way.

How much death is linked to this lately? A lot. A whole lot.

This isn’t just any ol’ “racism” issue. It’s huge. Some racist refuses to hire or promote you…or rent you an apartment…that’s a whole different kettle of fish from blowing you up into little pieces with a dynamite belt. I’m told some kind of “huge” deal has been made out of this in the news cycle.

Huge by what standards, might I ask? We ought to be hearing about this day after day…like we heard about Abu Ghraib.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XIIWednesday, February 7th, 2007

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XII
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007