First, it would help to stop pumping them full of cash.

There is not a single thing step that will truly be made towards reform until WE stop speaking out our asses and take care of our oil addiction.

Until we do that all other discussions are a waste of time.

...and to address your questions Dan:

Of course the examples were cherry-picked.

and

We have no shortage of closet Torquemadas in this country, its just that they are still structurally removed from state control.....so far.

This dogma is being taught everywhere there are madrasas, which is most of the muslim world. In other words, this type of brainwashing of children occurs throughout the muslim world. No wonder palestinian children and adults are so full of hatred and so helpless to help themselves. This is how they were molded and shaped by their culture. Those words are the seeds for eternal violence against the non-muslim world. Even peaceful Babar will suffer for it.

Babar,
The comparison between their society and here is a false one. Saudi bigotry is not confined to textbooks alone. Their law ensures little or no rights for non-muslims. A simple example is that non-muslims (specifically people from non-abrahamic religions) in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to worship even in the confines of their own homes. The religious police have the authority to enter such homes and search for any religious symbols to destroy and punish their owners. I think American society is hardly this intolerant.
Additionally Saudi Arabia has played a far greater role than any other state in financing the most fundamentalist and bigoted views of Islam and the terrorist activity that goes with such views. I really do not think that they deserve much consideration on these matters.

Most muslim countries are not this bad, but there are few, if any, muslim majority countries wherein religious minorities have equal rights as the majority. I may be wrong about this and would be glad to be proven so on these facts. The intolerance in Saudi society deserves to be known widely and Saudi Arabia deserves to face the heat for this.

The second question is a trenchant one. I would love to see *that* content analysis -- "Religious Tolerance in Christian School Education" -- in any journal. Wouldn't make one many friends on Pajamas Media, though, because my gut instinct -- having been "educated" by the Jesuit fathers -- is that all you have to do with these Saudi quotes is change the blank spaces a bit and -- voila -- conservative "faith-based" voucher-centered "education," American style.

That description of Jihad looks like it is deliberately vauge. Notice that it doesn't specify that Jihad should be violent and it seems to include fighting against "opression and injustice" as well as unbelief. Of course the passage is certainly open to the interpertation that Jihad ought to include blowing up unbelievers...

> because my gut instinct -- having been "educated" by the Jesuit fathers -- is that all you have to do with these Saudi quotes is change the blank spaces a bit and -- voila -- conservative "faith-based" voucher-centered "education," American style.

That is one of the more cretinous observations that I've read in this comments section, which is normally quite intelligent. Tell me, who would the Jesuits call apes and swine? What religions and races would the Jesuits prohibit you from befriending? Who would the Jesuits call your enemy, on the basis of their religion? Who would the Jesuits say it is your duty to fight?

Wow, that 5th grade text reads like a scientology primer. Islam: the cult that got away.

Krish, what kind of heat can be applied to the saudis?

It isn't like they're liberals. It's easy to turn the heat on liberals, just tell them about all the oppression they aren't opposing sufficiently and they get all guilty and apologetic.

But saudis? You might as well try to get southern racists in the USA to face the heat. Or texans who don't like mexicans. What kind of heat are we talking about here?

Mr. Drezner;

You would find a lot of the same cherry picking but the US (and the rest of the non Islamic world) is NOT a therocracy.

If you cannot see this distinction...? Chery pick this email.

Can't answer the first question, but I've taught religion as a volunteer in Catholic schools, and it's not near as harsh, either the modern textbooks or the old-style ones from the 40s & 50s (have used both). nothing about not being friends with anyone not a fellow believer, or insulting non-believers. Some urging along the lines to pray for unbelievers to see the light.

What the more fundementalist Christians have in their textbooks I haven't enough exposure to have an opinion. I have seen some samples of their (non-religion) textbooks, since we started homeschooling, and mostly I thought the God-stuff was so heavy-handed as to be detrimental to the subject they were trying to teach. Don't recall any insults there, but as I said, I mostly glanced at them, shuddered at other elements and passed on.

The textbooks taken out of Saudi Arabia do not concern me nearly as much as the Saudi textbooks that are used in madrassas in tribal regions of Pakistan. Wahabi money essentially has built a Wahabi colony inside of Pakistan that is far more radical, with a long list of terrorist operatives now on western intel watch lists, that continue to pump out indoctrinated souls with religious beliefs in a language they cannot read, write, nor comprehend.

RE: 2) If one were to go to religious schools in other countries, including the United States, how much rhetoric would one find that would smack of this kind of chauvinism?
--------------------------------

It is hard to find these percentages easily (even % of public/secular private/parochial secondary students in the US), though this paragraph from "countrystudies.us" (Library Of Congress country studies handbooks) shows a major difference in the treatment of religion in *public* education - nevermind the parochial school issue:

http://countrystudies.us/saudi-arabia/31.htm

"Public education, at both the university and secondary-school level, has never been fully separated from its Islamic roots. The education policy of Saudi Arabia included among its objectives the promotion of the "belief in the One God, Islam as the way of life, and Muhammad as God's Messenger." At the elementary-school level, an average of nine periods a week was devoted to religious subjects and eight per week at the intermediate-school level. This concentration on religious subjects was substantial when compared with the time devoted to other subjects: nine periods for Arabic language and twelve for geography, history, mathematics, science, art, and physical education combined at the elementary level; six for Arabic language and nineteen for all other subjects at the intermediate level. At the secondary level, the required periods of religious study were reduced, although an option remained for a concentration in religious studies."

- michael

It's probably cherry-picked as hell, Dan, but how come stuff like this gets past the editor, the publisher and the relevant government bureaucrats and gets widely distributed to children around the country? Because all those people read those sentences and think they are appropriate and common-sensical.

The Grade Eight quote from Ibn Abbas looks like Cherry Picking to me. Its not clear if the textbook is endorsing what Ibn Abbas said.

If I were to quote some of the nastier sections of the Old Testament in a textbook, that is not endorsement.

How can anyone expect a muslim country, especially Saudi Arabia, to discount or ignore principles pulled directly from the Koran? I believe some of those points may be direct quotations, in fact.

Anyone that is surprised by this news at all needs to learn more about Islam.

If I were to quote some of the nastier sections of the Old Testament in a textbook, that is not endorsement.

I'm just curous, can you quote anything from the Bible commanding followers to engage in war and murder? I don't mean historical accounts of what so-and-so was told to do, or did. I mean something actively telling all followers to kill others.

Hmm, by the way Dan, if you're reading this, the comment timestamp mechanism appears to be broken.

Cherry picking...you'd find the same thing over here...'jihad' is loosely defined...

Give me a break!

This garbage is found throughout the Middle East. Check out MEMRI. Why are we bending over backwards trying to give the benefit of the doubt? The Saudis aren't our friends.

Joe, MEMRI is a large-scale exercise in cherry-picking. If somebody reported on us that way we'd look like a racist society, scared of blacks and latinos and lashing out at them. But then you can find a lot of garbage that gives that impression in the US press.

That doesn't say that islamic societies are all sweetness and light. What it says is that MEMRI is un utterly unreliable source. It's comparable to sourcing Noam Chomsky to understand the USA. Everything he quotes is actually there, but it isn't really representative.

Joe, MEMRI is a large-scale exercise in cherry-picking. If somebody reported on us that way we'd look like a racist society, scared of blacks and latinos and lashing out at them. But then you can find a lot of garbage that gives that impression in the US press.

That doesn't say that islamic societies are all sweetness and light. What it says is that MEMRI is un utterly unreliable source. It's comparable to sourcing Noam Chomsky to understand the USA. Everything he quotes is actually there, but it isn't really representative.

Out of curiosity, is there a source that translates material from the Islamic and Arabic worlds in quantity, that is representative? I don't have the benefit of Arabic, so I can't read anything but what's translated. If Memri -- one of the sources for such material I know of -- is unbalanced, then a source that is more balanced would be helpful.

The "Left Behind" series comes to mind as a good example of what quite a few fundamentalist Christians seem to believe.

Doesn't MechaJesus disintegrate all the unbelievers in the last book?

I don't think it's helpful to consider Dan's questions in light of our tolerant democracy. A more thoughtful question might be what would, say, Bob Jones University want our laws and our schools to look like? In other words, wouldn't many of our ultraconservative christian schools want laws that reflect their teachings? Forget ultraconservatives. Don't a lot of mainstream Christians argue that our society SHOULD BE more like a theocracy? Isn't it a fairly common belief among evangelicals that non-christians are going to "hellfire" and that nonchristians should be converted?

It's also true, of course, that our Constitution does not structurally permit the pervasive religious influence present in Saudi Arabia. But it's wishful thinking to suggest that a substantial Christian minority wouldn't prefer a world in which public schools taught kids the good book. And those teachings would look an awful lot like these samples. Sure, the Jews wouldn't be called swine. And non-believers wouldn't be enemies necessarily. But the muslims would probably be terrorists. And if I remember my Southern Baptist teachings correctly, the Mormons would be a cult and the secular humanists would be Jesus haters and Satan's minions on earth.

'm just curous, can you quote anything from the Bible commanding followers to engage in war and murder? I don't mean historical accounts of what so-and-so was told to do, or did. I mean something actively telling all followers to kill others

Sure, anything to satisfy your burning curiosity !!

Deutronomy

7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
..

And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:
..

20:13
And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
...
20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee [for] an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; [namely], the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

Samuel

15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

Plenty more, believe me. And I have only picked out the stories of the God of the Old Testament exhorting slaughtering people, not stories where there is no explicit endorsement.

On the original topic, while the Eight grade line seemed to be cherry picked, the others may or may not have been, but there is no doubt of the bigotry and intolerance in Saudi Arabia.

I would guess (and it is purely a guess) the quotes are cherry picked. But if we are talking about books that really are used in public schools, that does not make me feel much better.

As for your second question, my 4th grader has been in a private Christian school since kindergarten and has NEVER brought home anything like that. Do they learn the Old Testament? Sure Do they learn that Christ is THE Way? sure. It is a fairly conservative school (especially for out here on the Left Coast) but she has never had books about apes, swines, having no friends etc etc. But maybe that comes in 8th grade (DWS)

Out of curiosity, is there a source that translates material from the Islamic and Arabic worlds in quantity, that is representative?

I don't know of one, unfortunately.

Naturally the things that will get the most attention are usually the first translated.

Obviously, the Saudis are playing both ends against the middle--they pretend to be enlightened when it suits their purposes and they play to their base when they need to. It's what is happening all over the Middle East.

Of course, the Saudis aren't our friends. Whoever said they were. That's not the point. They have something we need. Very few countries (including ostensible alliers) are each other's "friends." We need them and they need us. It's pointless to complain that they are an intolerant theocracy that encourages hatred and violence. Of course, they are. And, so? We deal with them because we have to deal with them, until we find something to replace oil--which I don't see happening in the foreseeable future. The problem is when we try to pretend that these relationships are anything more than what they are--based strictly on individual self-interest. The Saudis were willing to accept US troops on their soil because it served their interests at the time in the same way that we accept the Saudi theocracy because we need their oil. It's called welcome to the world.

I'm sure you could find stuff in American religious schools that are blood curdling, but there's a difference between a fringe and the mainstream. To say that there is no difference is to ignore the different contexts completely. I see no indication that the Saudis believe that religous tolerance is a value in itself or that, even if they did, they would risk the regime to encourage such tolerance. Having said that, it doesn't mean that every Saudi will grow up to be a terrorist, just as not every American southerner joined the KKK.

Another question that's worth asking is "how does that compare with Western society at various stages of its history". Cultures evolve, and ours certainly did. What we now think of as universal values were anathama to our forebears.

Which is not to say that all cultures are equally praiseworthy, but it should at least give one pause before characterizing every individual that's caught up in a f*cked one like Wahabbi Islam as irredeemably evil.

(If you want to push the thought experiment further, and way OT, how will our culture look to our descendants after they have seen millions die as a result of the man-made climate change we knew about and did nothing to prevent?)

RE: erg and the quotes from Deuteronomy and Samuel.
The quotes are accurate, but each of them deals with a specific situation - in essence, directing the Israelites to conduct a specific battle or campaign. There is no OT or NT direction to kill or fight all unbelievers as a general policy. This is a significant difference from what is found in the Koran and the Hadiths as they are understood today.

When my children went to a Catholic primary school, they took a mandatory religion class and I often helped with their homework. Even though I was raised Methodist, I figured hey, we're all Christians, right? How different can it be? They were taught that non-Catholics are inferior and go to hell when they die. Even their father. Fortunately, they were not instructed to kill me. Seriously, I'm pretty sure they didn't believe it. But in the process, the school undermined its own authority by teaching something that is so obviously wrong. Is it possible that the Saudis are sowing their own seeds of destruction in the same way? Just an idea.

The quotes are accurate, but each of them deals with a specific situation - in essence, directing the Israelites to conduct a specific battle or campaign.

Sorry, but this is specious. We have the OT God instructing His followers to essentially commit genocide on a group of unbelievers. This happens time and again. I see no indication that the God of the Old Testament asks for unbelievers to be spared. The only people that God asks the Israelites to spare are the Ammonites, but they're slaughtered in a separate book.

Besides look at this:

12:29 When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land;
12:30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.
...

13:6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;

13:7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
13:8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
13:9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

Face it, the God of the Old Testament was a vengeful and jealous lord.

Thanks erg, nobody has ever actually responded to my request before (that I saw, anyway). Verses 7:10-7:12 I found particularly interesting:

10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

Islam has similar cop-outs, which people commonly quote obscurely to blur the context... the part about servitude being a requirement for peace especially.

This stuff just reinforces my opinion that Mohammed simply took principles and ideas from Judaism and Christianity and warped them into his own perfect religion for controlling his people.

I see no indication that the God of the Old Testament asks for unbelievers to be spared.

Deuteronomy 24:
14 You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he be of your brothers, or of your foreigners who are in your land within your gates:

15 in his day you shall give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down on it; for he is poor, and sets his heart on it: lest he cry against you to Yahweh, and it be sin to you.

There are lots of other examples. An israelite who beats a foreign slave to death is supposed to be punished, although it's OK provided they live a couple of days after the beating. If they lose an eye or even a tooth they're supposed to be freed.

Anyone who kidnaps israelites and sells them into slavery is to be put to death, and they are also supposed to not kidnap and sell foreigners.

There are lots of examples where the scriptures tell people to be nice to widows and orphans and foreigners.

On the other hand, here's one I didn't notice before:

Deuteronomy 11:
24 Every place whereon the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness, and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the hinder sea shall be your border.

Luckily no one has interpreted this scripture to mean that israel has the right to all the land to the euphrates.

I can't speak for Catholic teaching of today, but I attended the first five grades in the '50's and never saw anything that disparaged non-catholics. At least in the formative years, the emphasis was on the basic tenets of the faith, what Catholics are supposed to believe, while alternative Christian as well as non-Christian thought was treated with benign neglect. I'm not familiar with the 8th grade message, but in talking to others in other schools, the teaching of the first five grades was pretty consistent from school to school.

As to 1) Who knows? We'd have to read the arabic to be sure.

For 2) Well, considering that in my home town, the evangelical parochial school teaches that everyone who doesn't subscribe to their particular version of Penacostal Christianity is going straight to hell, and does so proudly, I would say that you would find just as much bigotry in the US. I'm told that religious schools in the UK are rather more subdued. Don't know about anywhere else.

Do any Pentecostals believe that those condemned to hell should have their eternal travel plans expedited by way of improvised explosive devices as many Wahhabis do?

My son goes to a Jewish Day school for conservative Judaism. His textbooks from 1st through 6th grade specifically mention freedom of religion, the importance of separation of church and state (even in Israel) and quite honestly talk more about Islam than Christianity but when it does it usually talks about how the Islamic Countries let Jews live with much less persecution than the Christian ones.

I notice that no one addressed your initial question about textbooks here.

So to answer you for at least my group of religous school Jews - they teach tolerance in the textbooks and have class discussions about why the Torah might say things that sound intolernat and why that has changed over the years.

There is also a yearly event that is co-sponsored with the local Iman to promote understanding of each other's cultures - that's not common to all day schools but we're very proud of it here.

Sam Harris has a good summary of Islam's position toward unbelievers (infidels) in his book The End of Faith. As I recall from reading the book, the teachings quoted here are representative of what appears in the Koran and Hadith. I believe Harris summarized the views of the Koran/Hadith on the subject of infidels thus: convert, subjugate or kill.

The christian scriptures are much harder to find inflammatory messages from -- it's often hard to figure out what Jesus was talking about at all.

But I sort of remember something from saint Augustine, he said it was a good thing to torture unbelievers until they accepted the faith, but it was a terrible thing to torture unbelievers to death before they accepted the faith -- because killing them before they converted meant they were damned forever.

I think the difference is that Jesus preached in a country occupied by the romans, and he couldn't say things that sounded too intolerant or they'd grab him -- which they eventually did anyway. But Mohammed started out with a very few followers and eventually won Mecca and Medina. His proclamations are put in the Koran in reverse order of his reciting them. So in the back of the Koran there's lots of talk about tolerance and co-existence -- from the days his followers were weak. And in the front of the book it's very intolerant -- because that's when he'd already won. Jesus died before he won political power so he doesn't have much intolerant stuff, that's left for later christian leaders who don't get as much attention.

There's been a certain amount of christians sacrificing pagan priests on their own altars and genociding heretics and such. But it can be argued that Jesus wouldn't have wanted them to. Jesus wasn't around to say whether they should or not.

One of the basics of scientific research is setting up both a test sample and a control sample. I've noticed that a lot of people who harp on the alleged tyranny of Christianity almost always cite cases of public-sector atrocities. They make sweeping generalizations about Christianity without controlling for the State.

When government institutes a religion, it makes that religion in its own image. State religions oppress heretics for the same reason that secular leaders oppress dissidents - to get rid of threats to political power, threats to the very existence of their institutions.

In Western Europe where state religion still exists, the State still remakes it in the State's image. But now the State sees religion as a mere ceremonial function.

If you take the State out of the equasion, do Chrtistian institutions behave differently? Was it an accident that the first nation to abolish slavery was one in which private-sector religion thrived more than it did almost anywhere else on Earth? (Hint: Quakers and Methodists were heavily involved in Britain's abolitionist movement.) Didn't Christian institutions pretty much invent organized charity? Who better reflects the teachings of Christ - Tomas de Torquemada, or Billy Graham?

Uh, make that "If you take the State out of the equation" - gotta spell the math terms correctly.

Alan, we can do even better. If we look at religions only in terms of their own goals, independent of what they actually do, then they'll look even better.

But I think maybe we need to deal with the religions we actually have, instead of the religions we wish we had. It looks to me like, as of 500 years ago, christianity was even more bloody-minded than islam is now. Christians were exterminating the cathars and anabaptists etc, and doing reckless wars of aggression against muslims (and eastern christians).

But today christianity has morphed to meet its users' needs. Liberal christians get a liberal christianity that champions tolerance for everybody, while conservative christians get a christianity that tolerates murder of abortionists and so on.

Perhaps in practice the actual scriptures of a religion are less important than the desires of the religion's users.

J. Thomas opined, "It looks to me like, as of 500 years ago, christianity was even more bloody-minded than islam is now."

Look again.

"Christians were exterminating the cathars and anabaptists etc, and doing reckless wars of aggression against muslims (and eastern christians)."

Five centuries ago, on Tuesday, May 29 1453, a date that still lives in infamy among those who actually know some Western history, Byzantium fell to Muslim invaders. You are obviously confused about what constitues "aggression;" these Muslims were not gentle missionaries for the Religion of Peace. Rather, these Muslims originally from the desert of Arabia and wilderness of Turkmenistan had been sweeping westward in wars of conquest, plunder, and slaughter for hundreds of years.

As for the strife in Europe between Christians of heretical sects such as Anabaptists and Cathars and the orthodox, to throw around the word "exterminated" is hugely misleading. The large majority of heretics were pardoned. For centuries the Roman Church had ignored such heretics but when the Muslim aggressors invaded Christendom, there was, not surprisingly, a motive for beginning a drive toward greater orthodoxy and commonality of Christian belief in Europe but there was no universal extermination campaign as you imply, J. Thomas.

History can be your friend. Today's Hollywood flicks are not your friends.

"...conservative christians get a christianity that tolerates murder of abortionists and so on."

That's a reckless smear, J. Thomas. Conservative Christians include the police officers who investigate the few such murders that there have been, the prosecutors who try them, the judges who sentence them, and the voters whose elected representatives passed the laws that make such murder a crime.

Sigh. Just because 99.99% of atheists are Christian-hating jerks doesn't mean we all are.