Western and Islamic Education Are in Conflict
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The Islamic “Boko Haram,” loosely translated from the region’s Hausa language, means “Western education is forbidden”. However, the term “boko” from the Hausa language means “Animist, western or otherwise non-Islamic education” and the Arabic word “haram” figuratively means “sin,” which points to a division much more than just “forbidden”, but more rejected as evil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BokoHaram) Boko Haram opposes not only Western education, but Western culture and modern science as well. (The Origin of Boko Haram, Nairaland by egift(m), Jun 20, 20110)
Much of the rejection of Western education by the Boko Haram has as it root the rejection of Christianity, as to them the source of this sin was the educational outreach that the Christians used to spread the gospel in Nigeria, which greatly influenced that land, as it became about evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.
Missionaries in Africa used education as a basic tool for spreading the gospel. In fact, opening into the 21st century there are more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England, and about half the land became Christian. Those educated in the Western and Christian influence generally had different world views that those brought up under the teachings of the Koran.
Khadija Anderson in an article “Western or Islamic education?” from The Brunei Times, March 19, 2015, said the Islamic teacher, Prof Yusuf Progler warns against Muslims participating in the Western educational system. “He says that by using it, one adopts Western assumptions on the nature of existence…Muslims ought to re-evaluate their situation because the Western understanding of existence is quite different than the teachings of Islam. Islam has its own explanation…Western colonisers of Muslim countries knew the importance of taking Islam out of the minds of Muslims.”
Anderson went on to say that According to Imam Yusuf in “Understanding Islamic Education, Arabic has to be a foundation for Islamic education. Knowledge is obtained by first learning the tools of knowledge; language, reasoning and the ability to articulate…The Arabic language has been preserved since the time of the Quranic revelations. This allows one to perceive the meanings of the Quran as it was intended and revealed to the people of that time, which is crucial as the Quran is not interpreted through conjecture, but through knowledge…That is why The Prophet, may peace be upon him, said that whoever interprets the Quran from his own opinion is mistaken, even if he is correct. Also, traditional Islamic education teaches children to memorise the whole Quran between the ages of 7 and 9. This, Yusuf says, “…develops a memory in a child that will surpass others in any school system.”
A University of New Mexico student, Samuel Ryu, wrote an article in response to the New Mexico’s recent passage of the Resolution 6S that banned any criticism of Islam in the state of New Mexico. He said: “The truth is that Islam is Islam: there is no ‘Islam of ISIS,’ ‘Islam of Al-Qaeda,’ ‘Islam of Turkey’ ‘Islam of Hamas,’ or ‘moderate Islam’…The notion of a ‘peaceful and tolerant Islam’ is a fabricated myth that has no Islamic justification.”
And he went on say: “The recent passage of Resolution 6S is an infringement on American civil rights…Islam is not peaceful, apolitical, tolerant of other religions or compatible with democratic norms. The U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech, and voicing anti-Islamic sentiments is not a crime…Is there a ‘Christianophobia’? If anything, it is the Christians who are being victimized, as their religion is used as a red herring almost every time a criticism of Islam comes up.” (New Mexico Daily Lobo: Islam is Islam: ‘Peaceful’ Muslims are not real Muslims, March 18, 2015)
One of the strategies of the promotion and growth of Islam in America has been to paint the picture that Islam is the black man’s religion, where Christianity it that of the white people. Malcom X, who developed the Black Muslim movement in America promoted this understanding. The Nation of Islam is rooted in beliefs that white people are scientifically-created “devils,” and that all mankind started as black-skinned. Malcolm X, when leading the Nation, once said, “Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to Black people.” This to me seems like sowing the seeds of racial conflict, but the liberal mindsets seem to ignore it.
One of the great goals of contemporary education has been to combat the evil of “racism,” which germinated from the fact that most blacks in America had ancestors who were slaves, but slavery has been a basic teaching of the Islamic religion. One of the basic methods for the slave traders to get African slaves over in Africa was that the Islamic people captured and sold their own slaves, very often Christians to the slave traders.
Slavery spread rampantly in North Africa and the Middle East, under the Islamic conquests from India to Spain within 100 years after Mohammed’s death, the Christian influence from the African churches, which had been to destroy slavery, was very much defeated. It was not the Christians who that brought slavery, but mostly the teaching and practice of the Islamic religion in Africa to which many Christians fell prey.
The Byzantine Christian-Ottoman Muslim wars in the Middle East from the 13th to 15th Century resulted in the taking of large numbers of Christian slaves. And similarly, Christians in return sold Muslim slaves captured in war. Slavery, however, has been basic to Islam throughout its history, and has been, even still in in many Islamic lands.
The Danes and the Norwegians in 1803 were the first European countries to ban the slave trade, followed by the rest of Christian Europe and on to the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment in 1865. It was the Western world influenced from the teaching of Christianity that took the lead the deliverance from slavery.
The blatant liberal bias wishes to paint a idealized picture of Islam, and this has become so much of public school philosophy in American education that it encourages schools to teach the Quran for extra credit, while at the same time, they cannot even talk about the Bible, God, pray, or salute the American Flag. Liberal thinkers imagine a way to amalgamate the two world views of the Judeo-Christian and the Islamic into a progressive harmony.
A Maryland high school student’s father was banned from the school grounds after objecting to a portion of her history curriculum involving Islam. He was upset after his 11th grade daughter was assigned a three-page essay about Islam’s five pillars, Mecca, and Mohammed. He asked that his daughter be excused from her world history class for the duration of the unit covering Islam, arguing that students can’t study Christianity in schools “but we can force-feed our kids Islam,” according to Fox Insider. But his request was rejected.
Todd Starnes in a Fox News article “One nation under Allah: Fury after school recites pledge in Arabic,” March 19, 2015 wrote how students at Pine Bush High School in Pine Bush, New York were upset when the Pledge of Allegiance was recited in Arabic and they said, “One nation under Allah.” The Islamic creed is “There is no god but Allah.” Furious students tried to shout down the recitation in their classrooms. Other students sat down in protest. In fact, the outrage among students was so significant that the school issued an apology, saying the school said the pledge was recited in Arabic as a way to honor National Foreign Language Week “and in an effort to celebrate the many races, cultures and religions that make up this great country.”
The Progressive thinking in American education wishes to look at learning as a process of change as a mixture that balances out like you take white milk and mix in chocolate and there is chocolate milk, which is good. But you can’t mix everything, like the Progressives like to imagine, as for example oil and water don’t mix. And freedom and bondage don’t mix. This is evident from the Boko Haram declarations the Western and the Islam worldviews don’t mix.
Islamic thinking does not spawn freedom, where Judeo-Christian thinking does. This should be very much evident in our world situation although many of our more progressive politicians are calling for freedom in the Islamic world under the supervision of the so-called Moderate Islamic worldview, but democracy has not worked in any Islamic nation, as the teachings of Mohammed don’t promote it. Boko Haram has been categorized as radical, but aren’t the sores of religious persecution evident throughout the Islamic world saying something as Islam overall?
The freedom we have in America has its base the basic truths of the Christian faith where Jesus Christ taught that “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). The reason our democracy has worked in America has been that basic the Judeo-Christian value system, spawned especially from the teachings from the Reformed and Evangelical understanding of Christianity.
The Lord Jesus taught as well, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). This thinking would be anathema to the Islamic mind, and there is no way the two could combine, except by the rejecting of it, for the Muslims do not believe we can know God as our Heavenly Father, nor that Jesus Christ is one with God as his Father. Moving from basis of John 14:6 Proverbs 3:19, 20 sets a stage for scientific thinking as it says: “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens, By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and he clouds drop down the dew.”
Todd Starnes (Fox News, March 19, 2015) wrote: “In my most recent book, God Less America, I illustrate how the nation’s public schools have been turned into indoctrination centers. Teachers are preaching a liberal ideology. Our schoolhouses have become places where Christianity is marginalized and Islam is given accommodation.” We have major problems developing, and we need to see that the Islamic and the Judeo-Christian worldviews will not amalgamate into any kind of peaceful union!
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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net
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