Our Bad

The New York Times reports from the trenches on the culture wars--textbooks which push the leftist line that Western civilization is responsible for the word's ills while Islam, well, rocks. In Texas and other places, much to the Times's obvious consternation, some are fighting back:

...The portrayal of Islam has become an emotional political issue across the country of late, with some Christian conservatives contending that too little attention is paid to the militant aspects of the religion used by terrorist groups to justify their actions.

The latest controversy erupted over a plan by a Baptist preacher in Florida to burn Korans on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A debate continues to rage, meanwhile, about whether a mosque and community center should be built two blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

Mr. Rives has found several sympathizers among the board’s seven-member conservative bloc, who have introduced his resolution verbatim. The measure says past textbooks devoted more lines to Islamic beliefs and practices than to Christianity and spelled out atrocities committed by Christian crusaders while ignoring similar atrocities by Muslim fighters.

The resolution asserts that textbook writers habitually call Christians “violent attackers” or “invaders” while playing down Muslim conquests in Europe as “migrations.”

That gibes with what I heard from a clever high schooler (first in his grade last year) yesterday--that Christopher Columbus was wicked and so is the West for killing/bringing disease to indigenous populations whom we cruelly colonized. I pointed out that, prior to the West's "invasions," Islam has conquered a large portion of the planet, a historical reality which, quel shockeroo, he hadn't been taught in school.