Fight Against Stereotypes Is an Education for Muslim : Schools: Director of Islamic group based in Tustin says it’s hard to keep misinformation out of textbooks.

Aasiya Mansuri was reading her sixth-grade social studies book one evening when she exploded into laughter and began rolling around on the living room floor.

“What’s so funny?” asked her father, Shabbir.

Aasiya pointed to a passage that implied that all Muslims were Bedouins. It went on to say that Bedouins rub sand all over their faces before kneeling to pray to Allah.

That was news to Mansuri, a 47-year-old Indian-American who is Muslim. But the Arcadia restaurateur found nothing funny about this sweeping characterization of Muslims as desert nomads.

Mansuri complained to publisher Scott Foresman Co. that the passage in the text “Our World: Lands and Culture” was misleading and mocked his religion. After meeting with Mansuri, officials at the publishing company put their distribution plans on hold.

This experience three years ago set the stage for his current job as director of the Council of Islamic Education. The primary goal of the organization, which is based in Tustin and funded by a group of Muslim businessmen, is to counter stereotyping of Muslims in a culture with a strong Judeo-Christian bias. The group tries to accomplish this by providing teachers, school administrators and publishers with information about the faith in an effort to raise their consciousness.

Starting with the seventh-grade texts where children are first taught about Islam, the Islamic officials are trying to change wording, symbols and misleading contexts that they believe depict their religion in a negative light.

The effort is similar to that of other minorities who have also pressed state and local authorities about the content of texts and curriculum.

Next month, in the only gathering of its kind in the country, officials from the Council of Islamic Education will meet with school officials, textbook publishers and Muslim scholars from around the nation. They will discuss the role of Islam in shaping world events and address misconceptions about the faith during a daylong series of seminars Oct. 4 in Buena Park. “We realize that the misinformation goes back centuries to the Crusades and back to the time of the prophet Muhammad,” Mansuri said during a recent interview. “But we have to take one small step at a time. It’s not going to go away overnight.”

For Mansuri, who now works full time for the Council of Islamic Education, the efforts have netted some results. He described Houghton Mifflin’s seventh-grade textbook, “Across the Centuries,” as one that has undergone a dramatic improvement over past years.

But, he says, it is far from perfect.

For one thing, he objects to a likeness of Gabriel, an angel whom Christians, Muslims and Jews alike believe to be God’s messenger on Earth.

Why?

The angel shown in the book has a white face. “We said, ‘You can’t give us an angel with a white face,” Mansuri said. “That just perpetuates the notion that angels are white. I jokingly asked if they (the publishers) had the angel Gabriel’s picture faxed to them by God showing that he had a white face. And if they did, to please let us see it.”

Mansuri also disapproves of what he called a subtle distancing of Islam from Judaism and Christianity, leaving readers with the impression that its teachings have less validity.

He cited a passage in the text that describes the historical importance of Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem was the city where Jesus had been crucified and where, also, Muslims believed, Muhammad had ascended into heaven on his night flights to visit Allah.”

To Mansuri, the wording “had been crucified” implies that the crucifixion of Jesus was fact. However, the use of “Muslims believed”--a qualifier--makes it appear that Muhammad’s ascendancy was merely a belief by a particular group.

“The feeling you get is that Christianity and Judaism are ‘ours’ and Islam is ‘theirs,’ ” Mansuri said. “It’s a distant approach that gives the sense that this is not something acceptable.”

But for Mansuri and other Muslims, one of the most glaring symbols of insensitivity in the textbook has come to be referred to simply as “the camel.”

At issue is a likeness of a camel is used in the Houghton Mifflin text to help illustrate trading days in ancient Arabia. The photograph is included in a unit called “The Growth of Islam.”

The camel is one of seven photographs used in the book to represent “moments in time”--essentially pictures to help students visualize the lifestyle of a particular people in their era.

The other “moments in time” include a Spanish map maker, a Congo king, a samurai, an Austrian Crusader, an English printer and a Parisian market woman.

“All of the other pictures used were human, but when you get to Islam, it’s a camel,” Mansuri said. “The whole human element is completely missing here.”

Not only is the use of the camel troubling when other cultures are represented by people, but the camel itself evokes a stereotype that angers many Muslims. It implies that all followers of Islam are camel-riding Arab nomads. It is as offensive an image to Muslims as the stereotype that all Italians belong to the Mafia.

Mansuri said he has tried to convince Houghton Mifflin to remove the camel.

The publisher, however, has refused.

In some ways, it boils down to a question of perception.

“He’s been banging on that camel for the past two years,” says John Perata, regional manager for Houghton Mifflin, which furnishes textbooks to 1,100 school districts in the state. “But what he doesn’t point out is that the camel is in a section on trade and not on the founding of the Muslim empire.”

Some publishers and education officials maintain that the camel controversy stems from a larger problem.

All too often, they say, different ethnic and religious groups attempt to sanitize their histories by removing unflattering facts.

Consequently, they say, educators must guard against ethnic cheerleading that gets in the way of the teaching of history.

“History is full of terrible tragedies and wars and people taking advantage of each other,” said Glen Thomas, director of the office of curriculum framework and textbook development for the state of California. “But anybody who has a particular heritage wants it to be put in the most positive light. Striking that balance can be difficult.”

State education officials maintain that the camel has historical merit and have refused to require Houghton Mifflin to remove it. They said it accurately reflects a lifestyle in Arabia around the 6th Century.

“Islam is not (being) characterized by a camel. This is the first book for K-8 to spend more than two pages on Islam, to my knowledge,” Thomas said. “There’s about 30 pages in seventh grade. That doesn’t mean it’s adequate, but I think it’s a very good start.”

Muslims are just one of a number of religious, ethnic and other groups challenging the way their ancestors’ history is told. Ever since the state two years ago adopted new curriculum guidelines designed to promote contributions of non-whites as well as those of European immigrants, the textbook issue has become a political hot potato.

Houghton Mifflin, one of only a handful of publishers that even attempted to revise their textbooks in an effort to meet the new state guidelines, has drawn fire from a variety of quarters. Many others backed out of the California market altogether rather than undergo costly revisions, Thomas said.

However, critics charge that Houghton Mifflin has not gone far enough.

Some blacks have complained that the new textbooks give short shrift to the contributions of African-Americans. Some Jews worry that the books portray the Resurrection of Jesus as fact while questioning the historical basis for the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. Some Korean-Americans are angry that there was no mention of the large Korean-American community in California.

Gays and lesbians meanwhile, have charged that their accomplishments have been completely overlooked.

“In the old-fashioned days, all you got was the history of the great white man,” Perata said.

“Other people’s voices weren’t heard for so long. Now that the door has finally been opened, it just makes (people) want more.”

But the state’s efforts to accommodate a diverse culture have also caused a backlash.

“One group of right-wing, very conservative individuals said there were too many women, too many blacks and too many Hispanics and asked us where was the history of the white man,” Perata said. “I guess we were mutually offensive to everyone.”

A lot of the problem in getting a textbook that accurately represents Muslims stems from most Americans’ basic ignorance and bigotry about Islamic society.

In one publication for teachers called Islam, officials of the Council of Islamic Education objected to pictures of Muslim women wearing veils that they said were a cultural style of dress and had nothing to do with religious beliefs. While Muslim women are required to cover their heads, the religion does not mandate the wearing of veils.

They also complained about a photograph of a group of Arabs standing by some oil wells.

After meeting with Muslim officials, the publishers agreed to make changes in the manual--a teacher’s aid in which students pretend to be Muslims through various classroom exercises.

The simulations involve games such as “Jeopardy Ijtihad”--a play on the TV game “Jeopardy” in which students are awarded points for answering questions correctly about Islamic culture.

David E. Yount, president of Interact, a Lakeside publishing house that specializes in instructional aids for teachers, said the company had relied on the expertise of an Islamic scholar when it published the booklet containing the games, only to later discover that some of the information was incorrect.

But other companies are reluctant to spend the money to make such changes.

It can cost a publisher several million dollars to make revisions outside of the normal four- to six-year cycle.

That is why groups such as the Council of Islamic Education often take their case to the State Board of Education, which issues a stamp of approval for textbooks used in public schools.

Although publishers may still sell books to individual public school districts without obtaining this approval, the state list functions in many ways like a “Consumer Report” of textbooks.

Most districts choose their readings from the approved list. And, with a $40-million market in social studies books alone, most publishers are eager to comply.

In all likelihood, the camel will disappear from the Houghton Mifflin texts in the next publishing cycle. But it will not be because publishing company officials agree with Mansuri’s philosophy. All of the “moments in time” will be changed as part of the natural revision process, Perata said.

Currently, he said, the Houghton Mifflin textbooks have been approved for use in all but two school districts in California.

Mansuri, meanwhile, says he will continue to push to ensure that Muslims are portrayed accurately.

“We are looking at the long term rather than the short term,” Mansuri said. “With all of the major changes going on in the world, social studies textbooks are going to be going through some major revisions, and we want to be a part of the process.”

An Islamic Primer

Islam has many ties to Christianity. Some fundamentals of Islam:

Islam is the name of the religion preached by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century. Muhammad, an Arab born in Mecca, taught his followers that there is only one God. Allah is the name for God in Arabic. Muhammad was Allah’s messenger and the last of the prophets. Muhammad taught that Jesus and the Old Testament prophets were his predecessors.

His followers, nearly 1 billion worldwide, live throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The word Muslim is Arabic and means “one who submits” (to Allah).

The holy book is the Koran, a collection of the words of Allah spoken to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. It contains many stories about the prophets from the Christian Old Testament and includes sections from the New Testament about Jesus Christ.

The Koran forbids consumption of pork and alcohol and, like the Bible, also prohibits lying, stealing, adultery and murder.

Like Christianity, Islam also teaches that there is a last judgment, when people will be held accountable for their misdeeds. The good will go to heaven, while the evil will go to hell, whose tortures resemble those described in the Bible.

Muslims worship at a mosque headed by an imam, whose main duty is to lead followers in prayer. A Muslim chief’s duties are prayer, almsgiving, doing righteous deeds, fasting and pilgrimage. Pilgrimage to Mecca, known as a Hajj, is a requirement for all who are able.

Ramadan, one of the most widely observed Muslim holy rituals, occurs in the ninth month of the Muslim year. It celebrates the revelation of the Koran to Muhammad and is a time of fasting from dawn until sunset.

Source: World Book Encyclopedia

Researched by TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND / Los Angeles Times