O.C. RELIGION

It was the image in his daughter’s sixth-grade social studies textbook--of Muslims praying and rubbing their faces in the sand--that prompted Shabbir Mansuri of Fountain Valley to act.

His daughter came home convinced she and her family weren’t real Muslims because they didn’t bury their faces in sand, Mansuri said of the incident that occurred more than a decade ago. “I was furious. . . . And I was concerned about the hundreds of thousands of students who are not familiar with how we pray.

“Here was something that was going to [misinform] students about Islam, a minority religion.”

With funding from local Muslim-owned businesses, he started a nonprofit organization in 1990 to help textbooks publishers avoid stereotyping Muslims.

Mansuri’s Council on Islamic Education, based in a small Fountain Valley office, provides textbook publishers with access to Islamic experts who review textbook manuscripts, prepare study guides and lead teacher workshops.

“We tend to marginalize the world religions and not show them according to the beliefs of those believers,” Mansuri said. “We secularize the beliefs and make statements how that particular religion was spread” that often are wrong.

Mansuri’s organization has been busy in the last decade informing textbook writers about the tradition and history of Islam. Mansuri and an assistant mail brochures, give seminars, meet with publishers and education officials. Gradually, they have become known nationally.

He is often contacted by textbook companies to critique a text as well as to suggest how to better portray Islam. And he is working on a national project to review standardized textbooks for social studies used in the 50 states.

Mansuri emphasizes his organization is solely for research and educational purposes. “We do not support censoring any books,” he said.

He refers those who complain about misrepresentations of Muslims to the Southern California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is the clearinghouse for lobbying efforts.

For example, a publisher last month decided to halt distribution of a college textbook that was deemed offensive to Islam and Muslim women after a formal complaint was filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The Wadsworth Publishing company of Belmont, Calif., had included the following claims in a social studies textbook in a section about Islam: “In the presence of others, a wife must not speak to her husband or stare at him”; “At meals, a woman eats only after the men have been served”; and “A wife walking with her husband is expected to follow a few steps behind him.”

According to the council, the most offensive passage was: “In Islam, the most male-oriented of the modern religions, a woman is nothing but a vehicle for producing sons.”

Some of the errors are just “twisted distortions” that erroneously portray Islam as a misogynist religion, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director for the council’s Southern California chapter. In fact, he said, women are not required to eat after men or expected to follow behind their husbands or forbidden to stare.

Ayloush complained that another textbook portrayed the prophet Muhammad as someone who enjoyed killing Christians and Jews. In another, he was depicted as a womanizer.

“It affects the self-esteem of Muslim children,” Ayloush said. “As a Muslim child, you’re already a minority in your school. People already tease you about being a Muslim and say things like, ‘What are you going to blow up today?’ Then your history teacher reads from a textbook that says Muslims spread Islam by the sword.

“Imagine yourself as an 8-year-old trying to challenge their history teacher. . . . How can you challenge a textbook? Some kids come home and say, ‘I don’t want to be a Muslim anymore.’ ”

Wadsworth isn’t the first publisher to pull a book in response to complaints from the Muslim community. In 1997, Capstone Press, a Minnesota publisher of nonfiction books for children, recalled the book “Muslim Holidays” by Faith Winchester.

Simon & Schuster also recalled a textbook they said contained inflammatory information about the prophet Muhammad.

Educators say they are trying to make every effort to include perspectives such as those provided by the Muslim group in choosing textbooks.

“Sometimes our textbooks can be too vanilla,” said Linda MacDonell, director of instructional services for the Orange County Department of Education. “But the state now uses strict criteria for textbooks that they present women in nontraditional roles and are inclusive of many cultures and religions.”

While Mansuri said some textbooks remain in circulation that portray Islam inaccurately, there have been important changes. He is hopeful his group’s efforts are changing the overall perception of Muslims.

“Certainly there are still complaints, but our organization has been working with the system for 10 years,” he said. “How you contribute is more important than how you complain about it.”