Textbook Terrorism

Islamofascism: A new study confirms our "ally" Saudi Arabia is still poisoning young Muslim minds with anti-Western textbooks. So? Its hate-filled graduates are enrolling at our colleges.

The Hudson Institute reviewed the 2007-08 textbooks distributed by the Saudi Ministry of Education and found that, despite promised reforms, the kingdom still teaches students to "hate the infidels."

The texts assert that it's "permissible" for a Muslim to kill an "apostate," an "adulterer," a "homosexual," as well as non-Muslims practicing "polytheism," or Christianity.

The violent ideology is introduced in a religion textbook in the first grade and reinforced and developed in following years of the public education system, culminating in the 12th grade where a text instructs students that it's their religious duty to do battle against infidels in order to spread Islam.

The 12th-grade book glorifies "martyrdom" as "noble" and defines "jihad" as an "effort to wage war against the unbelievers." Jihad, it asserts, is the "pinnacle of Islam."

Many of these jihad-infused 12th-graders are flooding U.S. campuses right now, thanks to a post-9/11 "good will" gesture by the White House to reward more than 20,000 young Saudi men with student visas. King Abdullah had asked for the deal and got it — in part because he promised to reform the textbooks.

As usual, the Saudis tricked us. Instead of moving them to reforms, the deal only puts our homeland security at risk. Trained as they are to hate America from an early age, there is a good chance some Saudi students will lash out at their gracious host like the 15 Saudi hijackers before them.

"Some Saudis themselves have linked the kingdom's educational curriculum to patterns of violence in young Saudi men," the 90-page Hudson report said.

The curriculum is not confined to the kingdom; the oil-rich Saudi government is exporting it far and wide.

It disseminates these texts internationally, including to 19 academies founded by the Saudi ministry and chaired by local Saudi ambassadors in or near major foreign cities.

Quotes from the latest textbooks Riyadh is propagating include:

• "Every religion other than Islam is false."

• "The Jews and Christians are enemies of the believers."

• "Only through force and victory over the enemies is there security and repose."

• "The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."

The Saudi ministry has not removed these messages from its school texts. Its promised reforms are a joke, and the proof is clear. Now will the White House and State Department finally take action, as required under the International Religious Freedom Act? ...