PBS Islamic Lesson Plan Encourages Students to Identify with Radical Jihadists
A PBS high school lesson plan encourages students to
empathize with young Palestinian terrorists who want to become suicide bombers
to achieve martyrdom and suggests they would rather die because Palestinians
have less land and are restricted.
The
“Dying to Be a Martyr” multimedia lesson plan is available free of cost to
teachers and students at PBS Learning Media, reports Justin Haskins at the
Heartland Institute. It utilizes videos titled “Martyrdom,” “Suicide Bombing,”
and “Israel and Palestine,” as well as internet sites and primary sources “to
examine the roots of the Middle East conflict.”
Students
are asked to be able to understand “why individuals and groups sometimes turn
to tactics of terrorism.”
At
first, students are asked to learn about the connections that all three major
faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – have to Israel. However, later on in
the lesson, students view the video “Israel and Palestine,” and are asked to
focus on 25 year-old Majdi Amer, who built a bomb in 2003 for a suicide bomber
in Haifa who ultimately killed 17 people, and wounded 50 more, on a bus.
Students
are asked to compare Majdi’s view of suicide bombing with that of 18-year-old
Mohanned Abu Tayyoun, who wavers in carrying out his suicide mission and
ultimately goes to jail in Israel.
In
Part III of the lesson plan, students view an interview with Mohanned in jail
and are asked to “identify how Mohanned views his life and how he feels it
differs from the lives of Israelis (Jews).”
“Martyrdom
leads us to God,” he responds. “I don’t want this life. When you become a
martyr, your prize for carrying out the operation is going to heaven…We
Palestinians prefer to die, just kill ourselves, rather than live this
worthless life. Our lives are worthless. We are hollow bodies living a
pointless life.”
“Israelis
enjoy their life,” Mohanned continues. “They go out at night. They have cafes
and nightclubs. They travel all over the world. They go to America and Britain.
We can’t even leave Palestine.”
Teachers
are asked to check students’ understanding of the reasons Mohanned feels
he would rather die and be a martyr than live his life. The lesson suggests
that Mohanned may feel that way because “Palestinians have less land, fewer
privileges, cannot come and go as they please.”
In
Part IV of the lesson plan, Majdi is interviewed in a video and is asked why it
is acceptable for him to kill women and children.
“If
the Israelis kill a child in Gaza, I’m ready to kill one in Tel Aviv,” he says.
“If they destroy houses in Gaza, I’ll do it in Tel Aviv. If they give me security
in my land, then there’s no problem.”
“No
instructions are provided telling teachers to denounce the radical claims made
by Majdi, and there are no other lesson plans describing the conflict from the
point of view of the Israelis,” observes Haskins.
JP
Morgan Chase and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – which is funded by
the federal government – fund the lesson plan’s website.
The
Christian Action Network (CAN) has filed a demand letter with the U.S. Education
Department urging it to stop
funding the Islamic lesson plans that
are part of a program called “Access Islam.”
“So, PBS Learning Media is one of
the websites that is promoting it,” CAN’s president Martin Mawyer recently told
Breitbart News. “The Smithsonian also promotes it, the Indiana Department of
Education promotes it, and even the United Nations promotes it.”
Mawyer
claims that through the Access Islam curriculum, American students are taught
the Islamic way of life in a way that crosses the line from academics to
indoctrination.
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