I'm Dreaming of a Jihadi Christmas

Pakistani Schoolbooks Breed Hatred for Jews, Christians, Hindus and Others

The Express Tribune

Dislike of Christians is found in religious textbooks where Islam is described in opposition to Judaism and Christianity as creeds that rejected the pure message of Islam. 

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has researched Pakistani school textbooks to discover that there is religious bias in them denigrating the minority communities of the country. After poring through more than 100 textbooks from grades 1 to 10 across all four provinces; visiting 37 public schools and interviewing 277 students and teachers; visiting 19 madrassas and interviewing 226 students and teachers, the commission members have come to the conclusion that “teaching discrimination increases the likelihood that violent religious extremism in Pakistan will continue to grow”.

It is admitted by all Pakistanis that their society is steeped in extremist passions, some of them excited by unjust legislations like the blasphemy laws. Entire communities, such as the lawyers at the lower and high courts, have begun to take direct action on the streets to implement their extremist agenda, to say nothing of the Taliban who burn schools in fulfilment of their own vision of the perfect Islamic state. As a shocking demonstration of this trend, most people in Pakistan think that Pakistan is not following sharia, agreeing with the madrassa network that the constitutional amendment that set up the Federal Shariat Court is not sharia at all.

Textbooks have always been biased. Dislike of Christians is found in religious textbooks where Islam is described in opposition to Judaism and Christianity as creeds that rejected the pure message of Islam. The Hindus of Pakistan get the double whammy. History in our textbooks, which begins with the advent of the Arab warriors in Sindh against local Hindu rulers, and ends with the Pakistan Movement as a refusal of the Muslims of India to live together with “an unjust and hostile” Hindu community, always shows them in a bad light.

According to the commission’s report, “Hindus are repeatedly described as extremists and eternal enemies of Islam whose culture and society is based on injustice and cruelty, while Islam delivers a message of peace and brotherhood, concepts portrayed as alien to the Hindu”. This kind of bias should be excised, but the evil is constantly confirmed by inexpert analyses of contemporary India as a Hindu-majority neighbour that is against the very existence of Pakistan. Anydramatisation of events in Indian-administered Kashmir on TV will also attempt an ideological definition of Hinduism as an evil religion. More ominously, every time the home-grown Taliban kill innocent Pakistanis, police chiefs appear on TV to say that India — in tandem with Israel and the US — has done the deed. After the Babri Mosque incident in India, Hindu temples were burnt in Pakistan.

These facts go beyond the textbook to target communities against whom the school is not supposed to teach. Hindus in Sindh are becoming victims of inhuman treatment as religiously intense organisations become strong in the rural areas of the province. The Christians of Punjab are also being collectively punished on trumped up charges of blasphemy and desecration of the Holy Quran. The textbooks reflect this mindset. The report by the US commission quotes from a Grade 4 book in Punjab: “Anti-Islamic forces are always trying to finish the Islamic domination of the world. This can cause danger for the very existence of Islam. Today, the defence of Pakistan and Islam is very much in need’. A biased teacher may report Christian pupils for blasphemy, as has happened in the past, knowing full well that it takes up to nine years to get off the hook for a blasphemy accusation, given the virulently prejudiced lawyers’ community.

Pakistan will reject the US commission’s report as per a routine that has given our officials a lot of practice in hiding the truth. Things are actually much worse in a country where TV programmes show youths voting in favour of extremist passions under the rubric of ‘ghairat’ and politicians hope to garner votes by favouring the Taliban and their worldview while rejecting any action against religious terrorism by saying ‘it is not Pakistan’s war’. Some years ago, a professor in Islamabad revealed the bias of prescribed textbooks. Today, society has far surpassed the textbook and lives a life of extremism and hatred of minority communities.

Muslim Prayers of Hate

David Horowitz Freedom Center

Someone recently sent me an Arabic video that juxtaposes snippets of sermons delivered by Christian and Muslim leaders in the Middle East. 

The Christian preachers offer up universal 

supplications that include phrases like “O lord, lover of all mankind and savior of all the world”; they quote biblical passages such as “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5: 44); they pray that God may “heal all people around the world of their diseases.”

While such prayers are familiar, taken for granted even, the supplications of the Muslim preachers may surprise some. Popular Egyptian preacher, Sheikh Muhammad al-Zoghbi, was taped invoking his god thusly:

May Allah cut your tongue out! May he freeze the blood in your veins! May he inflict you with cancer and allow you no reprieve… Allah, strike them with all sorts of disease, afflictions and pain! Allah, strike them with cancer! Allah, let your prophet overpower them! Allah destroy them! Allah destroy them! Allah destroy them! Allah destroy the criminals who challenge the noble prophet! 

[Then, very serenely addressing his Muslim viewers:] And peace upon you, and Allah’s mercy and blessings.

Likewise, Sheikh Abdullah Nihari supplicated Allah with outstretched arms accordingly:

Lord, Lord, we condemn them before you!! Freeze the blood in their veins!! Strike them with evil, or at the very least freeze the blood in their veins-until they pray for death, but do not receive it!! O lord! O lord! O lord!…

One need not understand Arabic to appreciate the intensity of Nihari’s hate: watch the 45 seconds starting at minute 2:15, and see the gesticulating cleric issue his curse-while striking the floor with a stick, hurling a picture, and pounding on the wall.


Here's An Example of a "Sermon" form Sheikh Muhammad al-Zoghbi: