This year we have a new vaccine for the H1N1 flu. It did not go through the regular process of getting FDA approval, it was rushed. The people who pushed it through have no idea how this vaccine affects pregnant women, because there were almost NO studies done before this vaccine was approved. It usually takes years for a new drug to get approval, and HUNDREDS of studies done before it can be approved.
Regardless of the fact that there is no idea of whether or not this vaccine is even safe for pregnancy, OR children, these are exactly the target groups. Pregnant women are being told that they, more than anyone else, needs to get vaccinated. Scare tactics, such as saying that there have been more 3 more flu related deaths among pregnant women, are being used to get these women to listen to their doctors, who, by the way, know next to nothing about this vaccine. There simply hasn't been time to learn anything about it.
So, regardless of the fact that doctors know next to nothing about the vaccine, and noone knows how it will affect pregnant women, they are telling pregnant women that this vaccine is safe. Women who have miscarried right after getting the shot are being shot down as coincidental. I have been reading about this on Cafe Moms, and a lady was kind enough to give me permission to copy her post in it's entirety (There were movies and links, but I couldn't figure out how to get them to post). It is a compiled list of women who were pregnant, got the H1N1, and shortly thereafter lost their babies, in different stages of pregnancy. Pay special attention to the lady who lives in a town population of 2000. I would like to submit this to a doctor and ask how he or she can still claim it to be coincidental!
To see the post along with other mother's responses you can go to http://www.cafemom.com/group/4388/forums/read/10341904/STORIES_OF_PREGNANT_MOMS_MISCARRIAGES_AFTER_H1N1_VACCINE
Shocking H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Miscarriage Stories From Pregnant Women
by
Organic Health
Sat, Nov 28th, 2009 12:00:00 am
Source: Organic Health
U.S. health authorities have made pregnant women one of the highest priority groups for getting the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, but is it actually safe for pregnant women and their babies? Well, the truth is that miscarriage reports from pregnant women who have taken the H1N1 swine flu vaccine are starting to pour in from all over the nation. Vaccines and pregnancy simply do not mix safely. In fact, the package inserts for the swine flu vaccines actually say that the safety of these vaccines for pregnant women has not been established.
What you are about to read below should shock and anger you. If they are telling us that the swine flu vaccine is not safe for children under 6 months of age, then why in the world would it be safe for pregnant women and their babies? That doesn't make an ounce of sense, does it?
The following H1N1 swine flu vaccine miscarriage horror stories are from a June 2010 birth club.....
EBWashington:
I am so upset. I was so excited to be pregnant after trying for a year. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I joined this birth club and I was due June 25th. We have two healthy boys with no history of miscarriage. Everything was going great. Last Monday, I got the H1N1 vaccine thimerosal reduced (mercury reduced for pregnant women). On Tuesday morning, I started cramping and on Wednesday I started bleeding heavily. My hcg was 50 on Wednesday and I was almost 6 weeks along so it was low. They still thought that I might be pregnant but on Friday my hcg was down to 22. I am an emotional wreck. I feel like I had a healthy baby and I caused this by getting the H1N1 vaccine. My doctors pushed it. I researched online and there have been many miscarriages after the H1N1 vaccine but they haven't been reported since it is hard to say what caused the miscarriages. I hope that I did not cause this. I wish everyone the best.
Tayla08
I don't have an answer for you, but a friend of a friend just had a miscarriage 2-3 days after getting the shot. She was 7weeks. She had no previous history of m/c... No one can answer if they're related...it hasn't been out long enough and there haven't been any studies done on pregnant women. I will tell you, that it has made up my mind on getting it...I won't and I'm not going to get it for my DD either. My daughter and I both had H1N1 last week, and although it truly sucks...I think I'll take my chances. One doctor will tell you to get it and the next will tell you not too...you have to do what's in your heart.
90707
my heart goes out to you as i recently miscarried as well and was due in june. i had a healthy heart beat at 6wks. then at 7.5 wks my son got the h1n1 mist vaccine which has live vaccine in it. the nurse said to be careful b/c it could technically spread if he rubbed his nose and touched a surface etc. the next night i miscarried and 5 days later was diagnosed with h1n1. i work from home, kids are home, hadnt been anywhere during that time. so the chances that it is all related are very high. the flu mist vaccine warns for immunocompromised patients (which includes prego) to stay away from recipients of the flu mist for 21 days.
This next set of H1N1 swine flu vaccine miscarriage horror stories is from an About.com page about miscarriage.....
Jo:
I got the flu vaccine (regular not H1N1) at 8 weeks pregnant. Three days later I miscarried. I am not going to get the H1N1.
Regrets:
I got both vaccines on Thursday. I was 9 weeks pregnant. I miscarried on Sunday. I was told by several doctors to get these vaccines. Now I wish I followed my gut feeling and not get them at ALL!
:
i work in a hospital like setting and was told ‘the benefits outweigh the risks” 1am i got the vaccine, 3am i started bleeding and craming, 3pm miscarried. you decide
sue:
I had the H1N1 vaccination and 24 hours later had a miscarriage.
Linda Hill:
My daughter in law was 10 weeks pregnant and had the H1N1 vaccine on Friday that night she miscarried.
SoSorry:
I was so ready to get the H1N1 vaccine last week and they were only giving them to pregnant women. I was 6 weeks along and got it and the next day I started cramping and miscarried. I already had two healthy pregnancies and never miscarried or had any problems. My doctors think I am crazy to think it was the H1N1 but if no one looks into this than other women will not know. I am so sorry that I got it.
Connie:
I also received the H1N1 vaccination on October 22nd, 2009 and went into labor on October 25th, at 16 weeks pregnant and we just heard the heartbeat and everything was fine with my pregnancy on October 16th, 2009, then on October 28th my water broke then on October 29th, I delivered a stillborn baby boy, and no one can tell me why…Everyone wants to say it did not come from the shot but I believe it did. My baby was growing at the correct pace and everyone wants to brush off the vaccination. I say if you have the vaccination and suffer a miscarriage if they are able to perform an autopsy have it done.
I also agree something needs to be done and looked more into with this vaccination because most women are being advised it’s just something that happens, but I also had two healthy children normal pregnancies and when I received this vaccination with my third pregnancy, my baby is gone.
sioux falls, south dakota:
I received the H1N1 vaccine on October 16th and started experiencing cramping on the 22nd. I was nearly 17 weeks pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy on the 23rd. Like many of the other women here, the first thing I suspected was the H1N1 vaccine. I immediately asked a nurse at the hospital if that would have anything to do with it. Without hesitation, she told me “absolutely not.” I had reservations about getting the vaccine, but followed the advice of my long trusted family doctor. In a follow up appointment with my doctor 3 days after I lost my baby, I asked him if the vaccine would have had any adverse effects on my baby. He also said that it was not possible. I don’t believe that my doctor was necessarily lying to me, he was simply following the accepted practices and opinions of his field. I do, however, believe that as a nation, we are being lied to. This vaccine is NOT safe during pregnancy. There has not been enough testing done to determine this and there are far too many “coincidences” for this to be anything but a result of a vaccine that was hastily pushed into production and distribution in an effort to stop widespread panic. I have read so many stories in defense of the vaccine that will talk about how common miscarriages are, but I would challenge you to ask ANY health care professional how common second trimester miscarriages are. My baby was doing perfect developmentally and I had felt him move earlier that day. My heart goes out to all of you out there who have had to go through the same heartache and loss that I have had in the last couple of weeks. There is no reason that any woman or family should have to go through this. Get the word out to all of the pregnant women that you know. I know that if I had heard that women had been losing their babies shortly after they received the vaccine, I would have followed my gut and not gotten it myself. Maybe then Wyatt would have had a chance at life.
Marina Rossi:
I recently got the H1N1 vaccine and miscarried 3 days later. I thought it could have been the vaccine but didnt ask. After finding this site I believe it was the vaccine. Sorry to everyone else out there who has just experienced a miscarriage.
kathy-sd:
I’m from a town of 2000 in SD, there are several women pregnant and we are all due within a few weeks of each other. Four of us got the H1N1 vaccine 2 weeks ago and one by one each of us started to have preterm contractions. We are all due in Nov and Dec so we are further along than most of the people that lost their babies. There is no way you can tell us that our preterm labor was not caused by the H1N1 vaccine. It may look like a “fluke” to some people when these women are scattered all over the country but we are talking about 4 of us in our small community. My heart goes out to all of you that lost your babies.
ashley:
Im not sure but not only myself, i know someone that withing 4 days of getting the shot we both miscarried, i was only 6 weeks and she was 4 months along, not sure if the shot caused it and cant find any other information but i am a little concerned about this coincidence.
Time Machine:
I got a flu shot in pregnancy, developed incredibly strange symptoms immediately (numb hands, feet and mouth, heart palpitations, sudden weakness in my legs, a bright red face), began bleeding and miscarried by 11 weeks. I had no idea there was mercury in most flu shots but once I found out after the fact, I was assured that I’d had the “mercury free” form. As it turned out, the shot wasn’t completely mercury free and, according to the EPA website, it still had 5,000 times the limit for mercury in drinking water– not to mention a list of other toxins (MSG, formaldehyde, etc.).
I’d had no idea the shots were so dirty. I guess I’d been under the impression they were something like sterile water and a dead virus, that’s it.
The strange symptoms– which I’d been told were “just pregnancy” lasted six months. No one could figure out what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t make stairs, why I felt like I’d been shot with novocaine. I learned later from a book by Jane Hightower that these were all symptoms of mercury exposure. I guess I’m one of those susceptible people. No one in my family is getting the H1N1– no one even gets regular flu shots anymore, we all read labels.
If you are a pregnant mother, please do not take the H1N1 swine flu vaccine. Instead, do everything that you can do to avoid public places and make sure to wash your hands more than you usually would. Take extra large doses of immunity building vitamins and research many of the great natural ways for fighting the flu that are out there on the Internet.
The truth is that if you do take the vaccine and then something happens, you will NOT be able to sue anyone (thanks to Congress). You will have to bear all the responsibility yourself. That doctor who kept pushing and pushing it on you will tell you that it could not have been the vaccine and that you probably would have miscarried anyway.
Do you honestly want to inject a vaccine that may contain mercury, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 (associated with infertility), triton X100 (a strong detergent), phenoxyethanol (antifreeze) and a whole bunch of other toxic ingredients into your system when you know that your baby will absorb it too and has no defenses against most of these things?
In the very short video posted below, you will see one health expert explain to Sean Hannity that not even the swine flu vaccine package insert says that it is safe for pregnant women.....
The reality is that if you are pregnant, you need to hear what both sides have to say before ever subjecting your baby to the swine flu vaccine. You do NOT want to end up like one of the mothers above. Please help us out by sharing this information with as many people as you can. If you know of any additional H1N1 swine flu vaccine miscarriage horror stories please post them below in the comments section.
***UPDATE: More Stories From Our Own Readers***
AlinafromOz:
I had the normal Flu shot, and i had a misscarriage at 8wks… they told me it wasnt related pfftt yeah right and now no way in hell i would get a barely tested H1N1 vaccine..
Kayte:
My husband’s pregnant coworker (5 months along) called her doctor on the day they were giving the regular flu shots at work. He said she should get it. She did, and lost her baby the next week. This enrages and sickens me that the medical industry is pushing these shots on pregnant women and children, especially the new, little-tested, experimental H1N1 vaccine!
Kevin:
I work with someone who was 4 months pregnant. Her husband got swine flu, so both she and her son got the vaccine “just to be safe.” A week later, she had a miscarriage. Any supposed benefits from the vaccine are clearly outweighed by the tremendous risks.
JK:
I was in support of vaccines and was comfortable with the fact that there is a national database that records “all” vaccine reactions so they can see trends and such – which is the info I got from my doctor.
Then, my daughter had a reaction to a vaccine at 18 months old. It was horrifying to watch her body swell for three days and not be able to do anything (Benadryl slowed the swelling, but couldn’t reverse it until three days had passed). I knew there were risks to vaccines, but it had seemed that the benefits outweighed the risks. I could have accepted that.
I was not prepared for the reaction of the medical community. My doctor’s office refused to admit it was a reaction – even while she was swelling! They were concerned about the swelling, asked me if I knew how it started, then, when I mentioned that I suspected the vaccine they sent me home and said I was imagining things. A few hours later she had to go to the ER. Later I took her to an allergist who confirmed that it was a reaction. He told me that a lot of people react to the 3rd DTaP shot – even if they’ve been fine before. Still, he encouraged me to continue getting all the shots except for the last DTaP.
No one ever reported any of this to the national database.
My pediatrician pressured me to get more shots for my kids, but I refused. I’ve recently found out my kids’ medical records falsely state that my kids DID get additional vaccines.
My daughter had been ahead on speech milestones at the time of the reaction, from that date (October) to the following July, she only learned 8 new words, and her language development froze. We’ve done three years of therapy now and she is in special ed.
Lynn:
My heart goes out to all who have suffered horrific events due to these vaccines. I have a beautiful 2 and 1/2 year old daughter who was born a month premature, at the time, all the health care practitioners involved in our lives strongly were pushing that she receive all the ‘necessary’ vaccines…. My mothers heart and gut reaction strongly said “no” but being a first time mom and feeling the pressures of our health care advisors I agreed to having her first set of shots done. Days later she developed a horrible ‘chest cold’ which never really cleared… she would have good days only to relapse into endless nights of trying to clear her little chest and holding her while she cried. Of corse….. none of this was vaccine related. Then came time for her second set of shots… oh boy…. the stomach aches began… but our health unit would not stop calling until I made an appointment to bring her in, so, I did…. only agreeing to a select few of the vaccinations, resulting in more congestion toped with ear infections and many bouts of anti biotics. Her condition quickly spiraled downward into 2am visits to the hospital for a Ventilator because her chest was so tight each breath was a huge effort. Each doctor who saw her assured me that this was more common than I thought and that she would likely ‘grow out of it’. Needless to say I will never let another vaccination needle touch her little body again. Weather our health system wants to admit it was related or not I cant help but believe that it was. Other than being small she was 100% healthy at birth and remained that way for 3 months…. until her first set of shots.
For the absolute latest on adverse H1N1 swine flu reactions, the rapidly developing mystery flu situation in Ukraine and all the other hottest breaking news, please visit and bookmark our new daily news site: The Most Important News.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Swiss are making progress
Swiss Vote to Ban New Minarets
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: November 29, 2009
GENEVA - In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country's reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.
.
The referendum, which passed with a clear majority of 57.5 percent of the voters and in 22 of Switzerland's 25 cantons, was a victory for the right. The vote against was 42.5 percent. Because the ban gained a majority of votes and passed in a majority of the cantons, it will be added to the Constitution.
The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People's Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party had proposed inserting a single sentence banning the construction of minarets, leading to the referendum.
The Swiss government said it would respect the vote and sought to reassure the Muslim population - mostly immigrants from other parts of Europe, like Kosovo and Turkey - that the minaret ban was "not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture."
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the justice minister, said the result "reflects fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies." While such concerns "have to be taken seriously," she said in a statement, "The Federal Council takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies."
The government must now draft a supporting law on the ban, a process that could take at least a year and could put Switzerland in breach of international conventions on human rights.
Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned. None conduct the call to prayer. There are about 400,000 Muslims in a population of some 7.5 million people. Close to 90 percent of Muslims in Switzerland are from Kosovo and Turkey, and most do not adhere to the codes of dress and conduct associated with conservative Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, said Manon Schick, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International in Switzerland.
"Most painful for us is the not the minaret ban, but the symbol sent by this vote," said Farhad Afshar, who runs the Coordination of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland. "Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community."
The Swiss vote reflected a growing anxiety about Islam, especially its more fundamentalist forms, in many countries of Western Europe. France, for example, has been talking about banning the full Islamic veil as a way to stop the influence of the more fundamentalist Salafist forms of Islam, popular among some young Muslim citizens and also among converts.
Pre-referendum polls had indicated a comfortable, if slowly shrinking, majority against the proposal, after a controversial campaign that played aggressively on the same fears of Muslim immigration and the spread of Islamic values that already resonate in other parts of Europe.
Media Tenor International, which monitors television coverage, said that the main Swiss evening news programs tended to report about Islam "primarily in the context of terrorism and international conflict." Representatives of Islam "were quoted only infrequently," said the group's president, Roland Schatz.
"That Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of religious tolerance and the provision of refuge to the persecuted, should have accepted such a grotesquely discriminatory proposal is shocking," said David Diaz-Jogeix, Amnesty International's deputy program director for Europe and Central Asia.
Campaign posters depicting a Swiss flag sprouting black, missile-shaped minarets alongside a woman shrouded in a niqab, a head-to-toe veil that shows only the eyes, starkly illustrated the determination of the right to play on deep-rooted fears that Muslim immigration would lead to an erosion of Swiss values and traditions.
In a recent televised debate, Ulrich Schlüer, a member of Parliament from the S.V.P., said minarets were a symbol of "the political will to take power" and establish Shariah, or religious law. Switzerland, he claimed, already suffers from thousands of forced marriages, and he claimed, "We have a growing number of young Muslim women in Switzerland forced to endure genital mutilation."
That debate prompted the government to mount a public relations campaign overseas to try to avoid a backlash like the one Denmark faced in Islamic countries after a newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and to avoid damage to lucrative commercial and banking ties with wealthy Muslims.
Muslim leaders have tried to keep out of the spotlight and to avoid internationalizing the issue, shunning interviews with most news outlets from Muslim countries, according to Youssef Ibram, an imam at Geneva's main mosque and Islamic Cultural Foundation.
Still, the campaign was accompanied by sporadic shows of hostility. In two separate incidents last week, vandals damaged Geneva's main mosque by throwing stones and a pot of paint. On another occasion, Mr. Ibram said, a van pulled up outside the mosque early in the morning, loudly blaring a recording of the call to prayers through loudspeakers.
In an interview before the referendum, Mr. Ibram said that whatever the outcome of the vote, Muslims would lose out from a campaign that had played on fears of Islam and exposed deep-seated opposition to their community among many Swiss.
Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and Steven Erlanger from Paris.
Jennifer here: I'm glad the Swiss have made this step. Anyone reading this will probably call me a bigot, and they'd be correct. When an entire religion is based on conquering those that don't wish to follow the Islamic religion, you can bet your bottom dollar I am excited when anything cracks down on muslims. Muslims are worried about people fearing them? For good reason! Now this is not to say that there aren't peaceful muslims. I met a few. But the fact is that these peacful muslims do not practice Islam to the letter. If they did they would not be peaceful. Their Quran clearly gives muslims 3 options when conquering a new land.
1: They were to give the people in the new land the option of converting to Islam. If the people did so, the muslims were to create no further problems for the people.
2: If the first option was rejected, they were to give them the option of paying the tax all non-muslims are required to pay to the muslims. If the people were content to pay the tax (which was also accompanied by rediculous humiliations, as well as the requirement that they were not to practice their religion in public - they had to do so in the privacy of their own homes and were not allowed to practice with another family in their home - and were not to wear any symbols that represented any religion save from Islam) then the muslims were to not cause any further problems for the people apart from the customs regarding the tax.
3: If the first two options were rejected, the letter of the law was clear. Kill all and make no respect for women or children - all must die.
Does this sound like a peaceful religion to you? Now I will make the allowance that every religion has it's downfalls. Catholisimm was much the same - kill all not willing to be a catholic. There are others as well. However, the difference is that while Catholics no longer continue this - they've changed with the times - there is no allowance in Islam for the changing times. We've witnessed this already with the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Muslims would love for you not to be afraid of them... that way they can take over in a more peaceful manner, much more subtle than outright murdering every single man, woman, and child. Don't be lulled by a sense of peace with the muslims. They will take over every single entire culture until the only one left is Islam.
What irritates me most is that the schools are teaching our children that Muslims are a peaceful people by far. This is such an outrageous lie I get furious. This is how they'll get us though - by teaching the impressionables that it's okay for Muslims to take over our country and every other one as well.
It makes me sick.
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: November 29, 2009
GENEVA - In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country's reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.
.
The referendum, which passed with a clear majority of 57.5 percent of the voters and in 22 of Switzerland's 25 cantons, was a victory for the right. The vote against was 42.5 percent. Because the ban gained a majority of votes and passed in a majority of the cantons, it will be added to the Constitution.
The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People's Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party had proposed inserting a single sentence banning the construction of minarets, leading to the referendum.
The Swiss government said it would respect the vote and sought to reassure the Muslim population - mostly immigrants from other parts of Europe, like Kosovo and Turkey - that the minaret ban was "not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture."
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the justice minister, said the result "reflects fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies." While such concerns "have to be taken seriously," she said in a statement, "The Federal Council takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies."
The government must now draft a supporting law on the ban, a process that could take at least a year and could put Switzerland in breach of international conventions on human rights.
Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets are planned. None conduct the call to prayer. There are about 400,000 Muslims in a population of some 7.5 million people. Close to 90 percent of Muslims in Switzerland are from Kosovo and Turkey, and most do not adhere to the codes of dress and conduct associated with conservative Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, said Manon Schick, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International in Switzerland.
"Most painful for us is the not the minaret ban, but the symbol sent by this vote," said Farhad Afshar, who runs the Coordination of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland. "Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community."
The Swiss vote reflected a growing anxiety about Islam, especially its more fundamentalist forms, in many countries of Western Europe. France, for example, has been talking about banning the full Islamic veil as a way to stop the influence of the more fundamentalist Salafist forms of Islam, popular among some young Muslim citizens and also among converts.
Pre-referendum polls had indicated a comfortable, if slowly shrinking, majority against the proposal, after a controversial campaign that played aggressively on the same fears of Muslim immigration and the spread of Islamic values that already resonate in other parts of Europe.
Media Tenor International, which monitors television coverage, said that the main Swiss evening news programs tended to report about Islam "primarily in the context of terrorism and international conflict." Representatives of Islam "were quoted only infrequently," said the group's president, Roland Schatz.
"That Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of religious tolerance and the provision of refuge to the persecuted, should have accepted such a grotesquely discriminatory proposal is shocking," said David Diaz-Jogeix, Amnesty International's deputy program director for Europe and Central Asia.
Campaign posters depicting a Swiss flag sprouting black, missile-shaped minarets alongside a woman shrouded in a niqab, a head-to-toe veil that shows only the eyes, starkly illustrated the determination of the right to play on deep-rooted fears that Muslim immigration would lead to an erosion of Swiss values and traditions.
In a recent televised debate, Ulrich Schlüer, a member of Parliament from the S.V.P., said minarets were a symbol of "the political will to take power" and establish Shariah, or religious law. Switzerland, he claimed, already suffers from thousands of forced marriages, and he claimed, "We have a growing number of young Muslim women in Switzerland forced to endure genital mutilation."
That debate prompted the government to mount a public relations campaign overseas to try to avoid a backlash like the one Denmark faced in Islamic countries after a newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and to avoid damage to lucrative commercial and banking ties with wealthy Muslims.
Muslim leaders have tried to keep out of the spotlight and to avoid internationalizing the issue, shunning interviews with most news outlets from Muslim countries, according to Youssef Ibram, an imam at Geneva's main mosque and Islamic Cultural Foundation.
Still, the campaign was accompanied by sporadic shows of hostility. In two separate incidents last week, vandals damaged Geneva's main mosque by throwing stones and a pot of paint. On another occasion, Mr. Ibram said, a van pulled up outside the mosque early in the morning, loudly blaring a recording of the call to prayers through loudspeakers.
In an interview before the referendum, Mr. Ibram said that whatever the outcome of the vote, Muslims would lose out from a campaign that had played on fears of Islam and exposed deep-seated opposition to their community among many Swiss.
Nick Cumming-Bruce reported from Geneva, and Steven Erlanger from Paris.
Jennifer here: I'm glad the Swiss have made this step. Anyone reading this will probably call me a bigot, and they'd be correct. When an entire religion is based on conquering those that don't wish to follow the Islamic religion, you can bet your bottom dollar I am excited when anything cracks down on muslims. Muslims are worried about people fearing them? For good reason! Now this is not to say that there aren't peaceful muslims. I met a few. But the fact is that these peacful muslims do not practice Islam to the letter. If they did they would not be peaceful. Their Quran clearly gives muslims 3 options when conquering a new land.
1: They were to give the people in the new land the option of converting to Islam. If the people did so, the muslims were to create no further problems for the people.
2: If the first option was rejected, they were to give them the option of paying the tax all non-muslims are required to pay to the muslims. If the people were content to pay the tax (which was also accompanied by rediculous humiliations, as well as the requirement that they were not to practice their religion in public - they had to do so in the privacy of their own homes and were not allowed to practice with another family in their home - and were not to wear any symbols that represented any religion save from Islam) then the muslims were to not cause any further problems for the people apart from the customs regarding the tax.
3: If the first two options were rejected, the letter of the law was clear. Kill all and make no respect for women or children - all must die.
Does this sound like a peaceful religion to you? Now I will make the allowance that every religion has it's downfalls. Catholisimm was much the same - kill all not willing to be a catholic. There are others as well. However, the difference is that while Catholics no longer continue this - they've changed with the times - there is no allowance in Islam for the changing times. We've witnessed this already with the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Muslims would love for you not to be afraid of them... that way they can take over in a more peaceful manner, much more subtle than outright murdering every single man, woman, and child. Don't be lulled by a sense of peace with the muslims. They will take over every single entire culture until the only one left is Islam.
What irritates me most is that the schools are teaching our children that Muslims are a peaceful people by far. This is such an outrageous lie I get furious. This is how they'll get us though - by teaching the impressionables that it's okay for Muslims to take over our country and every other one as well.
It makes me sick.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Obama's Healthcare Plan
It's hard to point out on first glance what is wrong with this plan - everyone should be able to have healthcare right? Wrong. It is wrong to force people to provide expensive healthcare. Healthcare is not a right, it is a privilage. Listen to what my husband said.
"If I were in charge, everyone would be required to ride a motercycle, and those that didn't would get hit with a huge fine. Everyone would be required to go hunting, or get a huge fine. And everyone would be required to have healthcare, or get a huge fine - oh wait... that's just way too much government!"
He's right. The government is attempting to become WAY too involved in our personal lives. The more involved they become, the easier it is to control us. What we need is WAY less government. It seems that the more they become involved in something, such as education, the worse that something.
I used the example of education - the more the government puts stipulations on the educational system, the more they get their hands into it, the worse the school system gets. The No Child Left Behind Act is a perfect example. It doesn't cause teachers to work harder to teach the kids. It causes kids who before would have flunked out of their grade - several times - continue on and graduate without ever having gotten to the 4th grade on merits alone. What does this result in? It results in teens who may as well have mental disabilities. There is no insentive to work hard and learn, because even if you learn NOTHING you will still make it to the next grade. Back when kids didn't do well, it caused embarrassment to the child who decided to never do homework, because he'd be held back a grade, and be forced to work harder so it didn't happen again. No such insentives now.
But back to healthcare. Obama is trying to make health care equal for all people. But all people are not equal. My daughter, who is only 2 1/2 months old, would not use as much money for healthcare as my grandfather. Why? It's simple. My daughter is breastfed, so gets sick less, will most likely rarely need any kind of prescription, and when she starts walking, a simple slip and fall is not going to break any of her bones. My grandfather, in his 70's, is, by definition, more susceptible to illness, more likely to take not just one prescription, but mulitple prescriptions, and could possibly break a hip just by falling in the kitchen. Not to mention that someone in their 70's is more likely to have organ failure than a baby, and need surgery. He is going to need a lot more coverage than my daughter. Where my daughter could easily get by with minimal healthcare coverage - say 9 office visits a year, my grandfather might need maximum healthcare coverage - say 24 office visits, prescription coverage, personal accident coverage, surgery coverage, etc. So - are my grandfather and my daughter equal in their needs for healthcare coverage? Not even close. So does it make sense that they should both have the same coverage? Honestly - do you think my completly heatlhy daughter is going to need surgery, and take 4 different prescriptions? The likelyhood of this is slim to none. So why should she have that kind of coverage? It's nothing but wasted coverage, and by extension, wasted money.
There are just too many things wrong with Obama's healthcare plan to suit me.
"If I were in charge, everyone would be required to ride a motercycle, and those that didn't would get hit with a huge fine. Everyone would be required to go hunting, or get a huge fine. And everyone would be required to have healthcare, or get a huge fine - oh wait... that's just way too much government!"
He's right. The government is attempting to become WAY too involved in our personal lives. The more involved they become, the easier it is to control us. What we need is WAY less government. It seems that the more they become involved in something, such as education, the worse that something.
I used the example of education - the more the government puts stipulations on the educational system, the more they get their hands into it, the worse the school system gets. The No Child Left Behind Act is a perfect example. It doesn't cause teachers to work harder to teach the kids. It causes kids who before would have flunked out of their grade - several times - continue on and graduate without ever having gotten to the 4th grade on merits alone. What does this result in? It results in teens who may as well have mental disabilities. There is no insentive to work hard and learn, because even if you learn NOTHING you will still make it to the next grade. Back when kids didn't do well, it caused embarrassment to the child who decided to never do homework, because he'd be held back a grade, and be forced to work harder so it didn't happen again. No such insentives now.
But back to healthcare. Obama is trying to make health care equal for all people. But all people are not equal. My daughter, who is only 2 1/2 months old, would not use as much money for healthcare as my grandfather. Why? It's simple. My daughter is breastfed, so gets sick less, will most likely rarely need any kind of prescription, and when she starts walking, a simple slip and fall is not going to break any of her bones. My grandfather, in his 70's, is, by definition, more susceptible to illness, more likely to take not just one prescription, but mulitple prescriptions, and could possibly break a hip just by falling in the kitchen. Not to mention that someone in their 70's is more likely to have organ failure than a baby, and need surgery. He is going to need a lot more coverage than my daughter. Where my daughter could easily get by with minimal healthcare coverage - say 9 office visits a year, my grandfather might need maximum healthcare coverage - say 24 office visits, prescription coverage, personal accident coverage, surgery coverage, etc. So - are my grandfather and my daughter equal in their needs for healthcare coverage? Not even close. So does it make sense that they should both have the same coverage? Honestly - do you think my completly heatlhy daughter is going to need surgery, and take 4 different prescriptions? The likelyhood of this is slim to none. So why should she have that kind of coverage? It's nothing but wasted coverage, and by extension, wasted money.
There are just too many things wrong with Obama's healthcare plan to suit me.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Parental Rights and Public Education
This was copied off the internet (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/1025). I couldn't state it better myself.
Parental Rights and Public Education
Sonja N. Bohm
July 07, 2005
If you have not yet heard of the cause for the separation of school and state, you soon will. It is no less a cause for freedom than the one Thomas Paine wrote about in Common Sense when he stated, "The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth." What is at stake in our time is the freedom and right of parents to see to the upbringing, well-being, and education of our own children. That right and responsibility has been usurped -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- by our public school system. In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine also states:
"All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either."
I submit that our public school system has assumed, and therefore usurped, the responsibility for the education of our children -- a responsibility that rightfully belongs to the parent. But assumed authority is not necessarily legitimate authority. First and foremost, just as our Creator endows each of us with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (among others), we believe that God has also given parents the unalienable right to see to the upbringing and education of our own children. Unalienable means the inability to be transferred. Just as our right to be FREE can and should not be transferred to another person, so our responsibility as parents can and should not be transferred to another. We can delegate our authority, but never our responsibility.
But yet, many State Boards of Education continually refer to the responsibility of parents as being a "shared" responsibility between the parent and the school. This is misleading, however. I submit that it is an altogether separate and different kind of responsibility. Parents are responsible for the well-being of their children as a WHOLE -- to include seeing to their children's education... Schools are responsible for educating -- but only when the authority to do so has been delegated by the parents.
Because ours is a nation based on liberty, parents are free to raise their children based on their own belief system and principles. A parent's authority to see to their child's education is a recognized authority -- evident in the fact that parents are free to choose whether their children are educated publicly or privately. It is a parent's responsibility that their child is educated -- not necessarily by what means they are educated.
But the California State Board of Education goes one step further than to "merely" assume responsibility for a child's education. In a Parent Involvement fact sheet put forth by the California State Board of Education[i], the Board also appears to assume (or would like to assume) a responsibility of sorts over parents as well when it states:
"...efforts should be designed to help parents develop parenting skills to meet the basic obligations of family life [and to] prepare parents to actively participate in school decision making and develop their leadership skills in governance and advocacy. (Emphasis added.)"
This may seem on the surface to be a noble undertaking on the part of the public school system; but when considered more closely, it becomes evident that the Board of Education feels it necessary to develop some sort of standard -- not only for the education of our children, but for family life as well! And how long will it be until the State Boards of Education have the legal right to determine standards for parental obligations as they do presently for our children's educational standards? Have we reached a point where we have become so dependent upon the public school system for the care of our children (and not just for their basic education anymore!) that school officials have come to the conclusion that they need to also instruct parents on how to parent? While it is true that serious cases of neglect and abuse exist within some families, that is not reason enough -- and is in fact at its core un-American -- for the government to "supercede parental authority in all cases"[ii] as a result. This kind of usurpation has not taken place overnight, but over a period of time -- and right under our noses. And the resulting undermining of parental authority and degradation of family stability will continue to occur as long as we continue to allow it.
In a local PTA school bulletin it states, "if you want to have a voice," join your local PTA. Parents already have a voice -- whether they choose to claim membership to an organization such as the PTA or not. It is time to use our parental authority and take back our schools. If we continue to take the public school system for granted, we will continue to see a further erosion of parental rights and authority in this country. The continued rise in numbers of home schooling and private schooling families in the United States over the past two decades is due in no small part to the rising dissatisfaction with public schooling and its practices. Concerns about safety, curriculum, standardization, and religious liberties are just a few among many reasons for the growing "exodus" of families from public schools -- a testimony as well as a reaction to the rising usurpation of authority that the public school system has slowly and systematically been assuming since its 19th century beginnings in this country.
In the words of author C.S. Lewis[iii]:
"Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions.' The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds -- making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation -- men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive,' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity.' In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. Know your rights!"
A wealth of information can be found with regard to parental/children´s rights and education by visiting any of the following websites/links:
Alliance for the Separation of School and State: http://www.schoolandstate.org/
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA): http://www.hslda.org/
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ): http://www.aclj.org/
California Home School Network: http://www.californiahomeschool.net/
Christian Home Educators Association of California: http://www.cheaofca.org/
Exodus Mandate: http://www.exodusmandate.org/
Home Education Magazine: http://www.homeedmag.com/
Personal and Political Empowerment articles by Larry and Susan Kaseman:
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/weblinks/TakingCharge.htm
i] http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ms/po/policy89-01-sep1994.asp (Last modified: May 03, 2005)
ii] Klicka, Christopher J. The Right to Home School, Carolina Academic Press, 2002, p. 40.
iii] Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man, Harper Collins, 2000 (1944, 1947), p. 23,26.
The opinions expressed within this article are the author's alone. This article is not affiliated with or sponsored by any person, group or organization other than the author.
Copyright 2005 by Sonja N. Bohm. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged.
Parental Rights and Public Education
Sonja N. Bohm
July 07, 2005
If you have not yet heard of the cause for the separation of school and state, you soon will. It is no less a cause for freedom than the one Thomas Paine wrote about in Common Sense when he stated, "The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth." What is at stake in our time is the freedom and right of parents to see to the upbringing, well-being, and education of our own children. That right and responsibility has been usurped -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- by our public school system. In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine also states:
"All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either."
I submit that our public school system has assumed, and therefore usurped, the responsibility for the education of our children -- a responsibility that rightfully belongs to the parent. But assumed authority is not necessarily legitimate authority. First and foremost, just as our Creator endows each of us with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (among others), we believe that God has also given parents the unalienable right to see to the upbringing and education of our own children. Unalienable means the inability to be transferred. Just as our right to be FREE can and should not be transferred to another person, so our responsibility as parents can and should not be transferred to another. We can delegate our authority, but never our responsibility.
But yet, many State Boards of Education continually refer to the responsibility of parents as being a "shared" responsibility between the parent and the school. This is misleading, however. I submit that it is an altogether separate and different kind of responsibility. Parents are responsible for the well-being of their children as a WHOLE -- to include seeing to their children's education... Schools are responsible for educating -- but only when the authority to do so has been delegated by the parents.
Because ours is a nation based on liberty, parents are free to raise their children based on their own belief system and principles. A parent's authority to see to their child's education is a recognized authority -- evident in the fact that parents are free to choose whether their children are educated publicly or privately. It is a parent's responsibility that their child is educated -- not necessarily by what means they are educated.
But the California State Board of Education goes one step further than to "merely" assume responsibility for a child's education. In a Parent Involvement fact sheet put forth by the California State Board of Education[i], the Board also appears to assume (or would like to assume) a responsibility of sorts over parents as well when it states:
"...efforts should be designed to help parents develop parenting skills to meet the basic obligations of family life [and to] prepare parents to actively participate in school decision making and develop their leadership skills in governance and advocacy. (Emphasis added.)"
This may seem on the surface to be a noble undertaking on the part of the public school system; but when considered more closely, it becomes evident that the Board of Education feels it necessary to develop some sort of standard -- not only for the education of our children, but for family life as well! And how long will it be until the State Boards of Education have the legal right to determine standards for parental obligations as they do presently for our children's educational standards? Have we reached a point where we have become so dependent upon the public school system for the care of our children (and not just for their basic education anymore!) that school officials have come to the conclusion that they need to also instruct parents on how to parent? While it is true that serious cases of neglect and abuse exist within some families, that is not reason enough -- and is in fact at its core un-American -- for the government to "supercede parental authority in all cases"[ii] as a result. This kind of usurpation has not taken place overnight, but over a period of time -- and right under our noses. And the resulting undermining of parental authority and degradation of family stability will continue to occur as long as we continue to allow it.
In a local PTA school bulletin it states, "if you want to have a voice," join your local PTA. Parents already have a voice -- whether they choose to claim membership to an organization such as the PTA or not. It is time to use our parental authority and take back our schools. If we continue to take the public school system for granted, we will continue to see a further erosion of parental rights and authority in this country. The continued rise in numbers of home schooling and private schooling families in the United States over the past two decades is due in no small part to the rising dissatisfaction with public schooling and its practices. Concerns about safety, curriculum, standardization, and religious liberties are just a few among many reasons for the growing "exodus" of families from public schools -- a testimony as well as a reaction to the rising usurpation of authority that the public school system has slowly and systematically been assuming since its 19th century beginnings in this country.
In the words of author C.S. Lewis[iii]:
"Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions.' The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds -- making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation -- men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive,' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity.' In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. Know your rights!"
A wealth of information can be found with regard to parental/children´s rights and education by visiting any of the following websites/links:
Alliance for the Separation of School and State: http://www.schoolandstate.org/
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA): http://www.hslda.org/
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ): http://www.aclj.org/
California Home School Network: http://www.californiahomeschool.net/
Christian Home Educators Association of California: http://www.cheaofca.org/
Exodus Mandate: http://www.exodusmandate.org/
Home Education Magazine: http://www.homeedmag.com/
Personal and Political Empowerment articles by Larry and Susan Kaseman:
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/weblinks/TakingCharge.htm
i] http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ms/po/policy89-01-sep1994.asp (Last modified: May 03, 2005)
ii] Klicka, Christopher J. The Right to Home School, Carolina Academic Press, 2002, p. 40.
iii] Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man, Harper Collins, 2000 (1944, 1947), p. 23,26.
The opinions expressed within this article are the author's alone. This article is not affiliated with or sponsored by any person, group or organization other than the author.
Copyright 2005 by Sonja N. Bohm. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged.
Monday, April 27, 2009
History Alive! Medieval World
I want to start this post with excerpts from a letter from a parent whose child’s school used the book “History Alive! Medieval World” in his school. She goes only by the name Anne. This letter comes from a book called “From Crayons to Condoms” which is about the perversions the public schools are forcing upon our unsuspecting children.
“In November 2007, I caught a segment on Fox news on evening that piqued my interest. Sean Hannity was reporting on parents complaining about Islamic content in a middle school history textbook. He commented that in a Lodi, California, Public school you can’t mention Christmas, but you could teach Islam. At the center of the controversy was History Alive! Medieval World (HAMW), the book my own son was using in his seventh-grade history class at the public middle school he attends.
Until I saw a picture of the book on TV, I have to admit I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I was aware that California seventh-grade educational standards called for analyzing “the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages.” But I also knew that other religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, are studied in the sixth grade. Although it did occur to me that there seems to be a disproportionate emphasis on Islam, I was skeptical that a textbook approved by the state of California for use in public school classrooms would actually teach religion (as opposed to teaching about religion in a historical context).
Because I wanted to see for myself what the brouhaha was all about, I asked my son if I could see his copy of HAMW. After poring over the chapters about Islam for the next few hours, I was shocked. I not only agreed that HAMW includes religious content that has no place in a public school, but thought the book was even more inappropriate than portrayed on Fox News. Not only did the book speak of angels and prophecies and praying with prophets in caves, but it contained inaccuragte information, as well as insidious anti-semitic content.
Some chapters had little to do with presenting historical fact and seemed to propagandize present day political issues. Fore example, the chapter titled “Muhammad’s Teaching Meets with Resistance” suddenly shifts from the year 619 to end with a remark that “to this day Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims.” (Not only is this comment out of context, but it follows a passage that sounds like something from the Koran: “The horse then guided Muhammad through the seven levels of heaven, and Muhammad met Allah.”)…….
Following are excerpts from my response addressing both the teacher’s and TCI’s e-mails:
…N. has not addressed my primary complaint, i.e., that rather than teaching about Islam and the spread of Islam in the context of history per California standards, History Alive! contains overtly religious content inappropriate for a public school setting.
….Students in public school history classes should not be studying about the Koran and the Pillars of Faith in depth, any more than they should study the torah and the Ten commandments. Nor should they be asked theological cquestions, e.g., to comparing Allah to the God of the Jews and the Christians. It is just as inappropriate to ask public school students about God, angels and judgment from a Muslim perspective as from a Jewish, Christian or any other religious perspective.
…History Alive! definitely presents some of the material in a biased manner that portrays Jews negatively compared to Muslims… I also find History Alive! to be imbalanced in that there is no mention, for example, of the role jihad plays in the Crusades, military conquests and the spread of Islam, while the concept of dhimmi is glossed over as a “special tax” with no mention of the oppression or religious persecution it represents. Also, History Alive! interjects inappropriate political commentary, eg., an out of context sentence that states that Jerusalem is important to this day for Muslims in a section that is supposed to be about historical resistance to the spread of Islam…..
Just the other night I attended a program at my son’s school (not his class), entitled, “Islam: A Presentation for Parents.” What I saw was deeply disturbing. The students had difficulty distinguishing historical fact from religious myth and stories, as they told about Muhammad accompanied by the angel Gabriel, flying on the back of a winged horse to Jerusalem, praying with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and being carried up to heaven by Gabriel to meet god. Although these same students supposedly learned about Judaism and Christianity last year in sixth grade, they were not asked to build models of churches and synagogues, to research biblical prophecies, or to spend an evening telling teir parents about the Ten commandments or the gospel according to John.
Not that that would have been appropriate either. However, I am sure that if there had been a similar event about another religion in a public school,, there would have been a huge outcry. Therefore, I have to ask: Why a presentation specifically dedicated to Islam? I can’t help but wonder why teachers in America’s public schools are so intent on teaching American students about Islam, that they are overlooking our American Constitution, which not only guarantees freedom of religion, but is supposed to protect from the risk of religious indoctrination.”
Anne.
I decided to check out what I could find about this book. I found a table of contents at this website: http://info.teachtci.com/products/wProgramChapters.aspx?ProgramID=9. It has 8 units. Units 1, 7, and 8 deal with Europe, Unit 3 is about Africa, Unit 4 is about China, and Unit 6 is about America. There is a theme, is there not? It is all about countries, and what they went through during Medieval times. However, stuck in there between Europe and Africa is a unit dedicated to Islam. Islam is not a country, it is a religion. I found this odd, that there would be an entire unit devoted to a religion, when all the other chapters are about countries. So I looked deeper.
One chapter in the unit is devoted to a country, or more specifically a group of countries known as the Arabian Peninsula. This seems appropriate. The description says that the students study four environments – the desert, oases, the coastal plain, and mountains – to discover how they affected ways of life on the Arabian Peninsula. However, the entire next chapter is devoted to the “prophet Muhammad” and the students are required to create an illustrated manuscript that retells the story of Muhammad’s life in their own words. Imagine the lawsuits that would come pouring in if the chapter was about the life of Jesus, and the requirements were the same.
The next chapter is all about the teachings of Islam. The website won’t let you look further than the chapter titles and descriptions, so I can’t say firsthand anything about it, but from other parents in the book the letter came from say there is a huge emphasis on Islam. I am a nanny for a 13 year old girl. I was rather shocked when she came home one day with homework asking her to state what the greater and lesser jihad were in her life. Excuse me? I’d like to see homework come home asking her to relate the bible to her own life. Don’t think that will be happening anytime soon.
The next chapter is titled “Contributions of Muslims to World Civilizations.” In a book filled with countries and their struggle through the medieval time period, I fail to see the relevance of this chapter (not to mention the whole unit). Why are the Muslims so important that their religion must be taught in great detail to our children?
Take a look at a few links I found regarding the book. Wikipedia: History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is a Middle East "history" textbook from Teachers' Curriculum Institute that was used by 7th grade students. The book is full of religious propaganda and states Muslim myths and superstitions as fact. When a reviewer on Textbook League asked an officer of TCI to tell him what the source or sources of the textbook was, the officer refused to reply.[1] A principal at Houston Elementary said that the book does comply with a California state standard that requires students to learn about diverse religions which is false.[2] The book's false information was brought up to the Scottsdale, Arizona school district when a mother of one of the students thought something with the book was wrong when she saw that Islam was the only religion with a timeline.[3] The book was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district's curriculum in 2005.[4]
In the news (http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4845): Parents against it characterize it as an insidious form of Islamic proselytizing - definitely not sitting well with a Marin County mother who spoke to PRB News.
She said, "I filed a challenge to the book as a concerned parent, primarily because I think the public school system has no business teaching religion.
"I don't want my son to be learning about religion -- his own, or any other -- at school via distorted and corrupted textbooks, and I am outraged that there is religious proselytizing in and through public schools," she added.
Her filing in a matter of record with Marin County schools, but she requested her name not appear in print for safety reasons.
The textbook she and others are concerned about devotes approximately one-fourth of its 400 pages to Islam data that contains "way too much" overt religious content, the Marin mom said.
While other religions are cast in a negative light, Islam comes across as benevolent and uplifting, she added…..
The Marin mom is not wavering from her quest for a closer look at the textbook by her school board officials.
She is undaunted in her request that the books in which she finds pro-Islamist propaganda be discontinued, as another school district in Scottsdale, Arizona so decided in 2005.
In a series of emails she shared with PRB News, the pattern emerged of teachers downplaying her concerns about bias, indoctrination, and religious stories being presented as fact.
In a statement to one teacher, she said, "I realize that some of you may be under the impression that I do not want my own child learning about different cultures or religions. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.
"While I believe that everyone should have the right to practice (or not) their religion freely and without persecution," she added, "I also believe it is unacceptable for children to be exposed to religious proselytizing at school."
She closed one e-mail response with, "Our children should not only not be ‘influenced' -- wittingly or not -- to accept Islam (or any other religion), they should be protected from such ‘influence' in our public schools."
Dawa.net (http://www.dawanet.com/methods/publicschool.dawapublic.asp): Schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students. Muslim students should take ample advantage of this opportunity and present to their schoolmates the beautiful beliefs of Islam.
(I’m sorry, what? “The beautiful beliefs of Islam”???? What beautiful beliefs? That woman and children should strap bombs to themselves and walk into an area of “infidels” and kill themselves, taking all those nasty infidels with them? That all of America should be annihilated? I’m sorry, but I definitely do NOT want my children subjected to this kind of exposure.)
Dawa.net:
“The bottom line
We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam with Allah's guidance, Insha Allah (if God wills).”
Blog comment: “The entries on Islam are incredibly dishonest--you would think by reading the description on Sharia law that it was a benevolent help to sustain joyful lives.” http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/comments/152422
http://www.textbookleague.org/tci-az.htm: “At the Mohave Middle School in Scottsdale, Arizona, students who took a 7th-grade social-studies course during the 2004-2005 school year were subjected to gross, prolonged indoctrination in Islam.
Much of the indoctrination was delivered in a corrupt schoolbook titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, produced by a commercial publishing company that calls itself the Teachers' Curriculum Institute (TCI). The writers of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, by relentlessly presenting Muslim religious tales and religious beliefs as matters of historical fact, have striven hard to induce students to embrace Islam.
The heavy indoctrination material in History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is concentrated in chapters 8 and 9. This material consists overwhelmingly of Islamic religious propaganda. It includes blatant preaching as well as deceptive claims and extensive fraudulent narratives dealing with the beginnings of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the inception of the Koran. These claims and narratives are disguised as accounts of history. They actually are restatements of Muslim fables and superstitions.
While TCI's book disseminates and endorses Muslim legends and pseudohistorical fantasies in abundance, it ignores history. TCI's writers have scorned historical scholarship, and they have concealed everything that historians have discovered or deduced about the origins of Islam, about Muhammad, and about the emergence of the Koran.
By depicting the dogmas and fantasies of Muslim believers as history, and by simultaneously excluding the findings and deductions of historians, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond subjects students to a sectarian double-whammy.”
I could go on and on and on, but I'm not trying to write a book here. Suffice to say, if you find that your child is using this textbook, lodge a complaint with your school district, and tell your child's teacher that your child will not be reading this textbook nor completing any of the accompanying assignments. It is your right, as your child's parent, to request a different, more appropriate textbook and assignments. Don't let your child's teacher tell you otherwise. That is your child being indoctrinated, not the teacher's.
“In November 2007, I caught a segment on Fox news on evening that piqued my interest. Sean Hannity was reporting on parents complaining about Islamic content in a middle school history textbook. He commented that in a Lodi, California, Public school you can’t mention Christmas, but you could teach Islam. At the center of the controversy was History Alive! Medieval World (HAMW), the book my own son was using in his seventh-grade history class at the public middle school he attends.
Until I saw a picture of the book on TV, I have to admit I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I was aware that California seventh-grade educational standards called for analyzing “the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages.” But I also knew that other religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, are studied in the sixth grade. Although it did occur to me that there seems to be a disproportionate emphasis on Islam, I was skeptical that a textbook approved by the state of California for use in public school classrooms would actually teach religion (as opposed to teaching about religion in a historical context).
Because I wanted to see for myself what the brouhaha was all about, I asked my son if I could see his copy of HAMW. After poring over the chapters about Islam for the next few hours, I was shocked. I not only agreed that HAMW includes religious content that has no place in a public school, but thought the book was even more inappropriate than portrayed on Fox News. Not only did the book speak of angels and prophecies and praying with prophets in caves, but it contained inaccuragte information, as well as insidious anti-semitic content.
Some chapters had little to do with presenting historical fact and seemed to propagandize present day political issues. Fore example, the chapter titled “Muhammad’s Teaching Meets with Resistance” suddenly shifts from the year 619 to end with a remark that “to this day Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims.” (Not only is this comment out of context, but it follows a passage that sounds like something from the Koran: “The horse then guided Muhammad through the seven levels of heaven, and Muhammad met Allah.”)…….
Following are excerpts from my response addressing both the teacher’s and TCI’s e-mails:
…N. has not addressed my primary complaint, i.e., that rather than teaching about Islam and the spread of Islam in the context of history per California standards, History Alive! contains overtly religious content inappropriate for a public school setting.
….Students in public school history classes should not be studying about the Koran and the Pillars of Faith in depth, any more than they should study the torah and the Ten commandments. Nor should they be asked theological cquestions, e.g., to comparing Allah to the God of the Jews and the Christians. It is just as inappropriate to ask public school students about God, angels and judgment from a Muslim perspective as from a Jewish, Christian or any other religious perspective.
…History Alive! definitely presents some of the material in a biased manner that portrays Jews negatively compared to Muslims… I also find History Alive! to be imbalanced in that there is no mention, for example, of the role jihad plays in the Crusades, military conquests and the spread of Islam, while the concept of dhimmi is glossed over as a “special tax” with no mention of the oppression or religious persecution it represents. Also, History Alive! interjects inappropriate political commentary, eg., an out of context sentence that states that Jerusalem is important to this day for Muslims in a section that is supposed to be about historical resistance to the spread of Islam…..
Just the other night I attended a program at my son’s school (not his class), entitled, “Islam: A Presentation for Parents.” What I saw was deeply disturbing. The students had difficulty distinguishing historical fact from religious myth and stories, as they told about Muhammad accompanied by the angel Gabriel, flying on the back of a winged horse to Jerusalem, praying with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and being carried up to heaven by Gabriel to meet god. Although these same students supposedly learned about Judaism and Christianity last year in sixth grade, they were not asked to build models of churches and synagogues, to research biblical prophecies, or to spend an evening telling teir parents about the Ten commandments or the gospel according to John.
Not that that would have been appropriate either. However, I am sure that if there had been a similar event about another religion in a public school,, there would have been a huge outcry. Therefore, I have to ask: Why a presentation specifically dedicated to Islam? I can’t help but wonder why teachers in America’s public schools are so intent on teaching American students about Islam, that they are overlooking our American Constitution, which not only guarantees freedom of religion, but is supposed to protect from the risk of religious indoctrination.”
Anne.
I decided to check out what I could find about this book. I found a table of contents at this website: http://info.teachtci.com/products/wProgramChapters.aspx?ProgramID=9. It has 8 units. Units 1, 7, and 8 deal with Europe, Unit 3 is about Africa, Unit 4 is about China, and Unit 6 is about America. There is a theme, is there not? It is all about countries, and what they went through during Medieval times. However, stuck in there between Europe and Africa is a unit dedicated to Islam. Islam is not a country, it is a religion. I found this odd, that there would be an entire unit devoted to a religion, when all the other chapters are about countries. So I looked deeper.
One chapter in the unit is devoted to a country, or more specifically a group of countries known as the Arabian Peninsula. This seems appropriate. The description says that the students study four environments – the desert, oases, the coastal plain, and mountains – to discover how they affected ways of life on the Arabian Peninsula. However, the entire next chapter is devoted to the “prophet Muhammad” and the students are required to create an illustrated manuscript that retells the story of Muhammad’s life in their own words. Imagine the lawsuits that would come pouring in if the chapter was about the life of Jesus, and the requirements were the same.
The next chapter is all about the teachings of Islam. The website won’t let you look further than the chapter titles and descriptions, so I can’t say firsthand anything about it, but from other parents in the book the letter came from say there is a huge emphasis on Islam. I am a nanny for a 13 year old girl. I was rather shocked when she came home one day with homework asking her to state what the greater and lesser jihad were in her life. Excuse me? I’d like to see homework come home asking her to relate the bible to her own life. Don’t think that will be happening anytime soon.
The next chapter is titled “Contributions of Muslims to World Civilizations.” In a book filled with countries and their struggle through the medieval time period, I fail to see the relevance of this chapter (not to mention the whole unit). Why are the Muslims so important that their religion must be taught in great detail to our children?
Take a look at a few links I found regarding the book. Wikipedia: History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is a Middle East "history" textbook from Teachers' Curriculum Institute that was used by 7th grade students. The book is full of religious propaganda and states Muslim myths and superstitions as fact. When a reviewer on Textbook League asked an officer of TCI to tell him what the source or sources of the textbook was, the officer refused to reply.[1] A principal at Houston Elementary said that the book does comply with a California state standard that requires students to learn about diverse religions which is false.[2] The book's false information was brought up to the Scottsdale, Arizona school district when a mother of one of the students thought something with the book was wrong when she saw that Islam was the only religion with a timeline.[3] The book was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district's curriculum in 2005.[4]
In the news (http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4845): Parents against it characterize it as an insidious form of Islamic proselytizing - definitely not sitting well with a Marin County mother who spoke to PRB News.
She said, "I filed a challenge to the book as a concerned parent, primarily because I think the public school system has no business teaching religion.
"I don't want my son to be learning about religion -- his own, or any other -- at school via distorted and corrupted textbooks, and I am outraged that there is religious proselytizing in and through public schools," she added.
Her filing in a matter of record with Marin County schools, but she requested her name not appear in print for safety reasons.
The textbook she and others are concerned about devotes approximately one-fourth of its 400 pages to Islam data that contains "way too much" overt religious content, the Marin mom said.
While other religions are cast in a negative light, Islam comes across as benevolent and uplifting, she added…..
The Marin mom is not wavering from her quest for a closer look at the textbook by her school board officials.
She is undaunted in her request that the books in which she finds pro-Islamist propaganda be discontinued, as another school district in Scottsdale, Arizona so decided in 2005.
In a series of emails she shared with PRB News, the pattern emerged of teachers downplaying her concerns about bias, indoctrination, and religious stories being presented as fact.
In a statement to one teacher, she said, "I realize that some of you may be under the impression that I do not want my own child learning about different cultures or religions. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.
"While I believe that everyone should have the right to practice (or not) their religion freely and without persecution," she added, "I also believe it is unacceptable for children to be exposed to religious proselytizing at school."
She closed one e-mail response with, "Our children should not only not be ‘influenced' -- wittingly or not -- to accept Islam (or any other religion), they should be protected from such ‘influence' in our public schools."
Dawa.net (http://www.dawanet.com/methods/publicschool.dawapublic.asp): Schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students. Muslim students should take ample advantage of this opportunity and present to their schoolmates the beautiful beliefs of Islam.
(I’m sorry, what? “The beautiful beliefs of Islam”???? What beautiful beliefs? That woman and children should strap bombs to themselves and walk into an area of “infidels” and kill themselves, taking all those nasty infidels with them? That all of America should be annihilated? I’m sorry, but I definitely do NOT want my children subjected to this kind of exposure.)
Dawa.net:
“The bottom line
We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam with Allah's guidance, Insha Allah (if God wills).”
Blog comment: “The entries on Islam are incredibly dishonest--you would think by reading the description on Sharia law that it was a benevolent help to sustain joyful lives.” http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/comments/152422
http://www.textbookleague.org/tci-az.htm: “At the Mohave Middle School in Scottsdale, Arizona, students who took a 7th-grade social-studies course during the 2004-2005 school year were subjected to gross, prolonged indoctrination in Islam.
Much of the indoctrination was delivered in a corrupt schoolbook titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, produced by a commercial publishing company that calls itself the Teachers' Curriculum Institute (TCI). The writers of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, by relentlessly presenting Muslim religious tales and religious beliefs as matters of historical fact, have striven hard to induce students to embrace Islam.
The heavy indoctrination material in History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is concentrated in chapters 8 and 9. This material consists overwhelmingly of Islamic religious propaganda. It includes blatant preaching as well as deceptive claims and extensive fraudulent narratives dealing with the beginnings of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the inception of the Koran. These claims and narratives are disguised as accounts of history. They actually are restatements of Muslim fables and superstitions.
While TCI's book disseminates and endorses Muslim legends and pseudohistorical fantasies in abundance, it ignores history. TCI's writers have scorned historical scholarship, and they have concealed everything that historians have discovered or deduced about the origins of Islam, about Muhammad, and about the emergence of the Koran.
By depicting the dogmas and fantasies of Muslim believers as history, and by simultaneously excluding the findings and deductions of historians, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond subjects students to a sectarian double-whammy.”
I could go on and on and on, but I'm not trying to write a book here. Suffice to say, if you find that your child is using this textbook, lodge a complaint with your school district, and tell your child's teacher that your child will not be reading this textbook nor completing any of the accompanying assignments. It is your right, as your child's parent, to request a different, more appropriate textbook and assignments. Don't let your child's teacher tell you otherwise. That is your child being indoctrinated, not the teacher's.
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