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Newsweek reports that ISIS has announced a new curriculum banning the study of math for students in areas of Iraq and Syria it controls. Also banned will be the teaching of music, social studies (especially anything about elections or democracy), and sports. Books cannot include any reference to evolution and teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws." Students will instead learn all about "belonging to Islam," and how to "denounce infidelity and infidels." Teachers who break the rules "will be punished," according to fliers posted in ISIS-controlled territory.
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The Islamic State Bans Teaching Math to Students
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Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 19 2014, @07:29PM
I think, though I'm not sure, you need to check your calendar. I'm talking about the period characterized by cities like Samarkand along the silk road. Yes, there were wild people along the frontiers, like in Egypt, but the civilization was peaceful. (Yes, there was civil unrest. There nearly always is if there aren't external enemies.) These were people who made their wealth from the caravan trade along the silk route...and depended for their wealth on the caravans feeling secure within their walls, and relatively secure within the territory that they controlled.
For that matter, the Muslim conquerors of northern Africa and into Spain were considerably less oppressive than the Christians of the same time period. Their preference was not to kill those they couldn't convert, but rather to subject them to a punitive tax rate until they changed their minds. (Not that they weren't fierce in battle, I'm talking about times where there weren't armies in collision.)
OTOH, the Muslim countries do traditionally have a greater tolerance for slavery and physically brutal punishments for religious infractions than do modern Christian nations. (Do note the change in time.) The problem here is that the physically brutal punishments are written into Muslim tradition, where the Christians were always conflicted about this, and Jesus is essentially explicit in denouncing it. Mohamed, in contrast, considered it reasonable and proper. This makes it difficult for the adherents to his scripture to adapt to the changed circumstances. (Though one should note that the "followers" of Jesus have often been quite willing to claim religious sanction for brutality and violence, no matter what the words of their "Savior" say.)
So while I will agree that the fanatical followers of a religion may well have attitudes towards violence that are different from the human baseline, I'm not at all convinced that this is true for the ordinary adherents of that religion. (And I'm not certain how well founded in the Koran is Sharia Law, though it is clearly a strong part of existing Muslim culture. It's amazing how different people are willing to make different generalizations from the same facts.)
Also consider that many of the Catholic inquisitors may have both read the Bible and yet believed that what they were doing was sanctioned by Jesus. Verbal beliefs don't necessarily have much to do with belief motivated actions. Often the later verbalizations sound more like justifications only constructed after the fact, but then believed.
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