New textbook offers a Muslim alternative truth
A new textbook in history, written by Iman Hassani, is causing a stir in Denmark. The book states, for example, that Anders B. Breivik is a terrorist, while Omar El-Hussein, who was behind the attacks on the Krudttønden and the synagogue in 2016, was a “socially disturbed young man”. The author gives a distorted picture of what happened around the Muhammad crisis, and focused on Muslims who did not experience all the threats and terror that followed in the wake of the drawings. The term political brainwashing of youth is a close thought.
Iman Hassani is an MSc. in history and English and associate professor at Falkonergårdens Gymnasium, and the teaching book he has just authored is about the cultural meeting between Denmark and the Middle East. Hassani is himself from Yemen. Under the title “Denmark’s cultural encounters with the Middle East – from the Viking Age to the war on terror”, students in junior high and higher schools will be met with far-reaching views which are deeply worrying, says book reviewer Bent Blüdnikow in Berlingske, which gives the book dice roll 1.
In a section on Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammad cartoons, she writes that with the then culture editor Flemming Roses and the then editor-in-chief Jørn Mikkelsen (who was not the editor-in-chief, it was Carsten Juste) the cartoons were printed in Jyllands-Posten with the justification that Muslims “must accept their religious feelings become exposed to mockery, mockery and belittling’.
“Both Mikkelsen’s and Rose’s statements are an expression of exclusionary language that Muslims are not part of the national community, but instead are understood as someone who corrects it,” it says.
No, it is precisely the opposite that you want with the drawing, namely to make Muslims part of the community, because in Denmark we also expose religions to later comparison and satire.
Well, too bad for muslins
Blüdnikow further points out that in Hassani’s interpretation the consequences of the Muhammad crisis were “evenly distributed”, because even though the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Flemming Rose were indeed exposed to threats and had to live constantly with the protection of the security police (it can also be mentioned here that Westergaard was subjected to attempted murder with an ax and that until his death last year he lived in his own home as a prison, and that Jyllands-Posten itself experienced four terrorist attempts after publication), then Hassani probably believes that it can be equated with “a number of Muslim debaters also experienced harassment as a result of their involvement in the debate». She thus concludes that someone’s right to express themselves came at the expense of others.
So, if I understand the author correctly, the Muslims became victims of Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons and had their freedom of expression restricted. But no one has prevented Muslims and imams from participating in the public debate – quite the opposite. To make them victims of Jyllands-Posten is to turn things upside down, and to equate Kurt Westergaard and Flemming Rose with fanatical imams borders on the obscene.
Hassani interprets the Muhammad crisis, which she also refers to as the “drawing crisis”, as a continuation of the already existing value debate about us (the majority) and them (the minority) and that the gap just got bigger. Her conclusion is thus the following: Muslims’ sin over the drawings was due to the growing sin over a hostile Danish attitude.
“Of course” it is again the fault of the majority that Muslims get angry. The most obvious thing for Muslims all over the world is that they themselves do not need to take responsibility for their own actions and statements, the attitude seems to be.
Alternative facts
According to Blüdnikow, the textbook is permeated by Hassani’s subjective presentation. Anders B. Breivik is said to be a terrorist and a “Norwegian right-wing extremist”, while Omar El-Hussein gets a completely different description. “His motive behind the actions is not known, but after the murders there was a lot of debate about whether the murders were committed by a socially disturbed young man, or whether they had a larger ideological goal and could thus be a terrorist attack”, Hassani is quoted as saying, Blüdnikow states that we actually know that the terrorist El-Hussein was influenced by Islamic ideology, so why hide it? he asked.
And then space is reserved for the Israel/Palestine conflict, where the short version from Hassani is that Palestine has been robbed of its land. We also learn that al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the terrorist who was recently killed by the United States, acted out of political motives – not religion. We can remind you that al-Zawahiri was one of the masterminds behind the 9/11 terror. I think we can undoubtedly state, without having read the book, that regardless of what, who or how something is negative, it has nothing to do with Islam.
Hassani must have commented on social media that her book has only received one star in the book review from Blüdnikow, where she, on a thread with restrictions on who can comment, receives support by Taimullah Abun-Laban of Hizb ut-Tahrir, who believes Islam is the answer to most problems in Denmarkand Saif Shah Muhammad, who is imam in the Imam Ali Mosque in Nørrebro and who has connections to the Iranian clerical regime. Nice friends, that is.
Doesn’t bode well for the future
In conclusion, Blüdnikow points out that there is already a fierce culture battle going on in the education sector. “The students must now be indoctrinated with a storm against the norms and with extreme left-wing attitudes about cultural meetings and the Muhammad cartoons. It does not bode well for the future, and one fears what the students are told at Falkonergårdens Gymnasium.» But since this is a teaching book, we can assume that more schools and teachers will use it.
No, it does not bode well for the future. The Muslims who are trying to organize for more Islam in our society are becoming both more numerous and dangerous, dangerous in the sense that they have more and more internal positions where they exercise their ideology. In order to speed up Islam’s place in society, the perpetual offer card is drawn, which first began to push women forward, women who talked about their “free choices and their identity”, while now more and more often it is children who are put in the driver’s seat. Child who is “scared and insecure” in reference to the claim of ever-growing hatred of Islam and Islamophobia – in addition to the increasing fear of terrorism that Muslims supposedly suffer from. If someone points out fear of Islam-based terror, we are just ugly and stigmatizing.
It is also dangerous that they probably feel more and more secure, therefore they can also cheat and play with the truth, because they have large parts of the established media and politicians with them. Very few will criticize or rebuke, precisely from the fear of being blamed for Islamophobia and of creating contradictions.
We should probably get better at distinguishing between our friends and non-friends.
(Photomontage: HRS)