WHAT IS HAPPENING IN OUR COUNTRY? – AT 8:09 A.M. ET:  While we're being told by CNN and assorted pundits that anyone who opposes the mosque at Ground Zero must be a bigot, a stunning development in New York State shows the degree to which Islam is being whitewashed at the expense of Christianity.

The New York State regents exams, given to high-school students to test their knowledge, have been among the most respected in the country.  Given that background, consider this:

State testmakers played favorites when quizzing high-schoolers on world religions -- giving Islam and Buddhism the kid-gloves treatment while socking it to Christianity, critics say.

Teachers complain that the reading selections from the Regents exam in global history and geography given last week featured glowing passages pertaining to Muslim society but much more critical essay excerpts on the subject of Christianity.

"There should have been a little balance in there," said one Brooklyn teacher who administered the exam but did not want to be identified.

"To me, this was offensive because it's just so inappropriate and the timing of it was piss-poor," he added, referring to the debate over the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

The most troubling passage came from Daniel Roselle's "A World History: A Cultural Approach," observers said.

The passage reads: "Wherever they went, the Moslems [sic] brought with them their love of art, beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their culture was superior in many ways to that of western Christendom."

Meanwhile, an excerpt listing the common procedures used by Christian friars to introduce the religion in Latin America stated that "idols, temples and other material evidences of paganism [were] destroyed," and "Christian buildings [were] often constructed on sites of destroyed native temples" -- and built with free Indian labor, to boot.

"I can see why some people might see these questions as skewed," said Mark MacWilliams, a religious-studies professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate Canton. "Why does the exam seem to have only documents that portray Islam as a religion of peace, civilization and refinement, while it includes documents about Christianity that show it was anything but peaceful in the Spanish conquest of the Americas?"

COMMENT:  That is only a taste of what is happening all over the United States.  Does it reflect some sudden love of Islam by "educators"?  Of course not.  It reflects the infiltration into education of the hard left, which will always boost those forces that hate the United States.  And, of course, it reflects the contempt for Western religion that the hard left has always felt. 

Ask the question:  What are my children being taught?  It will take courage to ask the question, for you'll be accused of stupidity, McCarthyism and bigotry simply for asking.

August 24, 2010