Anti-Islam Bigots on the Texas State Board of Education Strike Again

These fundamentalist Christian yahoos on the Texas State Board of Education are playing the victim card yet again in a thinly-veiled expression of anti-Islamic bigotry. The claim this time is that school textbooks give an imbalanced picture of Islam versus Christianity and claim that this imbalance paints a relatively positive picture of Islam and a relatively negative picture of Christianity. And this is absolute bunk. Let's just get down to some facts:

A national poll released earlier this week by the Angus Reid polling firm found that a narrow majority of Americans holds a generally unfavorable opinion of Islam, with 45 percent saying it is a religion that encourages violence. By contrast, only one American in 10 believes that either Christianity or Judaism "encourages violence,” the poll found.

To which one can only say with some irony to those bigots in Texas: "Yeah, with statistics like these, it's clear that people educated in this country are coming away from their schooling with an overly rosy picture of Islam (just a mere 45% Americans think of Islam as religion that encourages violence) and an overly negative picture of Christianity and Judaism (because of that excessively high 10% of Americans who think these religions encourage violence)." Do these bigots not think Americans are smart enough to see the wool that they are attempting to pull over our eyes? Do they think Christianity and Judaism in this country are more reviled and that Islam is more embraced here? These people are simply nuts. To them, 45% of Americans holding such a negative view of Islam (a religion that encourages violence) is not enough, and yet 90% of Americans holding a positive views of Christianity/Judaism (religions that do not encourage violence, i.e. religions of peace) is too little -- and that this somehow is the product of an imbalance in textbook coverage? Get real. If anything, this paints a clear picture of imbalance in exactly the opposite direction.