Citizens of Western societies have been consistently miseducated about the Islamic world and its peoples. The Miseducation of the West examines the ways in which educational institutions such as media and schools have shaped Western views of Islam. The nature of these messages tells readers as much, if not more, about Western self-images as they do about Islam and Islamic peoples. A perspective emerges of Islam as the other , which provided Western powers with an easy justification for the colonial conquest of many Islamic lands. In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries Britain, France, and Russia colonized much of the Muslim world, with the U.S. entering the picture after World War II. Economic colonization, the oil business, and interference with various governments and the way these events and people are represented in the formal curriculum of schools and the informal curriculum of the media are central dimensions of this work. The contemporary expression of these images is found in the efforts of the Bush administration and its conservative allies to teach the true meaning of 9/11 and Islamic terrorism. In various reports, conservative organizations with close ties to the Bush White House present forceful views of what historical concepts should be taught in U.S. schools. At the same time, Hollywood movies and the mass media consistently portray Arabs and Muslims as terrorists and fanatics. As Joe L. Kincheloe states in his thoughtful and sensitive introduction, these efforts represent a return to a 1954 view of America as the bearer of the democratic torch to the anti-democratic forces of the world. A critical education must counter such tendencies and work to conceptualize 9/11 in a variety of contexts. The essayists in this book write with different voices from diverse viewpoints, contributing to a discussion that will not end for years to come.
