"Pro-Islamic" Textbooks in Texas

I recently read the online Ed Week article "Before Texas Panel:  'Pro-Islamic' Textbook Bias" by Erik W. Robelen, which made me want to hit my head on the desk.  The overview of the article involves the Texas state board of ed's 7-6 decision on a resolution to warn textbook publishers about "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian distortions" in recent textbooks.  The board claims that it should reject any textbook which favor one religion over another.  However, their examples of recent pro-Islamic bias is one textbook (which was replaced in 2003) that devoted "120 student text lines to Christian beliefs, practices, and holy writings, but 248 (more than twice as many) to those of Islam" & included information about the 1099 Christian Crusades massacre of Muslims in Jerusalem but left out Muslim massacres.

The notion of judging fairness and adequacy by a text line count and a tit-for-tat historical event count seems like a ludicrous and wildly inaccurate way to measure content.  The question should not be "How many text lines are devoted to each religion?"  Instead, we should be asking if the content is accurate and will it help students develop a deeper/wider understanding of a culture.  In this case, politics seems to be getting in the way of actual content questions.  (The article implied that the board is controlled by conservative GOP members.)

Ironically, most Americans could use more information on all religions, including their own (and I'm not just saying that because my undergrad degree is in comparative religion).  Recently, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life conducted a brief (15 question) survey of Americans' understanding of some basic world religion information. (To check out the survey: Pew Survey) The groups that self-identified as Atheists, Agnostics, Jews & Mormons scored the best while some of the most evangelical Protestant/Catholic groups scored the worst.  No group scored better than 63%.   That indicates to me that we all have information to learn about our own religions and about others, and that will be the only way we understand and respect each other more.  Luckily, future boards are not held to this particular resolution.