Here’s a letter that I found on Malaysiakini. Can anyone verify this?
——————————————————————–
School textbooks advocating murder

Very Concerned Mother

May 25, 06 4:20pm

I wonder if the
present government is aware that violence and murder is being preached
through its own curricula and textbooks. This is not an exaggeration. I
urge the government to seriously consider if its curriculum for Islamic
Education is what it wants to feed young minds.

I was shocked
and disturbed to find out that the secondary school syllabus for
Islamic Education (Pendidikan Islam) includes learning how to deal with
apostates and that one of the prescriptions is to kill them off.

In
many widely-used Pendidikan Islam workbooks (which base their texts on
the Ministry of Education’s syllabus), imposing a death sentence on
apostates is offered as a religious duty. Allow me to extract some of
what is written (and the original Malay version for readers to check on
context and accuracy).

For example, under the heading ‘Ways of Dealing with Apostates’ (Cara menangani orang murtad), the following precepts are given:

1. Advise and persuade the offender to repent and return to Islam
   (menasihati dan memintanya supaya bertaubat dan kembali kepada Islam)

2. To impose a death sentence (melaksanakan hukuman bunuh)

The text also has a heading which reads: ‘The death sentence against
an apostate who refuses to repent and return to Islam has several
virtues’. (Hukuman bunuh terhadap orang murtad yang tidak mahu kembali
kepada ajaran Islam mempunyai beberapa hikmah).

Among which are:

1. To show to others at large that Islam is not a religion to be
   mocked at will (menunjukkan kepada orang ramai bahawa Islam bukanlah
   agama yang boleh dipersenda dengan sewenang-wenangnya).

2. So that no one will dare to denigrate the Islamic religion (supaya tidak ada orang yang berani memburuk-burukkan agama Islam).

I am not sure now whether the hudud laws passed in Kelantan and
Terengganu are now being activated. But for the rest of Malaysia,
punishing someone labeled apostate is nothing but a grave act!

We
live in a society where everything mouthed by leaders and the
authorities (textbooks included) are accepted as the gospel truth. How
can we be sure that children fed the above commands will not one day
act to fulfill their jihad?

Sadly, it is going to be of the
brutal kind and we shall trace the answers behind such a tragedy to our
very own government-endorsed textbooks.

Kenny Drew Jr (All About Jazz) rants about the decline of black
music into negativity and stupidity. But it’s an abyss filled with greenbacks….

Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of my
favorite music from that time, and to be honest, I am disgusted and sickened at
how far our music has declined in the quality of the music and its message. How
the hell did we get from Motown to Death Row; from Earth Wind & Fire to
Ludacris; from Luther Vandross to 50Cent?

I remember a time in our music when songs
had great melodies and chord changes, you actually had to be able to sing or
play an instument to become a musician, and Michael Jackson was black! It’s a
sad commentary on our culture and society when the biggest thing in popular
music is an ex-crack dealer whose claim to fame is being shot nine times, and
one of the greatest entertainers in the world was on trial for child
molestation. If that’s not a sign of the coming Apocalypse, I don’t know what
is! And if 50Cent was really shot nine times, why couldn’t one of those bullets
have hit a vital organ? Who the f***  was shooting at him: Stevie Wonder? And as
far as all these black rappers getting shot, how about a little equal
opportunity violence here? Can’t somebody pop a cap in Eminem’s white ass? [Read the rest here]

About Kenney Drew Jr

C.S. Lewis was an unhappy
victim of public schools and he said so in his autobiography Surprised By Joy.

“If the parents in each
generation always or often knew what really goes on at their sons’ schools, the
history of education would be very different.”

The sad truth is, most
parents are happy to leave education to schools because of one or two reasons;
(1) Both mom and dad are working professionals with little time to pay
attention to junior’s schooling, and (2) both parents believe that educating
children are beyond their competence anyway. Leave it to the experts, they say.
We all have ideals, not least regarding the kind of schools and education we
think any decent child deserves, or what any government is obliged to offer.
But wishful thinking is a sheer waste of energy is it not?

You can see I am a pessimist
by inclination. Unlike my friend – let’s call him Bob – who thinks one can’t
possibly maintain sanity in Malaysia without a modicum of hopeful thinking. It’s easy to
walk away, he says, but you can still make a difference if you work at it, try
hard enough, push the envelope. I have had dreams too, but present realities
have all but convinced me that one ought to work towards change but I’ll be
working harder on alternatives. It’s one of the primary reasons I
homeschool.