World of Islam children's books spark protest from US Muslims

A series of US children's textbooks on Islam contains misleading and inflammatory rhetoric about the religion, inaccurately portraying its followers as hostile and deserving of suspicion, according to a US Muslim civil liberties group. The Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has begun what it calls a public awareness campaign against the World of Islam books by Mason Crest Publishing. "The overall theme of the books is that Muslims are inherently violent, that Islam is a second-rate religion and that one should be wary of Muslims in any society," said Moein Khawaja, the chapter's civil rights director. "These books do not fulfill the mission of a school, which is to educate."