America has a dearth of qualified Arabic and other critical language translators. So, you would think that training Americans in Arabic as a second language in colleges and universities would take a priority after 9/11.

Joel Pollak, a Harvard Law Student, tells us in this Washington Post op ed that the course readings in Arabic 101 are laced with propaganda for the Jihadis engaging in anti Israel and anti-US advocacy.

Sounds familiar after having been engaged in the recent Islamic Saudi Academy hate text controversy in Fairfax County, Virginia. . Problem is, that, as Pollak notes, more universities are offering these Arabic courses and thousands of students are electing to take them exposing them to this propaganda cum taqiyya.

Note the growth in these Arabic courses:

Here’s what Pollak found in the basic text, “Al-Kitaab” and supporting DVD used in his Harvard University Arabic course;

Most maps of the Middle East in “Al-Kitaab” do not include Israel, though a substantial minority of Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, are native Arabic speakers. Alongside simple Arabic poems, students read about anti-Western heroes such as Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The DVD that comes with “Al-Kitaab” includes footage of Nasser’s mass rallies in Cairo — including slogans in Arabic and French such as “Brother Nations in Struggle, We Are By Your Side.” These scenes of totalitarian rage are fondly described by the narrator as “dreams of his youth.”

The accompanying lesson describes the highlights of Nasser’s career, including the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the formation of the United Arab Republic. No mention is made of Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War or of Nasser’s brutal, repressive rule. In my class, we were asked to recite a passage about Nasser to practice our vocalization. (I refused.)
The last lesson in the book — which we skipped — features Maha’s mother speaking wistfully of her childhood in Palestine: “My childhood was taken from me!” Over mournful music on the DVD, she talks about returning to Jerusalem, as if she were a refugee, but the images suggest that she left voluntarily after the Six-Day War, when Israel offered citizenship to the Arab residents of East Jerusalem. The fact that Israel also claims Jerusalem as its capital is ignored.

My class watched three movies this semester, all with political themes. One was “West Beirut,” which cast Christians as the prime bad guys in Lebanon’s civil war (though, to be fair, there was plenty of hatred all around). Another was “The Tale of Three Jewels,” an allegorical film about Palestinian nationalism that portrayed Israeli soldiers as bloodthirsty child-killers.
The third movie, “Destiny,” told the story of the great medieval Islamic philosopher Averroes and his struggles against Islamic religious fundamentalism. It was a bit more nuanced than the first two. But the film omitted the fact that it was only through the Hebrew transcription of Averroes’s writings by Jewish scholars in Egypt that his works were preserved for posterity.

In conclusion, Pollak suggests, rightfully so, that federal underwriting of such propaganda in university Arabic language programs has to stop. And note who is publishing this text: our dhimmi friends at Georgetown U.