In Mosul, schools have been presented with a new set of rules, advertised in a two-page bulletin posted on mosques, in markets and on electricity poles. The statement, dated Sept. 5, cheered "good news of the establishment of the Islamic State Education Diwan by the caliph who seeks to eliminate ignorance, to spread religious sciences and to fight the decayed curriculum."

The new Mosul curriculum, allegedly issued by al-Baghdadi himself, stresses that any reference to the republics of Iraq or Syria must be replaced with "Islamic State." Pictures that violate its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam will be ripped out of books. Anthems and lyrics that encourage love of country are now viewed as a show of "polytheism and blasphemy," and are strictly banned.

The new curriculum even went so far as to explicitly ban Charles Darwin's theory of evolution — although it was not previously taught in Iraqi schools.

Abu Hassan and his fellow residents acknowledge the risks involved in keeping the children at home, but say that protecting their minds is equally important. "They will brainwash them and contaminate their thoughts," he said.

of course, there are some -- even on this site -- who will loudly proclaim that evolution is "just a theory" and that science is biased because it's not what g-d tells us. i don't know how it could be made more clear that religious extremism is harmful to a functioning society, and that "American Taliban" has never been a more apt description of the people holding US education hostage. the religious extremists in the US will never see they are indistinguishable from the Islamic extremists they rail against, even when their tactics and methods are shown to be equivalent to each other. i'm not sure this is something that will be fixed short of an all-out civil war in America, because being willfully ignorant is very difficult to combat when the truth will never be accepted as reality.