Picture a world of a new education. Everybody will attend three classes: reading the native language in a pre-approved form, an “altered” chemistry and physics that attributes everything to the state philosophy, and a new philosophy course featuring the tenants and history of the imposed state religion that everybody is required to follow under threat of punishment. Anything not relating to the state’s ideology is prohibited and any teacher who dares to deviate from the new path is sacked and punished.

No, it’s not here in the United States. But there is another area within a region of the world that has rapidly fallen into crisis and invasion over recent months under the takeover of a new organization seen by many as the successor to Al-Qaeda. You may not know what is happening in eastern Syria and northern Iraq under the new caliphate of the terrorist organization of Islamic State.

But you should.

For under Islamic State (aka IS or ISIS), this new education of censorship has become a reality practically unparalleled in the modern world. For in the wake of the new school year, in the territory they have captured over the past few months, IS has issued its new decrees regarding just how education will happen for the children of the caliphate. Posted on billboards and street poles around the territory, subjects of math, social studies, arts, literature, music, history (including history of Christianity and other religions), and ethnic or nationalistic ideology, along with any form of patriotism for Syria or Iraq, have been banned. Many sciences have been censored as well, with some key topics in chemistry, physics, and philosophy being altered in teaching to suit the purposes of control for the caliphate.

In the Western world, such censorship of learning can seem inconceivable. Students in America are used to a variety of classes with sources and topics from multiple areas of the world. If one wants to study sciences, philosophy, theology, literature, or the arts, that is possible in the Western world. But that does not happen everywhere.

Keep in mind, IS is not some backwater organization that controls hideouts and naught else. This is an organization sprung in the Syrian conflict that has forcibly taken and established its own rule and taxation over vast amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq, including Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul. Millions of people now live under their rule, and these people are not normal terrorists. They are not even normal Islamic fundamentalists.

They are a very organized and dangerous group that have established unprecedented control (not influence, control) in the territory of multiple sovereign states. Their brutality towards anyone who is not a Sunni Muslim has gotten them denounced by not only the western world, but also other Arab states and even Al-Qaeda itself. They have beheaded hostages, declared eradicating Shi’ites their first priority, and proclaimed themselves as leaders of a new caliphate.

And now they have direct control of regional education.