Amid a new report of Islamic
indoctrination in public schools, the American
Center for Law and Justice is fighting back
with a petition drive that already has garnered 120,000 signatures.
Earlier this year, public-school students in Madison,
Wisconsin, were given an assignment to “pretend you are Muslim,” while students
in Florida were instructed to “recite the Five Pillars of Islam as a prayer,
make Islamic prayer rugs and perform other Muslim rituals,” ACLJ said Monday.
Now, parents of public-school students in Tennessee are
protesting assignments that include writing a declaration that Allah is supreme
and textbooks that recount Islamic doctrines as facts instead of beliefs.
Nearly 120,000 people have signed ACLJ’s petition demanding
a halt to such teaching.
“What if your child or grandchild’s public school forced
them to write out the Shahada – the Islamic conversion creed – while having
skipped Christianity?” the organization asked.
“What if your child’s study guide had a section called
‘Origins of Islam’ that included statements such as, ‘Around the age of 40, the
angel Gabriel told Muhammad that he was to be a prophet of Allah.’
“Stated as fact, not belief,” the ACLJ said.
The
Columbia Daily Herald in Middle Tennessee reported details of the allegations.
In the Maury County school district, the paper reported
parent Brandee Porterfield said her daughter “brought home school materials
containing the Five Pillars of Islam.”
But the school skipped the textbook’s section on
Christianity.
School officials explained, she told the Herald, that
Christianity was not part of the state’s standards, so it wasn’t covered.
“I have a big problem with that. From a historical point of
view, that’s a lot of history these kids are missing,” Porterfield told the
newspaper. “Also, for them to spend three weeks on Islam after having skipped
Christianity, it seems to be that they are making a choice about which religion
to discuss.”
She said her concerns were about her seventh-grade daughter
being taught the “Shahada,” the profession of Islamic faith.
“From a religion point of view, if the schools are going to
be teaching religion in history, they need to teach them all equally,” she
said.
The ACLJ reported called it “Islamic indoctrination right
here in our schools.”
The organization said Maury County school officials admitted
they were addressing “some sensitive topics” in class and there appeared to be
some “confusion.”
“That’s outrageous,” ACLJ said. “The indoctrination of
students with the precepts of converting to Islam and forcing them to recite
‘Allah is the only god’ aren’t ‘sensitive topics’; it’s unconstitutional.
“Imagine the outcry from the ACLU, Freedom From Religion
Foundation (FFRF), and other leftist and angry atheist organizations if a study
guide states, ‘Jesus is the Son of God,’ and forced children to recite the
Lord’s Prayer.”
Now, Sekulow’s organization said it is taking action.
“We’re in direct contact with a number of parents and
concerned citizens, we’re taking on new clients, and preparing critical demand
letters and open records requests to these schools and school districts,” the
group said.
“It is a clear constitutional principle that public
education may not indoctrinate young minds into a religion. Teachers and
schools may teach what different faith traditions believe and how that has
affected world history and geography. But a school cannot censor Christianity
and promote Islam.”
The Daily Herald reported Jan Hanvey, a middle school
supervisor for Maury County Public Schools, said the curriculum has covered the
subject for decades, and Buddhism and Hinuism also are covered.
She told the newspaper the chapter on Christianity was not
skipped but was being delayed.
The newspaper cited state advisories that called for
seventh-grade social studies to begin with the Islamic world and then move to
Africa. The “Age of Exploration” follows, which continues into eighth grade.
Hanvey told the newspaper Christianity is discussed in the
“Age of Exploration,” partly because religious persecution is one of the
reasons for a search for a new world.
Fox
News reported Maury County Director of Schools
Chris Marczak said his teachers “work together to make sure that our students
are learning what is expected through the Tennessee academic standards.”
“For this last section on the Islamic World this past week,
our educators had students complete an assignment that had an emphasis on
Islamic faith,” he said. “The assignment covered some sensitive topics that are
of importance to Islamic religion and caused some confusion around whether we
are asking students to believe in or simply understand the religion.”
WND
reported earlier this year teachers and
administrators at a Pennsylvania school district attended a training session on
Islam and Arabic culture at taxpayer expense.
The workshop in the town of Lebanon
was led by a former district Arabic translator, Mohamed Omar, who took time off
from his Department of Human Services job in Philadelphia “to share his
knowledge of Islam with the staff,” the Lebanon
Daily News reported.
“I think this is the first time ever in the United States
that a school district goes to a mosque,” mosque founder Hamid Housni told the
Daily News. “Usually a representative of a mosque goes somewhere. We don’t have
words to explain to you how we appreciate that. This is very, very special.”
In 2006, WND reported
students in Nyssa, Oregon, were learning Muslim prayers and dressing as
Muslims.
Another assignment was to learn the “Five Pillars” of Islam,
study the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and listen to guest speakers, including an
American Muslim who came dressed in her religious costume to talk about her
Quran.
A resulting lawsuit regarding the
curriculum was
similar to a previous case in which the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually ruled such indoctrination was
permissible as “cultural education.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/students-forced-to-recite-allah-is-the-only-god/
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