West Virginia school district signs off on mosque’s ‘indoctrination’
of teachers. South Charleston High School was one
of at least three Charleston-area schools that allowed a local mosque to
solicit its teachers and invite them to a workshop on the Muslim culture and
religion.
By LEO HOHMANN
Parents and taxpayers in Charleston, West Virginia, are starting
to ask questions about what’s going on in their public schools after teachers
were recently targeted by what appears to have been a brazen violation of
separation of mosque and state.
Kanawha County Schools Superintendent Dr. Ronald Duerring gave
his approval for the Islamic Association of West Virginia to place personal
invitations into each teacher’s school mailbox to attend a “Get to Know Your
Muslim Student Event” at the mosque on Jan. 25.
“We came back from lunch [on Jan. 4] and found them in our
mailboxes,” said a teacher who asked not to be identified for fear of
professional repercussions.
The invitation included a request for teachers to “Please RSVP
by Jan. 19.” See the invitation below.
The invitation appeared in the teacher mailboxes of at least
three Charleston-area schools: South
Charleston High School, John Adams Middle School, Ruthlawn Elementary
When contacted by a local resident in his district and asked
about the Muslim outreach to teachers, Duerring said he had spoken with the
school-district attorney, Jim Withrow, who said there “wasn’t a problem” with
regard to church-state issues.
Duerring, reached by phone Thursday afternoon, said he did not
consider it at all controversial for schools in his district to be allowing
mosque leaders access to their teachers.
“That’s not a controversy for us and, no, I am not going to
answer any of your questions,” Duerring said before abruptly ending the
conversation.
Brenda Arthur, a local insurance broker who leads the
Greater Charleston ACT For America chapter, says she will approach the Kanawha
County Board of Education at its Thursday night meeting on Jan. 18 to address
the controversial invitations.
“I told them this is, to us, an egregious violation of the
separation of church and state. They only give you five minutes, so I’ve got to
give it my best shot,” said Arthur, a Jewish American who feels her tax dollars
should not be going toward the promotion of Islam in the schools.
Arthur said Islam appears to be advancing its agenda throughout
West Virginia in a series of aggressive moves.
The city’s only mosque – Islamic Association of West Virginia – doubled
in size about two years ago. CAIR, or the Council on American Islamic
Relations, announced plans last year to open an office in Charleston, likely in
anticipation of a second wave of 100 Muslim refugees arriving from Syria. Because
of a citizen backlash, however, that second wave never happened.
Episcopal Migration Ministries wanted to open a Charleston
office, and had been approved to do so in the final weeks of the Obama
administration, according to local media reports of
December 2016.
Catholic Charities had served as the only federal resettlement
contractor operating in West Virginia for the last 37 years. But Episcopal
Migration Ministries, doing business under the name “West Virginia Interfaith
Refugee Ministry” or VWIRM, was granted approval by Obama’s State Department to
open another office and resettle 100 Syrian refugees in and around Charleston.
But after Donald Trump took office in January he drastically
lowered the ceiling on the number of refugee arrivals, from 110,000 under Obama
down to 50,000 and then 45,000. The Episcopal-backed Interfaith Ministry’s big
plans for more Syrians were nixed.
But the Muslim Student Association and other Muslim
Brotherhood-affiliated groups have been upping their game in the state ever
since.
The MSA filed complaints of bullying on the campus of George
Washington High School in Charleston, according to a Nov. 11 report by
the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
The MSA joined with the San Jose, California-based Islamic
Networks Group, or ING, to put on a seminar at the mosque for students.
The ING goes around the country putting on cultural diversity
seminars and interfaith programs, according to its website, with particular emphasis on schools,
colleges, law enforcement agencies, churches and civic groups.
Muslim leaders with ING worked with Muslim students at George
Washington High on how to deal with bullying.
Islamic Network Group was founded by Maha El Genaidi, who
once advised
American Muslims not to talk with
FBI agents without an attorney present, and to notify CAIR or the Muslim Public
Affairs Council of any investigative inquiries.
CAIR, ING, MSA and other Islamist organizations often approach
schools under the guise of being concerned about bullying, then use that to
leverage special concessions for Muslim students, such as Islamic prayer rooms,
separate food arrangements, etc.
It wasn’t but about six weeks after the November bullying
seminar at one Charleston high school that the invitations for teachers to come
to the city’s only mosque appeared in mailboxes. And the advancement of Islam
in West Virginia hasn’t stopped there.
The vice president of the Charleston mosque, Ibtesam Sue Barazi,
is now offering a class through the state university system’s adult education programs. She will be at the South Charleston Public Library on Feb. 6
teaching on the “Holy Quran,” and “the Quran’s universal message where Allah
speaks to all humanity, believers and non-believers.”
It’s unclear what other religions will be offered a platform at
the public library to share about their faith.
Watch video below of Ibtesam Sue Barazi talking about how Muslims
had outgrown their mosque in Charleston and needed to expand.
“These incremental steps make it very clear to me what is
happening in our state,” Arthur said.
Another teacher who asked not to be identified for fear of
losing her job, said she was one of about 40 teachers at her school who
received the invitation to the mosque. She said reactions to the invitation
varied among her colleagues.
“I actually found it first and told a friend who is also a
teacher. She’s pretty disturbed about the whole thing. My first reaction was
disbelief.
“Some teachers were very offended by it,” she added.
She said the issue was raised at a teachers’ meeting with the
principal. Dr. Guerring gave his approval to the mosque but with the caveat
that principals at the individual schools in the district could have the final
say as to whether to give access to the their teachers’ mailboxes.
“I know a few who didn’t have any kind of reaction and maybe
seemed a little aloof when someone else brought it up in our teachers’
meeting,” the teacher said. “She wanted to know, she asked if this was approved
by the superintendent, and the principal said it was approved by the
superintendent, who left it up to the principals to give final approval in each
school, and that he had approved it for our school. As she asked the question
she held up her invitation, which had been ripped in two. There were a few in
the meeting who you could tell didn’t appreciate it. She was the only one to
speak out at the meeting.”
She said most of the teachers are afraid to say anything about
the invitations. But a few have voiced concerns that it may look bad for their careers
if they don’t attend the event.
“I posted on Facebook and just included something about how I
received this invitation today and I’m just wondering if any of my teacher
friends also received it and if any of my teacher friends are interested in going,”
she said. “I thought I would get some sort of reaction but nobody wanted to
touch it. No responses. And that’s so unusual. I rarely put anything on
Facebook that gets no response. That post did nothing in about 36 hours, so I
went ahead and took it down.” The teacher said she hasn’t decided yet whether
she will attend the mosque event.
If the effort to get teachers indoctrinated into the belief
system of Islam can happen in West Virginia, it can happen anywhere, says
Mathew Staver, executive director and lead attorney with Liberty Counsel.
“I think this invitation crosses the line because it
specifically indicates that the teachers are invited to come to the mosque with
a Muslim association to learn about the religion of Islam, that’s the sole
purpose of it, not only to learn about their culture but about the Islamic
religion,” Staver said. “It was authorized by the superintendent and the
principals to be sent to all the teachers in at least three schools. It would
be no different than a church sending out an invitation to come and learn about
the Christian students and particularly their Christian faith.”
If it had been a similar outreach by a Christian church, instead
of a mosque, Staver said he feels certain the ACLU and the Freedom from
Religion Foundation would be putting the school district on notice about a
violation of the so-called “establishment clause” of the First Amendment.
“I think they would be up in arms because they would argue it
violates the separation of church and state. In this case I think it’s very
clear from the invitation that it is an Islamic indoctrination event being held
at the mosque and it was authorized by the superintendent, so it’s clear it
crosses the line. It looks like this particular mosque and Islamic association has
been given special access to the teachers.”
Staver said he can’t imagine that any other faith would get this
type of inside access to the teachers to invite them to a specific event
designed for the teachers to learn about their religion. “We will follow up
with the school to make them aware of this situation,” Staver said.
The teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity said special
concessions are given at her school for students fasting during Ramadan. “I
just feel like it’s a very slow process of giving the country away,” she said.
Arthur, in her sixties but showing no signs of slowing down,
says she will continue to serve as a watchdog in West Virginia, because if
Islamization can happen there, it can happen anywhere in America.
“Who would think that little West Virginia would be a target but
these are exactly the kind of places they think they can go into and get a
foothold without anybody noticing,” said Arthur, a native West Virginian who
moved back to the state in 2013.
“When I got back here and saw the large mosque here in s
Charleston I was pretty stunned, then they went back in and doubled the size of
the mosque about two years ago. We didn’t know at the time they were intending
to establish a second resettlement site here. Looking back, when you put the
pieces together it makes all the sense in world why they did it because they
were expecting a second wave of migration. That’s been shelved for now, Trump
happened.”
Leo Hohmann is a veteran journalist and author of the 2017 book
“Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad.”
Donate to this website and help support his investigative reporting on topics
most journalists are afraid to touch.
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