How Did the Shahada Come to Augusta County?

As we reported last night, our neighbors over in Augusta County made national headlines when their “Islamophobia” caused the closure of the county’s schools. The parent of a student assigned to copy out the shahada complained, and the controversy went viral on social media. The resulting uproar caused the school board to shut down all the schools in the district yesterday, “out of an abundance of caution.”

The superintendent didn’t say what he was being “cautious” about, but you can bet the recent events in San Bernardino and Paris were in the forefront of his mind. Even a provincial school official must have noticed by now what angry Muslims tend to do when non-Muslims say or do things they find insulting to their religion.

To put the incident in perspective, consider what the equivalent assignment might have been if the topic had been Christianity. A rough equivalent would have been to copy out John 3:16 as presented in the King James Bible:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Or possibly the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3):

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

To be strictly analogous, the first would have to be copied out in Koine Greek, and the second in Hebrew.

Can you imagine a public school in the United States handing out such an assignment in the year of Our Lord 2015? It would end the career of the teacher, and possibly those of the principal and the district superintendent as well.

So how did the shahada come to be in the curriculum of an Augusta County high school? Before we look into that question, let’s recap the past week’s events. From Newsplex:

AUGUSTA COUNTY, VA (WHSV) — The mother of a Riverheads High School student says she felt her rights as a parent had been violated when her ninth grade son came home with a homework assignment last week that involved the Islamic Shahada, or statement of faith.

Kimberly Herndon said the assignment asked him to copy the Shahada, which translates to, “there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

When asked about her reaction to the assignment, Herndon said she was “shocked that this was sent home, shocked that this was in the schools [and] shocked that this was right here in our small town.”

The assignment says it is meant to give the students “an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy.”

However, Herndon said she felt the assignment tried to indoctrinate her child into the Islamic religion.

“There was no trying about it. The sheet that [the teacher] gave out was pure indoctrination in its origin,” said Herndon.

Augusta County Schools Superintendent Dr. Eric Bond said, “Neither these lessons, nor any other lesson in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion, or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief.”

He went on to say the lesson “attempts objectively to present world religions in a way that is interesting and interactive for students.”

[…]

On Tuesday night, dozens of people met at Good News Ministries to voice their own opinion. Herndon has not sent her child back to school since the incident happened last week.

“I will not have my children sit under a woman who indoctrinates them with the Islam religion when I am a Christian, and I’m going to stand behind Christ,” said Herndon.

Meanwhile, the school maintains the lesson is consistent with the Standards of Learning in Virginia.

A Dec. 11 social media post Herndon made has been shared hundreds of times.

In her post, she wrote, “I am preparing to confront the county on this issue of the Muslim indoctrination taking place here in an Augusta County school. This evil has been cloaked in the form of multiculturalism.”

Also from Newsplex:

Below is a statement from the Augusta County Schools district regarding the closure:

Augusta County Schools and all administrative offices will be closed Friday, December 17, 2015.

Following parental objections to the World Geography curriculum and ensuing related media coverage, the school division began receiving voluminous phone calls and electronic mail locally and from outside the area. As a result of those communications, the Sheriff’s Office and the school division coordinated to increase police presence at Augusta County schools and to monitor those communications. The communications have significantly increased in volume today and based on concerns regarding the tone and content of those communications, Sheriff Fisher and Dr. Bond mutually decided schools and school offices will be closed on Friday, December 18, 2015. While there has been no specific threat of harm to students, schools and school offices will be closed Friday, December 18, 2015. All extra-curricular activities are likewise cancelled for tonight, Thursday, December 17, through the weekend. We regret having to take this action, but we are doing so based on the recommendations of law enforcement and the Augusta County School Board out of an abundance of caution.

Finally, the Augusta County School Board and Dr. Bond appreciate parents bringing concerns directly to our attention, and a constructive and respectful dialogue between school and community is always welcome. As we have emphasized, no lesson was designed to promote a religious viewpoint or change any student’s religious belief. Although students will continue to learn about world religions as required by the state Board of Education and the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning, a different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future.

Dymphna did a little digging into the story last night. One person on Facebook said:

I along with another parent whose child was directly involved with the incident that took place at Riverheads High school met with school officials today at 3:45. The school was forthright in admitting that the teacher made a mistake in assigning the children to copy the shahada which is the Islamic creed that indoctrinates one into the Muslim belief. Also, it was admitted that asking the students to put on the head dressing of the Islamic woman was a bad choice in that there was no representation of any other apparel of any other culture or religion. We have been approached by a local news station to present this story to the citizens of this community who we strongly believe have the absolute right to be presented with the facts of the events that have taken place and what consequences have taken place as a result of the mistakes that have been made.

And Dymphna summarizes more of the information from social media thus:

Kimberly Herndon, the parent who initiated the pushback against this “geography assignment” spoke out in a forum held by the Augusta County Schools to address parents’ concerns regarding the shahada assignment. She noted that the Christian religion is a strong presence in the community (it includes a large number of Mennonites) and also addressed the fact that while children are given the shahada to write, no mention of one’s adherence to Christianity is allowed. She said: “If my truth cannot be spoken in schools, I don’t want false doctrine spoken in schools.”

There is no large Muslim presence in Augusta County. The wiki doesn’t give a sectarian breakdown of the county, but at the last census “The racial makeup of the county was 95.02% White, 3.60% Black or African American, 0.15% Native American, 0.28% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.32% from other races, and 0.61% from two or more races.” Not many of those blacks or whites are Muslims, which would mean the Islamic presence must be well under 1.4% of the population. Negligible, in fact.

So it seems unlikely that the assignment handed out by the teacher was being pushed on her by a local Islamic advocacy group. Where did it come from, then?

I browsed through the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning for history and the social sciences to see what might be found. The 2008 standards are currently in force, but the new standards will be finalized soon. Both of them use the same wording when describing what fully-educated Virginia students must know about Islam:

WHI.8   The student will demonstrate knowledge of Islamic civilization from about 600 to 1000 A.D. (C.E.) by
    a)   describing the origin, beliefs, traditions, customs, and spread of Islam;
    b)   assessing the influence of geography on Islamic economic, social, and political development, including the impact of conquest and trade;
    c)   identifying historical turning points that affected the spread and influence of Islamic civilization, with emphasis on the Sunni-Shi’a division and the Battle of Tours;
    d)   citing cultural and scientific contributions and achievements of Islamic civilization.
 

Nothing in there about Islamic calligraphy. Nothing about teaching students to copy out the shahada or wear the veil.

It’s hard to imagine that the unfortunate teacher devised the assignment herself. It was almost certainly handed to her as part of a package of teaching materials sent out by the state education bureaucracy in Richmond.

And where did the Commonwealth get the materials? The trail grows murky here — there’s no obvious pipeline from the federal education bureaucracy to its local Virginia counterpart. According to the state DOE, Virginia receives federal educational assistance under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, but it doesn’t give any details. And although it says Virginia declined the Common Core standards of 2010, at another place it says that the state is in “alignment” with them in some unspecified way.

My bet is that a lot of materials used in school curricula are sent out by the Department of Education in Washington and distributed to school districts by the Commonwealth of Virginia. If that is the case, you can be certain that the Muslim Brotherhood had a hand in the composition of all the content relating to Islam. Agents of the Ikhwan have tunneled through all levels of the federal government like termites in a stump, and they would consider this sort of material — which is actually dawa, “the call”, Islamic proselytizing — well within the scope of their remit.

46 thoughts on “How Did the Shahada Come to Augusta County?

  1. What I have found interesting about this is the subtle message that everyone that is objecting is a hick… Kudos to the mother willing to stand her ground.

    I have no doubt that this was deliberate but not from the school district or the teacher. They know nothing about Islam, although a teacher of World Geography or World Religions, both titles I have seen in the news, should know.

    This came from a curriculum developed much higher up and the school and teacher are ignorant.

    I am better qualified to teach World Religion or World Geography sitting here in my suburban home than any of these people just out of education school…

    But this begs the much larger question. That is who is developing this stealth curriculum? Is there no one along the food chain that can put a stop to this or, must this be filtered down to the 9th grade because everyone along the way is either intimidated or ignorant?

    • However, I must say that pressuring girls to don the headscarf and have their pictures taken isn’t coming from up the food chain. This is something devised at the district level. And it is sick, just sick…
      Someone on another site suggested that on “wear the headscarf day” the young men came in with kippas? Or how about Hindu turbans? Or how about nuns in habit with big crosses and rosary beads?
      I wonder how well any of that would be received.
      The point is that this is being driven by relentless propaganda peddled to the completely ignorant by very powerful actors that have a defined agenda. And it isn’t assimilation, it is dominance.
      To take the pictures of 9th grade girls in headscarf and publish them in the year book is very disturbing. Could any educator really be this ignorant?

        • Due to the low standards in schools of education these days (something that has been verified through studies of grade averages), educators are often some of the least educated and most Marxist-indoctrinated people out there.

          • Yes, it’s been obvious for some time. Just one more reason we home-schooled.

            At the bottom of the education barrel is Mississippi…

            …during the tenure of the first Obama Attorney General, he focused on driving a wedge between blacks and whites in Mississippi, to the point that many whites left positions in teaching and administration because of the growing ugliness. But there weren’t any blacks who could or would step up to fill those positions. So now some districts are hiring foreign workers:

            http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/12/19/mississippi-foreign-teachers-visas/76924408/

            J. Christian Adams was a career attorney in the Justice Department until Obama came in. The morale and injustice was so marked that Adams finally threw in the towel:

            Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department

            I have the book in my Kindle library if anyone wants to read it. I can loan it out for a month at a time and then it reverts to me or you can return it earlier. If you have an Amazon Prime membership, just email me with the email you use for your account. To contact me: the address is dymphna followed by the numeral two (not the word but the number) with no space between name & number. Then the ‘at’ symbol and chromatism dot net.

            At any rate, the further ruin of Mississippi by the stupido racialist malignancy of Eric and Barry is an unsung chapter in an administration chock full of failure.

      • The only thing that gets the attention of these [Muslim]-loving [left-liberals] are public demonstrations with signs and megaphones.

        (I really had a hard time matching the pronouns and plurals with this. I hope it’s clear!)

        • Again, please distinguish between Liberals and Leftists. I personally am a Liberal, but definitely NOT a Leftist. thx 🙂

    • I wonder if the teaching materials will accurately describe how Islam spread far and wide in an historically short period of time: mass slaughter…….convert or die being the 2 items on the menu. You can be sure the curriculum will not deal with this on a factual basis.

  2. I keep wondering why there is not a full English translation.
    There is no god but god and x is the messenger of god.

    • Also, this “worksheet” conveniently left out the probability that, as soon as a student had…ah…calligraphed the shahada, s/he would be considered a full Muslim (public profession of the shahada) and subject to the death penalty for apostasizing to Christianity, Judaism, or whatever ethics/morality system his/her family observed prior to this exercise.

      I was very careful, when I taught the Islam unit to my World History students, *never* to utter the shahada in full myself. I also warned them against it, saying that even experienced scholars of the Byzantine Empire and Moorish Spain/North Africa had fallen victim to the shahada unawares and suffered death. (The Martyrs of Cordoba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_C%C3%B3rdoba ; Nicholas of Karnepision: http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/constantelos_altrouistic_4.html –note the correspondence with the “calligraphy worksheet”! )

      Don’t expect to see a “full English translation” by anyone on this site; none of us wants to become an “instant, unwilling convert” to the Ideology of Islam.

      • As far as I know, you have to utter it in Arabic to be an official “revert”. Not sure about writing it.

        • My link to St. Nicholas of Karnepision (Orthodox saint) shows that even writing the Shahada is considered a conversion. This text is from the linked article, and can be found towards the end:

          “The French traveller to the Ottoman Empire, Antoine Galland, recorded in his calendar on September 2, 1674 the following episode:

          “Today the Turks did a perfidy to a young Greek who was tutored by a Turk. While he was tutored, some Mussulmans, who were nearby, handed over to the teacher a piece of paper with the Islamic creed of faith written on it. They asked the Turkish teacher to turn it over to his young student asking him to read it aloud. They wanted to learn for themselves whether the young Greek could read Turkish fluently. Unsuspicious of the trick, the youth read the paper aloud. No sooner had he finished than the Turks immediately seized him and took him before a judge. They testified that the Greek youth had read in their presence the Moslem creed, the Salabati; therefore, he was expected to become a Moslem. In protest the young man answered that he had been deceived and that he had no intention of changing his Christian faith: The judge ordered that the youth be put to torture. When he insisted on adhering to his faith, he was thrown into prison where he was kept for a month, refusing to apostatise. He must have been between the age of 18 and 20 when he was beheaded (Gatland, 1881).

          “The French traveller did not record the martyr’s name but modern scholarship has identified him as the neo-martyr Nicholas of Karpenision, whose story has been reconstructed as follows:

          “At the age of fifteen Nicholas came to Constantinople with his father, where the latter opened a shop in Tachtakala. Α Muslim barber, their neighbour, at the request of the father, gave Nicholas lessons in Turkish. The Mussulman looked forward to leading his pupil to change his religion and communicated his plan to the soldiers who frequented his house. And together they hatched a plot. The barber transcribed the Salabati, a profession of the Islamic faith. When the young man presented himself for his lesson, in the presence of the soldiers, the barber placed the paper before him. Suspecting nothing, Nicholas began to read it. When he had reached the end, the soldiers cried: “you have become a Turk; you have pronounced the Salabati.” Stupefied and indignant, Nicholas protested hotly: “Ι am a Christian and not a Turk. Ι read what my master gives me for my lesson.” But he was dragged before the Caimacan. The fatal paper served as proof of the odious accusation. After a long imprisonment and all sorts of ill treatment Nicholas was condemned to death (Delehaye, 1921, p. 705; Perantones, 1972). He was beheaded on September 23, 1672. His martyrdom was recorded by a third person, De la Croix, secretary of the French Embassy in Constantinople (De La Croix 1695).”

          • Hmm, but that was reading out loud, not writing. However, it seems that Allah considers Turkish acceptable for the purpose. I wonder what Mr. Pbuh thinks of English?

  3. Would anyone translate the first line of the Latin Nicene Creed as :-
    I believe in one Deum, the Father Almighty?

    • Sorry; I don’t understand the point of your comment.

      “Credo in unum deum, patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium….”

      thx for any clarity you can send my way, seriously.

    • The first article of the Creed in Greek:

      Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεόν, Πατέρα, Παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς, ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων.

  4. So has the teacher been handed her P45?

    I’ve got two nieces at school and they have been well warned about this short of thing going on – and they’ve been told that if any of their teachers do anything like this, they have to refuse & if the teacher or anyone else isn’t happy they need to phone their uncle and their dad, and believe you me, the pair of us heading up to the local school will have extremely unpleasant consequences for someone. I didn’t take a degree in philosophy without learning how to argue with people, LOL …

    On another related note, one of my nieces showed me her phone the other day &it turns our she and a bunch of her friends were being chatted up by a nice young Muslim fella called Mohammed eh … of course there is nothing wrong with a grown man of the Islamic persuasion grooming young white girls on ‘social media’ now is there … yes, this [offensive waste material] really is going on all around us.

    And the authorities aren’t doing jack [offensive waste material] to stop it. Is it any wonder people rate VladmirPutin higher than Dynamic Dave? Is it any wonder that Trump’s numbers are high?

    • I hope that you and Uncle set her and her friends straight on the dangers of “chatting” with this Mohammed guy…. Yes? The Rotherham child/teen abuse scandal has, I hope, awakened many in law enforcement to the reality of target-grooming, but it will take every adult who cares for a young person to follow through, as you did by viewing your niece’s phone. 🙂

  5. re WHI.8 above:
    There is a need to lobby for a change in the vocabulary.
    Islam has daughter-killing, stoning, amputations, slavery, genital mutilation, child marriage, forced marriage, wife-beating, no equality before the law, no freedom of speech, no freedom of conscience. It forbids instrumental music, sculpture, and art depicting man.

    Islam is an ideology. It does not qualify as a civilization.

    • Well said.

      They claim there have been “sciences” invented by so-called “islamic civilization” and rubbish like that. In fact the invader muslims confiscated the properties of other civilizations that were under influence of Hellenic civilization at the time. They just translated the texts into arabic and censored/changed the parts that would displease the caliph. Many books written on this subject.

      Also, ridiculously some of the texts that are totally against islam are included in “islamic civilization” collection by the muslims (they think we can’t read?). The most famous people who wrote against islam are Ibn Khaldun and Razi. Actually the latter was murdered by caliph for being so clear in expressing his heretic views, but those muslims/progressives are bold and ignorant enough to categorise his efforts under “islamic heritage”. (please refer to wikipedia)

      I can provide many examples on the “illusion of islamic civilization”, but this is not intended to be a survey.

  6. The Islamic indoctrination of our children has been ongoing since 9/11. The curriculum has been created by Islamic “scholars”/activists and pushed forward by our own government (Federal,State, County, City and Town). Why are they doing this? To destroy the established order and vanquish Christianity and Judaism from The United States. The “Prince of the air” is calling the tune and they are all playing it.

    I believe that the Augusta County officials who canceled School and all school activities are attempting to turn critical public opinion and scrutiny of their dhimmi curriculum onto the critics who have let the Augusta County government know their displeasure. The critics of Islamic curriculum are so hateful and dangerous that they had to cancel school and whatever fun had been scheduled. The white, Christian, Confederate critics of educational dhimmitude are the real danger. After all, “Islam is a religion of peace”

    “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
    King James Version (KJV)

    • Actually, in the case of Augusta County, I think that the reason for the school closure is simpler. I know the county well, and it is as un-PC as any other rural Virginia county. The chance that its actions were “dhimmi” is low.

      Rather, I think the school administrators and county officials had images of San Bernardino in their minds. Like everyone else, they’ve learned what happens when Muslims don’t get their way, and what they do when they’re offended. They weighed the consequences of closing the schools against all that, and made their decision.

      In other words, they acted out of fear. And I suppose you could say, “Fear is the beginning of dhimmitude.” But they’re not full dhimmi, not yet.

      • Baron,
        According to The Washington Post the threats that closed the schools were not from the Islamic side of the argument: “A high school geography teacher in rural Augusta County asked students to try their hand at writing the shahada, an Islamic declaration of faith, in Arabic calligraphy. The task, community reaction to it, and a sudden influx of outrage from around the country — including angry emails, phone calls and threats to put the teacher’s head on a stake — led the school district to close rather than risk disruption or violence.
        The county, in the Shenandoah valley west of Charlottesville, is the latest to wrestle with how Islam should be portrayed in the classroom and how students should learn about it. It’s a subject that has become increasingly fraught as concerns about Islamophobia have grown alongside fears of extremist violence and terrorism.
        During the same week that Los Angeles and New York school systems debated whether to close due to emailed threats of attack, the Augusta County School District closed despite having no specific threat of harm to students. In a statement posted on the district’s website, officials said they were concerned about the “tone and content” of the messages they had received.
        “We regret having to take this action, but we are doing so based on the recommendations of law enforcement and the Augusta County School Board out of an abundance of caution,” the statement said.
        Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher said the superintendent and the school board decided to close the 10,000-student school system after district officials and the Riverheads High School teacher who gave the assignment received emails that seemed to increase in volume and vitriol as the week wore on. Most emails and messages assailed the school and the teacher for “indoctrinating” students in Islam, and some referenced violence generally.
        Fisher said he saw messages that called for firing the teacher and putting “her head on a stake.” Photos of beheaded bodies also were sent to the Riverheads principal. In a news release, the superintendent also said people indicated that they were planning protests at school buildings and that “some communications posed a risk of harm to school officials.”…
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/12/17/furor-over-arabic-assignment-leads-virginia-school-district-to-close-friday/

        As far as the good people of Augusta County go, I know them well. Sadly these days, the people are seldom on the same side of the argument as the government and the educators.

  7. I feel sorry for kids in US public schools, the garbage, non-information, politically corrected BS and sometimes even outright lies they are being fed is nothing short of outrageous.
    And this is before we add Islam to the mix.
    Based on the ones I’ve gotten to know, US teachers tend to be very weak even in the subjects they are supposed to be teaching, and the ones who aren’t ignorant are so intensely focused on 1 subject and 1 subject only that they very literally can’t see the forest for the trees.
    When we get to a university level, we’re dealing with ivory tower utopians who live lives so incredibly far removed from reality that they really do not know what’s happening right beneath their very own noses or beyond the campus boundaries.
    Much like politicians, movie stars, scientists and other so-called ‘elites’.
    If you’re a parent in These United States, ca. 2015, you pretty much have no choice but to either homeschool your kids or at least try to undo all the damage that’s being done to them in class when they get home, especially if you can’t afford to send them to one of those so-called ‘academies’ (= better class of high school, approximately similar to what the Germans call a Gymnasium).
    As for playing religious or cultural dress-up, nothing wrong with that.
    Let’s see some Druids with or without sickles for cutting magic mistletoe. How about Celts dressed in nothing but war paint made of woad? Vikings in fur and chain mail. Romans and Greeks – yes, toga party! Crusader knights (bet the PC school marms would LOVE them!) in chain mail with white tunics and red crosses on them.
    The possibilities are endless.

  8. What is most shocking about this story is that there was zero effort made to give other faiths equal time. That is a dead giveaway as to what the real intent and larger agenda is. Kudos to the mother for standing her ground with the original complaint.

    If counter reactionaries are to profit from this story, it must be kept visible. The lack of equal time angle must also be harped upon. Leftists with either have to concede the point, or open themselves up to being slagged as the worst sort of totalitarian.

    • It wasn’t “zero effort”. The image on a corkboard showed some Christian and Jewish symbols. These multi culti federals aren’t fools. The others don’t get equal time but they do get a passing nod…no Hebrew though, and no Christian “art” to show the “beauty” of, say, the artwork in the Book of Kells.

  9. I am an Indian Hindu who visits the US often on business (we run a small research center in India and do custom research for firms, some of whom are in silicon valley). I have seen some very in-your-face Islamic proselytizing in the bay area. On one of the main expressways, a very large billboard said “Learn about Islam” for a few months. I saw “Shut down Guantanamo” signs on major exits to the freeways. I also noticed a *lot* of young girls wearing hijab as they walked to school. I could be wrong, but this seems to be increasing over the past 10 years (I first visited about 15 years ago).

    @Baron: there is a story currently unfolding in India where a Hindu Mahasabha leader called Mohammed the “world’s first homosexual” and more than 100,000 muslims marched through the streets of a mid-sized town calling for his beheading. No such marches against ISIS …

  10. As an Atheist, I tend to believe that outside of religions relevance to history or literature, etc, religion should stay out of public schools. I believe this policy should apply to all religions. The left is happy to throw a temper tantrum over every bit of Christianity they find in schools, but suddenly wants to defend Islam from the same treatment by the right. There should be one policy on religious education in school, and whatever that policy may be it should be universal.

  11. The “Islam is Peace” meme has been in heavy circulation ever since San Bernadino. Every local US newspaper has had a story detailing the “fears” of local Muslims, usually featuring mothers worried about their children. These stories allege mistreatment, such as cursing or spitting, never of course substantiated. These pieces are clearly designed to appeal to female readers, as most men wouldn’t buy it for a minute.

    Meanwhile, NBC assembled today a group of Muslims to whine and complain about Trump, to profess their affinity for America, and to detail their fears of “Islamophobia.” Clearly, they were a highly educated bunch, most likely drawn from the various Brotherhood affiliated organizations.

    Interestingly, one guest Muslim gent on NBC let slip that, were Trump to continue with his attacks on Muslims, more terrorism might be the result. A sort-of threat, in my opinion. Veil briefly lifted.

    • I see this canard repeated in many places: “Islam is a religion of peace.” Do we know when it started? Who started it?

      I’ve been told Prez George W. Bush started it during his first administration, shortly after the September 11 attacks, but I don’t know whether this is true. Islam most certainly is NOT a religion of peace; it has spread by the sword wherever it has gone in the world.

      So…anybody have leads to track this down? Information? Sources? thx

  12. So sad and angry that Miss Puertp Rico was pressured into apologizing for stating that “Allah is not the same god as the God of Christianity or Judiasm.” Then I thought more on it and remembered that my own high school had a World Geography Teacher/Coach who had made a statement in class that eventually got our school embroiled in an argument with local Christians and ended up being solved by the court…in our case, the teacher had made the claim that, “Allah was essentially the same As the God worshipped by Jews and Christians.” When the teacher told me he had said this, I remember thinking to myself, I certainly wouldn’t have said that…but now I am wondering, maybe those words weren’t from the teacher/coach either…Is it in our curriculum to teach the children that “Allah is the same as the Jewish or Christian God”? I am beginning to think so! Is this how the materials are being presented in “an interesting and interactive way”? This is outrageous! And I fear more people will lose their jobs, just as this teacher/coach did….either for sticking to the islamic indoctrination language of the curriculum he was handed down or for being like Miss Puerto Rico and daring to say what many believe is true?

    • Islamic State demolished the shrine of Saint Elian at Mar Elian Monastery.
      They said it was dedicated to a God “other than Allah”.
      The Caliph, unlike the Pope, has a PhD in Islamic Studies.

    • To answer your question: Yes, the curriculum (at least one of them) stresses that the “god of the Muslims, named Allah” is “simply the same god that Judaism and Christianity worship.” I taught from a nationally authorized World History curriculum in the 1998-2003 era; however, this was at an independent, private school (i.e., not parochial).

      I presented that point to my students as, “No one who’s not a Muslim can really *know* how Muslims frame their deity. We only know what they agree to tell us.” I wish I had been aware of taqiyya then. But I did what I could with what I had. Our textbook also didn’t give the full story about dhimmi status, but it was aimed at 7th- and 8th-graders. The text did say that dhimmis didn’t have full citizen status and that they had to pay an additional tax for the “privilege” of following their own religion, whether Jew or Christian. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any information about the clothing restrictions, being required to ride donkeys vs. horses, stepping down into the street from the boardwalk if Muslims were approaching, the “chopping” motion towards the neck when paying the jizya, and the other really dehumanizing penalties levied on dhimmis under Muslim rule.

      A history teacher absolutely MUST pre-read the handouts included in a ready-made curriculum. I used almost none of them in ours, because I was working–as was the whole faculty–to stress Writing across the Curriculum, and the handouts had the most simplistic verbiage on them you could ever imagine. Bleah. The questions at the end of each chapter and unit in our text–an excellent text, BTW–did much more to stimulate my students’ imaginations than the pathetic handouts.

      I *added* questions about Judaism and Christianity to the chapters on Islam, because it seemed to me that the Jewish students didn’t really know that much about Christianity, and vice versa. So all of them came out of the Islam unit with a better understanding–at least, as reflected in their tests–of not only the other two, but of their OWN religion.

      For example: There were a couple of evangelically raised boys who were utterly convinced, before this unit, that Catholics were NOT Christian. Their minds were stretched a bit when they learned about the Reformation and that their churches were a long-term product of same.

  13. I scrolled down these postings because I thought I might have already commented on
    this subject; but hadn’t. – When I was in high school over 50 yrs. ago; we got an
    exchange student from Turkey who was a Moslem. At that time, I had never even
    heard the word “Moslem” and barely knew there was a country called Turkey.

    We were told that the student was a Moslem and their God was called “Allah”. So,
    she came to school, I think even visited church with her host families; but as far as
    I know did not convert to Christianity at that time. She seemed a nice, polite girl;
    and went back to Turkey & married a Moslem.

    She died several years ago. I hope and pray she came out from among them.
    It is chilling to learn what the Koran teaches. Christ said, “By their fruits you shall
    know them.” – It’s just tragic and depressing.

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