Parents: Pro-Islam textbooks violate Constitution
Notify governor, legislature, education department that investigation is needed
Published: 9 hours ago
Parents in Tennessee have put their governor, legislature and state education department on notice that they want an investigation into pro-Islam bias in the textbooks and other materials used in public schools there.
The curricula violate the state law and constitution, and the U.S. Constitution, the parents contend.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations, noted that concerned citizens have been trying to get the problem addressed for several years.
But on Thursday, she asserted enough is enough.
She issued a call for Gov. Bill Haslam, the Legislature and the Tennessee Department of Education to launch a “full and thorough investigation into history, geography and social studies curriculum, textbooks and instructional materials that were adopted by the Tennessee Textbook Commission in 2013.”
A report she released said “evidence shows that many of the textbooks and instructional materials are in direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as well as a newly adopted Tennessee law … that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2015.”
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Additionally, the suspect books are “replete with historical inaccuracies, biases and values that do not reflect our communities across the state.”
Just over the last month, a non-profit law firm tried to review curriculum and instructional materials, her report said, but a lawyer for the Tennessee School Board Association is trying to block the review.
Last year, Cardoza-Moore asked lawmakers to get an opinion from the state attorney general on whether the materials are legal.
The fight dates back to 2013 when the state textbook commissioners “knowingly” adopted books containing “anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-Judeo/Christian, pro-Marxist and pro-Islamic” narratives, her announcement said.
“This puts our local school districts and county commissions at risk of a potential lawsuit because the textbooks and instructional materials do not comply with the new state law and clearly violate the U.S. and state constitutions by favoring the establishment of Islam over all other religions,” she said.
The content of the materials became an issue when parents contacted PJTN regarding a PowerPoint being used in their child’s 7th grade classroom teaching about the religion of Islam.
“Included in the presentation are multiple misleading statements including the glorification of jihad against infidels as a reason why many easily convert to Islam. It also includes the Shahada, the Muslim prayer of faith, and mentions nothing about the historically negative aspects and actions of the religion, including the 9/11 attacks,” the report said.
“Such materials expose a subtle and subversive campaign going on throughout this state and across this nation to rewrite history and promote values that threaten our Republic and undermine our own state laws,” she said.
“This type of blatant anti-Semitic, anti-Judeo/Christian and anti-American disinformation has no place in our public discourse and it certainly should not be taught to our future leaders. We have been told by some educators that we want our children to be able to think critically, but then undermine that goal by providing biased information that is historically inaccurate.”
Nashville Public Radio reported the state Board of Education already has agreed to hold a public review of the social studies texts.
And state Rep. Andy Holt, R-Dresden, is calling for changes in the way such issues are handled.
A year ago, WND reported PJTN was spotlighting the state texts .
WND columnist and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly previously wrote about the “double standard” in teaching in public schools.
“Drop Christianity down the memory hole but give extensive and mostly favorable coverage to Islam,” she wrote. “Even the mainstream media have provided extensive coverage of the steady stream of court cases and threatening letters from the American Civil Liberties Union aimed at removing all signs of Judeo-Christianity from public schools.”
But she noted a study found that since the 1990s, “discussions of Islam are taking up more and more pages, while the space devoted to Judaism and Christianity has simultaneously decreased.”
“The textbooks generally give a false description of women’s rights under Islam. The books don’t reveal that women are subject to polygamy, a husband’s legal right to beat her, genital mutilation and the scandalous practice misnamed ‘honor killings,’ which allows a man to murder a daughter who dares to date a Christian,” she continued. “Slavery is usually a favorite topic for the liberals, but historical revisionism is particularly evident in the failure to mention the Islamic slave trade. It began nearly eight centuries before the European-operated Atlantic slave trade and continues in some Muslim areas even today.”
Several years ago, WND reported experts said American students were not getting a realistic picture of radical Islam, and textbook publishers were promoting the religion in public schools.
Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a group that reviews history books, told Fox News the texts are sugarcoating Islamic extremism.
“Key subjects like jihad, Islamic law, the status of women are whitewashed,” Sewall said.
In a two-year project concluding in a report authored by Sewall, the American Textbook Council reviewed five junior- and five high-school world and American history texts, concluding: “Many political and religious groups try to use the textbook process to their advantage, but the deficiencies in Islam-related lessons are uniquely disturbing. History textbooks present an incomplete and conflicted view of Islam that misrepresents its foundations and challenges to international security.”
Read more at
http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/parents-pro-islam-textbooks-violate-constitution/#hLQrGKkdzZsKBtm8.99
