Muslim woo-woo in our schools

Christian Families Sue Over School's Islam Role-Playing

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court here heard arguments yesterday that a public school's effort to acquaint students with Islam went too far by having the students don Islamic dress, recite phrases from the Koran, and mimic the fasting associated with the Muslim observance of Ramadan.

Two Christian families from Contra Costa County, Calif., east of Oakland, charged in a 2002 lawsuit that a role-playing curriculum used to teach seventh-graders about Islamic history and culture violated the Constitution's prohibition against the establishment of religion. The students also engaged in a "race to Mecca."

Unfortunately, the case is being heard AGAIN in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - the looniest (and no doubt, dhimmiest) court in the US.

A federal judge in San Francisco threw out the case in 2003, but the families appealed. An attorney for the families, Edward White III, told a three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday that during the eight-week unit on Islam, religious teachings were described as "facts" and students were instructed to wear name tags that included the religion's star-and-crescent imagery.

It's not looking good, kuffars.

The arguments against the curriculum got a skeptical reception from the appeals court judges. Judge Dorothy Nelson said that many aspects of the instruction were cultural and historical. "Doesn't this seem more like a secular experience than a religious experience?" she asked.

So-o-o THIS makes it all right?

Judge Johnnie Rawlinson took issue with Mr. White's suggestion that the courts have discouraged role-playing in teaching about religion. She pointed to a 1994 case in which the 9th Circuit ruled that public schools could use readings about sorcery and witchcraft without running afoul of the Constitution.

(snip)

The lawyer said none of the teachers or administrators involved in the case is Muslim, so they would have little reason to try to convert children to Islam. "It would just be bizarre for the school to have a secret agenda to indoctrinate students in a religion to which they did not subscribe," she said.

Uh-huh. Well, check out the peeps who developed the curriculum and you tell me - do THEY have a secret agenda to indoctrinate students into their religion?

The curriculum materials in dispute, titled, "Islam: A Simulation of Islamic History and Culture," were developed by a private publisher in conjunction with two Muslim groups, the Islamic Education and Information Center and the Council of Islamic Education.

Read what Daniel Pipes had to say about the original 2002 case here. I found this section particularly enlightening:

Militant Islamic lobbying groups want Islam taught as the true religion, not as an academic subject. They take advantage of this indulgence, exerting pressure on school systems and on textbook writers. Not surprisingly, Interaction Publishers thanks two militant Islamic organizations by name (the Islamic Education and Information Center and the Council on Islamic Education) for their "many suggestions."

The Textbook League gives the curriculum a thorough fisking here.

From beginning to end, ISLAM: A Simulation requires teachers to indoctrinate their students by feeding them servings of "information" in which historical facts are insidiously intermixed with Muslim myths and Muslim woo-woo.