Posted on 09/30/2015 10:34:21 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
Tennessee School Districts Say Revealing Islam Lessons May Cost ‘Millions,’ Take Too Darn Long
Dozens and dozens of taxpayer-funded Tennessee school districts are refusing to comply with an open records request from a conservative legal nonprofit seeking materials and documents relevant to the way public schools are teaching Islam — primarily to middle schoolers.
The American Center for Law & Justice, a law firm that generally promotes conservative and Christian principles, sent its open records requests to all 146 taxpayer-funded school districts in Tennessee earlier this month, reports The Tennessean, Nashville’s main newspaper.
A Nashville attorney, Chuck Cagle of the law firm Lewis Thomason, has provided almost 80 school districts (all represented by the firm) with a sample letter which district officials are customizing to deny the conservative group’s open records request.
“Our client denies your request in full,” the sample letter reads. “Among many other defects in your demand, the Tennessee Open Records Act only requires that certain public records be made available for personal inspection by Tennessee citizens. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503(a)(1)(B). A public records request made by an agent on behalf of a foreign business entity is invalid.”
An attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based American Center for Law & Justice, CeCe Heil, says Cagle is applying his Tennessee law all wrong.
“We deal with government entities regularly and anticipate the necessity of engaging in negotiations pertaining to the actual documentation received,” Heil told The Tennessean in an email. “Our open records requests are valid and signed by an attorney who is a citizen of Tennessee.”
Also, Heil noted, the ACLJ is requesting the records because anxious Tennessee parents contacted its attorneys.
The ACLJ’s open records request is definitely broad. The conservative activist group is seeking every test, every quiz, every lesson plan, every study guide and every bit of instructional material concerning the teaching of religion in all Tennessee public school districts. The request specifies anything asking students to recite words in Arabic or to say or write Muslim prayers. It also seeks internal communications concerning how and classroom materials were chosen.
“I’ve never seen a records request that asked for this volume of information in 25 years of practicing law,” Cagle, the professional school district lawyer, complained.
Cagle has also claimed that compliance with an open records request about what schools are teaching in not feasible because it will take too long to respond and cost too much money.
“On the front end, this could cost school boards hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to respond to this request,” Cagle told Nashville NBC affiliate WSMV.
The open records request is related to a grassroots reaction among parents — primarily evangelical Christian parents — against what they perceive as an inappropriate focus on Islam in history and social studies courses in Tennessee middle schools.
Earlier this month, for example, parents in the Nashville suburb of in Spring Hill expressed alarm because their public middle school children are learning about Islam in a world history class but, the parents say, the course material pointedly ignores Christianity.
(RELATED: Public School Parents Angry After Middle Schoolers Instructed To Write ‘ALLAH IS THE ONLY GOD’)
Mad mom Brandee Porterfield, who has a seventh-grade daughter at Spring Hill Middle School in Spring Hill, Tenn., said her daughter came home with world history schoolwork all about the Five Pillars of Islam and other core teachings of the Abrahamic religion. The first and most important pillar — the shahada in Arabic — is roughly translated as: “There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Porterfield said her daughter’s teacher instructed the girl to write: “Allah is the only God.”
A petition initiated by the American Center for Law & Justice entitled “Stop Islamic Indoctrination in School” had garnered 201,505 signatures as of early Wednesday morning.
A spokesman for the Islamic Center of Nashville, Rashed Fakhruddin, said he thinks both the ACLJ’s open records request and the claim that schools are teaching too much Islam are preposterous.
“I don’t know if this is meant to be a witch hunt, but all of the religions — Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism — they’re being taught in the schools,” Fakhruddin told WSMV.
In addition to Islam, students in Tennessee public schools also study Buddhism and Hinduism. However, they do not study Christianity per se. There is not, for example, one class day dedicated to the basic Jesus story.
A Spring Hill school district official promised that students eventually come across a reference to Christianity when history teachers reach the “Age of Exploration” in eighth grade. Then, students will hear about Christians persecuting other Christians in some countries in Western Europe.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, Tennessee appears an epicenter for America’s continuing encounter with Islam.
Back in February, for example, leaders of ISIS took to the group’s propaganda magazine to urge followers to assassinate an American professor who teaches in Memphis.
(RELATED: ISIS Is Now Threatening To Murder A COLLEGE PROFESSOR IN TENNESSEE)
The professor, Yasir Qadhi, teaches at Rhodes College, a private bastion of the liberal arts in Memphis, Tenn.
Qadhi, born in Houston, Texas, is a professor of religious studies. He is also a Muslim cleric and the resident scholar at the Memphis Islamic Center.
ISIS and its adherents don’t like Qadhi because he stands athwart the radical Muslim entity, yelling stop.
“Contrary to popular opinion, ISIS does not have support in the American Muslim community,” Qadhi said when the calls for assassination were fresh.
“ISIS does not represent my faith, their actions are in contradiction to my faith, and I’m appalled at what they are doing in the name of my faith,” the professor added. (RELATED: ISIS Yearns To Be North Korea And Nine More Things You Won’t Believe About These LUNATICS)
In 2013, officials at Sunset Elementary School in the affluent Nashville suburb of Brentwood rescinded a ban on delicious pork just one day after it went into effect because parents complained. The parents and other locals believed that the prohibition on pork had been an attempt to defer to the sensibilities of unidentified Muslim students. (RELATED: Tennessee Elementary School Lifts Fatwa Against Pork After Parents Complain)
Tennessee lawmakers recently decided to expedite a review of the way Islam and other religions are taught in the state’s public schools, The Tennessean notes. The review, which had been slated for 2018, will now occur in January.
Over percent of the residents of Tennessee identify as Christian, according to a 2014 Pew poll. About one percent of Volunteer State residents call themselves Muslim.
He's a filthy liar. I have two college degrees from Tennessee schools and my children graduated high school there. He's a liar.
I'm stunned at what's happened to the Volunteer State.
Great point. And of course, they "could." The better word is "would." I find it hard to imagine there isn't one honorable teacher in the whole state.
And, if you do that (meet the Muslims’ own criteria for becoming a Muslim) but don’t actually live as a Muslim, you become apostate. Right?
Now’s a good time for Obama to amend his will——
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That’s right!
This is common core !!
THE BETRAYAL PAPERS, PART III OF V: OBAMA’S SCANDALS AND ASSAULTS ON FREEDOMS EXPLAINED
http://bwcentral.org/2015/03/the-betrayal-papers-part-iii-of-v-obamas-scandals-and-assaults-on-freedoms-explained/2/
Common Core: Even classroom education has not escaped the tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. The connection between Common Core and the international terror group is through, once again, Qatar. The Connect All Schools initiative is a program to promote “One World Education.” It is aligned to Common Core State Standards, and is funded by the Qatar Foundation International (QFI). The director of QFI’s Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics is Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna.
Allah in our schools ( Common Core )
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3241438/posts
See list of recent reports of Islam in schools here MA, MS, MD, TN, CA, etc.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3227490/posts?page=19#19
Why Did Hundreds of Common Core Implementers Meet in Dubai?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3222449/posts
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/why-did-hundreds-common-core-implementers-meet-in-dubai/
Bingo!
These schools aren’t teaching the history of islam they are making children recite a muslim pledge. Imagine thes school asking children to say they accept Jesus in their lives & repent of sins...
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Great image at the top of the Daily Caller page too!
Exactly right! And once they say that pledge - the Shahada -— they have been converted.
Allah In The Classroom — The ABC’s Of Forced Conversion
http://noisyroom.net/blog/2014/11/02/allah-in-the-classroom-the-abcs-of-forced-conversion/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3222437/posts
What it does include ….. is the Shahada and the Five Pillars of Islam. The Shahada is an Islamic creed declaring belief in the oneness of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as God’s prophet. It is recited to convert someone to Islam. That’s right… they are actively converting your children to their religion.
They do fear their jobs. My husband, who taught for 24 years didn’t fear losing his job by being honest and following the actual law regarding religious discussion in the classroom. He is now unemployed.
We learned a few things. One: the union isn’t really as powerful as everyone thinks. They only take action if you are fired, he opted for a settlement with his resignation as he didn’t want to work there anymore after what they did to him. Two: liberals hate conservatives with a burning passion and have no qualms about trying to destroy someone they disagree with. Even a nobody like a small town teacher. The principal lied and cheated but she and the superintendent (who is rumored to like her...a lot!) controlled the narrative from the beginning. Sort of wish he hadn’t taken the settlement because it includes a provision that he agrees not to sue the school district or its employees.
One nasty thing she did is tell all staff that they weren’t allowed to talk to him at all or they would be considered insubordinate and be dismissed. Had anyone talked to him and started piecing things together, her fraud would have been uncovered. As it was, they were all fearful and obeyed until after he resigned. So, yes, teachers are afraid and act like sheep. The ones who aren’t, like my husband, find themselves in trouble.
Flame me all you want, however...
I happened to think of this the other day; when I was in school (50's and 60's), all the principals were men. Even in elementary school.
They were disciplinarians. They were generally fair and no-nonsense-type people.
Today, I read one story after another about insane policies in America's schools, and invariably, the principal is a woman. A Liberal woman.
One nasty thing she did is tell all staff that they weren’t allowed to talk to him at all or they would be considered insubordinate and be dismissed.
With the exception of a few Conservative women; most women are totalitarians. If you want to know what the world would look like if it were run by women - look at the schools.
Oh, and by the way; teaching Islam to America's students is treason. Period.
A truly amazing fact, but true. Islamics in most parts of the world are perfectly O.K. with taking black slaves......PATHETIC.
PING
Thanks Liz
I just tried it...no turban appeared, I have no intention of cutting off anyone's head, and I have no intention to rush to Mecca for the hajj.
tell CAIR that it didn't work.....and I still don't like burquas.
“WHY ARE THEY TEACHING ISLAM AT ALL? THEY DON’T ALLOW TEACHING CHRISTIANITY...........”
How bout that !!
Yeah any pasty white boy knows if he converts and goes over he will either be not trusted and beheaded or bent over and ...
The Islamic Mosqueing of Public Schools in America
There is no reason, none whatsoever, for middle school students to learn the teachings of a mideastern "religion".
To learn where it is practiced, how it is spread, how it effects society is acceptable....not much else.
I will guarantee that no one in the class can name the 9 supreme court justices, don't know the number of U.S. Representatives, can't name their own state and U.S. senators and representatives, have no idea of who their chief of police and sheriff is, have no concept of what is or how many counties are in their state, and NONE OF THEM KNOW WHERE THEIR PRESIDENT WAS BORN NOR HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT HIS COLLEGE GRADES WERE......just saying.
Parents should send every child to school with a video recorder running from beginning to end of school day. Or request that technology be installed in every classroom so that parents can log in and monitor their children. They do it in day care centers. Schools love new technology so much, they should love this.
“Over percent of the residents of Tennessee identify as Christian, according to a 2014 Pew poll.”
Seems to be an important number missing from this sentence.
STOP RIGHT THERE....lately you might get a lot of converts!!
Of course he would say this. Is it reasonable to think he would say that Islam teaching has no place in public schools? Really?
It should be obvious to all that their MO is to usher in as much Islam as they can, all the while putting a benevolent moderate face on it.
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