Public Schools Embrace Islam (Mandatory Class in California)

BRENTWOOD, CA (ANS) -- As children return to school this week, following the Christmas break, 7th graders in a growing number of public schools, who are not permitted to wear a cross or speak the name of Jesus, will be required to attend an intensive three week course on Islam; a course in which students are mandated to learn the tenets of Islam, study the important figures of the faith, wear a robe, adopt a Muslim name and stage their own Jihad.

In Byron, California, parents were outraged when students came home with their handouts and were told what was being taught. Their complaints to the school principal not only were ignored, but officials of this public school, funded by tax dollars, essentially fluffed them off.

The public schools in California so stealthily slipped this course into the 7th grade curriculum that even another 7th grade teacher, Elizabeth Christina Lemings, was totally in the dark that this was being taught until her son, Joseph, who is a 7th grader in the same school where she teaches, brought home the handouts.

“We could never teach Christianity like this,” Lemings said to ANS during an on-site interview. “We can’t even mention the name of Jesus in the public schools, but over there…,” she pointed to the building next to hers, “they teach Islam as the true religion, and students are taught about Islam and how to pray to Allah.”

Lemings, in her second year of teaching in the Byron (Northern California) Union School District, has been a Christian since 1987. The government school system requires that she teach evolution in her science class with no reference to creationism or any contrasting viewpoint to Darwin’s theory. She quickly learned that God and Christianity are out (forbidden) but that Islam is in.

The textbook used for the Islamic course, Across The Centuries, is published by Houghton-Mifflin (Boston, Ma.). It is described as a Social Studies/History book and has been adopted by the California School System.

In it, Islam is presented broadly in a totally positive manner, whereas the restricted references to Christianity, is centered on The Reformation, Martin Luther and The Catholic Church. Everything Christian is shown in a negative light, with events such as the Inquisition, the Salem witch-hunts, etc. highlighted in bold, black type.

This is proper for a complete study of history. However, there is not one negative to be found about Islam in this one-sided account, such as the wars, massacres, cruelties against Christians and other non-Muslims that Islam has consistently perpetrated over the centuries.

Nor is any mention made of the way Muslims treat their own people, cutting off hands, feet and heads for even the slightest violations of the Islamic tenets of faith, or the shocking way they treat their women.

The ‘miraculous’ events leading up to the Koran, the ‘holy’ book of Islam, and other ‘revelations’ are presented as factual. Any reference of the miraculous regarding Christianity is always set next to a disclaimer stating that; “It was (is) believed by Christians (or an individual such as Martin Luther) that…..,”implying an absence of credibility about the stated event.

For example, the representation that Gabriel the archangel came to Muhammad (Note: not believed to have come to Muhammad) and dictated to him the Koran, a whole new revelation and idea that would surpass all other religions.

What needs to be explained by the Houghton-Mifflin historians, is why Gabriel (which translates, “Man of God”), the archangel of both Christians and Jews, who was a part of all of God’s plan, who interpreted for Daniel the vision of the ram and the he-goat, and comforted him after his prayer with the prophecy of the ‘seventy weeks’ and who heralded the good tidings by declaring the coming of the predicted Messiah, would at that point in time and history, call on Muhammad, one who did not believe in Jehovah God or Jesus as the Son of God, and ‘reveal’ to him the words of the pagan god Allah to lead his people with. How’s that again?

It would be most interesting to have the Houghton-Mifflin experts explain what possessed Gabriel to turn on the God of Abraham and Jesus Christ to lend assistance to what would become a murderous cult with no regard for life, the very antithesis of Christianity. There is a deplorable lack of information here.

And too, the Book of Revelation clearly states that no words should be added or taken away from that book. So this in itself poses a major contradiction and problem.

The faulty textbook, Across the Centuries, has more than its share of deceit. It is stated as fact that Islam, Judaism and Christianity share in common the belief in one god. This is a half- truth, which is the worst kind of lie. Christianity and Judaism worship one God, the God of Abraham. Islam worships one god named Allah. This hook is misleading on the part of Houghton-Mifflin. The publisher apparently is attempting to legitimize Islam.

If this were an authentic history, the textbook would explain that the god of Muhammad was man’s creation. Arabia was a pagan nation that worshiped over 300 gods. One of those was the moon god named, al-ilah. Legend has it that the moon god mated with the sun god and had two daughters, both of whom were worshiped as goddesses. When Muhammad claimed to have had his ‘vision’ and ‘revelation from Gabriel’ he chose al-ilah as the god to build his army around.

Muhammad shortened the name, al-ilah, to, Allah, and declared that he alone should be worshiped. He forbade the worship of the daughters. To this day, a crescent moon can be found at the front of every mosque, acknowledging that Allah was, and is the moon god. All of this is missing from the Houghton-Mifflin accounts.

It is also to be noted, even though not publicized, that Allah is also known as, The God of War. So why isn’t this important study of Islam included in the history books?

The handouts used in this course, obtained by ANS, are considerable. They include a history of Islam and the life of Muhammad its founder.

Muhammad is portrayed as an extremely moral man who wanted a society of purity. A vast body of historical accounts will refute this image. Historians will show that he had multiple wives, a sexual problem, and among his wives, he took a 10-year-old girl for his pleasure (some accounts list her age as 6).

And Islam promises its followers that those who become suicide bombers, killing themselves and others, will go directly to Allah’s paradise where they will be given 72 virgins for unbridled sexual pleasure for all of eternity.

There are many verses in the Koran that must be memorized in this Public School course and students are taught to pray, “in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” and to chant, “Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation.”

There are 25 Islamic terms that must be memorized, six Islamic (Arabic) phrases, 20 Islamic Proverbs to learn along with the Five Pillars of Faith and 10 key Islamic prophets and disciples to be studied.

“Can you imagine the barrage of lawsuits and problems we would have from the ACLU if Christianity were taught in the public schools, and if we tried to teach about the contributions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Apostle Paul?” teacher Elizabeth Lemings lamented. “But when it comes to furthering the Islamic religion in the public schools, there is not one word from the ACLU, People For The American Way or anybody else. This is hypocrisy!”

Even more disturbing; students are to pretend that they are Muslims, wear Muslim clothing to school, stage their own Jihad via a dice game, and pick out a Muslim name (to replace their own) from a list of thirty.

ANS asked some of the students what they thought about this course. All of them felt that “it was fun,” while others described Islam as “a pretty culture.” This included a pastor’s son! Joseph Lemings, 12, said, “the Jihad was like playing a video game,” even though the true violent nature of Jihad was well concealed.

Lemings is disturbed by the “fun” description. She sees it as a tool, not only to engender sympathy and support for the Muslim cause, but for recruitment. “This is not just a class of history of examining culture,” she said. “This course is entirely too specific. It is more about indoctrination.”

Lemings, upon learning of the course on Islam, approached the principal of Intermediate-Excelsior School of Byron, Nancy Castro, requesting the right to teach Christianity in the manner that Islam is taught and for the same length of time.

Castro has not responded to her request. Lemings later received, roundabout, information that the only way she could do this would be to teach the Christianity class (as a Christian Club) after school hours where students would come of their own accord. Otherwise, she would violate the law of (selective) Separation of Church and State. Excuse me?

In an interview with Nancy Castro, the principal of the schools in Byron, she stated to ANS that the Islam course (hidden within “History of Cultures”) reflects California (educational) Standards that meet State requirements.

When asked about the intensity of the Islamic course, Castro stated that the course “is not religion, but Ancient Culture and History. And,” she pointed out, “the text is a State Adopted textbook. We do not endorse any religion, we just make students aware.”

She stated that the textbook is now in use throughout California. When asked if she would allow Christianity to be taught the same way that Islam is taught, Castro stammered before saying that Christianity is already taught in the History and Culture class, “which,” she said, “actually starts in the 6th grade.”

She said that this class started a year ago. The Christianity that is taught is brief, taught as a myth, and strictly negative. This is how it is portrayed in the textbook.

Lemings had stated to ANS that there were many, many parents who protested this course on Islam, especially after September 11th ( which, coincidently, is when the course began).. Nancy Castro contradicted this account.

Asked if there was any response from parents about this course, Castro answered, “Oh a couple of parents called to express concerns, three to be exact.”

Peggy Green, Superintendent of the Byron Union School District did not return calls by press time.

The Muslim’s intentions are clear and the public has been continually notified of that fact. In nearby Fremont, where the majority of the over 150,000 Muslims living in the Bay Area reside, Omar M. Ahmad, chairman of the board of the Council on American-Islamic relations said this at the Flamingo Palace banquet hall: “I urge Muslims not to shirk their duty of sharing the Islamic faith with those who are on the ‘wrong-side’.”

He said that Muslims should not assimilate into American society. “If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam…Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth,” he said.

These quotes were published in the” San Ramon Valley Herald” on July 4, 1998 (ironically on our Independence Day), 3 years, 2 months and 7 days before September 11, 2001. And like everything else, Americans and church leaders didn’t pay any attention to it.

In the same article, Ahmad stated: “Everything we need to know is in the Koran.” And bear in mind that the Koran clearly states that Muslims are obligated to kill Christians, Jews and all other infidels.

So why would the American Public School System and the politicians want to further the Islamic faith, push to have it become the One World Religion and nix Christianity?

Simple. Christians cannot be enslaved. Islam, an oppressive religion of control, cruelty and fear does enslave, which can keep people subdued. This is precisely what the future leaders of the One World Order want to achieve. And the misinformed, make nice, politically correct crowd seem eager to help them accomplish it.

But the greatest driving factor in all of this is money. There are the profiteers and politicians who stand to grow in unspeakable wealth and power by cooperating with the Arabs and finding favor by helping them and their pagan religion take control. They have no compunction in selling us out, and our freedom, to accomplish their goals. These greedy, self-serving investors stand salivating on both sides of the oil pump.

From the Urban Legends Reference Page:

Claim: Seventh graders in California are subjected to an intense three-week course in Islam in which they are required to pray to Allah and memorize Koran verses.

Status: Not quite.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]

Course has 7th-graders memorizing Koran verses, praying to Allah In the wake of Sept. 11, an increasing number of California public school students must attend an intensive three-week course on Islam, reports ASSIST News Service.
The course mandates that seventh-graders learn the tenets of Islam, study the important figures of the faith, wear a robe, adopt a Muslim name and stage their own jihad. Adding to this apparent hypocrisy, reports ANS, students must memorize many verses in the Koran, are taught to pray "in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful" and are instructed to chant, "Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation."
"We could never teach Christianity like this," one outraged parent told ANS. Elizabeth Christina Lemings, a teacher in the Byron, Calif., Union School District, was unaware of the course until her seventh-grade son brought home the handouts. Obtained by ANS, the handouts include a history of Islam and the life of Muhammad, its founder. There are 25 Islamic terms that must be memorized, six Islamic (Arabic) phrases, 20 Islamic proverbs to learn along with the Five Pillars of Faith and 10 key Islamic prophets and disciples to be studied.
(The rest of the e-mailed article can be found here.)

Origins: Sometimes a clear yes or no answer is impossible to provide, given the quality of the information available and the complexity of the underlying issues. And this is one of those times.

The World Net Daily article quoted above was drawn from information provided by Assist Ministries in its January 9, 2002 article "Public Schools Embrace Islam." What World Net Daily refers to as "ASSIST News Service" is the public relations arm of Assist Ministries -- despite the use of the term "news service," ANS should not be mistaken for one of the legitimate wire services, such as Associated Press or Reuters. The contents of its article should thus be taken with a large grain of salt.

Even so, there is something to what it said. Granted, that "something" is distorted and overstated, but the core element is present.

As part of their social studies curriculum, Grade 7 pupils throughout California do study ancient Muslim cultures and the impact of Islam on world history, but only as one of eleven units that comprise that year's social studies course, not as a special indoctrination into a particular religion as the ASN article presents it. The intent is to teach the position of this belief system in history, not the religion itself -- the dividing line is not always clearly drawn, however, not even in the "standards" handed down by the State of California to its districts and individual schools. ("Standards" are education jargon for what the state insists be taught in a particular grade year in a particular area of study.)

According to California's Grade 7 social studies standard for this particular unit: "Students analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages." In and of itself that would be fine, but the breakdown of how that goal is to be achieved opens the door to potential blurring. One item from the 6-point list on how that standard is to be reached is especially troubling: "Trace the origins of Islam and the life and teachings of Muhammad, including Islamic teachings on the connection with Judaism and Christianity."

(You can view for yourself California's Grade Seven History-Social Science Content Standards.)

Many parents would be up in arms if schoolkids were learning about the life and teachings of Jesus in public school classrooms, even if the information were presented only as background for a unit on the impact of Christianity on world history. That it's a different religion on the hot seat shouldn't matter -- it's a "separation of church and state" issue, specifically, that religion must not be taught in schools. Whether the belief system is Islam or Christianity, the core issue doesn't change.

For the most part, the California standards were relatively clear on the intent of the unit (which was to teach about a people central to the course of world history). Ambiguity was certainly present in whether the religion or the people influenced by it would be the subject of all parts of this unit, and it was here that the trip wire was set for unwary educators.

How each school and district chose to meet the California-mandated standards was up to them, leaving the door open to any number of ways of presenting the same material. The Excelsior School in Byron chose a more unusual mode of imparting this knowledge to those schooled there, and its Grade 7 students do indeed participate in dress-up, role-playing, and simulation games as part of the Islamic history unit. The school district says such activities are common teaching practices and appears unconcerned that student-involvement techniques successfully used in other areas of study might be out of place in units where maintaining separation of church and state might be at issue.

The Grade 7 textbook central to the controversy, Across the Centuries, is a broad-based social studies textbook which examines the impact of a variety of cultures on events as they unfolded over the course of two thousand years. A look at the list of Houghton-Mifflin's "lessons at a glance" for this work shows that it's anything but a "how to" for the Muslim religion -- the book provides information about a number of cultures, including Japanese, Chinese, European, African, South American, and Muslim. More than anything else, it's an overview of world history meant to acquaint 7th graders with the concept of other lands and cultures through exposure to the timeline of events from Roman days until now and the variety of peoples that took part in those events.

Does it present Muslims in a positive light and Christians in a negative one? Some argue that it does -- by happenstance or otherwise, the information about Islam's place in world history is presented within the context of that belief system's glory days of scholarship and expansion of trade, while the information about Christianity generally only appears against a backdrop of Christians harming their neighbors and attempting to quash science.

The ambiguity of the standard as well as the possible cant of the textbook have contributed to the current controversy. Peggy Green, Superintendent of the Byron Union School District, said in a press statement issued on 11 January 11 2002:

We are sorry for the misinformation that has been picked up by the media and the distress it has caused to parents and members of the public. The Byron School District is not 'teaching religion'; we are teaching the California state-mandated standards with state adopted textbooks. The public school system was established to educate all children. In light of the events of this past year, it is imperative that our instruction includes an understanding of and insight into all cultures and a tolerance for the diversity found in the world. As such, public schools do not "indoctrinate" children on various religions, but they do expose them to the belief systems that have impacted the formation of our world.

The flaw in that statement should by now be evident: If the belief system had been Christianity rather than Islam, there'd have been hell to pay.

We think the Byron School District erred badly on the side of liberalism in how it chose to teach this segment and that it displayed an appalling lack of sensitivity to the fears that even more will be drawn to the fundamentalist Islamic faiths that spawned the terrorist attacks on America if Islam is made attractive enough, but that's a judgement call, not a matter of fact. What can be argued is whether the line separating teaching about a religion and teaching the religion itself was blurred by how the district chose to fulfill the Islamic history element of the Grade 7 social studies curriculum. Whether that line was actually crossed remains a matter of debate (the district is not at this time addressing charges that it had students memorize Koran verses), but it must be said if the shoe were on the other foot -- had the portions of world history centering on the spread of Christianity been taught in similar manner -- the outcry would have been thunderous.

dress-up are at times used in the classroom to facilitate learning. However, a dice game that seemingly glorifies jihad will strike some as wildly inappropriate, in a way that a game of Risk to teach geography never could. (Years earlier, some students in California grade schools learned the location of countries on the world map by playing Risk, a world domination dice game involving the clash of armies.)

--> Also erring in this drama, however, was Assist Ministries, which used this incident as a platform for publicizing its agenda. World Net Daily left out many of the more extreme statements from the Assist Ministries press release, ones that would have made the intent of the ANS piece clear from the beginning:

The faulty textbook, Across the Centuries, has more than its share of deceit. It is stated as fact that Islam, Judaism and Christianity share in common the belief in one god. This is a half-truth, which is the worst kind of lie. Christianity and Judaism worship one God, the God of Abraham. Islam worships one god named Allah. This hook is misleading on the part of Houghton-Mifflin. The publisher apparently is attempting to legitimize Islam.

And . . .

So why would the American Public School System and the politicians want to further the Islamic faith, push to have it become the One World Religion and nix Christianity?
Simple. Christians cannot be enslaved. Islam, an oppressive religion of control, cruelty and fear does enslave, which can keep people subdued. This is precisely what the future leaders of the One World Order want to achieve. And the misinformed, make nice, politically correct crowd seem eager to help them accomplish it.
But the greatest driving factor in all of this is money. There are the profiteers and politicians who stand to grow in unspeakable wealth and power by cooperating with the Arabs and finding favor by helping them and their pagan religion take control. They have no compunction in selling us out, and our freedom, to accomplish their goals. These greedy, self-serving investors stand salivating on both sides of the oil pump.

Assist Ministries is addressing the wrong issue: This controversy shouldn't be about Islam vs. Christianity or "our religion" vs. "their religion," but rather about the appropriateness of any religious teachings in public schools. Their hand-wringing over the evils of Islam, dark hints about conspiracies among politicians and profiteers to appease oil-rich Arabs, and presentation of Christianity as the one true religion miss the point.

Reporter Nich Schou of the OC Weekly made a telling statement in October 2001: "Since Sept. 11, there have been two kinds of Americans: those who think the U.S. is out of touch with the rest of the world, and those who think the rest of the world can take a hike." It's this split which lies at the heart of the subject at hand: Some want American students exposed to other cultures and ways of thinking so as to better prepare them for dealing with the world at large, and others would rather American students learn only about matters pertaining to the USA and view the teaching of anything else as an attempt to indoctrinate impressionable children.

Is it possible to teach about a people and their place in history without also teaching the belief system that influenced them? We don't know. But we do know every effort has to be made in that direction if the one is to be attempted.

Barbara "the churchmouse that roared" Mikkelson

Last updated: 16 January 2002

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