Islam quiz has U.S. parents 'outraged'

Islam quiz has U.S. parents 'outraged'

'They're not teaching 10 Commandments' but Muslim prayers allowed

Published: 16 hours ago

Leo Hohmann

Above is an excerpt from a quiz given to students in Walton County, Georgia.

Hundreds of irate parents are planning to attend the Walton County, Georgia, school board meeting Oct. 10 to convey their outrage over their children being taught the religious beliefs of Islam in middle-school social studies.
The outrage erupted over a quiz handed out to students asking them to answer questions related to the five pillars of Islam, the Quran as the “holy” book of Muslims, and the conversion prayer known as the “shahada,” which states, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” Perhaps most disturbing to Christian parents was the “correct” answer that the Muslim god Allah is the “same god” that is worshiped by Christians and Jews.
At the same time Islam is being studied in detail, the beliefs of Christianity are glossed over, parents say. They now have more than 2,300 parents and concerned citizens who have joined a Facebook group dedicated to opposing the school system’s methods of teaching comparative religions.
“I believe my children are my responsibility, and I believe I need to be the one teaching them what we believe instead of the school,” Bill Green told News 95.5.

Watch local TV report from Fox 5 News below:

'Nothing about 10 commandments'
Parent Michelle King told WSB-TV she's upset because students seem to spend a lot more time learning about Islam than any other religion.
"My daughter had to learn the (shahada), and the five pillars of Islam, which is what you learn to convert," King said. "But they never once learned anything about the Ten Commandments or anything about God."
"What they are learning goes against my religion completely," she said.
Kim Embry, spokeswoman for the Walton County School District, said in an interview with Fox 5 that some Christian students may need to learn more about Islam than Christianity since they're already familiar with the Christian faith.

Watch Embry's comments below:

Ryan Breece launched the Facebook page in an attempt to get school officials to alert parents to upcoming lessons on religion or other sensitive topics. They say that would give them a chance to opt their children out of assignments with which they disagree.
Breece said he pulled his sixth-grade daughter out of recent lessons on Islam, and her grade suffered as a result. He doesn’t think that's right.
"We need to see the assignments, and we need to be able to opt out without any grade negativity on our children," he told News 95.5, adding that he expects hundreds of parents to attend the Oct. 10 board meeting with similar demands.
Breece said Tuesday he has been invited to a private meeting with the school board Wednesday at 9:15 a.m.
"Fox News will be there," he wrote on the group's Facebook page. "Please come and gather in the parking lot or lobby to show your support. Now it's time for us to show we all care about this issue."
The Board of Education building is at 200 Double Springs Church Road, Monroe, Georgia.
The education standards being used in Walton County are the same standards used in all of Georgia and there have been complaints in the past. Last year, parents from Cartersville Middle School in Cartersville, Georgia, contacted WND and said their school was inviting Islamic teachers to come and indoctrinate their children about the tenants of Islam.
The latest controversy was touched off when Youth Middle School gave a fill-in-the-blank test on the basics of Islam as one of several examples of controversial lessons (correct answers in parenthesis):

• "In 610, Muhammad was told by the angel (Gabriel) that he was a (prophet) sent to Earth by (God)
• "He began preaching a new monotheistic faith called (Islam) – (Surrender) to God"
• “Basic beliefs of Islam:
• "Followers of Islam are called (Muslims) who believe in (one) God, called (Allah)
• "Allah is the (same God) worshiped by Jews & Christians
• "Muslims believe Muhammad was the (last) of God’s prophets
• "The teachings of Muhammad were written down in the (Quran) …, the holy (book) of Islam."

Other assignments delved into the five pillars of Islam – pilgrimage to Mecca, giving of alms, fasting and prayer five times a day, along with the associated Arabic words and phrases.
Arabic is the fastest-growing language in U.S. public schools, likely due to the 70,000 foreign refugees, the majority of them Muslim, who are being resettled annually by the Obama administration in cities and towns across the U.S.

Just latest in long line of complaints by parents
This type of parental uproar over Islamic teachings in public schools has become endemic across the U.S. in recent years, with complaints by parents popping up in school districts nationwide since 2011.
Christina Michas, founder of Operation Jericho Project and co-founder of Citizens United for Responsible Education, has been tracking the encroachment of Islam into public schools for several years, and she says it's obvious that atheist groups are not nearly as concerned about Islam in the schools as they are about Christianity.
"It's everywhere," she said, noting that a teacher in Texas who gave students a more accurate history of Islam got fired. She was referring to the case of Dale Wolverton in Richmond, Texas.
Wolverton was forced to resign on April 8 when the Hamas-supporting Council for American-Islamic Relations filed a complaint against him for handing out brochures detailing the bloody history of Islam, ABC News reported.
Tennessee pastor Greg Locke in Mt. Juliet recently encouraged students to "take an F" on their test about the Islamic religion over what he described as "absolute brainwashing of religion," EAGnews reported.
Locke pointed out in a viral video that local history books include about 28 pages on Islam, but only "a half-page of watered down Christianity," according to the Tennessean.
Dozens of teachers and administrators in Pennsylvania's Lebanon School District attended a taxpayer-funded workshop at a local mosque to learn about Islam, EAG News reported in June.
About 50 staffers from the district attended the workshop led by former district Arabic translator Mohamed Omar, who "took time off from his new job as a case worker for the Department of Human Services in Philadelphia to share his knowledge of Islam with the staff, which included Superintendent Marianne Bartley and several other administrators," the Lebanon Daily News reports.
Afterward, they headed to the nearby Lebanon Valley Mosque to join an Islamic prayer service with the congregation, according to the Daily News.
This is the second year the school district has held the mosque workshop.
"There was no mention of objections or threatening letters sent to the school district by atheist groups that typically scream foul with religious-themed school events," EAG News reported.

Teachers and staff from Pennsylvania's Lebanon School District bow to Allah inside a local mosque.

For the teachers it appeared to be all about comparing cultures and conveying them as equal.
"It's important that we educate ourselves about cultures that are different from our own and that we try to eliminate some misunderstandings," English as a second language teacher Lara Book said. "Although our cultures are different, the fundamentals of them are similar and we all want the same things: happiness for our families health, and success. Although we might go about finding those things in our lives differently, from a cultural standpoint, we all want the same thing."
Meghan Frick, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Education, said school systems in Georgia have "pretty broad freedom" in how they teach the required Georgia Performance Standards in social studies.
"They have that standard and it's just a couple of sentences, and they can teach that to students however they choose," she said. "We don't dictate a curriculum, we don't tell them what worksheets to hand out or what textbooks to use."
In Castle Rock, Colorado, earlier this year, the Douglas County School System required middle-school girls to comply with a special dress code suitable for visiting a mosque in Denver. The school system sent a note home to parents that read:

"THERE IS A DRESS CODE FOR THIS TRIP: All students must wear appropriate long pants. Ankles must be covered. Girls must bring wide scarves or hooded sweatshirts for the mosque."

Once at the mosque, the students were told to bow to Allah.

School girls in Littleton, Colorado, don the required attire as they get ready to enter a mosque in Denver.

"Shariah in the classroom," wrote Pamela Geller, author of "Stop the Islamization of America," on her website. "Here again we see anywhere American law and Islamic law conflict, it is American law that has to give way."
Geller adds, "The subjugation and oppression of women are enshrined under the Shariah. Young school girls should not be forced to 'respect' a dress code that represents honor violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, child marriage et al."
The Jersey City Board of Education recently voted not to close schools for the Muslim holiday of Eld al-Adha. It has been reported that a Muslim woman in attendance made a veiled threat saying: “We’re going to be the majority soon."
New York City schools already sanctions the closure of schools for Muslim holidays while Christian holidays such as Christmas are referred to generically as "winter recess."
In 2013 at Lumberton High School in Texas, girls were encouraged to dress up in burqas during a geography class to expose them to "world cultures, religions, customs and belief systems." There was no clothing brought for the students to experience dressing like a nun or Orthodox Jew, according to a Front Page Magazine report.
The Lumberton teacher was quoted by a student as saying, "We are going to work to change your perception of Islam" from one sullied by terrorism into one hoping for peaceful coexistence.
Thomas More Law Center is representing the father of an 11th-grade La Plata High School student in Maryland who was given a failing grade for refusing to complete assignments she considered to be Islamic indoctrination.
She had to affirm, similar to the Georgia quiz, that "there is no god but Allah" and the remaining five pillars of Islam. John Wood, a former Marine, demanded his daughter be given an alternative assignment, but the school refused and banned him from school property.
"We're talking about assignments where the right answer is, ‘There’s no god but Allah,' and that Allah is the same god that is worshiped in Christianity and Judaism,” Michas said.
Lack of balance in teaching about Islam
But what is most troubling about these assignments is they never provide any balancing material on the dark side of Islam, Michas said.
For instance, there is no mention of the harsh treatment under Shariah law of women, homosexuals, Christians, Jews or other religious minorities. There is no teaching on the recurring strong themes of jihad throughout Islamic history, or that Muhammad personally beheaded at least 600 Jewish men and pubescent boys after they unconditionally surrendered at the Battle of the Trench in Medina, taking the women and children as slaves.
There is nothing about female genital mutilation, or the fact that a woman must have multiple male witnesses to press charges for rape or she will be blamed for the “crime.” Nor are students taught that the Quran (in 4:34) says its acceptable for Muslim men to strike a disobedient wife.
"I lived in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, all over the Middle East. My father was in the Air Force,” Michas said. “I saw how women are treated over there."
Women are also entitled to only half as much inheritance as their male siblings under Shariah.
But American school children are being fed a distorted view of Islam in U.S. public schools, Michas said.
She said the largest textbook provider, United Kingdom-based Pearson, has been bending for years to the will of influence agents tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The texts often state as fact that Muhammad was the "last prophet."
'Connect All Schools'
Michas said the Islamization of American schools has been going on since at least 2011 and just keeps getting worse.
She traces the phenomenon back to 2009 and a program called “Connect All Schools,” which came out of the Obama administration’s U.S. Department of Education. WND has previously reported on the program and its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.
The stated goal of the initiative is to "connect every school in the U.S. with the world by 2016." On its website, the organization reports that 316 internationalized U.S. schools have already connected with 140 countries, the majority of them from the Middle East and Africa.
The Qatar Foundation International, or QFI, partnered with the U.S. State Department and Department of Education in the launching of Connect All Schools. The QFI is closely linked to the Al Jazeera news network and the Muslim Brotherhood, WND reported.
Vartan Gregorian, a board member of the QFI, was appointed in 2009 to President Obama’s White House Fellowships Commission.
WND previously exposed that Gregorian served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in startup capital to an education-reform project founded by former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and chaired by Obama.
Documentation shows Gregorian was central in Ayers’ recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers.

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