Texas educators add controversial section on Islam to school curriculum

The Texas State Board of Education went ahead with plans to add a controversial section to the state’s high school social studies curriculum showing how radical Islam motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, New York terror attacks. The 15-member board approved the updated curriculum on Friday, despite ongoing pushback from Muslim constituents.

The new curriculum also included an examination of early Islam, specifically the prophet Muhammad’s military campaigns against Jewish and Christian people groups and the normalization of slavery, according to the new curriculum outline. Teachers will officially begin using the newly approved curriculum in the 2033-34 school year.

What’s the problem with tying radical Islam to 9/11 and teaching the religion’s foundation? Several board members took issue with the curriculum because it singled out radical Islam as a root cause of the attacks, rather than focusing on the individual groups and persons responsible for the terrorism. One 15-year-old student told the board that she felt the new verbiage attacked her religion and made her feel as though she didn’t belong, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

CAIR’s Texas chapter said it planned to work to overturn the material changes before the 2030 implementation and protect students and teachers who refuse to honor the new curriculum, which it described as hate propaganda. The new high school standards denigrated Islam and diminished what students learned about black and Palestinian history, according to a Friday statement.

CAIR went on to characterize the curriculum as bigoted, and said its portrayal of Islam has never been validated by a credible scholar. Even the board’s own experts warned that the new claims would not hold up to historical scrutiny, CAIR said. State educators turned classrooms into places of prejudice and completely erased Palestinian people's experience during Israel’s establishment in 1948, the group added.

CAIR’s national headquarters released a separate Friday statement questioning how Christians would respond if their religion was cast in a similar light. CAIR said it would strongly object to students being told that the Christian religion was responsible for the burnings of witches, KKK cross burnings, or the forced conversions of kidnapped Africans.

Texas Education Board member Julie Pickren recalled that CAIR advocates started attending board meetings last year with what she characterized as stiff demands. Muslim advocates wanted to completely rewrite the history of America and Texas, with the founding documents and those who wrote them removed, she said in an interview posted last Thursday.