Twelve and 13-year-old students in West Virginia were ordered by a government school teacher to declare their submission to Allah, the Islamic God, as part of the Muslim declaration of faith known as the shahada. The assignment sparked outrage among parents, and comes amid similar scandals nationwide.
The controversial exercise called for students in 7th grade social studies to write out the words of Islamic conversion in Arabic calligraphy. It was reportedly part of a packet on “world religion” that was sent home with students.
The shahada (shown), which students were ordered to write in Arabic, is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is a declaration of faith in Allah and in Mohammed, a man Islamic holy books describe as his “messenger.” While there is plenty on Islam in the packet, there were no Bible verses, no Ten Commandments, and no Lord’s Prayer.
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Parents were furious. “I saw the assignment of writing the Shahada in Arabic. Their excuse was calligraphy,” said Rich Penkoski, a father of one of the students who also runs a Christian ministry, told the Christian Post. “I was like, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ First of all, calligraphy was invented in China 3,000 years prior to Muhammad. The fact that they were trying to get my daughter to write that disturbed me.’
“I said, ‘That is not happening. My daughter is not doing that,’” Penkoski continued. “My daughter told me that if she didn’t do the assignment then she was going to get a [detention] slip.”
The same father was forced to raise objections last year when the same government school showed his daughter a video of two high-school boys together in bed with a sex toy.
After parental outrage ensued, school officials claimed the packet was “optional” and that students were not required to complete it. But parents say that is not what their children were told, and that the school appears to be trying to mitigate the potential legal ramifications.
The scandal follows similar incidents with government schools promoting Islam all across America. In 2015, more than 7,000 Tennessee parents complained that their children were forced to write that “Allah is the only God [sic].” Students in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and other states have faced similar coercion.
It seems that these days, any religion except biblical Christianity is not just accepted, but promoted, in government schools all over America — once among the most Christian nations in the world. From Islam and Hinduism to atheism and humanism, as long as Christ is not mentioned, the tax-funded government indoctrination centers are happy to push it. Christian parents, beware.
Photo: screen-grab of the shahada from teacher-created resources
Alex Newman is co-author of Crimes of the Educators, and a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook. He can be reached at: [email protected]
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