Parents suing San Diego schools over an “anti-Islamophobia” campaign have revised their complaint to focus on the radical Islamic origin of the group that initiated the program.
As WND reported, the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations was formally approved by the school board in March to help develop a plan to “combat Islamophobia and the bullying of Muslims students.”
That lead to a lawsuit by parents charging the program is unconstitutional because it appears to show a preference for one religion over another.
The updated complaint adds focus on CAIR’s origin as a front group for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and its status as a religious organization while showing how the scheme violates California law, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported.
The complaint points out CAIR is regarded by the FBI as a Hamas front group and by a Gulf Arab state as a terrorist organization. CAIR has sued the authors of a WND Books exposé, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” which documented the group’s radical ties.
The updated complaint by the San Diego parents argues school officials aim to “identify safe places” for Muslim students and “explore clubs at the secondary level to promote the American Muslim Culture” while similar accommodations are not being given to adherents of other religions who feel bullied or harassed.
The amended complaint notes that the school district found only seven reported incidents of religiously motivated bullying of K-12 students between July 1, 2016 and Dec. 31, 2016, and also did not specify the religion of the victims.
That means only about 0.006 percent of actively enrolled students were impacted, the complaint states.
It also points out the 2014 report by CAIR-California that led the school district to adopt its anti-Islamophobia program found that only 7 percent of students reported being subjected to mean comments or rumors about them because of their religion.
Attorney Charles LiMandri, who is representing the parents, said the lawsuit will be dropped when the district treats all religions equally.
Religious ministry or civil-rights group?
The revised complaint aims to undermine any attempt by the San Diego schools to cast CAIR as a secular civil rights group, arguing CAIR testimony in a recent National Labor Relations Board case explicitly claimed it is a religious group, IPT reported.
Yet CAIR San Diego Executive Director Hanif Mohebi sought to downplay his group’s religious character after LiMandri announced the suit, describing CAIR as a civil rights and liberties organization.
However, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, referred to in the NRLB case as Nehad Hammad, contradicted Mohebi, asserting CAIR is a religious ministry and is, therefore, exempt from the NLRB’s jurisdiction. [Awad’s full name is Nehad Awad Hammad, according to a 200-page deposition.]
Charles L. Posner, NLRB regional director, wrote in his April 7 ruling: “The Employer’s letterhead includes a header that reads, ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.’ According to Hammad, the header is there to identify the Employer as a religious organization, and the header [on CAIR stationery] is the opening verse of every chapter of the Quran.”
The lawyers for the San Diego parents cite Awad’s testimony in the NRLB case, noting he stated that “informing the American public about the Islamic faith is a religious obligation, and distributing these publications is both a religious and educational exercise.”
They also point out in their amended complaint that CAIR’s national communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 1993 that he wanted the U.S. to come under Islamic law. Hooper told the paper he “wouldn’t like to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. … I’m going to do it through education.”
‘Cultural tolerance and understanding’
As WND reported, a San Diego school board report outlining the district’s objectives touted CAIR as an organization that “has been involved in constructive civic engagement, promotes cultural tolerance and understanding, as well as justice and equality.”
CAIR’s Mohebi told the school board April 4 his organization wants the district’s program to become a national model.
“The plan itself is a great first step,” he said.
“I truly believe that if we do this right, San Diego Unified School District would be the leading school district in the nation to come up with a robust and beautiful anti-bullying and anti-Islamophobia program.”
‘The true faith, Islam’
The influence of Islam has become an issue on other school districts across the nation.
In May, in Groesbeck, Texas, a couple moved their sixth-grade daughter to a new school after they discovered her history homework assignment on Islam.
In late March, as WND reported, a middle school in Chatham, New Jersey, was using a cartoon video to teach the Five Pillars of Islam to seventh-grade students, prompting two parents to obtain legal services to fight the school district, which has ignored their concerns.
Teaching the five pillars of Islam also created an uproar in Summerville, South Carolina, and in Loganville, Georgia, last year.
WND also reported in March a high school in Frisco, Texas, has set up an Islamic prayer room specifically for Muslim students to pray on campus during school hours. The same type of prayer rooms have been set up in high schools in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and other school districts.
In 2015, parents in Tennessee asked the governor, legislature and state education department to investigate pro-Islam bias in textbooks and other materials.
WND reported in 2012 ACT for America conducted an analysis of 38 textbooks used in the sixth through 12th grades in public schools and found that since the 1990s, discussions of Islam are taking up more and more pages, while the space devoted to Judaism and Christianity has simultaneously decreased.
In 2009, Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a group that reviews history books, told Fox News the texts were “whitewashing” Islamic extremism and key subjects such as jihad, Islamic law and the status of women.
Also in 2009, WND reported the middle school textbook “History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond,” published by Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, said an Islamic “jihad” is an effort by Muslims to convince “others to take up worthy causes, such as funding medical research.”
In 2006, WND reported a school in Oregon taught Islam by having students study and learn Muslim prayers and dress as Muslims.
WND reported in 2003 a prominent Muslim leader who eventually was convicted on terror-related charges helped write the “Religious Expression in Public Schools” guidelines issued by President Bill Clinton.
In 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, seventh graders in Byron, California, were taught a three-week course on Islam that required them to learn 25 Islamic terms, 20 proverbs, Islam’s Five Pillars of Faith, 10 key Islamic prophets and disciples, recite from the Quran, wear a robe during class, adopt a Muslim name and stage their own “holy war” in a dice game.
Parents went to court to uphold their right to reject the class for their children, but a federal just ruled against them, and in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider their appeal.
