Muslims 'proselytizing' at U.S. school assemblies

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Two Muslim organizations are suspected of proselytizing California public school students at assemblies.

The Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund dispatched a records request to the Gilroy Unified School District because of a possible constitutional violation for letting the Muslim groups indoctrinate students.

"Last year, a Muslim high school student complained to school officials she was bullied after Donald Trump got elected and that she was offended by a class assignment that included a Fox News op-ed," the legal team explained.

"After school board members met with the student’s family, the district engaged in 'great partnerships' with the Islamic Networks Group (ING) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to conduct 'Islamophobia' presentations and lecture students at school assemblies about Islam," the group said.

However, both the California and U.S. Constitutions prohibit the government from aiding religious sects or favoring one religious organization over another. The legal team explained courts repeatedly have ruled students suffer spiritual and psychological harm if they are exposed to religious indoctrination in a compulsive educational environment.

"When school districts allow sectarian groups to advance their agendas under the guise of 'promoting tolerance,' they place political correctness over the spiritual and psychological well-being of their schoolchildren," said Daniel Piedra, FCDF's executive director. "The First Amendment forbids CAIR's calculated effort to indoctrinate students in the name of 'diversity' and 'inclusion.'"

Support WND's legal fight to expose the Hamas front in the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

FCDF pointed out that Nihad Awad, CAIR's national executive director, testified that "informing the American public about the Islamic faith is a religious obligation," and the purpose of its "Islamophobia" public school programs is to "create a religious educational environment."

In addition, the organization said, "despite portraying itself as a mainstream Muslim organization, evidence confirms that CAIR was founded by members of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood."

"Indeed, the United Arab Emirates officially designates CAIR as a terrorist organization. CAIR is also notorious in the American Muslim community for demonizing and attacking progressive Muslim organizations that seek to work with government officials to combat Islamic radicalism in the U.S. The Anti-Defamation League has denounced CAIR for its anti-Semitic advocacy."

The organization's records requests seeks emails between school officials and ING and CAIR since the 2016 election.

The local Gilroy Dispatch reported the student claimed to have been bullied and became a celebrity, sitting down for interviews with the likes of National Geographic.

Shortly after Trump's election, the Muslim student, a freshman, claimed to have first encountered bullying."

The report said one message was pinned to her backpack that read, "I like Trump, you're fired."

The student's mother was "most taken aback" by an assignment for her daughter "involving a Fox News opinion piece that linked Islam, her religion as a whole to a horrific stoning in Afghanistan."

FCDF also is representing five San Diego families in a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the San Diego Unified School District’s partnership with CAIR. The district implemented an "anti-Islamophobia initiative" that singled out Muslim students for special protections and empowered CAIR to revise school curriculum to ensure it portrays Islam in a more “inclusive” light.

FCDF also is asking Seattle's schools for details about a similar program.

'The true faith, Islam'

The influence of Islam in public schools has become a nationwide issue.

In May 2017, 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 2017, 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 2017 a high school in Frisco, Texas, 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 judge ruled against them, and in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider their appeal.