The teacher, using an instructional guide, told students they would adopt roles as Muslims for three weeks to help them learn what Muslims believe.
She encouraged them to use Muslim names, recited prayers in class, had them memorize and recite a passage from the Quran and made them give up something for a day, such as television or candy, to simulate fasting during the month of Ramadan. — from this news article
What prayers are said? Is the Profession of Faith one of those things that is said? Do little boys and girls say the Shehada, and are then told “now you have done what everyone has to do to become a Muslim”? And if so, is this done under the beaming eye of the teacher? And do the children return home, full of stories about “I recited this prayer and if I want, I can be a Muslim” or “I did just what Muslims do, mom, and it’s really neat” or “I really like those prayers, they’re just kinda like our prayers so I think the teacher is right, all religions are just the same” or [fill in the seemingly innocent, in reality quite dangerous nonsense]? Those helpless little heads are a captive audience of their teachers, whether those teachers are of the terminally naive variety or the sinister sort. Who suggested this lesson plan? Who’s been pushing it?
Neither the judges in the lower courts, nor the Justices of the Supreme Court, know a thing about Islam. They may not realize the psychological effect on young children of having them participate in such a way by not merely studying, but by adopting roles as Muslims. Studying is one thing, if the studying is not simply the usual apologetics and nonsense, focused on such trivia as Ramadan and Iftar and the upright “family values” of Muslims (tell that to Muhammad’s Jewish concubine, whose husband, father, brother were killed by Muhammad, or to his Coptic concubine/wife, or to little Aisha and all the little child-brides of today, legalized in Iran and elsewhere, because of Muhammad as the model). Studying should rather focus on the core of Islam that matters so much: the uncompromising division of the world between Believer and Infidel and the endless war between them, which stops only when all obstacles to the dominance of Islam everywhere end, and everywhere Muslims rule.
Would the Supreme Court allow similar indoctrination into any other religion? Would it permit schools to insist that all schoolchildren should study, say, the Baltimore Catechism, and learn to provide the teacher, in a public school, with the memorized answers from that Catechism? How long would that be permitted? Ten seconds?
Where is the ACLU on this? How silly of me to ask, how pointless to wonder.
Like the Executive branch with tarbaby Iraq, and like Congress, which is divided between those who support Bush blindly and those who oppose him equally blindly (with only a handful who see the truth), the Judicial branch of our government thinks it can deal with questions involving Islam without comprehending Islam, without comprehending the psychology of a child who may be affected permanently by a cute little experiment in international living, or rather by a sinister, not innocent, attempt to manipulate minds.
This has to be reconsidered. There must, on the Supreme Court, be one or two capable of comprehending this. There must be one or two who are capable of understanding that Islam is not just a “religion” or, still worse, a religion “of peace and tolerance” or “one of the world’s great religions.” It is a complete system of regulation of life, a total explanation of the universe, a political and even geopolitical program, together with — yes — those Five Pillars of Worship which, of course, are in the damn unit on Islam, the one on World Religions that will make them all equal, but will be especially solicitous (you can bet on it) of Islam, Islam, Islam.
Look at all the gushing bits on television about the observance of Ramadan, and Iftar dinners, and all those articles in every newspaper about “What it Means to be a Young Muslim Woman in America Today” and “What It Means to be a Young Muslim Professional in America Today” and “What It Means to be a Young Arab Muslim In America Today” and “What It Means to be a Convert to Islam Today” and so on.
Seen any articles on Hindus lately? On Buddhists? On Sikhs? Why not? Why don’t we see gushing articles about them, or television bites on, say, Hindu festivals and other observances (why can’t we find out about those?), or on the Five K’s of the Sikhs, or on the lost lamaseries of Lhasa? Why not? Cat got someone’s tongue? Or are all those other, peaceful religions, which are entirely unhostile to the political, legal, and moral institutions of the Western world, for that very reason to be treated as non-existent or uninteresting?
My. Perhaps Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs could tell us a thing or two about Islam — Islam in India, Islam in Malaysia, Islam in Indonesia. Now and in the past. We might learn something. We might find out that the problem is a bit more than Islam and America, or even Islam and the West.
Islam — and All the Rest. That’s the problem. And the problem is not with all the rest. The odd man out, the causer of the problems whatever other faith it comes up against, is Islam.