Marine Vet Suing MD School System For Islamic Proselytization
Maryland couple claims their daughter’s school indoctrinates students and hides its overbearing curriculum.
An eight-year Marine Corps veteran his wife have filed suit against their daughter’s high school principal, vice-principal, school district and board of education for violating her First Amendment rights by indoctrinating her in Islamic thought.
The case filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland is captioned Wood v. Charles County Public Schools, et al.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Their daughter and her fellow students were instructed to write out the Islamic creed “Shahada,” which says, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” When recited by non-Muslims, the creed amounts to conversion to Islam.
Students were also required to memorize and recite the Five Pillars of Islam and were subjected to disparaging teachings about Christianity.
“Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian,” one worksheet read.
The class also spent one day covering Christianity, while teachers devoted two weeks to instructing about Islam.
Upon learning of the lessons prioritizing Islam, Wood, who is Christian, contacted the school and demanded alternative assignments for his daughter. The school refused to allow his daughter to opt out of the assignments and threatened her with failing grades if they were not completed. She elected not to complete the worksheets.
The complaint filed Wednesday charges that the school discriminated against Wood’s daughter “by removing her from the academic environment of her World History class, relegating her to the student library, and issuing her failing grades on assignments because [she] refused to deny and insult her Christian beliefs.”
Following Wood’s complaints, the school principal also banned him from entering school grounds.
The Woods filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, as well as Title IX of the Education Amendments and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
§ 1983 is noteworthy because it is the federal law creating a cause of action for violations of constitutional rights, meaning the Woods are claiming their daughter’s education violates the constitution itself. § 1983 provides:
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.
This means, generally, that a civil action may be brought against government employees claiming to be acting within his or her legal authority (“under color of law”) when violating constitutional rights. The color of law distinction separates a constitutional claim against a government employee in his or her official capacity from a civil action against a person who just so happens to have a government job.
The Woods’ Complaint gets right to the point. Paragraph 1 says, “The First Amendment prohibits the promotion of the religion of Islam over other faiths, such as Christianity or Judaism, in our public schools.” In paragraph 4, the Woods allege “[t]his case, therefore, seeks to protect and vindicate the fundamental constitutional rights of two Maryland parents and their daughter, C.W., who were harshly punished for voicing concerns about the desecration of their Christian beliefs and heritage and the promotion of the Islamic faith in the Defendants’ World History class.”
The juiciest allegations are that the defendants actively sought to prevent parents from knowing the content of the World History Class:
5. Defendants concealed that their high school World History class promoted Islam. The class syllabus failed to mention that the course involved the teaching and promotion of Islam. The class syllabus also failed to mention that Defendants were using two different textbooks. Defendants required that students keep the second textbook, which extensively covered Islam, at the school. Defendants only allowed students to take home the first textbook that did not extensively cover or devote a separate chapter to Islam. . .
6. Plaintiff John Kevin Wood was surprised to learn about the graded homework assignments Defendants required of C.W. because Defendants omitted any information about the teaching and promotion of Islam in C.W.’s 11th grade World History class from the class syllabus. . .
7. La Plata High School without informing the students’ parents, however, used a second book in class, “World History (Survey): Patterns of Interaction.”
8. This second textbook contains additional sections on the Islamic religion that are not included in the first textbook.
9. The second textbook, “World History (Survey): Patterns of Interaction,” stayed at La Plata High School and was not allowed to go home with the students.
You can browse the full Complaint here:
The suit’s potential impact is enormous. The Woods allege that:
Defendants’ acts, policies, practices, procedures, and/or customs of funding and implementing a curriculum that impermissibly endorses and advances the Islamic religion violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, depriving C.W. of rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to the states and their political subdivisions under the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
And the Woods therefore:
seek a declaration that Defendants violated Plaintiffs’ clearly established constitutional and statutory rights; a preliminary and permanent injunction barring Defendants from continuing the acts, policies, practices, customs, and procedures that violate the rights of Plaintiffs and other school children as set forth in this Complaint; and a judgment awarding nominal and compensatory damages for the loss of Plaintiffs’ constitutional and statutory rights.
If the court holds that the school board’s curriculum was unconstitutional, and declares that the defendants’ curriculum violated the Constitution, it would ramify through every public school district in the country. While other courts will inevitably disagree with whatever decision the District of Maryland makes, this is an important step toward developing a jurisprudence on an issue that has come up repeatedly – to what extent disparate treatment of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and other religions can and does violate the 1st Amendment’s establishment and free speech clauses. For there have been numerous arguments about school districts teaching Islam with an air of legitimacy not granted other religions, but little guidance or progress toward resolving the issue.
Wood is a fascinating test case because of the school’s overbearing response to the Woods’ complaints. It seems reasonable to say that compelling students to say the Shahada – the emblem on the ISIS flag and the means of converting to Islam – is going too far. Instead of engaging the conversation, the school banned the concerned father and docked the student points. Seems like a problem.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Where is the ACLU?
On the side of the Progressive schools, just as it’s on the side of gun grabbers instead of the Second Amendment.
And yo know this how? Can you link to the ACLU statement supporting the school? When has the ACLU ever supported a school in such a case?
I lived in Maryland. That state considers itself the Land of Good Gummint, and they are perfectly willing to govern you to death. I can’t imagine a school getting away with this kind of proselytizing. How did this “curriculum” get approval?
The curriculum is part of Common Core.
Common Core originated from the “One World Education” concept, a global goal orchestrated by the Connect All Schools program, which is funded by the Qatar Foundation International (QFI). QFI is, of course, Islamic and one of its directors is Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna.
Many of the textbooks for Common Core are provided by Pearson Education. Pearson also certifies U.S. teachers. Pearson Education’s largest investor (owning 26 million shares) is the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which was founded by one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons. LIA is also, of course, Islamic. CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood are among the terrorist-supporting organizations known to have invested in Pearson through LIA.
As part of the 2007 Holy Land Foundation Trial (a trial about terrorist funding), the FBI disclosed some Muslim Brotherhood manifestos they had discovered which revealed a plan to indoctrinate U.S. schoolkids into Islam. They are doing this through Common Core, with the aid and assistance of the Obama administration (and idiot Republicans like Jeb Bush).
Read more about it here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/7/bethany-blankley-parents-must-reject-common-core-i/?page=all
“Where is the ACLU?”
Busy attacking Repubs, I imagine.
Are the Woods raising money to cover legal costs? If so, where can we donate?
The Woods are being represented by the non profit St. Thomas More Center. You can Google it for further information.
It’s going to be a very very long year . . .
“The US Mosque Obama Has Chosen For His First Presidential Visit Has Deep Extremist Ties”
“The Baltimore mosque President Obama has chosen as the first U.S.-based mosque to visit during his presidency has deep ties to extremist elements, including to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The White House announced on Saturday that Obama will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) on Wednesday. He has visited several mosques overseas as president but has resisted visiting one in the homeland. The purpose of the trip, according to the White House, is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.” . . .”
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/30/the-us-mosque-obama-has-chosen-for-his-first-presidential-visit-has-deep-extremist-ties/
I see plenty of liberals allege the existence of such contributions but they never offer any examples.
Of course. Who else has time and money to spend on PR – and the interest in it? And the mosque was not selected at random.
The schools really don’t want the parents to know what is happening in the classrooms and will do anything to make the parent wrong when confronted. I wonder about the integrity of the teachers who are so willing to participate in indoctrination. Are they stupid, don’t care, afraid to challenge it or agree with that type of indoctrination? No matter what, parents should not accept what passes for ed these days.
I recently read an article giving advice to parents who don’t understand the “new” common core math homework assignments.
What do they recommend?
Back Off .
This is all part of the same trend.
There is a sense of entitlement building up among educrats that needs to be stopped.
Apparently, they’re convinced that us parents are too stupid to know what’s best for our children. They want us to back off and allow them to indoctrinate our children.
It is time to do away with the Federal Racket Of Education.
What the heck! I would do away with State Departments too. Let parents and local communities run their schools.
“There is a sense of entitlement building up among educrats that needs to be stopped,”
They have no problem conducting experiments on all of our children’s education. Do they actually test out these ideas and verify that they improve children’s learning? Or is it dry labbed where they think it will make things better without testing? They previous time they “improved” math education it ruined millions of kids math education.
Based on my experiences, the first response to the parents’ concerns was no doubt “Well, none of the other parents have a problem with it. You’re the only ones.”
In reality there probably were quite a few and there’d have been plenty more had the school not been concealing the lessons.
If all schools were private schools, we would not have this kind of problem.
At a minimum, we need to get rid of the Department of Education. ASAP.
“There is a sense of entitlement building up among educrats”
Of course, educrats are part of the ruling class and, as such, have, in their minds, an obligation to keep the rubes (like us) in line on behalf of whatever ideology provides the ruling class the appearance of legitimacy at any particular point in time. British historian Sean Gabbe does a good job of explaining the parameters of the ruling class in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BptPS0aD4RY.
“This ruling class consists of bureaucrats, politicians, therapists, educators, lawyers, media people and associated business interests.” Sean Gabbe.
As far as the educrats are concerned, you and your interests not to mention constitutional rights are entirely incidental to how the world is run. In other words, they don’t think you matter.
The ruling class has determined that their own multiculturalism gives them authority to rule. Therefore, multiculturalism is a critical social objective. Were it the case that popular support granted these folks authority to rule they would make an appeal to popular support. However, they’ve found that over time they can manage elections by making sure their candidates control both major parties, so popular support no longer matters in terms of establishing legitimacy. So, to the extent your influence is limited it is limited because of the palpable weakness of populism over America’s political culture.
Woods, the Marine parent, has a case. I’ll bet, ahead, there’s a settlement offer with enough money, that he walks away from pursuing this. Plus, the media has no intention of offering this subject any coverage.
Carol, I can tell you for a fact that no dollar amount will get Wood or his wife to back down from this. He is a solid Christian and fought against Islamic extremist in Desert Storm. He is the true meaning of a sheepdog. While other liberals and “progressives” are happy with going with the spoon fed flow from Washington DC, he is ready once again to fight for our freedoms that make this country so great. I say this both as his friend, a fellow veteran and a parent against teaching anything regarding islam or Islamic indoctrination in schools that is so far fetched from the truth. They want to teach about islam, show videos of 9/11, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, the list goes on and on of what islam truly is unlike the sugar coating that Charles county public schools, CAIR (A listed terrorist organization in numerous countries), the Muslim Brotherhood and Obama want everyone to see.
Religious beliefs and practices need to be left to the parents and not the schools. Morals and Beliefs should be taught at home, NOT school. And if the leftists want to keep pushing the one world agenda, well it’s time true Americans start pushing back and show them just how we want them to take their agenda and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine
You know, some people don;y consider Islam to be a real religion. Only Christianity and Judaism are religions. Of course that’s ridiculous once somebody says it.
That’s because some fools believe that “real” religions don’t sanction theft, rape, and murder. Islam is a religion whose “prophet”, whom they are commanded to imitate, said he had been made victorious through terror. It’s also a political ideology demanding its followers conquer the world by any means necessary, and make those they conquer “feel themselves subdued.”
Islam is a totalitarian system in the true sense of the word. It is total; Islam regulates every aspect of life so, yes, Islam includes a religious element. But the vast majority of what constitutes Islam is a politico-legal system. A Muslim would say a divinely ordained politico-legal system, and bringing it about is a religious obligation.