Religious Double Standard: What This School Made Students Do

Given secularists’ obsession with keeping any hint of Christianity out of government schools, it’s surprising that a government school would risk the appearance of endorsing any religion (at least for the sake of consistency). But a school in Maine did just that by assigning students to write out the Muslim creed, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,” which is required for Islamic conversion. 

Free Beacon also reported that one father considered this and other incidents to be propaganda for Islam.

John Kevin Wood filed a federal lawsuit last week against the school district, the school board, and the school’s principal and vice principal, citing civil rights violations. An excerpt:

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.

What happened to the strict “separation between church and state”?

Free Beacon reported that the daughter couldn’t opt out of the assignments, and the school threatened to fail her. In a further act of vindictiveness, the principal banned Wood from the school grounds after he complained about his daughter’s treatment. 

“Defendants forced Wood’s daughter to disparage her Christian faith by reciting the Shahada, and acknowledging Mohammed as her spiritual leader,” Thomas More Law Center president Richard Thompson said. “Her World History class spent one day on Christianity and two weeks immersed in Islam. Such discriminatory treatment of Christianity is an unconstitutional promotion of one religion over another…Parents must be ever vigilant to the Islamic indoctrination of their children under the guise of teaching history and multiculturalism. This is happening in public schools across the country. And they must take action to stop it.”