US Supreme Court: Teacher Who Forced Student to Say Islamic Conversion Prayer Did Not Violate Establishment Clause

Parents take note: the Islamization of the education system needs to be firmly rejected, but that is not happening. Instead, parents are continuing to entrust their children to a system that is untrustworthy.

“Public schools across America are promoting the religion of Islam in ways that would never be tolerated for Christianity or any other religion.” This is the warning from the chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, Richard Thompson. The warning stems from an alarming case in which the US Supreme Court “declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic ‘conversion prayer’ or receive a failing grade.” The school is La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland.

A student of that school, Caleigh Wood, who was in the 11th grade (i.e., around 16 years old) was placed under the extreme strain of having to challenge the authority of a teacher and defend herself by refusing “to deny her faith by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.’" Caleigh stood up to what amounted to efforts at a forced conversion in an American school, and the court saw no problem with it.

The Thomas More Law Center defended Caleigh, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the teacher “did not violate the Establishment Clause.”

There is more:

“Wood also had been forced to view a series of Islam-promoting PowerPoint slides, including one casting aspersions on Christians that said, Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian.”

Thompson said he was “not aware of any public school which has forced a Muslim student to write the Lord’s Prayer or John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son...”

Parents need to be actively involved in their children’s education and know what their children are being taught in schools, since many are now being subjected to Islamic indoctrination which encompasses the rejection of their own faith; other children are being taught that Islam is inherently a religion of peace.

Author William Kilpatrick wrote in his article “Islamization in the Schools":

While jihadists across the globe are busy slitting throats, American school children are taught that jihad is an “inner struggle” and Islam means “peace.” While Muslim rape gangs destroy the lives of teenage girls in England, American teenagers learn that Muhammad was a champion of women’s rights. And although American students are taught all the gruesome details of the Atlantic slave trade, they learn little if anything about the Arab slave trade which took many more lives.”

Western society is also being conditioned to believe that to challenge Islamization means that you are “Islamophobic” and/or bigoted, and that such discussions will only enrage Muslims. If the starting point of conversations about righteous anger over global abuses in the name of Islam is that Muslims will be enraged, then democracy is not in the interests of those who are enraged, and this is telling.

Six months ago, Jihad Watch also reported about a Washington school district that was promoting Islam “through a Ramadan policy that provides special privileges for Muslim students.” The Northshore School District in Bothell involved CAIR, which suggested “various changes in policy and practice that would benefit Muslim students,” but fortunately a legal team “dispatched a cease-and-desist letter” from the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund.

This demonstrates more of what parents are up against: CAIR suggested that a new Ramadan policy direct teachers to “create ‘safe spaces’ for Muslims, plan with Muslim students to let them ‘quietly slip away’ from class for prayer, ‘privately offer information’ about nutrition during their Ramadan fast, give ‘a lesson’ on Ramadan and privately ask Muslim students what accommodations they want.” All that is coming to a public school near you.

“Supremes have no problem with teacher forcing Christian student to voice Islamic prayer,” World Net Daily, October 15, 2019:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic “conversion prayer” or receive a failing grade.

The Thomas More Law Center is defending Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland.

Wood refused to deny her faith “by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – ‘There is no god by allah and Muhammad is the messenger of allah,’” Thomas More said.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the teacher did not violate the Establishment Clause.

Wood also had been forced to view a series of Islam-promoting PowerPoint slides, including one casting aspersions on Christians that said, “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian.”

The teacher’s actions were condemned in court by the high school’s content specialist, Jack Tuttle.

Richard Thompson, Thomas More’s chief counsel, said he’s “not aware of any public school which has forced a Muslim student to write the Lord’s Prayer or John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”

“Yet, under the pretext of teaching history or social studies, public schools across America are promoting the religion of Islam in ways that would never be tolerated for Christianity or any other religion,” he said. “It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court did not take this opportunity to clarify the test which lower courts should use when ruling on establishment clause and free speech challenges to public school classes on religion.”

Thomas More contends the school violated the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Speech clauses when it ordered Wood to do an assignment that she could not complete without violating her Christian beliefs......

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