Another action alert. California DOE contact info below – also contact your elected reps, hat tip to Doctor Bulldog.
AIM Column | By Malcolm A. Kline | July 17, 2009
Under some pressure from parents, California’s Education Department is reviewing its guidelines for teaching Islamic Studies to seventh-graders in its public schools. We wrote about this trend six years ago when we discovered that, though the California standards require the study of all religions, Islam is examined disproportionately.
Moreover, the more extreme elements of the more radically Islamic societies, though they represent a minority of a religion whose adherents are overwhelmingly peaceful, are ignored, no matter how visible their acts are. The latest attempt to revamp the California rules adds a new wrinkle to this approach.
For example, the treatment of Shari’ah law in the framework for Islamic studies developed by the California Department of Education is, to say the least, problematic. “Students learn how the Qur’an and the Sunnah served as foundations for the Shari’ah, the religious laws governing moral social, and economic life,” the suggested framework reads. “Islamic law, for example, rejected the older Arabian view of women as ‘family property,’ declaring that women and men are entitled to respect and moral self-governance.”
“Shariah law, or Islamic law, officially went into effect in a region in Pakistan this week and will likely result in ‘egregious’ human rights violations,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reported on April 16, 2009. The USCIRF went on to note that “Under Taliban-enforced shariah law in North West Frontier Province’s (NWFP) Swat Valley, human rights and religious freedom – especially for women and members of religious minorities – are expected to suffer severely.”
“The violent, Taliban-associated extremists based in NWFP’s Swat Valley consistently demonstrate their disregard for fundamental human rights, and use public beheadings and beatings as a means of enforcing their control,” Felice D. Gaer, USCIRF chair stated. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by an act of Congress and gives “independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress.”
Those who have lived under Shariah offer even harsher assessments. “Sharia[h] laws are being used by terrorists to violate divine human rights,” Shaukat Malik, a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant, wrote on The Baltimore Sun web log.
“Sharia[h] is used to scare the average citizen into submission,” he wrote. “This is done through publicly staged floggings, stoning and executions of men and women for committing adultery or other sexual acts.”
The California Department of Education is taking testimony today and tomorrow on its course revisions but if you would like to let them know how you feel about it, you can do so in the 60-day comment period that begins this weekend:
California Department of Education
Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources Division
1430 N Street
Room 3207 Sacramento, CA 95814
916-319-0881 or 319-0454
FAX 916-319-0172
Read it all, there is much more detail via Shariah Studies by Stealth.
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