Christians Under Attack by Government School Bureaucrats
by Jim Kouri (4/27/08)
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” - Karl Marx German economist & Communist political philosopher (1818 - 1883)
Oak Lawn, Illinois, school kids are going to have to do without Halloween, Christmas and Easter activities thanks to the sensitive bureaucrats who fear offending Muslims. The schools’ administrators claim they’ve received a number complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students.
The decisions on which of the festivities will be terminated will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122’s five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Observers say they expect that this latest announcement is going to increase the tension that has been building since school officials agreed at the start of the school year to adjust the students’ lunch menu to exclude items containing pork to accommodate the Muslim students.
On Wednesday, September 26, police officers had to be summoned to quell a heated dispute among parents and school officials over this latest attempt by government bureaucrats to “shove political correctness down the throats of Americans,” said conservative political strategist Mike Baker.
“More and more Americans are starting to wake up to find their country and its traditions being slowly torn down by those who worship at the altar of the politically-correct orthodoxy,” claims Baker.
Elizabeth Zahdan, a mother of three District 122 students, told the Sun-Times that she took her concerns to the school board this month, not because she wanted to do away with the traditions, but rather to make them more inclusive. “I only wanted them modified to represent everyone,” she said.
What’s occurring in Oak Lawn is merely the latest attack on Christianity by government bureaucrats. According to one New York School superintendent, the teachers’ unions throughout the nation see themselves as the vanguard for the New World Order.
“The NWO has no room for Christianity and the way to eliminate it is to start with children as young as five or six,” said the Bronx school administrator who requested anonymity.
“They just won’t stop until they remove God from the public square,” said one Teaneck, New Jersey church pastor. “They will continue their attack on Christianity, especially since Christians in the United States are so complacent and respond with prayers but without any action.”
The NJ pastor uses the example of a 2003 legal controversy to illustrate his point:
“When US District Judge Myron Thompson ordered the removal of a Ten Commandments monument from the front of a courthouse, it created a huge controversy throughout the nation. Thompson ruled that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s placement of the 2.6-ton granite monument in the state building violated the US Constitution’s principle of separation of religion and government.”
However, a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll found at the time that 77 percent of Americans interviewed disapproved of the monument’s removal and supported Judge Moore and the display of the Ten Commandments.
“It is a sad day in our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge,” said Moore, who was eventually suspended by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission for refusing to obey Thompson’s order.
Sadly, only a handful of the nation’s Christian and Jewish clergy supported Judge Moore and Alabama Christians. Among them were Pastor Chuck Baldwin, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson and a few others. Most clergymen said they prayed about this intrusion on religious freedom, but they took no action.
Several conservatives told NewswithViews.com that these same school administrators, who rationalize their anti-Christian bias, would never prohibit open displays of Muslim holidays such as Ramadan. In fact, one school district in California has students dress in Muslim garb, pray Islamic prayers, and read the Koran while banning the Bible.
When Christian groups filed a lawsuit against the school district, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving the indoctrination of public school children into Islam. The decision came on the First Monday of October, the opening day of the 2006 Supreme Court term.
Not surprisingly, the controversial case comes from a ruling made by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But what is surprising is that hardly anyone has heard of the legal battle.
The lawsuit stems from a state mandated course in California public schools that requires seventh grade students to learn about Islam, the teachings of Mohammad, as well as studying the Koran.
Though the course is mandated, the Californian Department of Education allows teachers to exercise their own discretion on how the course on Islam is to be taught.
This discretion encouraged one teacher in the Bryon Union School District to adopt a supplementary that specifically states: “From the beginning, you and your classmates will become Muslims.”
According to the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest law firm that sued the school district on behalf of Jonas and Tiffany Eklund and their two minor children, the course also had children:
“Recite aloud Muslim prayers that begin with “In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.”
“Memorize the Muslim profession of faith: “Allah is the only true God and Muhammad is his messenger.”
Chant “Praise be to Allah” in response to teacher prompts.
Profess as “true” the Muslim belief that “The Holy Quran is God’s word.”
Give up candy and TV to demonstrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Take an Arabic name from a list of 30.
Play a board game called a “Race to Mekkah”.
Wear an emblem of the Muslim star and crescent moon around their necks.
Essentially, the course had students “become Muslims for three weeks,” the Eklund attorneys argued in their petition to the Supreme Court to hear the case. Children were also asked to analyze, explain and recite this jihadist scripture: “Believers, why is it that when it is said to you: ‘March in the cause of Allah,’ you linger slothfully in the land? ... If you do not fight, He will punish you sternly and replace you with other men.”
Students were even asked to read this scripture: “Those who avenge themselves when wronged incur no guilt.”
Regardless of the constitutionality of the case, should 12-year-old students ever be taught in US government schools that Allah wants them to “march” and “fight” in his name, and to “avenge themselves when wronged?”
Yet despite the dubious constitutionality of the case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that declared the Islamic class did not violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Judge Phyllis Hamilton, who was appointed under President Bill Clinton, presided over the lower federal court case and issued a ruling that stated the children were only “role-playing” and “simulating” the Five Pillars of the Islamic Faith. Meanwhile, public school officials do not wish to see a Nativity Scene anywhere near their impressionable students.
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