Fear Factor

Last week, I reported on Jay Sekulow and the ACLJ’s attempt to profit off of fear of imagined Islamic indoctrination in Tennessee schools.

Rather than provide concrete examples of such indoctrination or respond to facts about long-standing state standards, Sekulow and his bunch of so-called religious liberty defenders are continuing the fight — the fight to get donations by way of stirring up fear.

Here’s the latest from a recent post on the ACLJ’s website:

The blatantly unconstitutional promotion of Islam in schools has garnered substantial national attention forcing the Tennessee State Board of Education to review the standards earlier than planned.

In response to questions and concerns we’ve received  from parents in Tennessee, we have sent over 146 “open records” requests to school superintendents—one request to every school district in Tennessee.

The ACLJ is requesting the information under the Tennessee Open Records Act.

We are asking  for information on exactly what students are learning about Islam and other world religions, how students are being taught this information, and what resources teachers are using.

We want to get to the bottom of this indoctrination. Where is it coming from and why is it happening?

In our letters, we are asking  for comprehensive records from school officials concerning the teaching of Islam. Specifically, among other requests, we asked that school officials provide us with:

“Any and all records concerning assignments or activities in which students of [your school district] are asked and/or required to recite prayers and/or chants, speak in Arabic or other foreign language(s), or engage in any other speech and/or conduct associated with any world religion.”

Make no mistake, the ACLJ is seeking to intimidate school districts and the state in order to gain control over curriculum. By making broad requests that may require individual teachers to produce lesson plans, ACLJ likely suspects some districts and schools will change their practices regarding current social studies instruction. Note the fact that ACLJ isn’t concerned about other world religions, only, in their own words they are, “asking  for comprehensive records from school officials concerning the teaching of Islam.”

As I noted in my last post on this topic:

With all this supposed indoctrination going on, where’s the evidence that students have converted to Islam? And then, do they convert to Buddhism later on in the semester when that subject is taught?

And now, this question: Should students only learn about Western Civilization and not the cultures with which it intersected?

Finally, with all the evidence of indoctrination that ACLJ surely expects to find in their review of documents from local districts, one wonders where all these Islamic indoctrinating Tennessee teachers are coming from and why they chose our state for their conversion experiment?

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport