Religious Reverse Discrimination?

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There is a big problem developing in respect to the separation of church and state in the public schools in the USA, particularly in reference to respecting the Muslim students with a type of reverse discrimination while at the same time not allowing the Christian students their rights.

From the writings of Columbus to the Mayflower Compact, to the Declaration of Independence, America’s founders clearly and articulately enshrined bedrock Christian principles in the foundation of this country. Our pilgrim fathers wrote in the Mayflower Compact, “In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten . . . having undertaken, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith…a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia.”

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson invokes our Creator-God no less than four times.  Jefferson predicates the Declaration on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and concludes the Declaration with an appeal to the “Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions” and with “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”   Faith in God, whether from a deistic understanding of it as in God being the one who has established the laws of nature or as in God revealed in Jesus Christ, is a basic part of America and the education of this land..

Deeptha Thattai, a volunteer with the Cincinnati chapter of the Association for India’s Development, said  in the article “A History of Public Education in the United States”:  “Since the 1950s, public policy toward education has addressed discrimination issues in education more than educational issues. The federal government has especially been concerned with issues of equality in school districts” (deeptha1@yahoo.com). I personally feel this is very true and especially in respect to seeking to accommodate many of the tenants of the Islamic faith.

There has been concern about racial or gender inequalities in education, and our nation has sought to address this, often by reverse discrimination.  Females experienced unequal educational opportunities and our nation has and is addressing this.   Now the shift has turned toward religion, in particular, to making sure Muslims are not discriminated against in their religious faith and practices.  This is fine when it does not interfere with the rights of others. But often reverse discrimination does!

It is educational to teach that  there are religions other than the predominant one in America, Christianity.  But it is something else to teach a distorted, biased or prejudicial understanding of a religion.  Case in point is the focus on the Islamic faith to the neglect of or attacks on the Judeo-Christian worldview.

I wonder why there has been a national pattern in the public school policy of favoring the Islamic faith to the neglect of others such as Hinduism, Buddhism or even some of the other Far Eastern faiths.  Some of us would say there have been attacks on Christians, particularly the evangelical Christians, as seen when a teacher is fired for silently reading a personal Bible during a study hall or when students are not allowed to have student-led Christian prayer at graduations or when students from parochial schools are denied open gym time at the local public school in their district.

Several recent studies have shown American students to be alarmingly ignorant about U.S. history and world events.  Many history educators are distressed that often history textbooks are in error, often from Islamic influences.   Major publishers, such as Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt and Random House, Inc., permit affiliates of Islamic groups to write and produce textbooks that tend to promote Islamic ideologies.

Across the Centuries (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a 558-page textbook used in middle schools contains fifty-five pages on Islam, but less than ten pages on Christianity.   It has been noted, “The chapter on Islam accounts for ten percent of the text, while Christianity and Judaism are almost entirely absent.” Some other examples are teaching that Jerusalem is an Arab city; that Muslims first discovered America; that Christianity was started by a “young Palestinian” named Jesus; and that the Koran was revealed to Mohammed first-hand mediated by the Angel Gabriel, while the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were written by men. (“Public Schools Teach the ABCs of Islam,” Erick Stakelbeck–CBN News Terrorism Analyst, January 9, 2009)

In respect to one class in Byron, California, that used the Houghton Mifflin text, Muhammad is portrayed as an extremely moral man who wanted a society of purity. A vast body of historical accounts will refute this image. History actually shows that he had multiple wives, a sexual problem, and among his wives, he took a ten-year-old girl for his pleasure (some accounts list her age as 6). Islam promises its followers that those who become suicide bombers, killing themselves and others, will go directly to Allah’s paradise where they will be given seventy-two virgins for unbridled sexual pleasure for all of eternity. It doesn’t say anything about female suicide bombers getting seventy-two male virgins!

The Houghton Mifflin text does not mention that it was the Muslims who captured blacks and sold them to be slaves to the Western and to the Eastern hemispheres. While European involvement in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, Arab involvement in slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day. The text condemns the Christian West for buying the slaves, but says little about the Christian Abolitionists who fought the slave trade. This bothers many of us!

In a public school course, there are many verses in the Koran that must be memorized, and students are taught to pray, “in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” and chant, “Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation.”  Twenty-five Islamic terms must be memorized, six Islamic (Arabic) phrases and twenty Islamic Proverbs.  The Five Pillars of Faith and 10 key Islamic prophets and disciples are to be studied.

The Houghton Mifflin history books are quick to note the negative factors in Christian Church history, while Islam is presented broadly in a totally positive manner. Almost everything Christian is shown in a negative light, and the restricted references to Christianity are centered on conflicts such as the Reformation, Martin Luther and the Catholic Church or events such as the Inquisition or the Salem witch-hunts, etc., highlighted in bold, black type.

Randy Dotinga, correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, July 12, 2007 in an article “Public schools grapple with Muslim prayer” noted about a California school that: “Like a growing number of school districts around the country San Diego is changing its ways to meet the needs of its Islamic students. But, in accommodating Muslim students, is the school unfairly promoting religion?” Dotinga goes on to note that Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said:  “The school’s policy ‘presumes that Christians are less religious and less inspired to worship and praise the Lord and come together.’”

In 2005 a suburban Dallas school district allowed Muslim students to leave class to pray after being confronted by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a bipartisan organization.  In the Dearborn, Michigan, schools students are to avoid strenuous exercise while they’re fasting and special diets are served for them with meat slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law. Dearborn school district has at least one in three students of Middle Eastern descent – many of whom are Muslim, and it also schedules two days off during the Islamic holiday of Ramadan.  What about the rights of Christians and Jews?

For years now, federal judges have demanded local schools (under the jurisdiction of local and state governments) to prohibit Christian prayers or Bible reading, but now an increasing number of school districts are observing that Muslim prayers and readings from the Koran are to be accepted.  But, I ask, “Is not this a type of reverse discrimination that is wrong and attacks the very foundation of our land?”

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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