Just days before Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode?s letter to constituents condemning a newly elected Muslim congressman from Minnesota, Muslim activists in Baltimore County testified before the School Board about the need to change the way Islam is taught to local middle and high school students.
Bash Pharoan, Baltimore chapter president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the connection isn?t mere coincidence.
“Virgil Goode?s statements show that he is not an educated person in regards to Islam,” said Pharoan, a local surgeon whose children graduated from Baltimore County schools. “I think the root of the problem is really in the public school system. What we teach about Arabs and Muslims in school affects the beliefs people hold when they grow up and become congressmen ? and presidents.”
The nearly 4-year-old push for a curriculum correction, Pharoan said, is more important than ever following Goode?s publicized response last week to incoming Congressman Keith Ellison?s announcementthat he would place his left hand on the Koran, not a Bible, during a ceremonial swearing-in ceremony. Goode?s letter said immigration policy changes were necessary to prevent more Muslims from entering the country and that he feared more Muslim representatives would take office in the future. Ellison, who converted to Islam in college, traces his family roots in the United States back to the 1700s. No religious texts are used for the official swearing-in ceremony.
Muhammad Jameel, Baltimore County Muslim Council director, and Pharoan said the text being taught to seventh- to 10th-graders contains errors and portrays misleading stereotypes. A major mistake, Jameel said, is the depiction of Islamic culture as monolithic.
“Just as Christianity is different in South America, Europe, Asia and in the U.S.,” Jameel said, “So Islam is different in each Muslim country.”
And the depiction of jihad is misleading, Jameel said.
“Three of the four paragraphs under ?Jihad? in the text talk about it in the context of war. Jihad, first, is about personal struggle.” County text stating a key belief in Islam is that the world is divided into two parts, “the land of Islam” and the other “war territory.”
“It is believed that every Muslim has the duty to expand the frontiers of Islam until the world has been won,” is not a commonly held belief, Jameel said.
“I?ve have never heard that before in my life,” Jameel said. “If I was a seventh-grade Jewish or Christian student sitting next to a Muslim, I?d be scared if I read that.” He also noted that county?s resource sheet stating that Muslims drink nothing except water between dawn and sunset while fasting during Ramadan is inaccurate. “I have never met a Muslim that drank water while fasting ? fasting is fasting,” Jameel said.
Pharoan said Islam forbids suicides, the killing of innocents and the conversion of others against their will, but thecurriculum fails to present that to students. The county schools? resource sheet also refers to the Muslim prophet Muhammad numerous times as simply “Muhammad,” rather than Prophet Muhammad which Pharoan said is disrespectful.
Baltimore County School Board president Don Arnold said the curriculum was reviewed last year and that it comes from “scholarly, not political” sources ? though those sources are not referenced in the curriculum material. Arnold said that the board has not asked the school system for a new review.
Schools superintendent Joe Hairston has however asked Rex Sheppard, county supervisor of social studies, to look into the matter, Pharoan said. And he recently sent an e-mail with proposed corrections to Hairston regarding the county?s World Religions resource sheet on Islam.
“There is hope,” Pharoan said.
