State Board of Education members on Friday approved a rewrite of what Texas high schoolers learn in social studies, disregarding pleas from Muslims who testified that schools should teach how people of Islamic faith positively contributed to world history.
The Republican majority instead adopted a lesson, for example, requiring public school students to learn that “radical Islam” motivated the 9/11 attacks, as opposed to more narrowly focusing on terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and extremists such as Osama bin Laden. A Muslim-American EMT was notably among those killed while attempting to save lives during the tragedy.
The board greenlit students learning about early Islam through the lens of the Prophet Muhammad’s “brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization and regulation of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.” No credible Islamic scholar would find such a portrayal accurate, the Muslim Texans argued.
At least three of the board’s appointed experts also cautioned against the characterization. Andrea Hutchison, a social studies curriculum coordinator for Prosper ISD, said it does not “hold up to close historical scrutiny.” Robert Koons, a philosophy professor at UT-Austin, said most nonreligious scholars find the source of the claims “not very reliable.”
