When angry parents contacted the school in Kalmar County in southern Sweden, its authorities said it was merely “role-play”.
Fifth-grade pupils in Bjurbäcksskolan, Emmaboda Municipality had to participate in a religion lesson, where they kneeled on prayer mats facing Mecca and worshipped Allah in Arabic, the news outlet Samhällsnytt reported.
The class was also reportedly divided by gender and the girls had to move to the back of the room.
“Today my girls came home from school and told me that they were forced to lie on prayer mats and pray in Arabic. The girls had to be in the back of the classroom. Then they would dance to Arabic music and eat Arabic cake. My girls did not even want to be there because they could not understand a word of what the teacher read from the Quran in Arabic”, an angry parent who called himself Markus told Samhällsnytt.
According to Markus, some students brought their own mats. The teacher distributed mats to the students who did not have their own. The pupils would be facing the Kaaba, the centrepiece of the Great Mosque of Mecca.
When confronted by parents, school authorities said it was “role-playing”.
“I was obviously upset to hear that. That the school, at lesson time, chooses to divide the children by gender and put the girls in the back of the classroom is absolutely crazy. As is kneeling on a rug and praying to Mecca. All while a native speaker recites the Quran”, Markus told Samhällsnytt.
According to Markus, kneeling in the face of a “hostile” religion that “oppresses and marginalises girls” contradicts the very idea of school education and sends the wrong kind of message, as is the idea that one gender is somehow more important than the other.
By his own admission, Markus wants the school to apologise, explain itself and follow Sweden’s laws. He has requested that the headmaster take a time out during the investigation period.
Tweet: “Swedish students in grade 5 in Emmaboda were forced to lie on Muslim prayer rugs turned toward Mecca and pray to Allah in Arabic. The headmaster dismisses it as ‘role play'”.
The incident sparked an outcry on social media, where many found it untenable and interpreted is as a sign of Islamisation.
“Those responsible for this should be dismissed with immediate effect”, one user tweeted.
“Imagine the reverse… Muslim children had been made to partake in Christian or Jewish ‘role play’. Then heads would have rolled, and the outrage milieus would have been jangling”, another one said.
Earlier this year, a video of Danish pupils kneeling on the ground and chanting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) under their teacher’s supervision sparked outrage in Sweden’s neighbouring country. The video was not intended for the public eye and sparked many accusations of “indoctrination”.
At 8.1 per cent of the population, according to a 2017 Pew Research report, Islam is Sweden’s largest minority religion.
US Supreme Court: Teacher who forced student to say Islamic conversion prayer did not violate Establishment Clause
Parents take note: the Islamization of the education system needs to be firmly rejected, but that is not happening. Instead, parents are continuing to entrust their children to a system that is untrustworthy.
“Public schools across America are promoting the religion of Islam in ways that would never be tolerated for Christianity or any other religion.” This is the warning from the chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, Richard Thompson. The warning stems from an alarming case in which the US Supreme Court “declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic ‘conversion prayer’ or receive a failing grade.” The school is La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland.
A student of that school, Caleigh Wood, who was in the 11th grade (i.e., around 16 years old) was placed under the extreme strain of having to challenge the authority of a teacher and defend herself by refusing “to deny her faith by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.‘” Caleigh stood up to what amounted to efforts at a forced conversion in an American school, and the court saw no problem with it.
The Thomas More Law Center defended Caleigh, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the teacher “did not violate the Establishment Clause.”
There is more:
“Wood also had been forced to view a series of Islam-promoting PowerPoint slides, including one casting aspersions on Christians that said, Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian.”
Thompson said he was “not aware of any public school which has forced a Muslim student to write the Lord’s Prayer or John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…”
Parents need to be actively involved in their children’s education and know what their children are being taught in schools, since many are now being subjected to Islamic indoctrination which encompasses the rejection of their own faith; other children are being taught that Islam is inherently a religion of peace.
Author William Kilpatrick wrote in his article “Islamization in the Schools“:
While jihadists across the globe are busy slitting throats, American school children are taught that jihad is an “inner struggle” and Islam means “peace.” While Muslim rape gangs destroy the lives of teenage girls in England, American teenagers learn that Muhammad was a champion of women’s rights. And although American students are taught all the gruesome details of the Atlantic slave trade, they learn little if anything about the Arab slave trade which took many more lives.”
Western society is also being conditioned to believe that to challenge Islamization means that you are “Islamophobic” and/or bigoted, and that such discussions will only enrage Muslims. If the starting point of conversations about righteous anger over global abuses in the name of Islam is that Muslims will be enraged, then democracy is not in the interests of those who are enraged, and this is telling.
Six months ago, Jihad Watch also reported about a Washington school district that was promoting Islam “through a Ramadan policy that provides special privileges for Muslim students.” The Northshore School District in Bothell involved CAIR, which suggested “various changes in policy and practice that would benefit Muslim students,” but fortunately a legal team “dispatched a cease-and-desist letter” from the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund.
This demonstrates more of what parents are up against: CAIR suggested that a new Ramadan policy direct teachers to “create ‘safe spaces’ for Muslims, plan with Muslim students to let them ‘quietly slip away’ from class for prayer, ‘privately offer information’ about nutrition during their Ramadan fast, give ‘a lesson’ on Ramadan and privately ask Muslim students what accommodations they want.” All that is coming to a public school near you.
“Supremes have no problem with teacher forcing Christian student to voice Islamic prayer,” World Net Daily, October 15, 2019:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic “conversion prayer” or receive a failing grade.
The Thomas More Law Center is defending Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland.
Wood refused to deny her faith “by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – ‘There is no god by allah and Muhammad is the messenger of allah,’” Thomas More said.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the teacher did not violate the Establishment Clause.
Wood also had been forced to view a series of Islam-promoting PowerPoint slides, including one casting aspersions on Christians that said, “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian.”
The teacher’s actions were condemned in court by the high school’s content specialist, Jack Tuttle.
Richard Thompson, Thomas More’s chief counsel, said he’s “not aware of any public school which has forced a Muslim student to write the Lord’s Prayer or John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”
“Yet, under the pretext of teaching history or social studies, public schools across America are promoting the religion of Islam in ways that would never be tolerated for Christianity or any other religion,” he said. “It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court did not take this opportunity to clarify the test which lower courts should use when ruling on establishment clause and free speech challenges to public school classes on religion.”
