My investigations reveal enough to give me fears that Sharia is indeed creeping across the country, and Muslims are using public schools as an incubator for their brand of religious fundamentalism. They may be banning the Bible, but the nation's public schools are embracing the burka. In New York City schools are allowed to display Islamic symbols, but those of Christian are banned.
"What's at work is the politics of multiculturalism: tolerance for some, intolerance for others," said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League.
Across the Hudson River, school officials in South Brunswick, New Jersey, voted to close schools on the Muslim holidays of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha. It's interesting that Christian students are not afforded the same opportunity for their holidays. South Brunswick calls Christmas break "Winter Break." And Easter break is called "Spring Break."
In Dearborn, Michigan, a high school football team moved its preseason practices to 11:00 p.m. to accommodate Muslim players who are not allowed to eat or drink during daylight hours during Ramadan. So the players at Fordson High School held late-night practices that started at 11:00 p.m. and ended at 4:00 a.m. The national media picked up the story and was apparently not able to find one person who objected to a public school revising policy to accommodate the demands of a minority religion.
Could you imagine the media coverage if your neighborhood soccer program was forced to cancel Sunday morning practice to accommodate the local First Baptist Church?
The irony at Fordson High School is that Christians are not afforded the same considerations as Muslims. That's why the school's former wrestling coach filed a federal lawsuit against the Dearborn Public School system and the principal of the high school.
Gerald Marszalek said he was fired after thirty-five years on the job because of his Christian beliefs. According to the Associated Press, Coach Marszalek's troubles began when a volunteer assistant coach introduced Muslim students to Christianity.2 It didn't seem to matter to school officials that the conversation took place off-campus during a private wrestling camp. The volunteer, who is a minister, lost his job.
Later that year the principal, a devout Muslim, informed the coach that his contract would not be renewed. Coach Marszalek said he was told the issue involved his association with the minister-coach and his religious beliefs.
Meanwhile, a group of Christian missionaries was arrested in Dearborn, accused of disorderly conduct after they tried to share their faith with Muslims attending the annual Arab Fest. The missionaries, some of whom are converted Muslims, were released by police in this heavily Arab suburb of Detroit.
Police Chief Ron Haddad told the Associated Press they are not taking sides, but they are required to keep the peace.3 In the past, authorities have banned Christians from witnessing at Arab Fest out of safety concerns. One evangelist, George Saieg, filed a lawsuit.
But the issue is not confined just to America. A growing number of public schools across England, for example, are forcing children to eat halal food to accommodate the dietary rules of Muslims.
Parents are absolutely outraged. "We can't force our culture on someone else because that's not right so we shouldn't have someone else's culture forced on us," Jacqueline Gomm told the Daily Mail. "The little culture that we have is being lost."4
But school officials are standing firm, and Muslim groups claimed that anyone opposed to the rules is guilty of racism.
Did you also know that Muslims and non-Muslims are not allowed to swim in the same pools? That's what David Toube was told when he took his five-year-old son to a public swimming pool north of London. The staff told Toube that he could not swim because he and his son were the wrong religion.
"I arrived at the pool to discover they were holding what staff described to me as 'Muslim men only swimming,'" he wrote online. "I was told that the session was for Muslims only and that we could not be admitted."
According to the Daily Mail, the staff informed Mr. Toube they would only be allowed inside the public swimming pool if the Muslims didn't object.5
And that's not all. I submit for you even more examples of "Islamaphobia Gone Wild" from the fly-over states.
High School Tests Slam Christianity
A state-mandated test administered to high school students across New York portrayed Islam as a religion of peace and Christianity as a religion of violence. The bias was so blatant a number of teachers complained to state officials.
"There should have been a little balance in there," one teacher told the New York Post. "To me, this was offensive because it's so inappropriate."6
State education leaders said they made every effort to make sure all religions were presented accurately.
But that did not happen. Check out this excerpt from the reading portion of the exam republished in the Post: "Wherever they went, the Moslems (sic) brought with them their love of art, beauty and learning. From about the eighth to eleventh century, their culture was superior in many ways to that of western Christendom."
Now read what the test had to say about Christian missionaries in Latin America: "Idols, temples and other material evidences of paganism [were] destroyed," and "Christian buildings [were] often constructed on sites of destroyed native temples."
Sixth-Graders Pray to Allah on Field Trip
A group of public schoolchildren were separated by gender and allowed to participate in midday prayers during a field trip to a Boston-area mosque, and now the school is apologizing.
Attorney Rob Meltzer said the incident allegedly occurred when a social studies class from Wellesley Middle School toured the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, one of the largest mosques in the Northeast.
His client was a chaperone on the trip and videotaped the events. The video was distributed by Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a religious advocacy group that has been critical of the Boston mosque.
Parents were told their children would be learning about the architecture of a mosque, and they would be allowed to observe a prayer service. However, the students were in fact given a lecture on the Prophet Mohammed, and some male students participated in a midday prayer service.
"You have to believe in Allah, and Allah is the one God, the only one worthy of worship, all forgiving, all merciful," a mosque spokesperson reportedly told the students.
"Personally, I was appalled," Meltzer told me. "We are obviously very concerned about how much control parents were given and the lack of informed consent."
The sixth-graders were also allegedly told jihad is a personal spiritual struggle and has nothing to do with holy war. Female students were told Islam is a pro-women's religion.
"Islam was actually very advanced in terms of recognizing women's rights," said an unidentified mosque spokesperson in the video. "At the time of the Prophet Mohammed, women were allowed to express their opinions and vote. In this country women didn't gain that right until less than a hundred years ago."
The students were then instructed on how to pray during the midday service.
Mosque officials separated the group by gender and invited male students to join traditional Muslim prayers. The video shows young boys bowing and prostrating themselves with their heads touching the floor.
Dennis Hale, a spokesman for Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said the incident illustrates how the mosque was engaged in proselytizing. "You can easily imagine what would have happened if a Catholic priest had taken some kids from a school to teach them about Catholicism and have them take Communion without telling the parents," he said. "The furor would be visible from outer space."
At no point during the event did any schoolteacher or school official intervene. But nearly four months later, when the incident finally became known, the Wellesley School District sent a letter to parents apologizing for what happened.
"I extend my sincere apologies for the error that occurred and regret the
offense it may have caused," wrote Superintendent Bella Wong in a statement provided to me. "In the future, teachers will provide more clear guidance to students to better define what is allowed to fulfill the purpose of observation."
Wong explained the field trip was part of a course titled "Enduring Beliefs and the World Today." It included a visit to a synagogue and a mosque along with a gospel music concert and meeting with representatives of the Hindu religion.
Wong admitted that five students participated in the midday Muslim prayers. She also confirmed that a parent videotaped the incident.
"It was not the intent for students to be able to participate in any of the religious practices," she wrote. "The fact that any students were allowed to do so in this case was an error."
Cop Demoted for Refusing to Attend Muslim Prayers
The Tulsa Police Department is investigating a captain who refused an order to assign officers to attend an upcoming Islamic event because he said it would violate his religious beliefs.
Captain Paul Fields was reassigned after he refused to order officers under his command to attend the Islamic Center of Tulsa's Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, a spokesman for the department said. "It is my opinion and that of my legal counsel that forcing me to enter a Mosque when it is not directly related to a police call for service is a violation of my civil rights," Fields wrote in an internal police department memo obtained by FOX News.7
"I have no problem with officers attending on a voluntary basis; however, I take exception to requiring officers to attend this event," Fields wrote in an e-mail obtained by FOX News to his superior officer. "I believe this directive to be an unlawful order, as it is in direct conflict with my personal religious convictions."
"When you become a police officer, you don't give up any of your constitutional rights," said Scott Wood, an attorney representing Fields.
The lawsuit named Deputy Chief Daryl Webster as the lone defendant, accusing him of retaliating against Fields for exercising his First Amendment rights.
Fields has been on the police force for sixteen years and has at least six commendations. Wood says Fields has had a "stellar career" without any disciplinary actions.
In essence, Wood said Field was retaliated against for not voluntarily attending a mosque. It's a case of political correctness, he said.
"That's definitely what it is," Wood said. "But political correctness has nothing to do with the First Amendment."
The events leading to the lawsuit started when members of the Tulsa Police Department were invited to attend a "Law Enforcement Appreciation Day" at the Islamic Center of Tulsa. It was advertised as a social gathering featuring food, an opportunity to watch a Muslim prayer service, and an invitation to join lectures on beliefs, human rights, and women.
According to Wood, no one responded to the invitations, and no one volunteered. The following day Fields received a directive ordering him to find officers to attend.
"This is a program put on by the mosque for the officers, not the officers for the mosque," Wood said. "He did not believe it was police-related or related to his duties, and he was not going to do something that conflicted with his religious beliefs."
Wood said to their knowledge Tulsa police officers have never been ordered to attend nonpolice-related events at synagogues or Christian houses of worship.
The controversy has sparked national interest among Muslims. Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on America-Islamic Relations said he was following the incident and said it's an example of "anti-Muslim bigotry. When somebody feels empowered to say, 'I'm not going to take part in a community outreach event at a mosque because I basically don't like Muslims,' it's all part of that rise in Islamophobia in our society," he said.
But Scott emphatically denied CAIR's accusations. "Captain Fields would lay down his life for anyone in that mosque if the need arose regardless of their color, creed, or background," Wood said. "The purported reason for this law-enforcement appreciation day was because of the department's performance in catching someone who had made threats against the mosque. You can't have it both ways. 'You did a great job protecting us, but you're a bigot?'"
Muslims Told to Stay Away from FBI
The Council on American Islamic Relations featured a poster on its Web site promoting an upcoming conference that encourages people not to talk to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The poster, which appeared on the Web site of CAIR's California chapter, features a sinister-looking FBI agent with the headlines, "Build a Wall of Resistance" and "Don't Talk to the FBI."
"I think it's subject to misinterpretation," spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told me.
Although it seems pretty clear to me.
The poster was promoting a conference called "FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas: Know Your Rights and Defend Our Communities." The keynote speaker was Hatem Abudayyeh, identified by CAIR as an activist and Palestinian community leader whose home was allegedly raided by federal agents.
Hooper conceded the poster "crosses the line" but refused to renounce the artwork and blamed critics for fomenting what he called a manufactured controversy. "The entire American-Muslim community is under the microscope right now with a cottage industry of Muslim bashers," he said. "We're used to this kind of attack by the Islamophobic hate machine, and in this case there is some justification in terms of the possibility of misinterpretation of this poster."
Former FBI assistant director Bill Gavin told me the poster is sending the wrong message to the Muslim community.
"It sends out a real negative attitude to the Islamic community of what the FBI is really all about," Gavin said. "This is just a propaganda tool to try and thwart an active investigation into criminal acts by a would-be terrorist group.
"Why wouldn't you talk to the FBI?" Gavin wondered. "If in fact there is something being done to destroy the image of Islam in the United States, then it should be stopped. We should put a positive face on Islam, not Islamic extremists."
Remember the story of the frog and the pot of boiling water? If you put the frog into the water before it starts to boil, the frog will never get out. And by the time the frog realizes what's going on, it's too late.
Friends, if radical Islam is the pot, America may be ready to croak.
18
Sex Tents, Gerbils, and San Francisco Values
It appears the folks in San Francisco have been smoking too much granola. In 2010 the city outlawed the sale of Coca-Cola, considered a ban on the sale of pets, and contemplated pitching public sex tents so folks can do what comes unnaturally in front of God, country, and presumably kindergartners.
The debate over the sex tents involves the city's Folsom Street Fair. Apparently a few people were understandably offended at the forthright fornication coinciding with this event, even with the well-known nature of the gathering and the sordid reputation of its provocative participants. But after dutifully notifying the police of their shock and concern, they were told that this was San Francisco, where "the unwritten rule for the fair was, live and let live."1
However, one complaint led to further complaints, and eventually a meeting was called to discuss the issue. That's where they came up with the idea of public sex tents. As the newspaper noted, folks could have sex there or just watch.
Supervisor Beven Dufty represents the Castro district. He's in favor of the tents, or at least in favor of exploring the idea.
"There are definitely people interested in seeing more public sex," Dufty told The Bay Area Reporter. "Right now, I'd just take it under advisement and wait and see what develops."
Tell me I didn't just hear that. From a government official.
Now most folks in the fly-over states would agree that what people do in their bedroom is their own business. But what you do in a pup tent over by the monkey bars is a totally different matter. The proposal caused even the l
iberals over at the San Francisco Chronicle to choke on their tofu.
"Public sex isn't just lewd; it's illegal under state law," opined the newspaper's editorial board. "Enough. This is a quality of life issue that should have been tackled years ago. Local leaders need to stop clowning around and insist that everyone obey the law."2
Meanwhile, another crisis is developing at City Hall where they've banned soft drinks. Mayor Gavin Newsome has issued an executive order banning Coke, Pepsi, and Fanta Orange from vending machines on city property. The directive also includes nondiet sodas, sports drinks, and artificially sweetened water. That means if you need to wash down that tofu turkey dog, you'll need to order a bottle of soy milk. Even fruit juices have come under the mayor's scrutiny. Juices must be made from 100 percent juice with no added sweeteners.
So what's a thirsty San Franciscan supposed to drink?
Well, according to the mayor, the city's vending machines will be stocked with a wide variety of "healthy" alternatives. Imagine nursing a glass of rice milk on a warm, sunny day. The machines will also be stocked with water, provided it meets fat and sugar content requirements.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the ban is part of the mayor's effort to slim the city's waistlines. "There's a direct link between what people eat and drink and the obesity and health care crisis in this country," Newsom spokesman Tony Winnicker told the newspaper. "It's entirely appropriate and not at all intrusive for city government to take steps to discourage the sale of sugary sodas on city property."3
Not intrusive unless, of course, you want a bottle of root beer or a Fresca.
The city's ban is believed to be one of the strictest in the nation, and it's drawn the ire of the California/Nevada Soft Drink Association.
"This is all about choice," Executive Director Bob Achermann told the Chronicle. "There is probably nothing more personal than what you drink or eat. Singling out beverages in this whole equation of how to fight obesity is not going to be the answer."
Dispatches from Bitter America: A Gun Toting, Chicken Eating Son of a Baptist's Culture War Stories Page 9