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Ga. Middle School: Muslim Polygamy Is Normal, Burkas Good For Women
Written By : Warner Todd Huston

-By Warner Todd Huston

A middle school in Smyrna, Georgia included in an assignment material that essentially shows 7th grade children that Islamic polygamy is a perfectly legitimate concept and that there is nothing wrong with the strict dress codes used to oppress Muslim women the world over.

The material was presented to the 7th graders at Campbell Middle School as part of a discussion of the school’s dress codes, apparently meant to use the ideas of Islamic culture for women’s clothing as some sort of example to compare how the school regulates clothing for its students in Georgia.

The concepts were presented in the lesson as a letter from a fictional 20-year-old Muslim woman named “Ahlima.” In this letter “Ahlima” tells readers that she wouldn’t mind if her husband took a second wife and also extolled the virtues of the burkha. She claims that American women are “horribly immodest” in the way they dress.

As to polygamy, the fictional Ahlima says, “I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong.”

A father of one of the students was not very happy with the assignment. He complained that the lesson is “promoting or positively depicting their belief that polygamy” is acceptable. He also felt that there should have been some sort of disclaimer that we Americans don’t accept these concepts and he worried that the Muslim ideas were presented as completely acceptable.

Another page of the assignment explained the “seven conditions for women’s dress in Islam,” presenting all of them without discussion and, in essence, endorsing them as acceptable or normal.

The school told the WSB TV, Channel 2 News that it did not create the lesson plan and that it came from the state. The school pledged to review the material to see if it was appropriate.

But, it is not appropriate. Not at all.

First of all, this lesson plan is built on lies. The burkha, for instance, is not a requirement of Islam. It is a cultural practice that only some Muslim cultures observe. The burkha has nothing at all to do with Islam directly. Not all Muslims practice polygamy, either, so even that isn’t necessarily a strict Islamic idea, either.

But, worse, the idea that burkhas should at all be acceptable to an American is a slap against our own ideals and promotes the oppressive ideas of enemies to our culture as perfectly acceptable.

The culturally strict proscriptions against freedom forced on Islamic women are a crime against humanity, yet here we have our own schools presenting to our own children the idea that the oppression of women is a perfectly acceptable cultural choice.

It would be exactly the same if they had a letter from a female slave saying that she was OK with being a slave. That it was perfectly acceptable for her to be owned by someone.

We are teaching our children that our own principles are not the optimal principles. We are teaching our children that our own culture, our own ideals are not supreme. We are teaching our children that the oppressive ideas of Islam are just as good as American ideals.

This is a result of liberals trying to make sure Muslims know that we “like” them in a post 9/11 world. With this weak, kow towing we are also making of ourselves a bigger target because there is another cultural ideal in Islam. Muslims feel that such bending over backwards as this is a weakness to be despised. Such kow towing is looked upon as pitiful. Muslims feel that such groveling is not “nice” or “neighborly” but spurs them to imagine that they can easily attack and dominate such a weak-willed culture.

But, even that aside, it shows how the liberals that wrote these lesson plans despise America. It shows that they do not value our own culture. It shows that these liberals are always in search of ways to further tear down the United States and make of her just another nation with just another set of cultural ideas.

If we want to bring America back from the brink of the destruction liberals have led us to we need to take back our educational system and get back to a time where we are teaching our kids why the United States is the best nation on earth.

Unfortunately, today our schools are filled with lessons like this, lessons that teach our own children that the US is nothing special.

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  • http://www.wordaroundthenet.com Christopher Taylor

    Well it has to be hard to try to teach both this kind of thing and the typical modern feminist cant about oppression and phallocracy to kids (reduced to kid terms, naturally).  But I don’t have any special problem with dress codes, per se.

    • Anonymous

      It must be difficult to maintain the belief in the superiority of Islam at the same time you pretend to support equal rights for women and homosexuals.

      • Toastrider

        Indeed. That’s been one of the left’s weirdest contradictions.

      • beastdog

        I do not understand it myself how the left bends over backwards in its support for “Islamic religion and way of life”. Yet for starters Islam is considered a religion (I personally think of it as a blood thirsty cult but that is for another time) and when it comes to religions especially Christianity liberals normally freak out about it and have collective heart attacks even at the mere mention of the word Christianity, yet liberals embraces Islam with open arms and call anyone who does not embrace it with them a Islamophobe. Islam is against almost every thing liberals stand for, Islam oppresses women to the point that they are nearly slaves and have almost no rights. Islam has no problems with things like imprisoning and even executing homosexuals and executing people who will not convert to Islam.  You can drive a semi truck through the liberals contradictions here.

        • Anonymous

          I don’t see how Islam is a religion in the technical or practical sense. Their is no central authority, no fixed set of rules as any imam can issue a fatwa.
          It’s a political movement and shouldn’t be granted any of the rights or considerations granted to religions.

          • Toastrider

            Strictly speaking, many Protestant denominations have this ‘decentralized’ aspect as well, though.

          • beastdog

            As I said above I personally think Islam a blood thirsty cult, I called it a “religion” just for the purpose of the discussion at hand that’s all.

      • http://www.cavalierx.com CavalierX

        Not much harder, I suppose, than supporting a serial groper and accused rapist while pretending to support equal rights for women.

      • Anonymous

        For thinking individuals, it surely would be.  But we’re talking about leftists here.

    • Anonymous

      It must be difficult to maintain the belief in the superiority of Islam at the same time you pretend to support equal rights for women and homosexuals.

  • Liberty&Justice4All

    It will be interesting to see what the response is following the investigation by the school in Georgia. I agree that this was a poor choice of material to foster a discussion about dress codes.That said, anything can be taken out of context, and it appears that the school did just that with this lesson material. A quick Google search of “InspirEd Educators, Inc.” (who, as can be clearly seen on the PDF linked from the OP, own the copyright to the material) turns up a small company run by two women out of Roswell Georgia. Further, the “My Name is Alima” document is part of a larger “Everything You Need to Teach the Middle East” curriculum, which, in addition to the Alima document includes other teaching materials on geography, history (including Christianity and Judaism), government and economics. While I was unable to view the curriculum itself, It would appear that this was hardly designed to promote Islam or the Islamification of the school system. And whether or not the authors are liberals, who knows.As I have posted before on other blogs about this topic, I would hazard a guess that the authors never intended for this material to be used out of the context of the whole, for the very reason that it could be misconstrued to support a particular point of view, as has obviously happened. They may even be within their rights to sue the school for violation of copyright.

    • Anonymous

      What other blogs have you posted about this on? I’d be interested in following the threads. You’re quite up on the subject.

      • Liberty&Justice4All

        I wouldn’t say I’m up on the topic. Just that before I go off on a rant entirely based on assumptions, I try to do a little research. It took me all of five minutes to find out some information about posted on Geller’s blog ( http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/09/islamicizing-the-curriculum-selling-misogyny-to-children.html#comments). I also commented on the Bare Naked Islam blog (http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/georgia-middle-school-furious-parent-gets-sharia-friendly-curriculum-scrapped/) but that post seems to have disappeared. At least on this blog they found some quotes from the source of the curriculum, though it seems the ad hominem attacks on Coletti (the author) in the article and comments doesn’t really help get to the truth of it, in my opinion. I’m looking a little deeper into Campbell Middle School as it appears that it is an International Baccalaureate Candidate School. The IB program was conceived by a group of educators in Geneva, Switzerland, and while the program has established itself in 141 countries, my quick research online turned up stats that they’re only operating in a total of 3,264 schools worldwide (with 1,297 of those in the US) – so it’s hardly spreading like wildfire. It’s part of the Campbell High School curriculum…and the stats on the High school are pretty impressive, featured in Newsweek Magazine’s list of “Best High Schools in America” and one of the highest ranking schools in Georgia. It would appear that the connection to the IB program in the Middle School comes through something called the IDEA Academy. From Wiki: “The Academy creates a small, central learning community within the Campbell High community, slowly transitoning Freshmen into high school with different social activities and opportunities to become involved at Campbell. By the end of the second semester, the students exit the academy and join the rest of the pupils at Campbell, making room for the next class at the IDEA Academy. The students primarily come from Campbell and Griffin Middle Schools, though the IB Program brings students from all over the county.” All of this to say that there’s nothing here to suggest that the InspirEd material that caused the uproar is a part of regular Georgia Public School Curriculum. 

    • Anonymous

      While that may be so, you must admit that a lesson based on a fictional “letter” from a muslim woman that talks up polygamy and burkas is not the sort of thing that should be taught in American schools.

      • Liberty&Justice4All

        As I said, it was, in my opinion, a poor choice of material to use to foster a discussion on dress codes. I think the context in how the material was used is important. As a tool to foster dialogue about cultural, religious and political differences, it is certainly a valid technique, though to be fair, i would also like to see fictitious letters written from a woman’s perspective highlighting differences in other segments of Middle Eastern societies to compare and contrast. Unfortunately, I have no way of examining the curriculum for context. If I did, I might have an issue not only with content, but with methodology. Carefully reading the entire letter and the study questions, I can see how, in the hands of a skilled teacher, this letter could be used to talk about a number of issues: women’s rights, freedom of expression, cultural approaches to marriage, objectification of women, etc. By the same token, in the hands of another teacher, this same letter could be used to show the “superiority” of Islamic religion and culture. And in the hands of yet another, it might provide the opportunity to paint Islam as antiquated, oppressive and silly. The real danger here isn’t the letter. It’s the agenda of the educator. 

        • Anonymous

          Fair enough.

  • Dale Day

    I’ve seen and read this story in at least 10 other blogs. All have the same general theme that this is just another liberal attempt to tout the benefits of Islam.
    IMHO it’s another attempt to belittle women in general and “put them in their place” and I’m amazed that NAGS [National association of gals] hasn’t jumped all over it!

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