9th Circuit Court Says Teaching Children To Be Muslims OK
Posted on November 18, 2005
Hat tip: My Pet Jawa
SAN FRANCISCO – Christian students and parents cannot sue a school district where some seventh-graders pretended to be Muslims for three weeks during a course in world history, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the role-playing game was not a religious exercise that violated anybody’s constitutional rights.
The decision was issued one day after the U.S. House of Representatives chastised the 9th Circuit for ruling earlier this month that parents can’t sue public schools for providing information about sex. That decision “deplorably infringed on parental rights,” said the House resolution.
Thursday’s decision came down in an unpublished memorandum, indicating the judges considered it routine.They reviewed the method used by one teacher in Byron, Contra Costa County, four years ago to teach the unit on Muslim history, culture and religion that is part of the state’s seventh-grade history curriculum.
Brooke Carlin encouraged her students to play at being Muslims – adopt Muslim names, recite a line from a prayer and give up candy or television to simulate fasting, for example. Students were permitted to opt out. On the final exam they were asked to critique elements of Muslim culture.
Jonas and Tiffany Eklund sued, along with their children. San Francisco U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton dismissed the suit two years ago, saying Carlin was merely teaching and not indoctrinating. Hamilton found that the students did not engage in actual religious exercises.
The 9th Circuit upheld her decision in a five-sentence ruling, saying only that the activities weren’t “overt religious exercises” that would raise concerns under the First Amendment prohibition of “establishment of religion.”
Senior Circuit Judge Dorothy Nelson of Pasadena and Circuit Judges Johnnie Rawlinson of Las Vegas and Carlos Bea of San Francisco signed the decision.
The unpublished memo format indicates the appellate judges did not believe they were breaking legal ground. Unpublished decisions cannot be cited in future cases.
But Edward White, who represents the Eklunds on behalf of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., called the ruling “an opinion without any precedent.”
He said the judges overlooked arguments he made about parental rights and freedom to exercise the religion one chooses.
You can bet if the children were subjected to participate in a Christian themed role playing game such as a nativity scene in a Christmas Winter Break play that the Seperation of Church and State Clause of the Living Document would have had precedent. However, since its not Christianity, the 9th Circus found it o.k. to indoctrinate into children. Where is the ACLU on this one? Anyone? How is it that Gideons giving out little new testaments are found as a threat, but teaching children to recite Muslim prayers is not? So they had the choice to opt out, just like voluntary prayer, or reciting the pledge without using “Under God”, but somehow this is different. Please, Congress split this Circus up!
Can we find a teacher out there willing to make some Muslim students pretend to be Christians for a few weeks? You know, just to better understand the culture and all.
» Filed Under ACLU, Activist Judges, News
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17 Responses to “9th Circuit Court Says Teaching Children To Be Muslims OK”
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Syndicate Me
Wow. I’m strongly for the separation of church and state. Maybe this story will convince my Baptist brethren how dangerous it is to abandon that ideal!
Howie
Split it up? How about impeaching a few of the more disgraceful Constitutional violators? Then split it up.
The 9th Circuit Court is at it again. How dressing up like a Muslim, reciting Muslim prayers and simulating Muslim religious fasting (I guess for Ramadan) in school doesn’t violate a prohibition respecting the advocacy of a Religion in public education is beyond me. Especially when the mere mention of Christmas, or anything remotely Christian, in a Christmas Carol at a school play does. The Justices of the 9th Circuit and their mush head bretheren at the ACLU must think the rest of the country is so stupid as not to see the hypocracy of all this. Examples like above have convinced me over the years that the courts are the biggest threat, along with the ACLU, to personel freedom and America culture today.
11 18 05
It just shows the comunazi hypocrisy of those moonbats!
My understanding is that if you once say “there is no god but Allah …” you are a muslim forever, and subject to shari’a. Does anyone have any facts on this? Did the teacher have the students recite it? In English or in Arabic? To an American teacher it may seem trivial. To Al Zarqawi it might seem to require action under the fatwa that says converting from Islam to anyhing else is a capital crime.
Better yet, Jay: let’s have the Muslim students pretend to be Jewish children for a week. After all, they’ve always shown such eagerness to get along with their fellow descendants of Abraham.
Dick
So what’s next for our vaunted education system?
Why don’t we, during a class on the history of WW2, have the kids break into groups an play out different sides of the war, simply to give them a better understanding of the history behind the war?
We could have some kids be American GI’s, some kids be allies, some play the Japs, some the Italians and of course, no WW2 histroy lesson would be complete without a few Nazi’s and some Death Camp players.
We can have a few kids be civilians that, simply to simulate getting bombed out of their homes, must live in their yards eating whatever food they can scrounge from the GI kids, all the while the Nazi kids could lock the Jewish kids up until the assigment is over, making them do the chores the Nazi kids don’t feel like doing themselves.
Of course, any kids playing the French would have to walk around the whole time with their hands up begging not to be killed.
“Why don’t we, during a class on the history of WW2, have the kids break into groups an play out different sides of the war,”
They could do with a board game like Axis & Allies.
Nope nope nope…..they didn’t have a board game called Infidels and Imams in that history class….gotta keep things on an even playing field.
Imagine how much fun this concept could be…..makes studying history even more fun…..I can’t wait until they start teaching about the Vikings or The Golden Age of Piracy.
Gee. Wasn’t the teacher a woman?
Maybe some of the boy students could/shoud have beaten the teacher for not being subserviant to the boy students and not treaching in a Burqa.
“Can we find a teacher out there willing to make some Muslim students pretend to be Christians for a few weeks? You know, just to better understand the culture and all.”
Really we need to teach the arab world about liberalism and feminism.
Actus, while feminism has become extreme here in America, I agree that they need to lean about equal rights for women.
hahaha [edited] idiots
I second the motion to have a teacher make a Muslim student be a Christian for three weeks. Wow – the fireworks would be huge!
If I, with merely a bachelor’s degree, could look at the opposite of the situation and see the illegality (and lunacy) of it, why can’t judgtes?
California is like a different country these days. It seems they and the ACLU should cecede from the rest of us. If they tried to do this with Christianity or Judaism, we’d be accused of not being sensitive to Muslims in this day and age.
Linked post:
Now That Schools Can Teach Islam, They Can Teach Christianity Too
Link:
http://ginacobb.typepad.com/gina_cobb/2005/11/ninth_circuit_b.html
how about this: Islam is not a religion. It is a competing legal system, devised by a caravan raider/pedophile and used throughout its history to justify the worst treatmant of women, children, noncombatants, prisoners, and citizens of what ever place where it gained sway.
Now if one taught another competing legal system, say that of the Hebrews, or Morgan and Bartholomew Roberts rules for pirates it may not be unconstitutional.
Islam is ambiguous, so when you care to treat it like religion, it is a legal system. If you treat it like an alternative legal system (which disagrees with the US Constitution, and hence holds no sway here)it suddenly receives protection as a religion.