Why Did Tennessee School Focus on Islam?

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Thomas D. Williams penned a story for Breitbart.com on Thursday detailing how a Tennessee school — using Common Core guidelines — instructed 7th grade students to study the Five Pillars of Islam and write the “Shahada” or Muslim conversion refrain.

Middle school parents in Tennessee are up in arms on learning that their children were instructed to recite and write, “Allah is the only god,” as part of a world history project.

In the Maury County School District, students were assigned a Five Pillars of Islam project that included the translation of the pillar of “Shahada” as being, “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is his prophet.”

Joy Ellis, the mother of a seventh-grader at Spring Hill Middle School, said that Christian children should not be instructed to write the Shahada.

“This is a seventh grade state standard, and will be on the TCAP,” Ellis said. “I didn’t have a problem with the history of Islam being taught, but to go so far as to make my child write the Shahada, is unacceptable.” — Breitbart.com

In a state where 85 percent of the population identifies as Christian, the school district spent three weeks discussing Islam, but glossed over the histories of Christianity and Judaism. Of course, the discussion regarding Christianity was limited to the Middle Ages, perhaps its darkest period.

Maury County Director of Schools, Chris Marczak, defended the curriculum in a statement, saying that the school system is in no way endorsing Islam over other religions or trying to “indoctrinate” students.

“It is our job as a public school system to educate our students on world history in order to be ready to compete in a global society, not to endorse one religion over another or indoctrinate,” Marczak said.

Porterfield, however, finds Marczak’s assurances unconvincing.

“They are not going over anything else. So for the students to have to memorize this prayer, it does seem like it is indoctrination,” she said.

These situations explain why so many oppose Common Core and the top-down Federal standards and curricula.