OPINION:
The Texas State Board of Education is taking fire for new high school history lessons that ask students to study the ideology behind the 9/11 attacks.
Opponents say it is unfair to single out one religion. Groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations claim that it is trying to stigmatize all Muslims for the actions of a few.
The board approved the curriculum Sept. 4 by an 8-4 vote. It requires students to “identify the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks motivated by radical Islam” and learn about the response, including the global war on terrorism.
This drew the typical whiny, dishonest response from CAIR, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has labeled a terrorist group.
“No credible scholar of history validates the bigoted caricatures of Islam this curriculum teaches,” CAIR Texas protested. “The board has turned our classrooms into a place where prejudice is taught as fact and entire communities are written out of their own history.”
In fact, objective scholars have documented the importance of jihad — or a war against unbelievers — to Islam, the brutal conquest of non-Muslim lands beginning in the seventh century and the rise of Islamic extremism from Iran to Sudan.
Unlike Texas, most other states either downplay the 9/11 attacks or ignore them completely. A recent study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that fewer than a dozen states have statutes that require or encourage the inclusion of the attacks in either curricula or schoolwide activities. That even applies to something as noncontroversial as a moment of silence.
There are forces dedicated to lying about the connection between radical Islam and a day on which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. The radical left is especially active here. Podcaster Hasan Piker, the darling of the Democratic Socialists of America, has said: “America deserved 9/11.”
Islam is not a force for good in the world. Nigerian Christians are being massacred in the name of Islam on an almost daily basis. The Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel — which resulted in the greatest one-day death toll of Jews since the end of World War II — were carried out by Islamic extremists.
Throughout Europe, Muslim immigrants are committing hate crimes against Christians and Jews.
The war over the new Texas curriculum is not unexpected. Muslims consistently lie about what happened 25 years ago in New York City. If our schools do not tell the truth, who will?
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