Schools in Virginia shut over anger at Islam homework

People are so dumb sometimes.

 

I heard that if you write 'There is no god but Allah' three times that makes you a Muslim. So that sneaky teacher was probably trying to get the kids to write 'There is no god but Allah' to unwittingly convert them. If she put it on the midterm and the final exam, that'd be 3 times that all those kids wrote 'There is no god but Allah' and it'd be a done deal.

 

That's kind of a stupid sentence to make people write if you're just showing the complexity of calligraphy. How about choosing another statement? I don't know what kind of reaction they were expecting from this...

 

You know you just converted yourself, right?

 

You know the first time I've ever heard of that phrase was when Antonio Banderas in '13th Warrior' wrote it in the sand in attempt to teach the illiterate Vikings. Before that I didn't comprehend what Islam at any level.

 

It could've said "Hargle Bargle" and something tells me the parents would've still been upset.

 

That town is upset that their entire population isn't 'white'. They know it and we know it.

 

The most surprising thing to me in the article is that there is a World Religions course in a public high school? I'm assuming this is an elective, right?

Of course I remember going into world religions as part of social studies/history courses in high school...but an entire class?

 

I agree. The teacher should have known better, or maybe trying to trying to provoke a reaction. In any case, asking students to write down something that may be counter to their own faith simply as a lesson on appreciating calligraphy makes very little sense.

 

Eh...

normally on the side that agrees that parents are just overreacting, but this time I think the parents are right to have an issue with this.

Most in here would agree that a teacher could make a student write "Jesus Christ is the son of God" and many in here agree that schools shouldn't have children singing Christmas songs that deal with God and that the Ten Commandments shouldn't be on federal land. I think having kids write the Islamic profession of faith in Arabic is across whatever line those are at a minimum.

 

I'll write or say anything you want if you give me an A or give me a salary. Whoever picked the quote is a moron, but who gives a ****?

I've written countless essays molded to kiss up to the ideologies of the professor/teacher that assigned it.

 

D'oh!

It's not so bad though. Now, I have a sliver of a chance at 72 virgins. My old nihilistic atheism wasn't offering jack squat!

I think the biggest hole in a public education is on religion, and for precisely the reason exposed in this story -- that there's too much potential for parents to get in a huff about state endorsement of religion.

You're right, though that's the boring explanation. That it's Islam doesn't help, but asking professing Christians to write that someone else is God is problematic, even when those Christians know it isn't intended to be a spiritual exercise. Angry parents and school closings sounds really extreme though. Just don't do the assignment.

 

I see nothing wrong with that phrase, or the phrase "Jesus is the son of God", or the phase "Buddha isn't a God", or any possibly religious phrase in a world religion class. I'm more surprised why student are learning the complexity of calligraphy in a world religion class.

 

Does the assignment explain the importance of calligraphy in Islam and its associated magical powers?

 

Article, btw, says it's a World Geography class, not World Religions. The assignment tries to demonstrate the importance of calligraphy to Islamic cultures. As a geography assignment, that makes some sense. It does rather look like busywork when they could be doing something deeper.

 

I suspect it was a one-off question and calligraphy was never to be discussed again in the class.

 

I agree..I could see non-Christians either raising a stink or opting their kids out of writing a phrase like "Jesus Christ is the son of God, our Lord and Saviour", so it's actually somewhat understandable that they would be angry about a similar Islamic phrase. They could have picked a much more generic phrase to demonstrate Arabic Calligraphy. A friend of mine used to have the Arabic for a roughly translated "b*itch better have my money" on his facebook. They could have used that, lol. :grin:

 

It should come as no surprise that a common example of complex Islamic calligraphy would be a friggen religious statement. The assignment didn't even ask them to actually complete it.

I guess my folks should have been outraged when I came home with Easter eggs, a paper menorah or dreidel.

Give me a break

 

Home of the Confederacy, what are ya gonna do....