With uproar in Cobb school, Georgia may pull lesson about Islam

By David Ibata

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A controversial lesson that some say presents Islam in an uncritical light may soon be pulled from the list of state-approved educational materials, Channel 2 Action News reports.

An uproar on the blogosphere over the lesson and alleged death threats followed a parent's complaint about  social studies materials defending Islamic precepts.

A teacher at Campbell Middle School in Cobb County had assigned students to write about the issue of school dress codes, and had handed out a fictional two-page letter ostensibly written by a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian woman. “Ahlima” writes approvingly of wearing the burqa, or Islamic veil, and of her fiance's multiple wives and the law of Sharia.

“I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong,” the woman writes.

State school Superintendent John Barge told Channel 2 that the lesson was approved before he took office, and he would not have allowed it to be sent home with students for an assignment on dress codes. Nor, he added, was it appropriate for middle school students.

“When you start passing judgment on one culture or one religion being more appropriate, and especially criticizing our own culture as being wrong, that’s going too far,” Barge said.

Barge said there were too many opportunities for the author’s opinions to be passed off as fact. “What this lesson should be is about fact – they wear a burqa, or this is what their religion believes – not whether something is right or wrong,” he said.

The superintendent said the state school board at its next meeting would discuss the issue and the process for removing materials that had previously been approved.

In the meantime, he said, “We hope … our teachers at the local level are really using their professional judgment on what goes out to students and what they're teaching and resources their using.”

The letter from Ahlima is part of a 358-page unit produced by InspirEd Educators of Roswell for use during a two-week segment that Georgia middle schoolers devote to the Middle East. It is paired with a letter from a fictional Israeli woman discussing her own lifestyle.

In a previous interview with the AJC, Dale Gaddis, Cobb area assistant superintendent, said schools are tasked with teaching Middle Eastern cultures, and doing so requires talking about the religions of those cultures.

Gaddis denied the allegation by the website “Creeping Sharia” that the schools are “indoctrinating American youth with Islamic propaganda.”

Barge has acknowledged to the AJC that no one in his office may have reviewed the materials before the state approved it.

"I honestly don’t have the staff here to do that," he said. "The reality is with budget cuts here, I have one social studies specialist for the entire state of Georgia.”

InspirEd Educators, meanwhile, this week filed an incident report with Roswell police citing "terroristic threats."

The firm released a statement Wednesday saying it had received “what the police have classified as hate email and phone calls, and the company and its staff have been threatened and discussed with threatening language on various websites and blogs."

-- Staff writer Bo Emerson contributed to this article.