February 14-2014
Alabama’s state school board voted 5-2 Friday to recommended 11 social studies textbooks, dismissing complaints from critics who said the texts favored Islam.
The vote is only a recommendation since local school districts still get to decide which texts their students will read. However, local school districts that do not use books on the state’s approved list do not receive funding for their textbooks.
The board was originally scheduled to vote in December, but then decided to review the texts again after receiving complaints. Members of Act for America and the Eagle Forum of Alabama, both staunchly anti-Islam, said the books devoted too much content to explaining Islam and not enough on Christianity and Judaism.
“Why is so much text devoted to Islam?” Larry Houck, the founder of Act for America’s Birmingham chapter, wrote in a letter to the school board. He said the books “proselytize for Islam.”
The president of the Birmingham Islamic Society, Ashfaq Taufique, said the objections were unfounded. He said a multi-faith coalition that included Christians had supported recommending the textbooks.
“I feel really good about the progressive nature of this vote,” Taufique said. “A negative vote on this would have sent chills through the communities. Alabama is gaining more international business, more physicians from areas other than Alabama … and therefore rejection of these books based on this content about Islam would have been detrimental to the progress we have made to date.”
The approved state list includes more than 500 textbooks on all subject matter. Only the 11 now approved were questioned. The Eagle Forum and Act! For America sent letters to board members last month complaining that the books were too pro-Islam and misrepresented some aspects of Christianity. They said the books omitted references to Islam being spread by violence and didn’t spend enough time on Christianity’s positives.
This objection to textbooks for allegedly being pro-Islam has erupted in the past year and is spreading in many conservative parts of the country.