Terrorist Front Group Strong-Arms State’s Largest Public School Dist. to Observe Muslim Holiday

A renowned terrorist front group that has managed to influence various areas of American public life has strong-armed Maryland’s largest public school district to give students the day off in observance of a Muslim religious holiday known as Eid al-Fitr. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a radical Muslim charity, reared its ugly head and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) officials as well as other legislators in the Old Line State caved in to its demands of recognizing Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, on March 20. The district has around 156,500 students across 211 campuses and last month they lost five days of instruction to a severe winter storm. Officials designated March 20, a previously scheduled noninstructional day, as a snow makeup day and Muslim groups, led by CAIR, immediately waved the discrimination card and the Maryland public school district reversed course.

In one media report the head of the local CAIR chapter, Zainab Chaudry, called the snow makeup day on March 20 “troubling news” and compared it to striking other religious holidays such as Yom Kippur, Easter and Christmas. “We want the same dignity and response for the Muslim community as well,” she said in the story. In a statement issued a few days ago, CAIR celebrated the “swift advancement of emergency legislation” in the Maryland General Assembly to provide the school system with the flexibility to adjust the calendar. Eid al-Fitr is a sacred holiday for thousands of MCPS families, CAIR writes, and the State Department of Education’s prohibitive policies required a substantial effort to restore it on the calendar as a non-instructional day. “We extend our gratitude to Superintendent Dr. Thomas Taylor and the Montgomery County Board of Education for working diligently with the Montgomery County Delegation to find a solution that protects both instructional integrity and religious accommodation,” the statement reads. CAIR also acknowledged the chair delegate of the House Ways and Means Committee for “fast-tracking the legislation” that makes Eid al-Fitr a school holiday.

Alarmingly the group’s influence is gaining steam in American primary and secondary education which are foundational in shaping young minds. A few months ago Judicial Watch reported that CAIR is partnering with public schools in at least two states to help make them “more inclusive.” The pro-Hamas organization that represents itself as a human rights group is going after kids with a purported plan to bring inclusivity to public schools in Pennsylvania and Delaware. CAIR will use “An Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices” to teach American children that jihad is an internal struggle to become a better person and not violence committed in the name of Islam. The guide also asserts that the oppression of Muslim women “is not related to their adherence to Islam but rather tied to customs and traditions.” Another educational guide that will be utilized is titled “Remembering and Reflecting: Teaching September 11, 2001 in Diverse Classrooms” and directs teachers not to use what it calls “inaccurate and inflammatory” terms like Islamic terrorists, jihadists or radical Islamic terrorists to avoid validating the claims of the 9/11 attackers by associating their crimes with Islam and Muslims. When covering topics—like Guantanamo Bay, the Iraq war and Afghanistan invasion—related to the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks the guide says to include discussion of the bigotry and hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs.

It is a worrisome movement considering CAIR is a terrorist front group that was named as a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation. CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine. The Obama administration allowed CAIR to transform the way U.S. law enforcement conducts anti-terrorism training by permitting it to bully agencies at the local, state, and federal level to alter materials determined to be discriminatory against Muslims. This includes getting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to purge anti-terrorism training curricula of material coined “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch uncovered that scandal, obtained the FBI records and published an in-depth report documenting Islamist measures and influence operations targeting anti-terrorism training in this country. CAIR also got the U.S. military and local police departments to eliminate anti-terrorism training materials and instructors it deemed anti-Muslim. Nearly two decades ago Judicial Watch published a special report chronicling how radical Muslim nonprofits—including CAIR—operate in the United States as mainstream humanitarian charities.

The post Terrorist Front Group Strong-Arms State’s Largest Public School Dist. to Observe Muslim Holiday appeared first on Judicial Watch.