Parents across Tennessee are challenging the state's political and educational boards on the grounds that a textbook used in 7<sup>th grade is "Islam-centric."
A parent group, "White County Citizens Against Islamic Indoctrination" met on Tuesday to "continue efforts to inform and engage the community about the pro-Islamic textbooks and materials being forced upon teachers and students by White County School Board."
The group of parents from White County is taking their fight to seven publicly elected county school board members who approved the book, "My World History and Geography: The Middle Ages to Exploration of the Americas," which they claim is Islam-centric.
It described the textbook as containing "nearly 50 pages devoted to a sugar coated view of Islam and the 'Islamic World'".
They claim that "The school board has adopted the textbooks and materials in a shroud of secrecy and misrepresentation and have attempted to hide what is happening in our classrooms concerning the promotion of Islam and limited mentions of Christianity."
Despite the fact that Middle School students only learn about Islamic civilisation up to the 1500s according to state standards, the group has complained that the textbook "doesn't report 9/11, ISIS. It doesn't talk about any Islamic group."
The chairman of the group said, "All it takes is one seventh-grader to go home and recite the five pillars of Islam, then go to a school with a bomb in their backpack and blow up 10 kids."
His ignorance of Islam is apparent, as rather than reciting the five pillars of Islam, to become a Muslim, one would recite the Shahada to profess a new faith.
The school board chairman, Ed Cattrell, has stated that "our teachers do not teach religious doctrine at all. We simply teach world history according to the state department of education standards."
