California's Education Department, teaching Islamic Studies to seventh-graders in its public schools

Shariah Studies by Stealth

By Malcolm Kline
Saturday, July 18, 2009

Under some pressure from parents, California’s Education Department is reviewing its guidelines for teaching Islamic Studies to seventh-graders in its public schools. We wrote about this trend six years ago when we discovered that, though the California standards require the study of all religions, Islam is examined disproportionately.

Moreover, the more extreme elements of the more radically Islamic societies, though they represent a minority of a religion whose adherents are overwhelmingly peaceful, are ignored, no matter how visible their acts are. The latest attempt to revamp the California rules adds a new wrinkle to this approach.

For example, the treatment of Shari’ah law in the framework for Islamic studies developed by the California Department of Education is, to say the least, problematic. “Students learn how the Qur’an and the Sunnah served as foundations for the Shari’ah, the religious laws governing moral social, and economic life,â€