Coptic Christian Group Wants Public Schools to Expel Pro-Islam Teachings
by Jim Brown
December 1, 2003
(AgapePress) - A Christian group in California is protesting what it calls the "Islamic indoctrination" of impressionable students in the state's public schools.Last month, a world history teacher at Royal Oak Intermediate School in Covina encouraged students to take part in an extra credit assignment that involved fasting during the month of Ramadan and exploring other tenets of Islam in order to promote greater understanding of and empathy towards the Muslim religion.
Steve Klein is a spokesman for the American Middle-East Christian Association (AMECA), a large group of Coptic Christians who fled the Middle East after their family members were murdered, raped, or had their houses burned down by Muslims.
Klein says members of his group were appalled when they got hold of information about the assignment, because the teaching materials put Islam into such a positive light. He believes the teacher who initiated the school activity, while well-intentioned, has "bought into the lie that Islam is a peaceful religion."
AMECA's spokesman notes that President George W. Bush and others continue to call Islam a religion of peace, and the teacher in question apparently shares this misconception. "We've contacted and spoken to this gentleman -- he's a very kind, very nice Catholic," Klein says, "and he's under the impression that Islam is a peace-love-dove religion. He wants all the kids to know how peaceful and loving and kind Islam is, which is certainly not the truth of the Koran."
Klein says several Korans being passed around in the California public schools have been edited, and all the words having to do with killing, hatred, and jihad have been taken out. "Now it's all peace and love, and the kids are being brainwashed," he says.
The Coptic church leader says it is an outrage that Christians and Jews are not allowed to practice their faiths in public schools because of the so-called "separation of church and state," yet Muslims are allowed not only to practice Islam in schools but to push their religion on other students.
More than 200 Coptic Christians recently gathered outside Royal Oak Intermediate School to pass out information countering the "doctored" versions of the Koran that Klein says are currently in use in many public schools. The group has planned a December 1 sidewalk protest -- i.e., a "peaceful educational seminar," featuring a number of experts in Islam who are able to quote the Muslim scriptures in Arabic and English.
