Schlafly Finds High Court's Refusal to Hear Muslim Indoctrination Case Typical
by Chad Groening
October 6, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A conservative author and parents' rights activist says she is not surprised the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case brought by a California couple who believed pupils in a 7th grade history class were being subjected to pro-Islamic religious indoctrination. The high court refused to hear the case of Jonas and Tiffany Eklund, who sued a school in Byron, California, for basically having students in a world history class, in effect, to become Muslims for three weeks. The parents thought the school exercise was a violation of the separation of church and state; however, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the school, and the Supreme Court would not consider the plaintiffs' appeal.
Phyllis Schlafly of the conservative pro-family group, Eagle Forum, says she is not surprised at the high court's rejection of the case. Typically, the Supreme Court justices "don't like to take parents' cases," she says. "They've turned down almost all of the parents' rights cases. They back the schools."
However, Schlafly says she thinks the Supreme Court might have taken the case had it involved Muslim parents complaining about Christian indoctrination. That is because the federal courts, "when they are anti-religion ... are anti-Christian religion," she says.
America's highest court, as it is currently constituted, "surely is not a conservative Supreme Court," the Eagle Forum spokeswoman contends. "And the lower federal courts are terrible in a lot of areas," she adds, "particularly the parents' rights area and the school cases."
Because the U.S. Supreme Court has a history of rejecting parents' cases and school versus parents cases, Schlafly says, typically, "what the lower courts do becomes final." The Eagle Forum founder, who is also an attorney and author of The Supremacists: the Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, has been a vocal advocate of Congress reining in the federal judiciary by limiting its jurisdiction in several areas, including certain matters pertaining to religion.
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
