For over a week outraged parents in one Virginia county have been keeping their children from school over a world geography lesson about Islam. Now the entire county school system has been forced to shut down over safety concerns.
Augusta County, Virginia schools were closed Thursday and will remain closed Friday, and the local sheriff has increased the number of law enforcement officers at all schools. Outrage has been so heated and “voluminous” the Superintendent says he was forced to coordinate with the local Sheriff’s Office. They jointly made the decision to close all 23 public schools in the county “out of an abundance of caution” for safety reasons.
It has not been reported who was placing the calls or emails, or what specifically their nature was. Schools Superintendent Eric Bond in a statement told parents “based on concerns regarding the tone and content of those communications, Sheriff Fisher and Dr. Bond mutually decided” to close schools, noting “there has been no specific threat of harm to students.”
What is the cause of the outrage?
A world geography lesson which includes a section where students attempt to replicate intricate Arabic calligraphy by writing an Islamic statement of faith, called the Shahada. That statement reads, “there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.â€
Parent Kimberly Herndon said she felt “shock that it was sent home, shock that that was in the schools, shock that this was happening right here in our small town,” when her ninth grade son brought the assignment home.
Herndon spoke with WHSVÂ from a Christian church where she and other parents were meeting to discuss the world geography lesson. She says the lesson is “pure doctrine” and indoctrination into the Islamic faith. And she’s kept her kids out of school since last week.
“I will not have my children sit under a woman who indoctrinates them with the Islam religion when I am a Christian, and I’m going to stand behind Christ,” Herndon says.
WHSV reports that Herndon on Facebook last week wrote, “I am preparing to confront the county on this issue of the Muslim indoctrination taking place here in an Augusta County school. This evil has been cloaked in the form of multiculturalism.”
“Christian girls in this class were called to volunteer to adorn the apparel of Muslim women. Unknowingly these children did so. Also unknowingly they were instructed to denounce our Lord by copying this creed of Islam,” Herndon’s post reads.
“This creed is connected to Jihad in that it is the chant that is shouted while beheading those of Christian faith, or people of the cross as being called by ISIS. Christian girls in this class were called to volunteer to adorn the apparal of Muslim women.”
In another Facebook post, written Wednesday, Herndon calls the lesson an “unbelievable atrocity and blatent disrespect of our Lord in a land that was founded based on the principles and foundation of His word.”
And in a Facebook post from Tuesday, Herndon labels Islam “a religion of hate” and called for the teacher to “be fired because she had them write an abomination to their faith and causes a little girl to cry herself to sleep because she was worried she had denounced her God.” In that post she also calls herself “a woman of sound Christian background who has given up sleep, and comfort for days for fear of this woman [the teacher] planting the seed of satan into the precious minds of those innocent children.”
She also tells those who oppose her they can send their “children back into the hands of the devil.”
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Image: Screenshot via WHSV