Texas’ anti-Muslim curriculum looks to plant seeds of hatred

Texas’ State Board of Education — the same Republican-controlled body that has removed or revised educational standards that address race and ethnicity — has voted to introduce anti-Muslim propaganda into social studies lessons.

The GOP-led effort to plant seeds of hatred in American students continues apace.

As The Associated Press reported, Texas students will be required to learn that “radical Islam” motivated the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks, starting in the 2030-31 school year. The news follows Florida’s implementation of “anti-communism” courses as Republicans try to label liberals as dire threats to American society.

According to The Associated Press:

State Board of Education members on Friday approved a rewrite of what Texas high schoolers learn in social studies, disregarding pleas from Muslims who testified that schools should teach how people of Islamic faith positively contributed to world history.

The Republican majority instead adopted a lesson, for example, requiring public school students to learn that “radical Islam” motivated the 9/11 attacks, as opposed to more narrowly focusing on terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and extremists such as Osama bin Laden. A Muslim-American EMT was notably among those killed while attempting to save lives during the tragedy.

The report continues:

The board greenlit students learning about early Islam through the lens of the Prophet Muhammad’s “brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization and regulation of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.” No credible Islamic scholar would find such a portrayal accurate, the Muslim Texans argued.

The attempted deflection from Texas conservatives is noteworthy here. Christianity has been used as justification for all sorts of moral wrongs — including chattel slavery — and yet lessons about the integral role Christianity has played in, say, the rape and bondage of Black enslaved people would surely face scrutiny in Texas, even as lessons linking Islam to slavery are being actively promoted.

And the political context is also essential. Republicans, facing putrid polling numbers ahead of the midterms, are relying almost entirely on illiberal voter suppression schemes and political propaganda as they desperately seek to maintain political control.

Of late, conservatives have been eager to try to use the 25th anniversary of 9/11 as an opportunity to spew Islamophobic rhetoric and score political points. As I’ve written before, this kind of bigotry has helped fuel violence, but conservatives have continued to peddle it nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Republicans were silent when Laura Loomer, a top Trump ally and Sept. 11 conspiracy theorist, said the U.S. may “need another 9/11” to convince Democrats to support keeping Muslims out of politics.

The Republican Party is steeped in a sludge of bigotry. Loomer is evidence of the violent derangement the party has fostered by welcoming unabashed Islamophobia into its ranks. And Texas now seems poised to infect its students with a similar disease.

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