How Did the Shahada Come to Augusta County?
20th December 2015
As we reported last night, our neighbors over in Augusta County made national headlines when their “Islamophobia” caused the closure of the county’s schools. The parent of a student assigned to copy out the shahada complained, and the controversy went viral on social media. The resulting uproar caused the school board to shut down all the schools in the district yesterday, “out of an abundance of caution.”
The superintendent didn’t say what he was being “cautious” about, but you can bet the recent events in San Bernardino and Paris were in the forefront of his mind. Even a provincial school official must have noticed by now what angry Muslims tend to do when non-Muslims say or do things they find insulting to their religion.
To put the incident in perspective, consider what the equivalent assignment might have been if the topic had been Christianity. A rough equivalent would have been to copy out John 3:16 as presented in the King James Bible:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Or possibly the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3):
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
To be strictly analogous, the first would have to be copied out in Koine Greek, and the second in Hebrew.
Can you imagine a public school in the United States handing out such an assignment in the year of Our Lord 2015? It would end the career of the teacher, and possibly those of the principal and the district superintendent as well.