BS BULLETIN:

• Texas approved new high-school social studies standards teaching that “radical Islam” motivated the 9/11 attacks.
• Students will also study Muhammad’s military campaigns, slavery and treatment of captives.
• Muslim groups call the curriculum discriminatory; supporters say leaving those facts out would whitewash history.

Texas students will soon get a considerably less sanitized lesson about the ideology behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Republican-majority Texas State Board of Education has given final approval to new high-school social studies standards requiring students to learn that “radical Islam” motivated the 9/11 attacks.

The language deliberately goes beyond identifying al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as the perpetrators and addresses the religious ideology that motivated the terrorists.

And that’s not the only change generating controversy.

Lessons on early Islam will include 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.

An attempt to remove the word “brutal” from the description of Muhammad’s military campaigns failed.

Republican board member Brandon Hall argued that softening the language would amount to rewriting history.

“We’re whitewashing and watering down a part of history that I think is very consequential,” Hall said, arguing that students need that history to understand subsequent world events.

Muslim organizations and some curriculum experts strongly disagree.

The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations accused the board of singling out and denigrating Islam while favoring Christianity.

A 15-year-old Muslim student who testified against the standards told the board she felt “attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong.”

At least three curriculum experts appointed by the board also raised concerns about portions of the material. Andrea Hutchison, a social studies curriculum coordinator, said some of it did not “hold up to close historical scrutiny,” while University of Texas philosophy professor Robert Koons cautioned against relying on material not supported by well-established secular sources.

Board Chairman Aaron Kinsey pushed back on the furor, saying critics had sensationalized the changes and made the subjects appear more divisive than they actually are.

Republican board member Julie Pickren, meanwhile, celebrated the final vote as the culmination of more than a decade of work.

The standards also include updated lessons in U.S. history, government and world geography and are expected to reach classrooms beginning with the 2030-31 school year.

MY QUICK TAKE:

Here’s the part I can’t get past.

Radical Islam did motivate the men who attacked us on 9/11.

They didn’t hijack four airplanes because they were upset about airline food.

We can debate how Islam should be taught, whether every word in this curriculum is historically precise, and whether Christianity is being treated differently. Those are legitimate questions.

But we’ve reached a strange place when teaching students the ideology explicitly invoked by the terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans is itself treated as the scandal.

Twenty-five years later, apparently the controversial part of 9/11 is saying why they did it.

DBS WIRE SOURCES:

• Fox News — Texas education board approves curriculum changes tying ‘radical Islam’ to 9/11 attacks
• Texas State Board of Education — Final adoption of new high-school social studies standards
• Texas Tribune — State education board finalizes rewrite of Texas social studies lessons
• KERA — Texas State Board of Education approves controversial curriculum