What do you tell a child attending public school when her teacher singles out and disparages her religion?

That is the question parents of Muslim children in Texas schools might soon confront. The Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards taking effect in 2030 that require teachers to denigrate the religion of Islam with biased, ahistorical, and offensive characterizations.

One of the most controversial edits would require students to study "the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”

All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith.

None of these claims stand up to a neutral reading of history.

Even prominent secular historians recognize that the Prophet and many of the Muslim leaders who followed him protected Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities under their governance; that Islamic law outright banned most forms of slavery and never permitted the type of race-based enslavement practiced in the West; and the Prophet was a married man who never had a so-called "harem."

The new curriculum’s characterization of warfare in Muslim history as "brutal" is also deeply dishonest.

All wars are inherently brutal, yet the new Texas curriculum does not require teachers to describe wars undertaken by the United States, European powers, Israel, Protestant and Catholic empires, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, ancient Israelites, and other historical actors as “brutal.”

“Brutal” is not a historical fact; it is a judgment. Presenting that judgment as objective history crosses a line that public schools should never cross.

For a Muslim child attending public school, the new curriculum's misleading claims about Muslim history and its negative characterization of the Prophet strike directly at her faith, her identity, and the values she holds dear. It tells her that the historic figure her family reveres as a model of mercy, compassion, justice, and dignity is someone her own government has chosen to portray as “brutal."

That is not neutral instruction, and the harm caused by this biased curriculum can extend far beyond the classroom.

The anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by a teacher can follow a student from the classroom, to the cafeteria table, and into conversations with her classmates in the locker room. Imagine being a Muslim teenager when your teacher introduces a lesson that denigrates Islam. Imagine your classmates looking at you and asking, “But you're Muslim. What do you think about that?”

No child should have to sit at a desk while the adult entrusted with teaching her is........

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