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| courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public Domain |
Part of the Middle School Social Studies curriculum is to teach
some basic facts about the world’s major religions. One of the religions we are
required to teach about is Islam. In my role as a teacher, I do my best to give
an unbiased view of the history and basic tenets of each of the major religions.
Due to recent world events, the students tend to ask a lot of
questions about what Islam is really like. I give them the best answers I can
within the parameters of what is within the curriculum. Sometimes their
questions went beyond the parameters of what I was “supposed” to teach them.
Prior to the events at Pulse in Orlando, I was able to rationalize presenting
Islam in the most positive possible light.
In a self-serving way, I am grateful the events in Orlando
happened after the end of the school year so that I don’t have to try and
explain to my students how someone who claims to be a follower of Islam, a self-identified
religion of peace, could decide to walk into a nightclub with a bomb strapped
to himself, an automatic rifle, a pistol, and a knife, and take 50 lives, wound
53 more, and then die in a gun battle with a police SWAT Team.
As a teacher, how do I explain to my students that the religion claimed
by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boka Haram, the killers in San Bernardino, and the
perpetrator of this most recent massacre in Orlando purports to be a religion
of peace? Over the past two years, I have taught them that the radical
fundamentalists who follow ISIS and these other terrorist death cults are not
true followers of Islam. Rather, what I have taught my students is that the
leaders of these groups have taken select parts of Islamic teachings and
twisted them to justify their murderous ways.
In the harsh light of the massacre in Orlando, where a
self-proclaimed follower of Islamic State murdered 50 people in cold blood
before the police ended his life, and with the Islamic State having claimed
responsibility for the attack, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain
unbiased about Islam itself. And when the shooter’s father tries to obfuscate
the fact that the attacker’s religion played a part in the terrorist’s decision
to attack the nightclub, one has to wonder why he doesn’t want people to think
his son’s Islamic faith played a role.
I do not believe the majority of Muslims around the world are
potential terrorists or that they even support the actions of these radical
fundamentalists. I am encouraged by the growing number of Muslims who are
standing up around the world to be counted as speaking out against this scourge
on humanity. But I am concerned that young Muslim males raised here in the
United States are so susceptible to radicalization.
Having taught several Muslim students, and knowing I will be
teaching more, I find myself wondering just how I am supposed to teach about
Islam and honestly answer the students’ questions about how it relates to the
terrorist death cults, while not offending the sensibilities of the Muslim
students? Teaching has always been full of challenges, but I have to wonder if
my predecessors had challenges as complex as those we face today.
As always, I remain,
The Exhausted Educator
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