Days after the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release claiming that a teacher ordered a Muslim student to explain to the class who was behind the attacks, leading the class to chant “you’re Muslim like them.”
The incident lead to him being “reduced to tears,” “fleeing the classroom,” and refusing to wear his Muslim prayer cap, and his mother saying “my Muslim kids are going to listen to these things all their life,” CAIR said.
It was an example, the group said, of why schools should follow its “school resource guide to help educators teach about 9/11 in a culturally appropriate way.”
But the Howard County school system said CAIR’s allegation contained inaccuracies and misrepresentations and that CAIR refused to “commit to a correction.”
Superintendent Michael Martirano, a strong backer of racial “equity” programs, lashed out at the group in a memo obtained by The Daily Wire.
“We learned of a September 14, 2021, CAIR Press Release alleging 9/11 related bullying at Veterans Elementary School,” he wrote. “Prior to the press release, there was no notification of any bullying allegations at VES… The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) contacted CAIR to get additional information related to the press release so HCPSS could investigate the actions noted in the release,” but it did not immediately call the school system back.
So the principal called every teacher. One fifth-grade teacher “shared an exchange that occurred during a discussion and a student asking to leave to go to the restroom.” The principal called the parent of the student, and the parent said that one student said “you are a Muslim like them” and then apologized to her son without any prompting. The parent said she and her son never told the teacher or anyone at the school.
Even by the parent’s account, CAIR’s version of her story was not true, Martirano wrote. “While the parent confirmed speaking to a CAIR representative, the CAIR 9/11 press release includes misrepresentations.”
“We scheduled a conference with CAIR this morning to discuss the inaccuracies, and CAIR offered to issue a follow-up press release regarding the HCPSS response, but would not commit to a correction of the misrepresentations,” he wrote.
CAIR’s Maryland office did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire. It has not issued any new press release on the incident.
Howard County is a Democrat-leaning county outside of D.C. Its county Office of Human Rights & Equity abruptly canceled a play it planned for 9/11 after seemingly booking the play without reading it.
The play actually mocks the naivete of a white liberal woman and ends with her being beaten by her Arab husband, who said he felt “pride” when the World Trade Center fell. It ends with his nephew saying America “deserved what it got,” and with the call that “They’ve conquered the world. We’re gonna get it back. That’s our destiny. It’s in the Quran… For three hundred years they’ve been taking our land, drawing new borders, replacing our laws, making us want to be like them. Look like them. Marry their women. They disgraced us. They disgraced us. And then they pretend they don’t understand the rage we’ve got?”
In nearby Fairfax County, Virginia, school board member Abrar Omeish recently voted against a resolution offering a moment of silence for 9/11 victims, saying it failed to be “anti-racist.”
“I vote against this today because our omission of these realities causes harm. We are elevating a traumatic event without sufficient cultural competence,” she said.
She proposed an alternative that spent one paragraph honoring dead Americans, and 10 lamenting discrimination, such as a man who allegedly experienced discrimination in a restaurant twenty years ago.
Her father, Esam Omeish, is a former board member of the CAIR Foundation, and a former board member of the “9/11 mosque” attended by two of the hijackers as well as the man who attacked Fort Hood in Texas.
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