In an age of a growing American Muslim population, the United States has seen an increase in the number of American Muslim private schools. Lobbying over public school curricula is also an increasingly important area of focus for American Muslim organizations. By themselves, these phenomena are not problematic, especially with the focus on civil rights so commonly advanced by Muslim educators. But a problem arises when powerful American Islamist organizations use the language of social justice activism as a cover for their efforts to impose their own illiberal values on Muslim communities.
One such organization is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which, among other pursuits, organizes annual “Education Forums” all over the country. Now in their 20th year and drawing hundreds of American Muslim educators with each occurrence, this ISNA educational conference claims to integrate Islamic teachings with social justice activism, working with Muslim educators who teach the next generation of American Muslims. But at its core, ISNA is an Islamist organization with deep ties to overseas terror networks. In the infamous 2007 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorist financing case, the U.S. Department of Justice named ISNA an “unindicted co-conspirator” — naming the group as one of a number of “entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.” Accordingly, ISNA’s conferences — replete with extreme speakers and exclusionary ideology — facilitate the tendentious education of Muslim American youth by narrowly defining “authentic Islamic studies curricul[a]” and the “Muslim American Narrative” according to ISNA’s Islamist ideals.
.png)
.png)
