The Texas State Board of Education is advancing a rewrite of high school history, government, and geography standards that includes explicit language tying the September 11 terrorist attacks to radical Islam.
On Tuesday, the Republican majority preliminarily approved the proposed changes over strong objections from Texas Muslims, with the final vote expected Friday. The revisions would affect the social studies curriculum for Texas high school students and drew strong reactions from the packed public hearings.
“I feel attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong,” Habiiba Quresh, 15, told the GOP-dominated board. “I shouldn’t have to defend my religion in the middle of history class because of one sentence someone on this board wrote.”
The revised curriculum standards would require students to “identify the significance of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks motivated by radical Islam.” Students would also learn about the violent history surrounding Islam’s rise, including “Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves,” according to the document.
Digging deeper, the proposal would also examine the teachings of jihad and how the ideology contributed to the expansion of Islam and the conquest of Christian lands. The curriculum would also cover the modern rise of radical Islam through Iranian proxies and U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
In June, the same board approved new K-8 social studies standards alongside a separate mandatory reading list for students in first through 12th grades that includes Bible passages and other classic works of literature as part of Texas’ broader effort to emphasize the state’s Judeo-Christian heritage, The Daily Wire previously reported.
Multiple titles will be mandated at each grade level, including a “picture-book adaptation of the David and Goliath story” for elementary students and the story of Adam and Eve for older students. Other biblical selections include the Book of Jonah, the Book of Psalms, and excerpts from Genesis and Lamentations. The curriculum will also place greater emphasis on classic literature and culturally significant works, including Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.”
The move came shortly after Texas lawmakers won a brewing legal fight to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. A petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Ten Commandments rulings is pending, and could allow the justices to revisit — and potentially overturn — existing precedent.
Texas officials have faced intense scrutiny from conservative activists over the growing influence of Islam in the state, from the proliferation of mosques to Muslim washing stations at airports.
Last month, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport scrapped plans to add Islamic foot-washing stations to two Terminal D restrooms after Texas Governor Greg Abbott called the plan illegal and threatened to cut off state funding.
“These ablution facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion. That is illegal,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
On the Democratic side, state representative and Senate hopeful James Talarico (D-TX) has helped lead the opposition to Texas adopting Bible-centered curriculum and teaching history that highlights the country’s Christian roots.
“I consider the Hindu student, the Jewish student, the Muslim student, the Buddhist student, the atheist student who sits in a classroom in a Texas public school to be my neighbor, and as a Christian, I am called to love them as myself. And forcing my religion down their throats is not love,” Talarico said in 2024 while discussing an elementary curriculum change.
“I think if Jesus read this new curriculum, he would weep for those students, and then I think he would overturn our desks in the Texas Legislature,” he added.
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