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  • 2016-08-25 (xsd:date)
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  • Were Tennessee Schoolchildren Forced to Bow Down to Allah? (en)
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  • On 23 August 2016, the web site Christian Today reported that public school students in Tennessee were being forced to bow down to Allah: That short item was accompanied by a misleading photograph that was taken neither recently nor in Tennessee, showing children kneeling at a mosque in the posture assumed by Muslims during prayer. That picture seems to have first appeared online in 2011, shared by anti-Muslim web sites in Europe that claimed it was taken in either England or Denmark. The photograph was later shared by white supremacist and anti-Muslim web sites in the United States that claimed it was taken in Alabama, Florida, and even Glasgow, Scotland. Some web sites claim the image proves that President Barack Obama is secretly trying to force Americans to convert to Islam: The earliest appearance of the photograph in question that we could find dates from late 2011, when the picture was published by web sites such as Islam versus Europe and EuroIslam. Both sites stated the photograph was taken in England, but didn't say where or otherwise source the image — but you get a flavoring of the sentiment involved by this quote from the text from the Islam versus Europe page: Another web site, Bare Naked Islam, claimed the picture was taken in Denmark, yet the same web site claimed in a different post that it came from Alabama, and published it again in 2015 to accompany a blog post entitled, All about the Barack Hussein Obama Muslim connection to Common Core. As the image worked its way across the Atlantic Ocean, yet another a blog claimed in 2013 the image originated with Volusia County, Florida. The photograph, which seems to have come from somewhere in Europe around 2011, found new life in the summer of 2016 with the web site Conservative Daily Post claiming the photograph showed Kids Engaging in Obama’s New 'Cultural Immersion' School Program. The white supremacist web site, The Daily Stormer, used the image in a July 2016 in a post condemning multiculturalism. Public schools in the United States typically teach major world religions as an element of history or social studies classes, and when students reach the point in the curriculum in which they learn about the Islamic faith, those lessons occasionally trigger claims by some parents that their children are being indoctrinated into Islam and forced to say Muslim prayers. Sara Gast, spokeswoman Tennessee's state Department of Education, told us that none of the state's public school students are being forced to pray or adhere to any religion: Nevertheless it is worth noting that Islam, along with Christianity and Judaism, share the Biblical figure Abraham as their common ancestor, and all three worship the same conception of a monotheistic god. Allah is the Arabic word for God. (en)
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