Due to the deluge of hateful messages, Riverheads High School was on lock down for Wednesday and Thursday’s school hours, meaning that once all the students had entered the school, the doors were locked.
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The assignment said: “Here is the shahada, the Islamic statement of faith, written in Arabic”.
The classical Arabi phrase read “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah”.
While some parents complained the class was trying to convert their children to Islam, others said the controversy was a symptom of anti-Muslim sentiment that was fuelled by the ongoing Republican presidential race.
Some parents called for the firing of teacher Cheryl Laporte, who told The News Leader that she took the assignment from a standard workbook on world religion. The statement given to practice calligraphy read controversial when translated in English.
A teacher’s lesson on Islam in Virginia’s Bible Belt sparked an angry meeting of outraged parents that mushroomed into a national denunciation of the educator in the form of thousands of angry emails and social media postings. The uproar, which included unspecified threats, resulted in the closing of a whole school district, forcing 10,000 students to stay at home and avoid participating in any school-related activities.
In the Facebook group, several of LaPorte’s former students shared their memorable stories with their teacher, and how her lessons helped them grow strong in their faiths.
Augusta County Public Schools officials said no specific threat of harm had been made against students in the district, located in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley about 240 km southwest of Washington.
The county school system reacted. “You shouldn’t teach religion in school unless you’re in a religious class”.
But experts say that teaching about religion is critical in public schools because religion – including Islam – is essential to understanding everything from ancient history to current events.
The lesson was intended to illustrate the complexity of the Arabic language, they said, and not meant to promote any religious system.
Although LaPorte received a lot of support from her students, the complaints from parents and other people have not stopped. However, it didn’t refer to the homework assignment. “You can’t “catch” someone’s faith by learning and associating with them but you can breed ignorance and hate by isolating”.
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“As a community, it is up to us to defend a teacher who is not in the wrong and deserves our support as she supported a great number of us through our high school years.”
