This case is bigger than one school in New Jersey. If the lower court’s ruling stands, school districts across America will have a green light to push Islam.
In 2017, seventh-graders at Chatham Middle School in New Jersey walked into what was supposed to be a simple World Cultures class. Instead, they were hit with blatant religious recruitment for Islam, paid for by taxpayer dollars and required for a passing grade.The materials were shocking:
When Christian mother Libby Hilsenrath discovered what her 12-year-old son was being taught, she went to the school board. They ignored her. She sued. Federal courts, including the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in favor of the school district, claiming this aggressive proselytizing was just “education.”
Now the Thomas More Law Center has taken the case to the United States Supreme Court, asking the justices to reverse that dangerous decision.
- A five-minute video titled “Intro to Islam” declared as undisputed fact that “Allah is the one God,” “Muhammad is the last and final Messenger of God,” and the Quran is the “perfect guide for humanity.”
- The same video closed with an on-screen prayer: “May God help us all find the true faith, Islam. Ameen.”
- Students were then handed worksheets forcing them to fill in the blank for the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith: “There is no God but ____ and ____ is his messenger.”
When Christian mother Libby Hilsenrath discovered what her 12-year-old son was being taught, she went to the school board. They ignored her. She sued. Federal courts, including the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in favor of the school district, claiming this aggressive proselytizing was just “education.”
Now the Thomas More Law Center has taken the case to the United States Supreme Court, asking the justices to reverse that dangerous decision.
The Thomas More Law Center is making sure the highest court in the land hears that message loud and clear. Get updates here: Thomas More Law Center
The petition argues that forcing children to memorize and recite a religious conversion statement in a mandatory public-school class is textbook government endorsement of religion, exactly what the First Amendment forbids. It points to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton decision, which told courts to look at “history and tradition” when deciding Establishment Clause cases. Under any honest historical reading, public schools have never been allowed to act as missionaries for one faith.
This case is bigger than one school in New Jersey. If the lower court’s ruling stands, school districts across America will have a green light to push Islam, or any other religion, while telling objecting parents to sit down and be quiet. Classrooms could become recruitment centers, and the fundamental right of parents to direct their children’s religious upbringing, a right the Supreme Court has called “deeply rooted in our history”, would be gutted.
Parents send their kids to school to learn math, science, and history, not to be told which God they should worship. Yet that is exactly what Chatham Middle School did, and lower courts incredibly called it constitutional.
The Supreme Court now has the chance to slam the door on this overreach. Every parent in America should be watching. Your children’s Christian faith is not Islam to shape.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.-Galileo
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