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Marine veteran John Kevin Wood is currently banned from watching his daughter graduate high school. Why?
He dared to criticize his daughter’s public school for promoting the religion of Islam in the classroom.
The dispute dates to October 2014, when Wood’s daughter showed him several assignments for her 11th grade World History class at La Plata High in Charles County, Md. She had been asked to memorize the Five Pillars of Islam. She had been asked to write and recite the shahada, the Muslim statement of faith: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. She had been taught, according to school papers submitted to federal court, that most Muslims’ faith is “stronger than the average Christian.”
The lessons also taught that Islam was a “peaceful religion,” court papers say, and that “jihad” is a “holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty; a personal struggle in devotion to Islam especially involving spiritual discipline.” Wood is a Marine veteran who had lost two buddies in combat in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm.
The school wasn’t just teaching Islam but was promoting it, it seemed to Wood, and in a way that amounted to an assault on his family’s Christian faith. When Wood called to complain about the assignments and request alternative work for his daughter, school officials issued a no-trespass order against him. Wood has not been allowed to set foot on the campus of La Plata High since October 2014.
Wood threatened to get the lawyers and the media involved, and filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the school promoting Islam over any other religions. He is currently in the middle of a legal battle to get the ban lifted so he can attend his daughter’s graduation.
When parents are banned from school property for being their child’s advocate, something is seriously wrong in our public school system.
Can you imagine if the religions were reversed, and a public school teacher was instructing children that most Christians’ faith are “stronger than the average Muslim?”
There would be national outrage, and the teacher would have likely been fired.
Whether it’s banning Chick-fil-a from a university student union, or banning a father from protesting the promotion of Islam in public schools, our education system is systematically silencing families who hold Christian values. It’s unconstitutional, and it’s absolutely chilling.
