Last Friday, the Texas State Board of Education voted to approve new high school social studies standards that frame Islam as a religion of violence and conquest. The Republican majority on the 15-member board decided that what Texas teenagers need to learn about Islam is that “radical Islam” motivated the 9/11 attacks, that “the teachings of jihad” led to the “conquest of Christian lands,” and that early Islam should be understood through the Prophet Muhammad’s “brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization and regulation of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”
At the same time, they removed a proposed standard that would have taught students about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy. You can teach that Islam conquered Christian lands by force in Texas schools, but you cannot teach that Muslim scholars preserved and advanced the mathematics that Europe would later build on.
The standards are state-sanctioned religious bigotry, written into curriculum that will shape how millions of Texas students see the world and the Muslim classmates sitting next to them. They take effect in 2030.
The board’s own experts told them it was wrong
At least three of the board’s appointed content experts cautioned against the characterization of Islam in the standards. Andrea Hutchison, a social studies curriculum coordinator for Prosper ISD, wrote in a report that the language “doesn’t hold up to close historical scrutiny” and that the standards characterize Islam “in a manner inconsistent with the neutral, descriptive standard applied to other religious and cultural traditions covered in the course.” Robert Koons, a philosophy professor at UT-Austin and another board-appointed expert, told members Friday: “I would warn us about including things that are not based on well-established secular sources.”
The board approved the standards anyway. When one board member, Will Hickman, suggested removing the word “brutal” from the description of Muhammad’s military campaigns, the Republican majority voted against it. They did not revive the deleted standard about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy.
What this does to Muslim students
This is not hypothetical. CAIR organized a press conference before the vote, bringing Muslim students, parents, and faith leaders to testify against the standards. Abdelrahman Azami, a Muslim high school student in Austin, told the board what this looks like from his seat in the classroom:
“I have been told multiple times that, ‘Oh, you’re a bomber. How many bombs did you drop today?’ Or that I celebrate 9/11 — when I was born 10 years after it happened. We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for our rights… to be treated equally as Christians, Jews, Hindus, or any other religion.”
Fifteen-year-old Habiiba Quresh told board members: “I feel attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong. I shouldn’t have to defend my religion in the middle of history class because of one sentence someone on this board wrote.”
One of the more than 100 people who spoke at the board’s meetings put the intent plainly. “All they need to know is how evil Islam is,” Chuck Allmon said of Texas students.
The board heard all of this and approved the standards anyway. Republican Chair Aaron Kinsey said he believes Texans will eventually see how “balanced” the framework turned out, accusing critics of trying to “sensationalize” the divisions.
The strongest argument for the standards, and why it fails
The defenders of these standards will say: 9/11 was motivated by a specific interpretation of Islam. Students should understand the religious ideology that drove the attacks. Islam, like any religion, has a history that includes military conquest and slavery. Teaching that history is honesty, not bigotry. Why should Islam get gentler treatment than Christianity, whose history of violence is also taught?
This would be a real argument if the standards applied the same standard to every religion. They do not. Hutchison said so explicitly. Christianity’s history of violence is not taught with the language of “radical Christianity” or “the teachings of Christ leading to the conquest of pagan lands.” The Crusades, the Inquisition, the transatlantic slave trade that Christian theologians justified with scripture, the colonialism that missionaries served as a vanguard for, none of that gets the loaded framing these standards reserve for Islam.
According to AP reporting, a Muslim-American EMT was among those killed while attempting to save lives during 9/11. The standards don’t mention that. They teach students to associate an entire religion with the people who attacked this country, not with the people of that same faith who died trying to rescue their fellow Americans.
If the standards taught every religion with the same critical eye, that would be education. They do not. They single out Islam for hostile treatment while scrubbing Muslim contributions to science and mathematics from the curriculum. Calling that academic rigor does not change what it is.
This is bigger than one curriculum
Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country. What Texas puts in its standards, publishers put in their textbooks, and other states buy those textbooks. The board knows this. That is part of why they do it.
The social studies rewrite is part of a pattern. In June, the same board approved a mandatory reading list that includes Bible stories for Texas public schools. The high school standards also require students to learn arguments against “the modern welfare state that emerged from continued expansion of Great Society programs,” Lyndon Johnson’s 1960s agenda that sought to abolish poverty and racial inequality. They require students to connect “biblical imagery and founding principles of equality and justice from the Declaration of Independence” to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Critics at the board’s meetings noted that the same standards whitewash how white Americans used the Bible to justify slavery.
The board delayed these standards in 2022 after conservative lawmakers complained about how students learned about race and gender. The process stretched years. Conservative activists now champion the framework as the final battle in a push to rid Texas schools of instruction they say paints America in a negative light.
CAIR’s Texas chapter put it plainly: “The board has turned our classrooms into a place where prejudice is taught as fact and entire communities are written out of their own history. This is not only a Muslim issue, a Black issue, or a Palestinian issue. It is a Texas issue, because a board willing to do this to one community can do it to any community next.”
The Texas State Board of Education just voted to teach a generation of students that Islam is uniquely violent. They did it over the objections of the Muslim families it targets, the academic experts they hired to review it, and every standard of religious neutrality this country claims to uphold. They will face no consequences for it, because the people who could hold them accountable are the same people who appointed them.
This is what religious freedom looks like when the people in charge only mean it for their own religion.