Outcry as Arabic exercise sparks closure of schools

Schools in a Virginia county closed yesterday as a safety precaution after an assignment asking students to practice Arabic calligraphy sparked an angry outcry from parents and threats from outside the district.

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 240km southwest of Washington.

However, the volume of calls and emails related to the high school class lesson and concerns over their “tone and content” prompted the school closures, according to a statement on the district’s website.

The outcry over a lesson based on a brief Muslim text appeared to reflect a current mood of anxiety and distrust of Muslims among some Americans.

“We regret having to take this action, but we are doing so based on the recommendations of law enforcement and the Augusta County School Board,” the school district statement said.

Extracurricular activities on Thursday and through the weekend were also cancelled for the district’s approximately 10,000 students.

The backlash in Augusta County, Virginia, was triggered by an assignment last week in a world geography class at Riverheads High School in Staunton, local news reports said.

As part of a study of the Middle East, a teacher instructed her students to copy a Muslim statement of faith written in Arabic and intended to show the complexity of calligraphy, the school superintendent told the News Leader newspaper.

The statement translates as: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is the messenger of Allah.”

Some parents have accused the teacher, Cheryl LaPorte, of trying to indoctrinate students with Islam and called for her to be fired.

“I do not trust her to teach my son and, regardless of the outcome, he will not sit in her classroom,” said mother Kimberly Herndon.

The school district said students would continue to learn about world religions as required by the state but a non-religious sample of Arabic writing would be used in the future.