• • Social studies plan more manageable for teachers in Tennessee
• • San Diego Schools team with 'terrorist front' to stop 'bullying'
• • What Thomas Jefferson learned from the Muslim book of jihad

Students in Tennessee will continue to learn key elements of world religions, civil rights, geography and the history of their home state, but the final draft of proposed social studies standards for the state lessens the load of material for teachers to cover in a year.

The state's Standards Review Committee released its final draft of the new standards this week, adding back in a slew of Civil Rights-era topics after a backlash when the first draft was released in October. Restored were topics like "Tent City", where black people in West Tennessee were forced to live after being evicted from their homes for trying to vote, and the Highlander School, which trained Civil Rights leaders like Rosa Parks in social justice leadership.

An elective class covering Tennessee history remains part of the new standards, which will be up for a final vote by the Tennessee State Board of Education in July. A first reading will take place April 21.

The standards, which don't dictate how schools will teach the material but what students should know by the end of the class, include focuses on major religions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Students will have to describe the origins, features, key people, texts and basic beliefs of each.

Jason Roach, chairman of the Standards Recommendation Committee and a Tennessee principal, said all religions will be taught in a uniform way, providing context for historical events. Throughout the review process, the committee received comments from parents concerned about the teaching of Islam in particular. Some standards were removed that required deeper teachings of Islam and Christianity. Standards previously referred to as "Islamic World" have also been changed to "Southwest Asia and North Africa" in the seventh grade.

"We're trying to give students context for why events happened in the past, and it has nothing to do with teaching students what to think," Roach said. "In Tennessee, we're pretty proud independent thinkers."

Roach said the goal of the committee was to create standards that were both rigorous and manageable, and to allow teachers to go deeper into subject areas that interest their students.

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The San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, nevertheless, was formally approved by the board of the San Diego Unified School District this month to help develop a plan that will include the review and vetting of materials related to Muslim culture and history.

A report outlining the district's objectives touted CAIR as an organization that "has been involved in constructive civic engagement, promotes cultural tolerance and understanding, as well as justice and equality."

Hanif Mohebi, executive director of CAIR San Diego, told the school board April 4 that CAIR wants the district's program to become a national model.

"The plan itself is a great first step," he said.

"I truly believe that if we do this right, San Diego Unified School District would be the leading school district in the nation to come up with a robust and beautiful anti-bullying and anti-Islamophobia program."

In a statement, Mohebi said bullying is taking place in schools that "is a direct result of the growing Islamophobia in our state and nation."

The San Diego school district did not reply to a WND interview request.

As WND reported earlier this month, after successfully "purging" the military and federal government of "anti-Muslim" subject-matter experts and materials under the Obama administration, CAIR urged the Air Force to sever ties with a veteran counter-terrorism instructor it casts as "Islamophobic."

But CAIR is regarded by the FBI as a Hamas front in the U.S., by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding plot and by the United Arab Emirates as a terrorist organization.

According to evidence entered in the terror-financing case, CAIR was founded by figures associated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the worldwide movement that has stated its intent to transform the U.S. into an Islamic state. More than a dozen CAIR leaders have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.

An FBI chart obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request shows connections between CAIR and Hamas

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Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.

Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.

The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America's founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.

Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic "Barbary" states.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women and children could be collected.

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers"--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.

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