Schools in Virginia allow opt-out from Holocaust lessons

The school board of Fairfax County, Virginia, is doing something terrible they won't do with LGBT ideology:

Virginia’s largest school district will let students skip a presentation from a Holocaust survivor, saying the diverse district includes students with “different experiences.”

“We understand that all students have different experiences. If you prefer to opt your child out from participating in this presentation, please email your child’s history teacher and they will be provided an alternate assignment. Please email your child’s history teacher with any questions that you may have,” a letter from Cooper Middle School said.

The letter referred to a scheduled presentation from a Holocaust survivor to seventh-graders, according to Adele Scalia, a mother of one of those middle schoolers.

[...] Scalia said on social media that she is drawing “less charitable (but more likely) conclusions.” The Left has been pressured by Islamic extremists to demonize Israel following Hamas’ terrorist attacks on the Jewish nation on October 7, and liberals have used the same language of “colonization” and “oppression” that they apply to whites in the U.S. to Israelis.

“If the email had said ‘We understand that some students are very sensitive and Mrs. X’s stories my be disturbing and traumatizing to them…’ I would have given them the benefit of the doubt. But it didn’t,” Scalia wrote.

Fairfax County contains a hotbed of Muslim extremism. A mosque there, attended by several 9/11 hijackers as well as the Fort Hood terrorist, was presided over by the father of Abrar Omeish, who until this year was a member of the Fairfax County school board. Omeish voted against an FCPS resolution offering a moment of silence for victims of 9/11 and another for victims of October’s Hamas attacks on Israel, said the decisive World War II victor at Iwo Jima was “unfortunate,” and gave a graduation speech encouraging students to “remember your jihad” and reject capitalism.

This definitely says quite a bit, right down to how the manager of a mosque is allowed on the school board, and even desecrated the memory of 9-11 victims. This also makes clear the sad path the USA is regrettably headed on if something isn't done to put a stop to this indoctrination.

The opt-out of the Holocaust lesson in FCPS, whose school board is entirely Democrat, is a reversal from the Left’s position on opt-outs on topics like transgenderism and anti-racism, which typically holds that hard truths are often uncomfortable, that it is the role of a school to instill certain values, and that on some issues, there are not two sides, but only good and evil.

[...] With some people claiming that the Holocaust did not even occur, the lesson is one of the last chances to hear from someone who survived it first-hand, as survivors are perishing of old age.

Prior to the election of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a video promoted by Virginia’s state Department of Education, then presided over by Democrat Atif Qarni, sought to dampen the emotional resonance of 9/11, advising teachers not to call it “terrorism” and to focus on “anti-Muslim racism” while making sure not “to reproduce what’s understood as American exceptionalism.”

This is the most terrible part about Virgina, how, Youngkin's election notwithstanding, there remains a considerable amount of far-left influence, and now it's resulted in a truly awful situation. It's clear Virginia has a serious problem with misogyny, anti-Semitism, and the Religion of Peace is really going to make things awful soon enough. Maybe most grating about the whole matter is that, if LGBT ideology is cleared away from schools in Fairfax, it'll only be due to Muslim influence, not because Judeo-Christians, Hinduists and Buddhists ask for it to stop. That's one of the worst things about "protected class" statuses.

October 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas could be a prelude to what could happen in the rest of the world

In this interview with a woman who grew up in a Muslim family, she warns that the Hamas bloodbath on October 7, 2023 is a horror that can happen in the rest of the globe:

"I feel that since October 7, humanity has been in a very delicate and dangerous transitional state. Everything I've been shouting and warning about for years has suddenly come out all at once for the whole world to see through the GoPro cameras of the Hamas terrorists," says Yasmine Mohammed, one of the world's leading activists for the rights of Muslim women and support for ex-Muslims.

"If the West sobers up and realizes who it is up against and how the worst versions of Islam entered the most important Western institutions, and if it then proceeds to tackle it at the core, then there could remain a chance to correct course," she says, "but if Western liberals continue to play the role of useful idiots for Muslims who use them to promote their ideology, then things will get much worse. The massacre that took place in Israel may be just a prelude to what awaits the whole world."

She does not disclose her current place of residence, and even her exact age is confidential. These security measures, along with various other precautions she takes, stem from the fear that radical Muslims will try to harm her. Given the fate of not a few Muslims or ex-Muslims who dared to publicly criticize Islam, she certainly has something to fear. Just two years ago, the world was shocked when, during a conference in New York, a Lebanese-American stabbed and wounded author Salman Rushdie. In his 1989 bestseller "The Satanic Verses," Rushdie presented unflattering depictions of the Prophet Mohammed and Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution. Since then, he has become a target for radical Muslims worldwide.

Naturally, Mohammed does not want to enter these bloody statistics, "especially for the sake of my two daughters." Nevertheless, she gives interviews and acts with a sense of urgency, warning in harsh terms about the dangers posed by Muslim civilization. "The West is facing an obstacle called Islam," she states. "If we are afraid and do not say this truth, the price is that we will lose the free world. The risk is certainly worth it, even my personal risk."

This should by all means be an outrage that followers of the Religion of Peace would threaten her over an Orwellian thoughtcrime. Tragically, there's only so many scumbags in the west who'd rather cowardly ignore it all.

The videos disseminated by Hamas of the massacre in the communities surrounding Gaza affected her on a very personal level. "The first thing I saw was a few seconds of the video of Shani Louk, how she lay on the truck of the Hamas terrorists who abducted her from the nature rave. I closed it immediately, I simply couldn't continue. I got flashbacks within seconds: the abuse I endured as a child from my stepfather because I didn't memorize verses from the Quran verbatim; Iranian women being raped and murdered because they refused to wear the hijab; and Algerian women murdered because in their husbands' opinion they did not behave modestly. I saw generation upon generation of women whom extremist Muslim men treated as subhuman. It made me realize that the voice I am raising is more important than ever."

Alongside the personal outrage, Mohammed demonstrates extensive knowledge of both Islamic scripture and research, as well as an understanding of the prevailing sentiments in Muslim countries around the world. As someone familiar with the Muslim world from the inside, she feels her testimony is of paramount importance. The organization she founded, called "Free Hearts, Free Minds," provides support and psychological assistance to "Muslims who dare to think freely" in Islamic countries and the West. She is interviewed by media outlets and forums around the world, unraveling her story of leaving the Muslim world, and criticizing the lack of understanding in the Western liberal world of the true intentions of Islamic leaders.

In 2019, Mohammed warned about the dangerous connection between the progressive Left and Islam, in a book she published called "Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam." In addition to criticizing Western liberalism and its naivete in the face of Muslim ideologues who cunningly exploit it, she extensively recounts her personal story there.

The journey she had to go in order to publish the book also teaches a lot about the fear of what the message is trying to convey. "All the publishers refused to publish it for fear that its message against Islam would pose a security threat to them," she recounts. "Even Neil Blair, J.K. Rowling's agent, who thought the book was worthwhile and tried to convince publishing houses to publish it, couldn't help me." She decided to self-publish the book. The book sparked discussion in many forums, and to her surprise, it was translated into some 15 languages. "I wasn't prepared for that, because I didn't know how much people in places like Sweden and Germany would identify with my personal story and with my insights on Islam. I thought I was alone in this battle, and it turned out I clearly wasn't."

When I raise the possibility that in her book she predicted what is happening today, she demurs. "I'm no prophet. I just described what was happening from my perspective, as someone who was inside the Muslim world, for my Western liberal friends. Unfortunately, they suffer from severe blindness, which could end up costing Western culture dearly. Unfortunately, people who didn't listen to me at the time, or who dismissed me and saw me as 'crying wolf', are now forced to see hordes of pro-Palestinians marching through the streets of every Western capital. I took the risk of being Cassandra [a figure in Greek mythology that no one heeded; ] and I will continue to be one until my voice is heard."

She must definitely continue, without fear. But it's definitely atrocious how all these decades, the west virtually enabled much of the abominations we're seeing today, and never truly made an effort to reeducate masses not to embrace barbarism. And the double-standards are another serious issue:

Q: Can you really envision something similar happening in America?

"Certainly, it's already happening. The city of Hamtramck in Michigan welcomed a large Muslim community, as many there felt that the Muslim minority in America was feeling threatened during Trump's presidency. Many Muslims responded to the call and came to settle there. Today there are so many Muslims there that they dominate the city council. One of the first steps they took upon gaining a majority on the council was declaring that LGBT flags would not be allowed to be flown in the city. Liberals reacted with shock and a sense of betrayal. That didn't help them. All I could think was 'What on earth did these liberals think in the first place.' What's toxic about this whole affair is that if Christian parent organizations, for example, spoke critically of LGBTs, it would be dreadful and terrible and condemnation would come from all sides. But while the radical Right struggles to thrive because it is under consistent surveillance and criticism, Muslims are held to a different standard.

"Add to that what is already known to all, how with Qatari money organizations that are mouthpieces for Islamist movements have become dominant in institutions of higher education in North America, or another group, which has a growing lobby within the American government – and you get the full picture. Many have warned that this is how Islam is strengthening its hold in the West. I warned some time ago that the barbarians are at the gates. This time they didn't have to fight over Rome: They came in through the main gate, and in the name of free speech we have all surrendered to them."

While there's certainly a valid argument that the LGBT movement was naive about the Islamic movement, it's still entirely possible quite a few of the wokeists are fully aware of what Islam is like, and would bizarrely enough forfeit their practices once the Religion of Peace takes over. Suggesting it's something like what Winston Churchill called "crocodile feeders".

This is vital info, especially following a very troubling statement made by one of the released hostages, who's taking a bizarrely lenient view of the Religion of Peace that led to the horror of October 7, 2023:

Agam Goldstein, released from Hamas captivity during a November 2023 prisoner swap, spoke Saturday night at an International Women's Day rally demanding that 19 women held hostage in Gaza be released from captivity. [...]

"From what I was taught about Islam, it is a religion that believes in bringing good into the world and opposes injustice. There are verses in the Quran that explicitly say - treat women well. There is also a verse about holding prisoners, about the way it is permitted by religion to hold them. And all we can hope for is that some humanity exists within you, or at the very least that you received a mission to keep them alive.

This is stupefying when you consider it doesn't sound like she quoted any verses from the koran. I realize Goldstein may have been raised under a leftist education system, to the point she runs the gauntlet of alluding to Stockholm Syndrome, but even so, this is a huge disappointment that she's taking such a devastatingly cliched path, concealing koranic verses like 2:223, which are exactly what led to the bloodbath last year. Goldstein's statement will not solve the crisis, and will only prolong it. Much like the terrible incident Lara Logan went through over a dozen years prior, it's regrettable Goldstein is also being naive about the Religion of Peace.