The Texas State Board of Education met Friday to consider a push by Muslim advocacy groups to insert more positive references to Islam into the state’s history curriculum, prompting a letter from a bloc of Republican lawmakers warning the board against what they called “flagrant lies” and “revisionist history.”
The clash centers on updated social studies standards currently under review. CAIR-Texas, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has organized opposition to the existing proposals and sent members to recent board meetings to argue current standards are “exclusionary and Islamophobic.”
During public testimony, one participant claimed the Alamo is an Islamic building, according to the lawmakers’ letter. Republican members of Congress described that argument as representative of a broader pattern.
“The petitioners’ efforts claim that Islam influenced our founding, culture, and way of life,” said the letter, led by Rep. Brandon Gill and obtained first by The Daily Wire. “For instance, the board recently responded to public testimony asserting that the Alamo is an Islamic building. Such claims are intended to introduce sensationalized or false history into our curriculum.”
In the letter, Republican lawmakers called CAIR a “transnational criminal organization.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott previously designated CAIR as a terrorist organization. CAIR has denied any ties to terrorism and has sued the state over that designation.
Rep. Gill drew a hard line on the curriculum question. “Islam did not play a role in the founding or development of Texas, and to say so would be an outright lie,” he wrote. “The fact is that Texas was neither founded upon nor influenced by Islamic principles.”
The letter was also signed by Reps. Chip Roy, Wesley Hunt, Michael Cloud, Nathaniel Moran, Ronny Jackson, Lance Gooden, Brian Babin, Keith Self, and Pat Fallon.
