RUTHFULLY YOURS

Students at Riverheads High School in Greenville, Virginia, were told to practice calligraphy by writing out the statement “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” The assignment was given by classroom teacher Cheri Laporte.

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That statement is known as the Muslim statement of faith or the shahada. The school district defended the assignment last week when it met with outraged parents.

“Neither these lessons, nor any other lesson in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion, or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief,” the district said in a statement provided to Fox News.

Parents told The Schilling Show that their children were not given the translation of what they were writing.

Riverheads High School Principal, Max Lowe, did not directly acknowledge an inquiry requesting confirmation of the incident, clarification of policy, and disciplinary measures, if any, taken against Ms. Laporte.

The school district defended the assignment.

“The statement presented as an example of the calligraphy was not translated for students, nor were students asked to translate it, recite it or otherwise adopt or pronounce it as a personal belief,” the district stated. “They were simply asked to attempt to artistically render written Arabic in order to understand its artistic complexity.”

Further, the district said the assignment was “consistent with the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning and the requirements for content instruction on world monotheistic religions.”

In military conflict, bridges figure large. Retreating armies want to blow them up to slow advancing armies; advancing armies want to capture and preserve bridges to aid forward progress. They even bring along their own.

The metaphor of bridges in warfare is one way to contemplate the homeland security problem of how to retard the advancing flow of illegal migrants from the Islamic world to America’s land borders. This human traffic — the sort that camouflaged at least three ISIS terrorists as they traversed to their attack on Paris — is primarily made possible by long-haul human smuggling networks, which bridge distant countries.

These smuggling networks provide the exceptionally long bridges that for years have made it possible for “special interest aliens,” or SIAs — the term for Syrians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Somalis, Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians, and the citizens of two dozen other countries where Islamic terrorism organizations exist — to reach the U.S. southwestern border. Given the vast distances to be covered and the necessary stolen passports, ill-gotten visas, fake identity documents, and corrupt airport customs officers who require bribes, ISIS terrorists would be hard-pressed to make the journey without the SIA smugglers.

Philip Haney, the Homeland Security whistleblower whose investigation into Islamic infiltration of the U.S. might have prevented the San Bernardino attack, has written an important op-ed for The Hill, warning of President Obama’s misplaced priorities when it comes to national security. In brief, says Haney, “the Obama administration is more concerned with the rights of non-citizens in known Islamist groups than with the safety and security of the American people.”

There are terrorists in our midst and they arrived here using legal means right under the noses of the federal law enforcement agencies whose mission is to stop them. That is not due to malfeasance or lack of effort on the part of these officers; it is due to the restrictions placed on them by the Obama administration.

Not only did the Obama administration shut down an important investigation that could have connected enough dots to prevent the San Bernardino terrorist attack, they went back and erased the dots Haney was “diligently connecting.” Worse yet, when he complained to the DHS inspector general, the DHS and the Department of Justice subjected him “to a series of investigations and adverse actions, including one by that same inspector general.”

Since the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13, the State Department has admitted 276 Syrian refugees into the United States – 270 Sunni Muslims (97.8 percent), five (1.8 percent) described merely as “Moslem,” and one Christian (0.3 percent), according to data from the State Department Refugee Processing Center.

The Christian, a Greek Orthodox, is the only non-Muslim among the 276 Syrian refugees admitted since the deadly attacks just over a month ago.

Of the 276, 140 are male, 136 are female; 71 (25.7 percent) are men between the ages of 14 and 50, while 64 (23.1 percent) are women across that age group.

Another 127 (46 percent) are children aged under 14, of whom 63 are boys and 64 are girls.

The attack in Paris, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), stoked fresh fears that terrorists may be entering Western nations posing as refugees – as occurred in the case of at least two of the Paris terrorists, according to police investigators.

That prompted a contentious debate over the admission of Syrian refugees into the U.S., where President Obama plans to resettle 10,000 during fiscal year 2016.