Steve Burns
WMAL.com
LA PLATA – (WMAL) The father of a high school senior who was banned from La Plata High School’s campus in October 2014 is filing a new motion to have the ban lifted so he can attend his daughter’s graduation.
In October 2014, John Wood had asked Charles County Schools to give his daughter an alternative assignment. “His daughter was forced to recite the Shahadah, which is the Muslim statement of faith. It starts with ‘There is no God but Allah,’” said Thomas More Law Center attorney Kate Oliveri, who is representing Wood. “It’s actually a sin for a Christian to profess allegiance to any god but the Christian God, so the school was forcing her to commit a sin for a grade.”
Oliveri said Wood threatened to go to the media and hire lawyers, and was then given a no-trespass order from the school. “He has been banned from the school for over a year, and his daughter is in her last semester of high school,” she said. “There are tons of important events celebrating her achievements he cannot go to.”
The motion contends the ban violates Wood’s First Amendment rights to speak about his daughter’s activities at a public school, and they only want to “quash criticism of their pro-Islamic curriculum.”
“This case is just a symptom of the hysterical negative response to anything to do with Muslims or Islam in our society,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told WMAL. “Merely teaching about the principles of any particular faith is not a promotion of that faith.”
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