ISLAMOPHOBIC ACTIVISTS CALLS FOR SCHOOL BOOK TO BE BANNED – AFTER SCHOOL BOARD WAS ALREADY DONE WITH IT

When – and we do mean when – Laurie Cardoza-Moore (pictured) proclaims victory in getting a textbook she didn’t like removed from the schools in Willamson County, TN, you will be looking at the way the right makes themselves relevant – by standing in the direction the world is tilting and insisting it is because of them.

One People’s Project

WILLIAMSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE–A college-level textbook that has been used by the county for an advanced placement program is being replaced after three years for a more updated textbook, and that is when a well-known Islamophobic activist best known for her failed attempt to prevent the construction of a Murfreesboro, TN mosque decided to mount a campaign to have the book banned, saying it was anti-Semitic.

Over the past week Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of a “pro-Israel” group called Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, has been making the rounds on the Fox News Channel to say the book “The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography,” a human geography book, promotes hatred and bias of Jews, particularly because of questions posed such as: “If a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism or wartime retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions?” According to the Tennessean Cardoza-Moore spoke at a April 15 school board meeting along with seven other community members during its public input section of the meeting, calling for its removal. “It is this type of disinformation that historically leads to violence against Jews,” she said. “The Holocaust did not happen in a vacuum. This type of anti-Semitism has no place and shouldn’t be taught to our future leaders.”

According to Director of Schools Mike Looney however, the question is taken out of context. In truth, the entire paragraph from where the question comes from reads:

“Distinguishing terrorism from other acts of political violence can be difficult. For example, if a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism or wartime, retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions? Competing arguments are made: Israel’s sympathizers denounce the act as a terrorist threat to the country’s existence, whereas advocates of the Palestinian cause argue that long-standing injustices and Israeli army attacks on ordinary Palestinian civilians provoked the act.”

While Cardoza-Moore and others say that they have been complaining about the textbook for several months, Williamson County school officials, who say they have a formal process in which parents can write to request a formal review of a text book by a committee of representing parents, administrators, teachers, and curriculum experts, say they have not received such a request for this particular book. In the meantime Assistant Superintendent Tim Gaddis says the book, “At the end of its life.” After using it for three years, the book will be replaced for the 2013-2014 school year.

Cardoza-Moore is a notorious hatemonger that has used a defense of Israel as a thinly-veiled attack on Muslims. Most notably, she led the charge against plans by the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro to expand their mosque and community center. In 2010, she filed litigation against the mosque with wild claims that the mosque was connected to Islamic militants in Somalia and Gaza and was part of a plot to take over Middle Tennessee. The mosque was subjected to vandalism and arson in addition to this and other litigation, but eventually the courts ruled in favor of the mosque and allowed completion and occupancy by August 2012.

This put Cardoza-Moore in a national spotlight which brought her to New York City to speak at an August 22, 2010 rally held in vain to prevent the Park 51 Islamic Center from being built in Lower Manhattan near the site of the World Trade Center bombing. There she implied, among other things, that Muslims did not fight or had anything to do with the American Revolution, an untruth, as not only did Muslims were recorded as soldiers during the Revolutionary War, but a Muslim state was actually among the first to recognize the American Revolution as legitimate. Cardoza-Moore has made other infamous statements such as blaming President Obama’s “treatment of Israel” for a rash of tornadoes in May 2011 and saying to Daily Show correspondent Assif Mandvi “Nobody’s Perfect” when after a long rant against Muslims, he informed her he was Muslim.