A teacher at Pacific Cascades Middle School in Issaquah, Washington showed his class a video depicting an example of “Islamic culture”—except rather than depicting anything truly representative of Islamic culture, the video showed students a reductive, offensive portrayal of Muslims and Islam that was produced by a media company notorious for creating offensive propaganda about non-Christian religions.
One of the families whose child had been subjected to this video alerted me and my Policy team at CAIR Washington. We quickly contacted the school; but rather than take this as an opportunity to “name and shame,” my team and I saw this as an opportunity to educate. The school agreed to hire me on as a consultant, and I worked with both the teachers and curriculum teams to determine a more accurate and equitable way to expose students to Islamic Culture. My team went on to work closely with the Pacific Cascades Middle School in promoting accurate and authentic representations of Muslims and Islam when appropriate, in order to avoid repeating issues like this in the future.