‘They’re Not Listening To Us’: 100 Muslim Parents Oppose Gender Ideology at Virginia School Board Meeting
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell /
About 100 Muslims attended the Fairfax County School Board meeting on Thursday night to protest the school district’s plans to add radical gender ideology to elementary schools’ curriculums.
The Northern Virginia school district unanimously approved changes to its Family Life Education Curriculum on June 27—including teaching kindergartners about the supposed “gender spectrum” and middle schoolers about transgenderism—despite significant parental opposition.
A Muslim woman, Thoraia Hussein, a Fairfax mother of six, spoke against the district’s Family Life Education Curriculum and sexually explicit books in county libraries on behalf of Muslim parents and those of other faiths.
“According to the First Amendment, you may have personal beliefs, but you may not enforce them upon others,” Hussein said. “Referencing last year’s [Fairfax County Public Schools] parent survey, the majority chose not to pass gender ideology education and sex education to school curriculum.”
Hussein spoke about pornographic books in libraries, such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Gender Queer,” and “This Book is Gay.”
“Those books are not just sexually exploiting children, but also offend our core values as Muslims,” she said. Hussein’s minute-long speech was met with resounding applause and cheers throughout the packed auditorium.
Muslims have a history of taking a strong stand against radical gender ideology being taught in their children’s schools. Arab and Muslim protesters shut down a school board meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, in October 2022 over sexually explicit LGBTQ library books.
Muslims also protested outside the U.S. District Court in Maryland last summer in response to Montgomery County Public Schools’ plan to read LGBTQ “Pride Storybooks” to children without parental consent.
The Daily Signal spoke with Hussein after her public testimony.
While Hussein believes gender ideology is sinful due to her religion, she said she respects people with different beliefs. She just wants the school district to have that same respect for her beliefs.
“It’s not only about that respect,” she told The Daily Signal. “It’s about telling my children, ‘What you believe is wrong.’ I’m not going around telling your children what you believe is wrong. I respect what you choose for yourself. So, I just expect you to respect the same—what I chose for my children.”
Hussein had brought some of the sexually explicit books from local schools to her mosque, the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., to show other families the importance of opposing radical gender ideology in Fairfax County.
“We couldn’t even finish reading [them],” Hussein said of the books. “It was so inappropriate.”
That inspired about 100 Muslims, including the mosque’s imam, to support her public testimony at the School Board meeting.
Since her oldest child was in kindergarten 17 years ago, the district has made decisions based on surveys on parents, Hussein said, yet the district completely ignored parental pushback about adding gender ideology to the elementary school curriculum.
Most parents and community members do not support adding lessons on gender identity in elementary schools, the district admitted in a summary of comments submitted about the Family Life curriculum.
Parents shared concerns about lessons on gender identity not being age-appropriate for elementary schoolers, and expressed the belief that they, not schools, should be the primary educators of their children on such topics.
“Even though parents were really upset, saying that they don’t want their children to be introduced to such explicit sex information, still they said [the community review] is not accurate, and they went ahead, and they want to do a pilot program about it,” Hussein said. “And that’s what makes us feel as parents that we’re not heard. We are supposed to take care of our children, but at the same time, we’re not allowed to do so, because they’re not listening to us.”
The district will implement a pilot program in 14 elementary schools for a coed Family Life Education Curriculum for the 2024-2025 academic year.
As a mother of six and a local youth mentor, Hussein has firsthand experience with how age-inappropriate information about gender ideology harms children.
“I’ve seen a lot of issues with children going to school reading about things, and they don’t find anyone to actually explain to them about it,” she said. “So, they’re getting exposed to information that they don’t know how to process. And most of the time, parents are not there, or they are not aware because of the pressures of life.”
Hussein is concerned about the confusion caused by children learning they supposedly can be any gender they want.
“In my religion, we have only male and female,” she said.
Hussein’s youngest child, who is in elementary school, walked out of his classroom when his teacher started a lesson on gender ideology. The child told his teacher that it violates his religion.
When asked about the widespread parent opposition to gender ideology instruction, the school district told The Daily Signal that parents can opt their children out of the Family Life Education Curriculum.
“As you know, should any parent wish to opt their child out of FLE, they are able to do so,” said the district’s media relations manager, Julie Allen.
But parents shouldn’t have to opt their kids out, according to Hussein.
“A lot of parents, like immigrants, come from different backgrounds,” she said. “They don’t understand that there is a choice to opt out. And those are the most vulnerable children, because their parents cannot address it. They don’t understand what’s going on.”
Schools should focus on education and leave religion to parents, according to Hussein.
“Let’s leave this conversation to parents, because parents have to have the right to teach their children their values,” she said.
The Muslim families protesting gender ideology in Fairfax County don’t want to cause trouble, Hussein explained, adding they just want to protect their right to raise their kids in accordance with their faith.
“Our religion encourages us to love everyone,” she said. “At the same time, our religion is our life, and anything that touches that is considered a threat to who we are. So, it’s not that we hate anybody. We don’t want to force anyone into anything. And indeed, we don’t anyone to force whatever they want on us.”