An Iraq veteran was banned from his daughter’s high school after objecting to a required homework assignment about Islam.
Kevin Wood, father of an 11th-grader at La Plata High School in Charles County, Md., was upset to discover a teacher had asked his daughter to write a three-page essay about Islam’s Five Pillars, Mecca and Mohammed.
After Wood met with the school’s vice principal to discuss the matter, the school banned Wood from the property late last week.
“I don’t agree with it,” Wood said in a phone interview with Fox News. “I said you can’t study God or Christianity in school; you have atheists suing schools for saying God and the pledge, and not being able to say prayers before football games … but we can force-feed our kids Islam.”
Katie O’Malley-Simpson, spokeswoman for Charles County Public Schools, told The Daily Signal today that Wood, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, was banned from school property because he was “threatening to cause a disruption at the school that could compromise the safety of the students and staff.”
“We don’t issue no trespassing orders lightly,” she said.
O’Malley-Simpson defended the assignment on the Islam, saying it is part of Maryland ‘s “world history curricular standards that are a requirement for all counties in the state.” She said:
The particular unit in question at La Plata High School is on the formation of Middle Eastern empires in which students learned the basic concepts of the Islamic faith and how it, along with politics, culture, economics and geography, contributed to the development of the Middle East. Other religions are introduced when they influence or impact a particular historical era or geographic region.
Tearing up, Wood’s wife said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday that the school doesn’t understand the sensitivity of the subject.
“The people do not understand what he endured when he was over in Iraq,” she said. “[H]e lost friends, and he lost brothers and sisters to these people.”
O’Malley-Simpson said the dispute between Wood and the school is not yet resolved, and the school and Wood are in discussions that will continue into next week.