By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

A furor is erupting over a newly released video showing sixth grade students from a Massachusetts middle school prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to a local mosque.

Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance has published a video on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace website showing students from Wellesley Middle School in Wellesley, Massachusetts participating in midday prayer at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center mega-mosque on May 25, 2010. The school claims the students were taken to the mosque to learn about the history of Islam first-hand.

The video shows students being given all kinds of erroneous instruction on Islam by representatives of the mosque, including one who told students that in Mohammed’s Seventh Century Arabia, women were allowed to vote, even though American women couldn’t vote until the past century. The truth is that women were not permitted to vote in the 7th Century. In fact, women are still not permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia.

“The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war,” Jacobs writes. “As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.”

A mother who accompanied her 11 year-old on the field trip that day said parents were not properly informed about the outing.  “In mid-May the school sent a permission request for him to participate in a social studies class field trip to a mosque,” she said. “I was told that the goal of the trip was to learn about the mosque’s architecture and to give the students an authentic experience inside a mosque by observing Islamic religion first-hand.”

She admits that “something didn’t feel quite right” about public school kids being taken to have an authentic experience in a place of worship. Concerned, she began to research the mosque and found that it was highly controversial.

For instance, the mosque’s founder, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, is currently serving 23 years in prison for his participation in an Al-Qaeda terror plot. The Muslim American Society, which runs the mosque, has been identified by federal prosecutors as “the overt arm of the Muslim brotherhood.”

Alarmed, the mother decided to attend the trip as a chaperone and filmed many portions of the outing. At one point during the address, children were taught how to say the daily prayer and women were asked to leave the area when the time for prayer arrived.

“Some of the middle school boys were prostrating themselves and praying with the men,” the mother said. “Apparently, when we weren’t looking, the boys were asked to join in the prayer, and some of them did,” including one Jewish boy, she said.

The mother looked to the teachers, expecting them to do something, but none of them made a move to stop it.

“There was nothing on permission slip to inform parents their kids would be praying,” she said.

Even though the ACLU is typically at the forefront of the battle to keep religion out of schools, one of state’s leaders is known to be a strong supporter of the Muslim American Society, which could explain how such an event was able to take place.

A full investigation of the matter has been called for.

Unfortunately, this may not be an isolated case. A Fox undercover investigation has found that this kind of proselytizing by Islamic groups, known as da’wa, is becoming very popular in the U.S. In fact, one organization, DawaNet is devoted to proselytizing children in public schools.

“In various parts of the country, public schools are allowing Muslim extremists to promote Islam to our children,” Jacobs writes. “Something’s broken here. Our leadership is failing. It’s now up to ordinary citizens to fix it.”

The video can be see here.

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