What would the Quakers say about this?

I used to work in the small town of Friendswood, just south of Houston, as a newspaper reporter covering about 22 square miles of, well, not much more than local news. Back then, in the early '90s, the biggest ball of fur to hit the fan had to do with a toxic waste dump just outside the city limits and how to clean it up without spreading more poison into the nearby community and a creek.

Then there were a couple of semi-sensational murders and those kept tongues wagging for a few months.

Finally, about two years after I left the paper, the tragic abduction and murder of a young girl put the town founded by peace-loving Quakers squarely on the map as her parents struggled to cope with their loss by establishing the Laura Recovery Center to aid the searches for future missing children.

Friendswood is back in the news once again, this time for a stellar misstep by the principal of one of the town's junior high schools.

Seems she thought the students should be required to attend a presentation on the virtues of Islam rather than participate in the PE class for which they were originally scheduled. To make matters worse, parents were not notified in advance of this enriching opportunity.

Don't misunderstand. I'm all in favor of cultural awareness, of kids learning about other religions and customs and languages.

The problem here is that Islam, being a religion, was given special billing and a captive audience. The same would never have been granted to someone presenting a program about Christianity.

Worse still is that the women who presented this program about Islam were from the Houston office of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Do a little research on CAIR and its supporters and you'll find a rap sheet that will take your breath away.

Lots and lots of hobnobbing with suspected and confirmed terrorists, for starters.

I'm not saying the women who came to Friendswood Junior High School were terrorists. In fact, I'm sure they weren't.

But I do think that this attempt to present Islam as a wonderful religion worthy of admiration in spite of its role in the 9/11 and other terrorists attacks, in spite of its harsh treatment of women, in spite of the fact that Muslims in some Middle Eastern countries who convert to Christianity can be jailed or killed, in spite of the fact that the Koran instructs followers to convert those it can and kill the rest is just a tad disingenuous.

Am I missing something? Am I wrong about this? Do I really want my Christian children being told that, nope, their religion has it all wrong and that the only god isn't the God of the Bible but Allah?

I don't badmouth Islam to my kids, but I also don't go out of my way to tell them what a romp through the rose garden it is.

Shame on Friendswood Junior High School for trying to do just that.