Today, Explained - Will “parental rights” mobilize Muslims?

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Some Muslim parents wanted their kids to opt out of reading schoolbooks with LGBTQ characters and themes. Today, Explained reporter Haleema Shah explains what happened when their fight went national. This episode was reported and produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Serena Solin, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The parental rights movement, or the parents' rights movement, is one in which conservative parents demand the right to restrict what their kids learn and encounter in school about sexuality, gender identity, and race. Now, we don't know the exact demographics of this movement, but the assumption has been that it's made up largely of white Christian parents who vote Republican. Today Explained reporter Halima Shah recently came across a story in Montgomery County, Maryland, that really surprised her. Some parents in that very diverse district

say they don't want their kids reading books about LGBTQ people. They say discussing gender identity, especially with young kids, goes against their religion. But they're not the expected demographic. These are American Muslims. Our children, our values. Our children, our values. Coming up on Today Explained, Halima is going to talk to the parents and to their critics.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King, reporter and producer Halima Shah. Tell me about why you got so interested in this story in Montgomery County. I'm a member of a lot of Muslim Facebook groups. And last year, I had seen a number of posts from Muslim parents asking for Islamic school recommendations. And one of the reasons I remember one of the parents giving was that she didn't like the LGBTQ trend in public schools. I didn't entirely know what it meant, though I can kind of guess. And I was also intrigued by this because I am a product of private Islamic school.

I also went to a public high school for a little bit. But that experience was very uncommon. Seventy-two percent of Muslim parents say they send their kids to public school. I wanted to know what is it that has these parents so distraught that they're considering pulling their kids out. And then I saw these stories this year about protests happening in Montgomery County, Maryland, where parents were organizing and holding rallies about certain children's books that were being read in elementary school classes. And so I reached out to one of the parents

to try to understand what was going on here. My name is Ra'ef Hagag, and you can just call me Ra'ef. He's Egyptian-American, he's a parent, he's also a musician. And he's a very proud resident of this community. He always felt like he belonged in Montgomery County. He got married there. He has a six-year-old daughter in Montgomery County Public Schools.

He even was a public school teacher in the school district for over a decade. And he said he felt like the school district has really accommodated Muslims. So when I was younger, we had requests to leave for Jummah prayer, Friday prayers. Both teachers and administration were always very accommodating, making sure not to put any important materials on Friday afternoon. And as a teacher, same situation. All of the principals that I've interacted with made sure that I always had those two periods or one period at the end of the day open so that I could make my way to Friday prayers. For LGBTQ people in this district,

is there a sense that that same kind of acceptance extends to them? I did speak to parents of LGBTQ children in covering the story, and they really appreciated that about the school district. They do feel like this has been a welcoming district to their children, to their family, and this year the school district tried to take that commitment a step further. At the beginning of 2023, they added LGBTQ affirming books to the English language arts curriculum in elementary school. And they saw this as imperative to its mission of diversity and inclusivity. And these books are, you know, kids books with bright pictures and rhymes. I'll give you an example of a book that he and I talked about in particular. It's a book called Intersection Allies.

Actually, on the cover of Intersection Allies, there's a girl with hijab. My wife and I read all of these books, and we're like, wow, this seems interesting. Let's see what this book is about. The first page of the story introduces a group of kids. Age is one trait that each of them share. But kids' lives are unique, as you'll soon be aware. And the subsequent pages go through each child's unique experience,

like wearing hijab or using a wheelchair or not neatly fitting into one of two genders. Skirts and frills are cute, I suppose, but my superhero cape is more Kate than those bows. And Kate goes on to say this. My friends defend my choices and place. A bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space. And through that book, there's a discussion about the use of pronouns. They also introduce

the terms sex, gender. They introduce transgender, non-binary, in our opinion, not age appropriate for our six-year-old. Halima, what does the book say about being trans, about being non-binary? Is it like a full-throated endorsement? No, the section for kids, the actual story, doesn't use the words trans or non-binary. But in the book notes for adults, or presumably teachers, it does define those words, and it also asks the question, what pronouns fit you best? And in our religious teachings, we believe that men and women are created by God, and that corresponds to the gender that you are. And it's not a compassionate or good thing to encourage your children to explore gender options.

The school district really does not see this as an instruction on gender or sexuality. They see this as the reading of stories in which there are children of various identities in the story. And in their public statement, they said, quote, diversifying texts in elementary school will help young people develop empathy for a diverse group of people and learn about identities that might relate to their families or community members. Still, the content doesn't fly with Ra'if and a group of mostly Muslim parents. They go to the principal and ask for an opt-out. And she says yes. However, she did mention to us that she will not be able to offer that same accommodations in the future. Because in the spring of 2023, the school district rolls out new guidance.

Parents can't opt students out of these books, and they can't expect advance notice when they're read either. The district says it's because Maryland state law only allows opting out in one particular case, when human sexuality is taught in health class. And these books are being taught in English language arts class. But I wanted to know why the school board changed their guidance. After all, they were previously allowing this opt-out. They said they couldn't comment because of pending litigation. The district is being sued right now over this decision. And to Ra'if, this decision is what opened the floodgates. This opt-out option was a solution. We're not saying ban this topic, ban this book. We're saying give us a right to step out if we believe it's not appropriate for our children. Based on sincerely held religious beliefs, we're not just making this up. Ra'if and other parents form a group called Family Rights for Religious Freedom.

They start to organize with Ethiopian Orthodox Christian parents. And Islamic advocacy groups even get involved. Our children, our values! Our children, our values! Our children, our values! Our children, our values. Our children, our values. Our children, our values. Halima, this sounds a lot like the capital P, capital R parental rights movement, where parents with conservative values say,

we don't want our kids learning about critical race theory in Florida or that slavery was bad. Are these parents part of that movement? I asked Raif about that, and he said he didn't even register the capital P, capital R parental rights movement. He calls the local parents effort an apolitical one. But I did speak to another opt-out parent who was like, yeah, this is about parental rights. I did also see Moms for Liberty logos there on two people, and they are a face of the parental rights movement. And I reached out to the Montgomery County chair of Moms for Liberty, and she did say, yes, they are telling their members about these particular rallies.

But I will say there were also just regular people there. That was the vast majority, and that included kids and graduates of the district. We are simply asking for our right to religious freedom as people who live in this country. Somehow that turns us into haters that are spreading bigotry. Let's be clear and get this straight. Choosing to live by a religion does not make us ones who spread hate. As a parent and as a queer Muslim, I am disappointed that we have a community that feels the way that they feel. I called up someone for whom the stakes of this debate feel particularly high. My name is Abdul Khan.

My pronouns are he, they. I identify as a Muslim. I'm within the LGBTQ umbrella. And I also have a child that is trans. Abdul has really watched the parental rights debate unfold in his own backyard because he lives in a neighboring county in Virginia, where the state elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor, who really made the capital P, capital R parental rights debate a cornerstone of his campaign. Abdul said that reading these

LGBTQ affirming books, the one that he read to his daughter was called My Shadow is Pink, not only helped his trans daughter understand her own transition, but it actually helped her older sister understand her siblings' experience. For my youngest, you know, it built her confidence to be who she wants to be. And then additionally, it made the siblings' relationship stronger because the older siblings began to understand their journey the younger child was going through and was able to support them at the same time. One of the things that came up in a lot of these school board meetings that I observed was Muslim parents saying their children were being bullied for saying that these texts were against their religion.

I wonder what you would say to people who say that not allowing an opt-out basically makes the school system more intolerant of religious Muslims. When it comes to teaching about diversity and inclusion, it's not a conversation. You're going to encounter LGBTQ families out there. So to say that as per our religious beliefs, we don't have to learn about X, Y, Z. There are many things in the Quran and the Bible that may teach you things about slavery that aren't essentially what we do today. You're not going to go back and say, well, you know, I don't really want to learn about slavery today. I don't really want to learn about human rights today because that's not part of what the old book says.

It is a very sticky issue that has divided this particular community in Maryland. But something happens that supercharges this issue to the national scale. A Montgomery County Council member, Kristen Mink, says this in a board meeting. This issue has unfortunately put, it does put some, not all of course, but some Muslim families on the same side of an issue as white supremacists and outright bigots. However, the folks who I've talked to here today, I would not put in the same category. I don't know if you could hear it, but there was a very faint rumumble in the room right after she says white supremacist. Mink, I think, said something that a lot of people might have been thinking, but her statement did not go over well at all with the mostly black and brown parents in the room.

She apologized, but not before her remarks were reported out on Fox. Now, I just mentioned this disturbing allegation that Muslim parents and their children, former students who want to opt out of the sexualized curricula in our schools, are now akin to white supremacists. So that's Laura Ingraham. And this is a moment when the debate, which is ongoing, by the way, there's still a pending lawsuit and parents are still organizing. It's a point when this debate is catapulted to the national stage and becomes a culture war talking point. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Thank you. So you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained.

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It's Today Explained. We're back with Halima Shah and the story of a fight in Montgomery County, Maryland over books about LGBTQ people and issues, and some Muslim parents who say those are not for our kids. Halima, when we left off, Fox News had picked up the story. Take it from there. Well, Laura Ingram invites a Muslim parent in Maryland and an organizer, Garim Munib, onto her show, and they have a friendly conversation. We want to bring people of all faiths and even those who may not belong to any particular faith. The traditionalists, perhaps. Traditional, reasonable people.

I think that if we come together, we can become a political force in this country that can save us from what's happening. You, Kareem, and all of those kids who spoke out and former students, you all petrify the left. There's mixed reaction to this. I did have a conversation about this interview with Garim,

and he told me people in his mosque understood that he was trying to get attention to his cause. But Muslim commentators like Wajahat Ali see Laura Ingram, who, by the way, has said that Muslim immigrants shouldn't be allowed into the country, as merely pivoting to a different scapegoat. The same exact playbook that is used against CRT and wokeness, which is used to attack transgender kids, was used against Muslims. Garim told me that he's trying to ally

with other people of faith. But people like Wajahat Ali see an alliance with the religious right as a trap. What I see is them opening the door for their former and future butchers, sharpening the knives, and it will be used against us and other people of color. And they don't see that they're being co-opted and used by people like Laura Ingraham, who's openly celebrating it on her show. But Raif, the parent in Montgomery County, really does not see things this way. And he doesn't like the language of co-opting. Some are saying our sincere efforts is a trap, you know, set up by the political right that Muslims are falling into.

And I absolutely reject that. This is a false generalization. And it assumes that we don't have any agency or our own way of thinking. And Muslim Americans, like all Americans, we have a diverse spectrum of political beliefs and leanings. You know, some Muslims lean more conservative, others are more liberal. Some lean more conservative, others are more liberal. That makes complete sense. What do we know about how American Muslims generally vote? The data tells us that two-thirds of Muslims vote for the Democratic Party. There is a very small number, roughly 13%, that vote for the Republican Party.

And Bashir Mohammed, who's a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, told me that Muslims are a very difficult group to pin down politically because it is so diverse. Probably the three largest ethnic groups would be Black Americans, South Asians, and Arabs, each of which only make up about a quarter of the Muslim population. There are wealthy Muslims and Muslims that are living below the poverty level. So it's hard to see a single issue as sort of the uniting, like this is the issue that all Muslims are going to agree on.

A lot of diversity, but two out of three Muslims do vote Democrat. When they're asked why, what do they say? It's that they think Republicans don't like them. Even the ones who vote Republicans believe that the party is unfriendly to them. And an even larger share see Donald Trump as unfriendly. And yet still vote for Republicans. That's really interesting. Yeah. But Muslims don't think Democrats love them either. That's the other interesting part, right?

Like, when you survey Muslim Democrats, roughly half say that neither party is friendly towards Muslims in America. So, in short, this is a group that does not squarely align or identify with either political party. Muslims tend to be sort of more aligned with the Democratic Party on questions about size of government, questions about whether government should do more to help the poor, then, on the other hand, they tend to be somewhat socially conservative on questions like homosexuality, same-sex marriage,

on some of these questions, and to that extent, they'd more align with the Republican Party. The Pew Research Center has consistently asked the question, should homosexuality be accepted by society? They've asked this question for years. And Muslims have pretty consistently been about 10 to 15 points less accepting than the broader American public. And by the way, when these book debates happen, they also motivate religious debates. So as the opt-out fight in Montgomery County gets

underway, there's a very aptly timed joint statement published by a group of Muslim scholars, and it's called Navigating Differences, Clarifying Sexual Ethics in Islam. And the piece really reaffirms traditional views on gender and sexuality. Sex takes place in the confines of marriage. Marriage happens between a man and a woman. And when this joint letter came out, my social media feeds were on fire. There were Muslims who saw this as a really brave affirmation of tradition, especially as the public moves in a different direction. And then there were Muslims on the other side who were livid about this. They saw this as a remarkable level of organization among Muslim scholars to basically single out LGBTQ people and kind of pretend like LGBTQ Muslims don't exist.

And, like, the visibility of LGBTQ Muslims was something that I also heard from Abdul Khan, the queer Muslim parent from earlier. And he said it with respect to the book debate. I think some of the damage that's happening here is that within our community, we're not acknowledging that there's LGBTQ folks that are Muslim. And that by doing some of the things, the message that you're sending to people in your community is that you're not worthy of having a platform. You're not worthy of being in this community.

And I don't understand, like, we don't push people away from Islam, but this is just a great way to do it. For Muslim parents in Montgomery County who hold traditional views on gender and sexuality, this issue is important enough to them that they are galvanizing outside the school board, that they are speaking at these meetings, that they are reaching out to other religious groups, that they're doing interviews on Fox News. And they are really willing to do it regardless of whether the school board or other members of the Muslim community think that they're being co-opted by bigots. And I think that people like Raif, who is a former public school teacher, sincerely believe that opting out is an accommodation that will ultimately keep people of different backgrounds happy

and staying in the public school system. And maybe it teaches another lesson that goes beyond inclusion, which is that not everyone will like you and not everyone's really going to get you. If someone opted out of a class out of about the five pillars of Islam because they said this conflicts with my religious beliefs, would you feel like that's fair? Would that still be protecting plurality in the school? I would fully support it because my child's self-worth is not dependent on someone else's celebration of them. And if it really did contradict their sincerely held religious beliefs, I would 100% support their right to opt out.

You're an American Muslim, Halima, and I know we talked at the beginning about why you were interested in all of this. We are a country divided over many, many, many things, and now we have another one here. What did you take away from all of this? I think what I take away is that schools are battlegrounds of social change. So I think, like, public school districts have to contend with that. There are going to be more Montgomery counties. This country is becoming increasingly diverse,

and I just don't think that there's going to be any way around these debates. All of these school districts will have to decide between opt-out policies or controversial blanket policies that they believe might serve the greater good. And the stakes of this are very high. I mean, the fact that Muslim parents are considering pulling their kids out and sending them to private or parochial schools suggests that if districts don't walk this line very carefully, they could lose some of their diverse populations,

and I think that would undermine some of the beauty of public schools. Today's episode was produced and reported by Halima Shah and edited by Matthew Collette. Patrick Boyd is our engineer. Fact-checking was the Dream Team, Serena Solon and Laura Bullard. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you