American schools are not the only schools in the world that are forgetting that their job is to teach children. Teaching children means telling them the truth about their history and the world we live in at the present time. On Friday The U.K. Daily Mail reported that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) has cancelled an event with ISIS survivor Nadia Murad. Ms. Murad was taken from her home and sold into sexual slavery at just 14 years old. She was scheduled to discuss her book, The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity, in February 2020.
The article reports:
Murad was scheduled to sit down with students from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) – the largest school Board in Canada with nearly 600 schools – to discuss her book The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity in February 2022.
Murad’s graphic exposé detailed how she escaped the Islamic State, where she was ripped from her home and sold into sexual slavery aged just 14 years old, according to The Telegraph.
…But before the event could happen the superintendent of the Board Helen Fisher said that her students would not participate.
She has since issued an apology but refused to allow her students to attend.
Fisher expressed that she believed the book would ‘promote Islamophobia’ and cited how offensive the book was to her Muslim students as her reason for cancelling the event.
The decision enraged TDSB parent Tanya Lee, who wrote an email to the superintendent about the decision.
Lee also founded the book club – called A Room Of Your Own Book Club – which allows teen girls aged 13 to 18 from secondary schools around the country to hear from female authors, and was hosting the event set to feature Murad.
‘This is what the Islamic State means. It is a terrorist organization. It has nothing to do with ordinary Muslims. The Toronto school board should be aware of the difference,’ she wrote, as reported by The Telegraph.
The article concludes:
However, this isn’t the first time Fisher banned a book from a book club event.
Back in October, A Room Of Your Own Book Club featured author and lawyer Marie Henein, who defended Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi while he was being faced with sexual assault charges.
Although Ghomeshi was acquitted on all charges in 2016, the TDSB sill refused to let its students attend the event.
In response, dozens of users took to Twitter to express their fiery discontent towards TDSB’s decision.
One user referred to when Holocaust survivors spoke to TDSB schools and sarcastically said: ‘I guess all the Holocaust survivors who have spoken at schools were promoting hatred of Germans – any response to your idiotic position on Nadia Murad???’
Meanwhile, another user said the school’s choice to cancel Murad’s event is ‘sad (because) she is being de-platformed’.
Yet another response said the decision is the ‘opposite’ of cancel culture, ‘where incompetent professionals face no consequences for bungling their jobs, because their errors are seen as being committed in the (nominal) service of social justice’.
I’m not sure I would want thirteen or fourteen-year olds reading Ms. Murad’s book–I think I would want to let the parents decide that, but ignoring the culture of Islamic jihad is something all western nations do at their own peril.