The Islamic Society of Greater Houston is helping to register about 1,000 voters a week at mosques across the city as some Texas officials grow increasingly hostile to the Muslim community, the group’s president said Wednesday.
At a press conference with local imams and community activists, President Emran Gazi said the weekly voter registration drives were energizing people who had previously not considered voting to be important.
“I can guarantee you, if you all go out and vote this time, Muslims’ vote will make a difference in Houston and Harris County,” Gazi said.
His organization gathered Houston Muslim leaders at the River Oaks Islamic Center to condemn a new social studies curriculum that they said demonized Islam. Texas’ Republican-controlled Board of Education approved the new curriculum for high schoolers in an 8-4 vote on Sept. 4 over the objections of Muslim and other religious leaders.
READ MORE: Texas education board OKs new high school curriculum over objections from Muslim advocates
The new curriculum requires students to “explain early Islam in terms of Mohammed’s, the prophet of Islam, brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”
In a news release after the state education board approved the new curriculum, the board’s chairman, Aaron Kinsey, celebrated the new standards. He cheered their “central emphasis on the foundations of Western Civilization and the values that shaped America’s and Texas’ founding.”
Daa’iyah Farooq, a retired Houston school counselor, worried the curriculum would teach some children to feel inferior, and others superior. “We are not asking the board to hide an uncomfortable history, but to apply the same intellectual standing to everyone,” she said.
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State Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, who leads the Texas House Democrats, urged about 50 people gathered Wednesday to vote out the state education board members who had approved the new rules. He encouraged Asian Americans to unite to fight Republicans, and blasted Muslim donors to Republican candidates as “donating to our enemies.”
Wu, who is not Muslim, declined to name the donors, but he called on Muslim community members to do so. After the conference ended, several attendees criticized S. Javaid Anwar, an oil executive who has given over $15 million to Gov. Greg Abbott’s political action committee, Texans for Greg Abbott, according to campaign finance reports.
The Texas Ethics Commission included in-kind contributions from Anwar, such as airplane use and other travel expenses. Its reports show he’s given the committee $1.5 million since January of this year.
Transparency USA, a campaign finance website, lists Anwar as the donor who’s given Abbott the most money since 2015. Anwar did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking his perspective.
Anwar has been the chief patron for Houston Iftar, the city’s premier Ramadan celebration. He has sat on the honorary council for the Muslim American Heritage Celebration, which “celebrates the contributions of Americans of Muslim heritage to the United States.”
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This article originally published at Houston Muslim leaders tout voter mobilization as they bash new social studies curriculum.