# Moron hillbilly's in bumfuck Virginia **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 18, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744 "2015-12-18T00:47:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/81 "2015-12-18T21:41:32Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > What does **the complex artistry of the written language used in the Middle East** have to do with religion? Uh, Muslim art is highly involved in the calligraphy of their religious precepts. I suppose all of the people objecting to this lesson are in full support of the morons who are making threats which have required the entire school district to shut down every fucking school? ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/82 "2015-12-18T21:42:50Z")
I wonder if the Christianity part of the class involved the religious art of the Middle Ages? ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/83 "2015-12-18T21:46:22Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > World Geography isn’t a required class? Isn’t this comparative religions, not world geography? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/84 "2015-12-18T21:48:01Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > I wonder if the Christianity part of the class involved the religious art of the Middle Ages? I wonder if they had to write out the Lord’s prayer in calligraphic Latin as part of that section of the class? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/85 "2015-12-18T21:49:24Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Isn’t this comparative religions, not world geography? According to this link: [news story](http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/us/virginia-school-shut-islam-homework/index.html) it is a world geography class. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/86 "2015-12-18T22:00:14Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > If the assignment is to write out what each religion believes, then why not? context is key. If that were the assignment, no problem. But to ask the students to write out a profession of faith, just to demonstrate calligraphy, seems inappropriate. Both because some students may have a problem professing faith in the prophet Mohammed, and because it seems to make light of a serious religious statement. That is, I think both Moslems and followers of other faiths have a legitimate gripe with this lesson. That being said, it’s more on the level of “ask the teacher to pick a different text next year” than “refuse to send you kid to school” or “threaten people” level of gripe. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/87 "2015-12-18T22:02:40Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > According to this link: [news story](http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/us/virginia-school-shut-islam-homework/index.html) it is a world geography class. That sort of puts a damper on all of the self righteous defense of this lesson. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > _It was a fucking class about fucking religion, you fucking fucktard, so of course the fucking calligraphy example would have something to do with fucking religion!_ So, now that it wasn’t a class about fucking religion, is the fucking calligraphy making kids declare a belief in god justified still somehow? I mean it wasn’t even when you were claiming it was a religion class. But, that was a major crux of your (unhinged) argument. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/88 "2015-12-18T22:09:32Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > That sort of puts a damper on all of the self righteous defense of this lesson. > > So, now that it wasn’t a class about fucking religion, is the fucking calligraphy making kids declare a belief in god justified still somehow? I mean it wasn’t even when you were claiming it was a religion class. But, that was a major crux of your (unhinged) argument. Nobody made the kids declare a belief in jack shit. It was a bit of calligraphy-not a magic spell that bound their souls to the words they were assigned to write. Do you honestly believe the teacher was trying to trick them into professing belief in another religion?? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/89 "2015-12-18T22:12:34Z")
Surely there is some value in being able to _ **recognize** _ this particular piece of calligraphy, which is fairly common in art and popular culture throughout the Islamic world (which has a not insignificant overlap with the entire world). Also, to the question about the value of Arabic calligraphy in a World Religions class: the prohibition on representative art (esp. human figures) has meant that Islamic art does a lot more with calligraphy and abstract art. This is pretty important in understanding a big chunk of human art, and can also be tied into iconoclastic movements in Christianity under the Byzantines and early Protestants. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/90 "2015-12-18T22:15:40Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Nobody made the kids declare a belief in jack shit. It was a bit of calligraphy-not a magic spell that bound their souls to the words they were assigned to write. Do you honestly believe the teacher was trying to trick them into professing belief in another religion?? A declaration in a belief in god is actually, literally, what the shahada is. I would think, at the very least, it is offensive to Muslims to have it declared by non believers. Making high school football players pray before a game doesn’t bind their souls. Having a moment of silence to thank the lord before class doesn’t bind their souls. The teacher making the kids pray to Jesus for the school lunch they are about to eat doesn’t bind their souls. All of them are wrong in the school. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/91 "2015-12-18T22:21:32Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > So when she uses “we” she is speaking for everyone from or living in that Middle Eastern country? As Khatt is a highly developed art and has the specific and often taught forms, it is safe to speak for all arabophones as well as anyone who is not so unlearned to confuse ordinary signs with the arts of the calligraphy. So no, restaurant signs themselves are not calligraphy en grosso modo. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Considering the rather obvious statement she made, I would say “we” would include everyone who know what calligraphy is and what it is/was used for. yes I think so. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > I don’t know. If you’re so fucking confused about calligraphy, why don’t you look it up on the internet and learn a few things, then come back to us with an _informed_ opinion on the subject? could be contaminated to do so… ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/92 "2015-12-18T22:26:31Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > I would think, at the very least, it is offensive to Muslims to have it declared by non believers. it is not offensive. I would not have maybe chosen it, rather than the basmalla, but it does not offend. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/93 "2015-12-18T22:27:20Z")
ETA: Thank you **Ramira** , yes, that is a good example of an alternate phrase that would be more widely accepted. (Plus then you can link also to how it gets referenced in rock music…) > [@puzzlegal](#): > > That being said, it’s more on the level of “ask the teacher to pick a different text next year” than “refuse to send you kid to school” or “threaten people” level of gripe. This. A thousand times this. Religions class, history class, geography class, art class, whichever the context, \*“maybe pick a more innocuous example next time?” \*is the level of reaction that normal people apply when objecting to something like this. Making the district shut down? Moronic, and it’s an insult to hillbillies to associate them with it. Oh and fer cryin’out loud no, displaying examples of religions’ practices and creeds is NOT the same thing as organizing prayers. The rule is not that schools are religion-free zones. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/94 "2015-12-18T22:27:59Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > A declaration in a belief in god is actually, literally, what the shahada is. I would think, at the very least, it is offensive to Muslims to have it declared by non believers. > > Making high school football players pray before a game doesn’t bind their souls. Having a moment of silence to thank the lord before class doesn’t bind their souls. The teacher making the kids pray to Jesus for the school lunch they are about to eat doesn’t bind their souls. All of them are wrong in the school. None of those are the equivalent of what she asked those kids to do. If this was supposedly so offensive to Muslims, why are we not hearing about any protests from Muslim groups? I’m sure, though, that they find your “concern”…touching. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/95 "2015-12-18T23:12:51Z")
> [@Valgard](#): > > Hell, when we lived in England (I was 9) there was mandatory school prayer at a weekly assembly. I was uncomfortable (as a budding agnostic Jew) with having to sit there and recite the Lord’s Prayer but oddly enough, my parents had no problem with it. > > There were also two brothers who were, IIRC, Muslim. Their parents objected to them having to participate in a Christian religious ceremony and you know what they did? They threatened to come down and slit every teacher’s throat so the administration surrounded the school with cops and cancelled classes. > > Oh wait, that’s wrong. The parents told the school “We don’t want our sons to do this” so those two kids sat off to the side silently while the rest of us did our thing. I wondered if it was the school’s choice to actually move them away from the rest of us (that would have been jerkish, IMHO) or if the parents were not satisfied with “OK, how about they sit with their classmates and don’t say the prayer, just be respectfully silent for a minute”. Either way a better resolution than what some nimrods in that county felt was appropriate. Yes, I went to school in England in the 50s, same deal. I remember RCs and others could opt out and several did. We’d sing a hymn in assembly and there was a short prayer, I think, but most of the assembly was secular. England of course has an established church so there was no problem with prayers in schools, although I’m sure they’ve created one now. England always feels left out if we don’t have the same problems as the States. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2015, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/96 "2015-12-18T23:26:51Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > I suppose all of the people objecting to this lesson are in full support of the morons who are making threats which have required the entire school district to shut down every fucking school? I have a simple, two-part test for teaching of religious beliefs in a public school setting: 1. Does it have a valid, secular purpose? 2. Is it minimum amount of teaching of religious ideas necessary to further that purpose? Teaching children the fundamentals of world religions so they can understand other cultures and peoples, teaching about schisms in Christian thought to understand European history, and teaching about Abrahamic prohibitions on human imagery to understand early-Protestant era iconoclasm or Islamic art all pass this test. Opening class with a prayer does not, and neither does copying the phrase “Jesus loves me” 50 times to practice handwriting. As for this issue, the context of the lesson is rather unclear. If the intention is purely artistic, than a secular message would have been a better choice. If it’s to understand something deeper about the interaction between religious belief, art, history, and culture, then it’s fine, but I don’t know how you’d accomplish that without even translating the phrase. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/97 "2015-12-19T00:11:17Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > How pissed off were these redneck parents? Seems like a communication that resulted in the closing of the schools is a crime. Go ahead, call in something to a school that results in the school’s closing, without committing a crime. I dare ya’! We’ve all seen it claimed: Your “anonymous” communications aren’t as anonymous as you think they are. With sufficient effort, your calls _can_ be traced. With sufficient effort, your on-line comments _can_ be traced. Well, at least a lot of time. But we never see law authorities putting all that much effort into it. With the ever-growing amount of hate-speech flying around these days (especially on-line), reaching such a crescendo that schools are being shut down because of it (and we’ve seen _several_ instances of this lately), you would think the authorities would be losing their sense of humor about this. This isn’t protected by any Amendments that I know of. It’s become a big enough problem that it shouldn’t just be shrugged off any more. The kind of hate crimes going on here, as discussed in this thread, should be prosecuted and more than a few asses’ asses thrown in jail for a while. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/98 "2015-12-19T00:57:36Z")
> [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](#): > > You don’t teach Christianity by making students recite the Hail Mary, and you don’t teach Islam by making students copy out the Shahada. So, it is clear that the lesson was not doing anything resembling trying to convert the kids to Islam. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > Let’s force the kids write “Christ is Lord” and see how the enlightened sophisticates on this board react. If the course included having the kids write the Shema in Hebrew, ‘[symbol]o Cristos [/symbol]’[symbol]o Kurios[/symbol] in Greek and similar statements from other religions in the original alphabets, it might have dampened the objections. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/99 "2015-12-19T01:01:12Z")
> [@Askthepizzaguy](#): > > +1 > > Nothing to get up in arms about either way. > > I was forced to say the pledge of allegiance and affirm the existence of a deity as a child. It shouldn’t be compulsory, but it didn’t scar me for life. The Pledge of Allegiance didn’t specify WHICH deity. That’s the issue here. This statement that they were asked to copy endorsed a religion, and even though I’m a Christian, I would be just as offended if they had been asked to write out John 3:16 in Arabic, or any other language. :rolleyes: Why couldn’t they have been asked to write out the name of their school, or the date, or some other non-offensive-to-anyone phrase? 😕 p.s. I saw a TV show where some American kids at a Muslim parochial school said “one nation, under Allah…” I’m OK with that, because it was in the proper context. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2015, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744/100 "2015-12-19T01:02:59Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > If the course included having the kids write the Shema in Hebrew, ‘[symbol]o Cristos [/symbol]’[symbol]o Kurios[/symbol] in Greek and similar statements from other religions in the original alphabets, it might have dampened the objections. War on Christianity. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moron-hillbillys-in-bumfuck-virginia/740744.md?page=6)