Texas U.S. History Curriculum Will Only Mention Islam in Relation to Terrorism

Hanifa Nayeemuddin, a high school sophomore, told the Texas State Board of Education about her experience as a Muslim student growing up in Texas during a public hearing on the new public high school history curriculum standards on Monday, Aug. 31.

“A girl from public school … saw my mom wearing a hijab and asked me, ‘Are you Muslim?’ And I said ‘Yes.’ And then she asked me, ‘Are Muslims terrorists?’” Nayeemuddin recalled. “I was 11 years old. … Before I could even respond, her mom yelled at her not to associate with people like me.”

“That is why the way we teach about Islam and Muslims matters,” Nayeemuddin emphasized to the board members.

During the public hearing, Nayeemuddin and multiple others noted that Islam is solely mentioned in U.S. history curriculum as “radical Islam,” in relation to the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy. “Think about what that means for a student,” Nayeemuddin pressed. “The only time they learn about Muslims is when they’re learning about terrorism.”

Despite hearing criticism from dozens of educators, students, and historians that the standards contain historical gaps, anti-Islam bias, and potential inaccuracies, the Republican-majority SBOE voted on Friday, Sept. 4 to adopt the revised U.S. and world history, geography, and financial literacy curriculum standards, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), to be taught in Texas public high schools starting the 2030-31 school year.

“It’s a state of 30 million people. It has tons of social studies expertise. Virtually none of it was reflected in the TEKS revision process, and that’s a waste.”

Julia Brookins

The revised standards and agenda for the week’s meetings were not publicized by the SBOE until Aug. 24. That only gave parents a week to review the curriculum in time to give feedback to the board, Carisa Lopez of the Texas Freedom Network told the Chronicle.

“One of our big concerns is the complete lack of transparency around the process,” Lopez said. “How is the public, how are parents supposed to be able to weigh in on this process?”

Julia Brookins, a doctor of American history with the American Historical Association, told the Chronicle after the SBOE’s vote that she believes the final version of the history standards are “inadequate to support students’ intellectual development.”

The standards may not meet the Texas Education Agency’s own learning requirements for College Career and Military Readiness, which are listed in Texas Education Code as required by the state, Brookins said. They may also not be aligned with Senate Bill 3, which requires education on the history of civic participation, she added.

Republican Texas State Board of Education members held a press conference inside of the Barbara Jordan State Office Building on Aug. 31 Credit: Sammie Seamon

“It doesn’t give them enough practice in civil discourse, examining multiple perspectives, engaging with evidence, source criticism, and in information literacy skills,” Brookins explained, referring to CCMR requirements.

Another major change from the previous standards is the replacement of verbs like “evaluate and analyze,” with now asking students to simply “name, list, describe, or locate” historical facts, Brookins added, which “lowers the rigor” of Texas social studies courses.

Fawaz Usmani, who also testified before the board on Monday, noted the TEKS lack any historical contributions of Muslim cultures and scholars, while Islam is the only world religion that’s connected to slavery in the curriculum.

He pointed to one world history standard that asks Texas students to, “Explain early Islam in terms of the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”

“You could also call the slavery that happened in America as ‘Christian slavery,’ even though I feel like that’s really unfair,” Usmani said. “So I don’t get why one standard is applied to Islam, and one standard is applied to Christianity.”

The standards also contain large gaps in both world and U.S. history, Meghan Dougherty, a social studies curriculum developer who gave early feedback on the drafted TEKS, told us.

The Black Power and Chicano movements, along with several aspects of the civil rights movement, have been largely removed from the previous U.S. history standards. Latin America, Asia, and Africa are largely taught through the context of how they “contributed to the development of Western civilization” in world history, Dougherty said.

“It’s maybe 70% or 80% on European history [versus] the rest of the world,” Dougherty emphasized. “Kids are just going to walk out of these courses with a very distorted worldview and understanding of how history progressed.”

The standard about “harem slaves” is the only time women are even mentioned in the world history course, Dougherty added. “Apparently, the state board believes that the only significant impact or influence of women in all of world history were of concubines.”

The last major overhaul of the K-12 social studies TEKS was in 2010, Brookins reminded us – it’s not a common occurrence. A major fault of the 2026 curriculum review, Brookins reflected, was that the SBOE’s process “didn’t draw on the state’s real expertise” on the subject matter.

“It’s a state of 30 million people. It has tons of social studies expertise. Virtually none of it was reflected in the TEKS revision process, and that’s a waste. That’s a shame for students,” Brookins pressed. “It was about politics leading up to an election that’s in two months. It was not about what students are going to need to know in 10 years.”

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