Members of the Texas State Board of Education Call for Action Against Sharia Supremacism
Frank Gaffney, President of the Institute for the American Future and a CHQ contributor, on June 1, 2026, moderated a press conference in Fort Worth, Texas, with Texas State Board of Education members Julie Pickren (District 7) and Brandon Hall (District 11).
The discussion focused on concerns surrounding the Fort Worth Independent School District, the reassignment of Shaima Al-Zubi from her announced role as principal of Western Hills High School, and the broader debate over Sharia, public education, curriculum standards, and parental trust in Texas schools.
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Hall and Pickren addressed the importance of keeping political and ideological agendas out of classrooms, defending equal rights under the Constitution, and ensuring that Texas students receive a fact-based, patriotic education focused on core academic achievement. They also urged Texans to stay engaged in upcoming school board and State Board of Education proceedings related to curriculum and school governance.
Transcript of the press conference follows:
Mr. Gaffney: Welcome to Fort Worth, where we are coming to you from the Z Bones Dog Park as part of the, I believe it's Z Bone Park complex.
It is a spot that is adjacent to the Board of Education of this independent school district of Fort Worth, where we had thought in the course of the afternoon there might be a significant demonstration in connection with the decision taken by the school district not to have a woman by the name of Shayma Al-Zubi serve, at least for the moment, in the role of principal of the Western Hills High School, a 2000 pupil school in this Independent School District of Fort Worth.
Therein lies a bit of a tale. And in the course of comments I will be making, and more importantly, two elected representatives of the State Board of Education will be making about the controversy involving Ms. Al-Zubi.
To give just a brief bit of context, she had been a teacher and I believe other parts of the country. She was an assistant principal in another part of this particular school district.
She was announced to become the next principal of Western Hills High School. And three days into that tenure, information came to light about some problematic social media posts that she had made over the years and raising questions about not only their content, but their consistency, or more to the point, inconsistency with the school district's policies.
They also raised larger questions about whether a person with the views reflected in those posts is best suited to be involved in public education at all, let alone in a leading role.
This gave rise to protests because Ms. Al-Zubi is Muslim, and some of those posts involved things like the totalitarian political, military, and legal doctrine, ideology, program, agenda, what I call a death cult of Islam, in which she made, I believe, some rather significant errors of omission at best, and at worst, some very much misleading statements, perhaps even dishonest ones.
This gave rise in turn to a press conference that a designated terrorist organization doing business as the Council on American-Islamic Relations threw together Thursday of last week as we speak, pulling in quite a coterie of fellow Sharia supremacists and as well some radical leftists, what's come to be called the Red-Green Alliance or Axis.
At the end of that highly orchestrated program, it was announced that they were going to arrange for large numbers of people determined to have Ms. Al-Zubi reinstated as principal of Western Hills High School, pile into a school district workshop on unrelated matters involving onboarding policies and content.
Since this is not on the agenda, we now understand that there will be no public comment in this particular meeting, but will be allowed on the 23rd of June.
Hence, our meeting today, our conversation today at this dog park is intended to try to raise awareness about what's coming, the importance of it, and what needs to be understood in response to it.
What we hope will happen on the 23rd of June is that in addition to the Red-Green Alliance being much in evidence, patriotic Americans who believe that our country should not be subjected to, let alone forced to submit to, Sharia. Nor to the other totalitarian agendas of Leftist allies for the moment of the Sharia supremacists.
We'll talk about why that is in a moment.
But before we do, I'm very pleased to welcome the first of two members of the State Board of Education who have been intimately involved in, in fact, leading the fight to assure that the kind of curriculum for K through 12 public school education in the state of Texas that American patriots would recognize and want their children or grandchildren to learn of will be not only practiced and implemented in this state but many others as well by the nature of the publishing business which uses the texts for the Texas public schools for the purposes of other states' public school programs as well.
Our first speaker is Brandon Hall. He represents this particular district of the state of Texas, Texas school systems.
He has, as I said, been a leader in the fight for a patriotic pro-American curriculum, and he has also been very actively involved in trying to make sure that what is done in the schools of this district conforms to the highest standards of education, which is not the case today.
Brandon Hall, welcome, and thank you so much for being here today, sir.
Mr. Hall: Good afternoon, my name is Brandon Hall and I am the State Board of Education member who covers parts of Fort Worth ISD.
I ran for State Board of Education because parents are very concerned about indoctrination making its way into our classrooms.
Parents were concerned about seeing things their children were bringing home and during the COVID pandemic when the kids were left at home, parents are starting to see some of this pop up in the curriculum and what their students are learning and I wanted to be a voice for those parents and eradicate that left wing indoctrination out of the classroom.
And what we've seen in Fort Worth ISD with Shaima Al-Zubi is an example of that, an example of someone who, rather than just being an educator or a school leader, is a very dedicated left wing and Islamist activist.
I applaud the swift action of Fort Worth ISD in reassigning Shaima Al-Zubi based on social media posts where she appeared to defend and promote Sharia law and use slogans associated with pro-Hamas activist movements.
The district announced they will be conducting an investigation to determine if their policies were violated and further action is warranted.
I hope that at the conclusion of a timely investigation, Ms. Al-Zubi will no longer be employed by the district.
Parents deserve to feel safe sending their children to Fort Worth ISD schools and have confidence that their schools are not led by radical Islamists and activists like Shayma Al-Zubi, how are the parents of Jewish students supposed to feel safe with a school leader who has repeated pro-Islamist and slogans that are associated with pro-Hamas movements? How would the parents of young girls feel safe sending their students to a school where the school leader has defended Sharia law, which oppresses women all over the world?
Now, political ideologies have been injected into the classroom for far too long. We have seen numerous examples of this in Fort Worth ISD. It is my hope that with new state appointed leadership in place, students will be protected from left wing indoctrination and bias in the classroom.
It's time to return to the fundamentals of education and push aside social agendas, especially in Fort Worth ISD.
Let's remember why state intervention was necessary in the first place.
At the close of the 24-25 school year, only 38% of Fort Worth ISD students were reading at grade level, and only 29% were proficient in math.
Nearly two-thirds of Fort Worth ISD students cannot read or do math at grade level. An appalling statistic that was reported by the Fort Worth Report Education Scorecard, a collaboration between Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research, Stanford University's Educational Opportunity Project, and faculty at Dartmouth College, published a study showing Fort Worth ISD students are only advancing at half a grade level per year in math and reading on average.
The study also ranked Fort Worth ISD near dead last in student growth in the entire nation.
So clearly Fort Worth students needed a lifeline.
Previous administrations and boards had misaligned priorities and used district resources for far left initiatives like DEI instead of focusing on academics.
I hope the new board of managers and Superintendent Licata will continue to lean into student outcomes, focus approach and get the political agendas out of the classroom.
I will continue to stay vigilant and stand up for the rights of parents who are concerned about activism in the classroom.
And I'll continue to support work at the State Board of Education that will rise student outcomes, provide high quality curriculum and keep agendas out of the classroom.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Gaffney: Thank you, board member Brandon Hall. And again, thank you for your leadership as well. It's vital.
We're going to hear next from another member of the State Board of Education, Julie Pickren.
Dr. Pickren has been, like Brandon Hall, a champion for factually based, historically grounded social studies curriculum for the children of the state of Texas and has, to her great credit and his, succeeded in securing approval of such a curriculum.
But, and this is partly why it's directly relevant to why we're meeting today and the conversations that will be resuming on the 23rd of June, there is going to be yet another effort made by this Red-Green Axis to overturn what has been approved for the moment by the State Board of Education in the way of a sensible and patriotic and pro-freedom curriculum of which we could all be very proud and happy to have our other students around the country taught according to as well.
Julie Pickren is nothing less than a force of nature.
She has devoted her life in public service to the betterment of our country, both in the educational domain and in many others.
She is very actively involved at the national level as well as the state level, and we're proud to have her with us to speak about her insights into what's going on here, especially because she has been personally named in the kinds of attacks that were mounted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, in the course of not one but two recent press conferences that, incredibly, that designated terrorist organization is somehow still allowed to hold in the state of Texas.
Julie Pickren, we're delighted to have you with us. Thank you and welcome.
Ms. Pickren: Thank you, Frank.
Appreciate you.
Frank's a great American hero.
He's been serving our country for many decades, starting with his service, well, a little bit before, but starting with his great service to President Ronald Reagan and the United States of America.
So Frank, first and foremost, I want to say thank you for your just distinguished service to our country for many decades now.
Next, I'd like to say thank you to Pastor Brandon Hall, SBO member Pastor Brandon Hall for allowing me to, or inviting me to come into his district to speak about this.
Pastor Hall, if y'all don't know, is officially the youngest member of the Texas State Board of Education ever.
And I tell you what, he is just a great leader.
Reminds me of the Timothy and the Bible where he was told, don't let your age, don't let them discount you because of your age.
And Pastor Hall's our youngest member, but I tell you what, he is an exceptional leader for the state of Texas and for families and for children.
So, thank you, Pastor and dear district and also for just serving with distinguishment and with excellence, the children and the families of the state of Texas.
But ladies and gentlemen and children of Texas, it's an honor to speak with you today about a principle that has shaped the success of America and the great state of Texas.
This provided hope and opportunity for generations of families and is the principle of equal opportunity over special rights.
Whenever we talk about equal opportunity or special rights.
It is the Texas Constitution that says that the purpose of our public education is to provide for a general diffusement of knowledge to preserve our God-given liberties and to preserve our God-given freedoms.
That is the whole purpose of Texas public education.
And so whenever you have the Council of America and Islamic Relations, a terrorist organization, coming before this board and people in our local school districts, administrators and teachers that support care, the terrorist organization that are demanding that we rewrite U.S. and Texas history that we grant special rights for people in our school districts.
We saw it happen during Ramadan this year.
We saw throughout the state of Texas, we saw school districts, including here in North Texas, that were providing professional developments for teachers and administrators to train them on Ramadan and how to adjust class schedules, how to adjust homework schedules, how to adjust testing, how to adjust teaching time, how to completely reorganize public education for several weeks to give people special rights in Texas, not equal rights, special rights.
Because as long as I've been serving in education, I have never seen a professional development in the state of Texas for teachers and administrators to teach teachers on how to readjust schedules, readjust homework schedules, readjust testing schedules, how to reorganize your classroom to accommodate Catholic parents and Catholic children for Lent.
Never seen that.
I've never seen in the great state of Texas, I've never seen professional development for teachers and administrators for Easter, for Good Friday and for Easter, where we're going to teach teachers how to accommodate their schedules for children that fast, Catholic children, Protestant children, Christian children that fast.
Never seen that happen.
Never seen them say, okay, take it a little bit easy in the morning because they're fasting or in the afternoon, watch your extracurricular activities.
Never seen that before.
So, this is a violation of equal rights and equal protection under the United States Constitution.
This is special rights.
These are special carve outs, special caveats.
And so, this is why we need to be vigilant with what we are doing and how we are handling this subject with our administrators and our teachers, and even with our social studies curriculum in the great state of Texas, because our Texas Constitution also begins with the beautiful preamble.
And it says that we humbly, we humbly request the Lord God Almighty to bless Texas and the people of the great state of Texas.
In the United States Constitution, it clearly says that all people, all men, are created equal and given our rights by our Creator. Okay?
So, this is a nation and this is a state based on Judeo-Christian values, and anyone who is asking us to accommodate public education, to change classes, to provide professional development, to adjust course schedules, to adjust testing, to adjust lunch schedules, to provide adjustments for a small population of people that is special rights, that is not equal rights.
And it's especially concerning whenever we have administrators and teachers.
This isn't confined to just Miss Al-Shayma This isn't just her.
This goes further.
If y'all don't know, in January this year, we had high schools and junior highs across this great state, even down in my neck of the woods, down in the Texas Gulf Coast, SBOE 7.
A lot of it happened up here in Pastor Hall's area in this SBOE district across North Texas, where students were walking out, walking out of their high schools on education days to protest what's happening with Israel, to protest ICE, to protest for Palestine.
We saw that across the state.
Member Hall just told you the numbers.
He already told you that two-thirds of the children in Fort Worth ISD cannot read and write and perform math on a grade level.
But here they are taking a whole day to go walk out and protest from the river to the sea, which, by the way, is the complete genocide of Israel.
From the river to the sea is just a rewrite of what Jews lived in Europe in the 1940s under Nazi and Hitler.
So, it is for a complete genocide of the Jewish people in Israel.
Okay, so that was your public education dollars.
And we saw administrators, I believe in Ms. Shaima Al-Zubi’s high school, I could be wrong, the one that she was the assistant principal at, but I believe they also had a student walk out. And if Ms. Al-Zubi was out there with those students, shame on her.
And let's report her to the Texas State Board of Education certification violation of the Texas Code of Ethics for School Administration.
Okay?
So, let's talk about this.
Schools, North Texas, up here, Fort Worth ISD, two-thirds of the kids can't read and write on grade level, but yet they're going to take a whole day out.
Okay? A whole day.
That school's being paid for by Texas tax dollars.
Those teachers are being paid for by Texas tax dollars, by families going to work every day.
That school took a whole day off.
Those schools took a whole day off from learning.
Two-thirds of kids can't read and write.
They would take a whole day off from learning to go protest against Israel, to go protest from the river to the sea, for the genocide of an entire country and entire people.
Okay, so y'all, this is why this is not fit Texas.
Texas and America, we are founded on Judeo-Christian values.
That is who we are at our core.
Down in my SBOE district, in March, in our primary season, people could vote across the great state of Texas on whether they wanted to ban Sharia law.
And I am very proud to say that I have a very clear mandate for my almost two and a half million voters down in Southeast Texas, because in Southeast Texas alone, it passed by 97% area, 97% of the voters said they do not want any form of Sharia law in the great state of Texas, and I agree with them.
Because you know why? This seat doesn't belong to me.
This seat belongs to my voters.
I represent them.
And when 97% of my voters tell me no Sharia law anywhere in education, Julie, you know what? I'm going to listen to them and I'm going to fight this fight for them.
Because also in that vote for the entire state of Texas on banned Sharia law, 20% of the entire state vote came from my district.
I'm telling you, I'm going to fight this fight for y'all.
I hear you.
I hear my voters.
I hear what's important to you.
And I promise you, as long as there is the breath of God in me and I'm in this elected position, I will fight against Sharia law in our public education in the great state of Texas.
Because this is very different from what we experienced when we were fighting critical race theory a few years ago when I was first elected in my first term, which praise God, we defeated that evil Marxist indoctrination of our children.
But that didn't require the rewrite of US history and Texas history.
That didn't require us to teach that the Alamo was built and designed to honor Islam.
That didn't teach us that what made America great, that the founding of America was the contribution of Muslim slaves that were brought to America.
And that's what made America great.
That wasn't this.
Critical race theory was to teach children to look at America and look at Texas through Marxist worldview left founding facts in place.
This, what they're asking for now is a complete rewrite of US and Texas history.
So, what we need right now, I'm telling you what we need.
Parents, grandparents, citizens, taxpayers, business owners unless you want this radical rewrite of US and Texas history, unless you want people who are out taking time away on your tax dollars, they're being paid by their salaries are being paid by you, taking time out of the education day to take children out to the streets to go advocate for the genocide of the Jews in Israel.
Okay? Unless you want that, you need to show up and you need to speak up.
These are your schools.
If you live if you're paying property taxes in Texas, these are your schools and hold them accountable to what we believe as Texans, to what we hold dear and what we hold sacred, which is that all men are created equal and endowed with rights by their creator, not a political system that treats women that look like me and the women and girls who are watching that look like you as second class citizens that were property of somebody.
That's not what we teach our girls in Texas.
That's not what we do.
So, we need y'all to show up and we need y'all to speak up.
On June 22nd at the Texas State Board of Education, we will hear public testimony on this matter, on the Islamification, on the Sharia law being inserted into our Texas history and US history, government, civics, economics, all of it, kindergarten through 12th grade social studies.
We need you to show up, we need you to speak up.
And with this situation in Fort Worth ISD, if y'all don't know, Fort Worth ISD is under state conservatorship right now.
The elected board of Fort Worth ISD, they're not sitting on that dais.
When y'all go to that meeting next week or when y'all go to your Fort Worth ISD meetings, the people sitting on that dais are not elected to that office.
They are appointed by the Texas Education Agency.
They're appointed by the executive branch of Texas.
And you need to make your voices heard saying that you expect this board that's appointed by the great state of Texas to follow all Texas laws, because what happens Tell me what happens whenever you get someone who's doing a walkout with students, who's doing a from the river to the sea, Palestinian walkout during the school day, whenever remember.
The Holocaust Week comes around in September every year of high school.
How are they going to teach the Remember Holocaust Week so that we don't ever create that atrocity so that that evil against humanity never happens again? Because we have the Celebrate Holocaust Week every year in September, but in January, we're taking our kids out saying from the river to the sea.
It doesn't make sense and it doesn't fit Texas law and it doesn't fit Texas values.
So, I'm just going to say, please show up, speak up, whether it's your local school district here in Fort Worth, whether it's the Texas State Board of time to stand up and make your voice heard.
So, I'm just going to say thank you, Frank, again.
Thank you, Pastor Brandon Hall again.
God bless America, but God bless the great state of Texas.
Thank you.
Mr. Gaffney: Would you all be willing to take a couple of questions?
Crosstalk: Yes. Great.
Mr. Gaffney: Come on up.
One of the things that I thought it might be helpful to do because we're speaking to Texans about these coming events and we're wanting to enlist their help with them in defense, as you said so eloquently, both of you did, of freedom.
Some of the arguments that were advanced by the jihadis present at this CARE-sponsored press conference, the most recent one, and/or their communist-aligned allies, is that this is all about racism, that it's reminiscent of the sort of Jim Crow period in our history, a black mark for sure.
And they're suggesting that this is simply anti-Muslim bigotry rooted in racism.
Would you speak to this particularly, maybe Brandon, because this district in particular is one that has had some challenges in regards to these sorts of agendas.
Where does the truth lie on why we are concerned about what's being proposed here? And why support the corrective action taken by this appointed board?
Mr. Hall: Well, the corrective action that's being taken is solely based on activist statements made on her Facebook page.
And so, none of this ever would have happened if those posts were not discovered.
And I think it should have been discovered by the HR department of Fort Worth ISD when they were vetting her for this position and it would have showed her really unqualified for this position based on these extremist statements.
And again, it's about the safety of Fort Worth ISD students.
It's about keeping political agendas out of the classroom.
And I think it's very telling that the group who swooped into Fort Worth ISD to defend Miss Al-Zubi was a designated foreign terrorist organization named CARE, who said they're going to pick up with this case and run with it.
So, I think their involvement tells us everything that we need to know about the objections to keeping these agendas out of the classroom.
Ms. Pickren: Would you like to comment on me?
I have been named not once, not twice, not three times in press conferences and in statewide meetings accusing me of civil rights violations for not wanting to put Sharia law in education, which is crazy because Sharia law is a civil rights violation for a woman and a girl.
When I think about this, I think about a dear friend of mine who serves down in Houston on the Houston City Council, who has former Marine Special Forces, very distinguished career in the military and who also happens to be a man of color, who when we were talking about this, he said, Julie, he said, whenever I was putting my... on the line when I was, you know, serving our country in war during the Special Forces.
He said, I did all that because I believe in equal rights, because I believe that every American, regardless of their skin color, should have the same protection of the law, the same opportunities and the same rights in the United States of America.
And whenever we're talking about this, I told him, I said, well, Pastor Willie, I said, It seems to me what they're asking for is special rights.
And he said, Julie, that's where we're missing it.
That's where we have the problem.
We have the problem right now is we have these groups that are asking for not for equal rights, but are asking for special rights.
And what happens when you start granting special rights, nobody's equal anymore.
Now you're gonna fall into communism, the foundation of communism and Marxism, which is some people are more equal than others.
So that is why we must defend this and protect this to protect our American way of life.
Mr. Gaffney: One other piece that is, I think, incredibly important, and you touched on it in your remarks, is the extent to which there is dissembling going on about the nature of Sharia.
That they would have us believe, particularly the CAIR and associated, I call them Sharia supremacists, that actually it's perfectly legal and protected faith that has under our Constitution the First Amendment the right to be practiced freely and this is something that in a post that Ms.Al-Zubi circulated defined among other things as basically just for most Muslims in America.
It's just about prayer and dietary practices and the like that are pietistic and therefore, I think, unobjectionable.
Would you guys speak a little bit, knowing what you do, about whether this is in fact, A, an accurate characterization of Sharia, and B, if it's not, is this program, this doctrine, protected under the Constitution of the United States?
And therefore, any objection to it, any criticism of it is unwarranted and problematic.
Ms. Pickren: Thank you, Frank.
So, I think that it is critical that we understand there's a difference between Sharia law and being a Muslim.
Sharia law is not a religion.
Sharia law is a full legal system with courts and everything that that entails.
And if you want to see what happens whenever Sharia law is instituted in a massive way into Western civilization, look at England, look at France, look at Northern Europe.
Look at what's going on in these countries where they are accommodating, where they are making special rights for their citizens because unfortunately they don't have the blessing of the beautiful U.S. Constitution.
So, the government willy-nilly, you know, on just a dime can choose to give people special rights and end the idea of equal rights in their countries.
Praise God, we live in America.
Praise God as a woman.
I live in the United States of America and have the protection of the United States Constitution.
As I was in Great Britain and London in January, a minister of education invited me to come over there.
They were delivering this law.
And I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
What I was hearing is that they were asking for a dramatic increase in funding because children in England are coming down with PTSD at an alarming rate due to seeing so much violence on the streets.
And I couldn't believe what I was hearing, because first of all, the American in me was thinking, y'all desperately need Second Amendment rights.
If you arm your people, they can protect their own selves and they can protect their families.
That's gonna help a lot of that.
But then at the same time, I wanted to go and see, I wanted to research the data and see, well, what is the violence on the streets of London where you're asking for these billions of dollars and pounds of increased funding?
So, when I looked it up, I saw that in England last year alone, machete attacks, including beheadings on the streets of England.
So, Europe generally is about four to five years ahead of what's coming for America.
So, if we start down this road, if we start down this road of these special rights, these special accommodations, allowing these administrators that believe in the genocide of Israel, allowing these administrators who support terrorist CAIR.
The FBI says that CAIR is the face of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.
That's their words.
So, when we go down this road of letting the people who are in charge of Texas children's education indoctrinate them and facilitate school walkouts that call for the genocide of Israel and the Jews, that's a problem.
That's a problem.
Mr. Hall: We're going to go down the slippery road and just look at what's happening in England.
Look what's happening in Europe.
They are losing their culture.
Yeah, Sharia is subversive to the United States Constitution and Texas values.
It's not compatible with our way of life.
It's a parallel legal system.
And as Member Pickren referenced, we see that actually in Europe already.
They have separate Sharia courts. And so, we know that that's ultimately the goal.
And you know, Texans are smarter than that.
You can't gaslight Texans.
And we're already actually in stage two of the Sharia takeover of the state of Texas and the United States of America because the first stage is to deny that you want Sharia while you import just hordes of immigrants who are Islamic and they want Sharia and they do not want to live the American way of life.
They want their own way of life.
And that's stage one.
We're already out of stage one into stage two where now they're building numbers in our country and they're actually admitting that they want Sharia, which is what Ms. Al-Zubi was doing in her post, admitting that they want to live under Sharia and trying to tell us that Sharia is a good thing.
The fact that she would compare Sharia law to biblical values or Jewish values is appalling. I I mean, Sharia has real consequences for those who actually have to live under it, and we are never going to allow it to take a foothold in the United States of America or in the state of Texas.
Mr. Gaffney: Finally, just one other sort of bit of context for the conversation we're having today and the one that we hope will take place on the 23rd of June in the Board of Education ISD Fort Worth Service Center across the street is that the opportunity to examine what this particular individual, Shayma Al-Zubi, is saying, is promoting, is advocating.
This is not about her First Amendment rights.
This is about her role as a leader in the state public school system and whether she should have such a leadership role.
And our colleague Trevor Loudon appeared on Steve Bannon's program earlier in the day.
And one of the points that he made, he understands very well, probably if not the foremost expert, certainly one of the foremost experts in our country, about the Red-Green Axis, about what it's up to, how it is that an atheistic communist ideology could possibly make common cause with a theocratic Sharia supremacist one.
And the answer, quite simply, is they are making common cause to remove the impediment to the ambitions they both have, different ambitions.
The communists want China to rule the world, to impose its form of communism worldwide.
The Sharia supremacists want a caliphate.
They will sort that out if they succeed in their common agenda of the moment, which is getting rid of us and what Trevor said is this example of what's going on in this particular school district, if properly pursued, can lead to revelations about a whole host of others in the school district and elsewhere across this state and elsewhere across the United States of America.
Yes, in various teaching roles and administrative roles in education, but also in other walks of life, our culture, our legal system, our political system, our financial system, where they are conforming or as you use the term accommodating, Sharia supremacism.
So, I would just ask both of you to just say a further final word, if you can, about how important it is to really root out these, well, proclivities, I guess you might call it, this agenda, and ensure that it's not only impossible, hopefully, for it to be inculcated in our children, along with an enmity towards our country, but also that we find and remove others, both in the educational system, but hopefully in these other walks of life that are aiding and abetting.
If they're not Sharia supremacists themselves, they are enabling it. I'd be very interested in your thoughts about this, particularly as it relates to the urgent need for citizens, patriots, Texans who love this country to come out and challenge what is going to be said to the school board on the 23rd, which is a lot of nonsense and taqiya, which is the term used in Sharia for lying for Islam.
Julie, you want to go first?
Ms. Pickren: Oh, you know, serving on the Texas State Board of Education and serving as a school board trustee for years even before that, I have heard thousands of people get up and testify before a board that I have been elected to or serving on, saying separation of church and state.
Can't have prayer in schools, separation of church and state.
Can't have the Bible in schools, separation of church and state.
Can't say Merry Christmas, which thank you, Governor Perry, for passing the Merry Christmas law in Texas.
But before that, they were saying couldn't say Merry Christmas because of separation of church and state.
Couldn't teach about Easter, could only teach the Easter Bunny, but not the real meaning of Easter because of separation of church and state.
So, we have heard for years about why we cannot have Judeo-Christian values, Judeo-Christian beliefs, Judeo-Christian tenets in public education because of separation of church and state, which by the way, for all of you, I'm sorry if you didn't get a great education, public education, appears nowhere in the Texas, or it appears nowhere in the United States Constitution.
That term does not exist there.
But now whenever it comes to supporting Sharia law, which on all their social media platforms, and according to care, is a religion.
It's not a legal system or political system, but it's a religion, therefore it's protected.
Now they want this interjected into our schools.
They want this interjected into public education.
But all the organizations that stood with them in previous press conferences, Texas Freedom Network, the Teacher Union, American Federation for Teachers, AFT, Randy Weingarten's group, all these groups that stood with them in the press conference when they are advocating for putting Sharia law into public education, those are the same groups that were crying separation of churches for the last 15 years, at least that I've been serving in elected office in Texas in public education.
So just the hypocrisy is just astounding because they want to say, no, it's a religion, it's protected.
But then whenever people bring up, well, you're going to teach a religion in school, then all of a sudden, no, it's not a religion anymore.
Now it's a legal thing, it's a court thing, it's a political movement.
So, you can't have it both ways.
So, what I'm going to say to that is that we have a serious problem in Texas with our learning loss still from COVID and from learning loss due to other issues that we've had in the state.
We only have 73,000 minutes a year to educate a child.
We can either spend that money on keeping it the first thing, keeping the main thing the main thing.
We can either keep that 73,000 minutes on reading, writing, arithmetic, science.
What's required by law to teach patriotism, to teach American and Texas exceptionalism required by law.
What's required by law to use the Bible and English and social studies kindergarten through 12th grade as an instructional text, Old Testament, New Testament scripture and its relevance to enrichment and knowledge of English and social studies.
We can do what's required by law and we can truly educate children so that we have a civically well-established and well-educated population, or we can go into this thing of social justice warriors, teaching our kids to be social justice warriors, walk out, call for the genocide of people, call for the annihilation of a country.
Indoctrination, indoctrinate them that, you know, women who don't cover their head are sinning against God.
Women who don't cover their head are rebellious. It's what Sharia law does.
Our teaching them that a man has the right to have more than one wife – Sharia law.
We saw just in the Pakistani Supreme Court, you can go look it up for yourself.
The Pakistani Supreme Court about three weeks ago ruled that a Muslim man had the right to kidnap a 12-year-old Christian little girl and take her as his wife, a grown Muslim man, because it's what Sharia law allows.
So now that's the law in Pakistan now, because the Pakistani Supreme Court agreed with it.
That's what we're talking about.
This is for the very existence of our country and of our state and of our freedoms and as our God-given equal rights.
And I just ask y'all, please stand with me, stand with Pastor Hall, stand with Governor Abbott, stand with the people who are who are willing to put it all on the line to protect freedom.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Mr. Hall: Thank you, Member Pickering, for coming all the way to North Texas to be a part of this.
And thank you, Mr. Gaffney, for putting this together.
And what you're seeing here today is an example of vigilance on the part of elected officials and on the part of people who care very deeply about this issue.
The reason we saw Ms. Al-Zubi reassigned is because people were vigilant in doing, you know, double checking and doing the vetting that the district should have done in the first place.
When the district does the right thing, we should applaud them.
And state appointed Fort Worth ISD leadership did the right thing in reassigning Ms. Al-Zubi.
And I hope at the conclusion of this timely investigation, they'll continue to do the right thing.
And we need to hold them accountable at all times in every district across the entire state.
We need parents to rise up.
We need taxpayers to rise up.
So, I'll assure you, there are more Shayma Al-Zubis in public education across the state of Texas.
And we need to know that.
Parents, when you see something, you need to raise awareness, draw attention, show up to your school board meeting and demand accountability because when we fight back, we win.
Thank you so much.
Mr. Gaffney: Just one or two concluding thoughts.
I want to commend a woman who has contributed mightily to both this particular instance of accountability and transparency and to a host of others that she's been documenting through an X account called Rare Foundation.
Her name is Amy Mack. She has a small team of very skilled professionals who are helping her expose the sorts of problems that we've just been discussing.
Her most recent post, as of this morning, laid out in detail not only information about Ms. Al-Zubi, but also the people who populated that CARE-sponsored press conference last Thursday. And it's a rogue’s gallery.
And what she has documented is profound and very concerning information about their agenda.
And what has just been said has been borne out, I believe, by the actual records of the individuals who are now standing with Shayma Al-Zubi, as well as trying to compel this Board of Education here in the Fort Worth Independent School District to do their bidding to conform to their demands, to submit, in other words.
Speaking of submission, an important prism, I believe, to look through in examining what they have in mind is the model of an individual they call the Sharia supremacists, the perfect man.
That would be a man they've identified as a prophet.
His name is Muhammad.
And Muhammad's teachings, his practices, his every utterance, what he liked and what he disliked, what he considered therefore to be pure or halal or unclean, haram, is essentially what guides the faithful Muslim.
And if they fail to be guided by it, if they fail to emulate it, they would be considered to be apostates.
I personally believe there are Muslims in America.
I don't think it's a majority, as Shama says, but certainly a number of them who do not want to live under Sharia, who do not want to impose Sharia on anybody else.
They certainly don't want to go into jihad for that purpose.
But they are considered apostates.
We may think of them as good Muslims.
The authorities of Islam consider them very bad, in fact, so bad that the punishment for apostasy is death, a capital offense.
I want to mention this for one other reason, which explains why we're in a dog park.
One of the things that Muhammad disliked, which he described as haram, prohibited, unclean, is man's best friend, our dogs.
That's been my experience when you talk to ordinary Americans about the various horrible things that Muslims are supposed to, again, don't all of them, but are supposed to emulate, whether it's the abuse of women or children, it's the practice of slavery, it's the stoning of people who've been raped on the grounds that that's adultery, it's the marriage of children at six. Of course, like Muhammad, you're not supposed to rape them until they're nine, you're allowed to marry them at age six.
And the list goes on and on, beheading, torture.
One of the things that does seem to affect an awful lot of Americans who may not be moved to act by any of that, let alone all of it, they may nonetheless be moved to act if they understand that under Sharia what its practitioners are obliged to do pursuant to Muhammad's model is to take their dogs and kill them.
I believe the way that would be done is the way animals that are killed for food, halal food, in public schools in the state of Texas, for example, and penitentiaries and hospitals, is to simply slit their throats and let them bleed out without any care taken to minimize their suffering.
Ask yourself, if you have a dog, you countenance that kind of mistreatment?
I'm sure the answer is no. We encourage you, actually, I personally would entreat you to become engaged as 1.9 million Texans did on Proposition 10 on March 3rd.
To say, “We do not want Sharia in this state. We want it prohibited.”
And indeed, that should be true across the country because it is not only in so many ways illegal. It is not even just unconstitutional; it is anti-constitutional.
And that board needs to hear from American patriots on the 23rd of June, just as these members State Board of Education does as well the day before in the city of Austin.
Please, rise to this challenge.
Do your part to save Texas and thereby help save America.
We have a campaign called just that.
You can find out all about it at bansharia.com.
I strongly encourage you to go there to learn more about all of this and to become part of the solution.
With that, I want to say thank you to all of you who've been listening and especially thanks to Brandon Hall and Julie Pickren and their credible leadership and the voices they give to their constituents in their professional responsibilities as well as in the conscience of our country.
God bless you all.
