The Council on American-Islamic Relations is up to its usual assault on the discussion of Islam.

Its Philadelphia chapter is holding a press conference on March 17 at which it plans "to announce the launch of a nationwide campaign to challenge anti-Islam bias in a series of children's books that the Washington-based Muslim civil rights group says promote 'hostility toward Islam and suspicion of Muslims'."

For some Islamists, freedom to wear Muslim attire is not enough; they also demand that others conform to their definition of modesty. IW refers to them as "hijab bullies," though their focus is not necessarily limited to headscarves. Examples highlighted previously on this blog include a British dentist requiring patients to cover their hair and a teacher in Norway manipulating first graders into donning hijabs. However, these tactics are tame compared to recent revelations.

Consider the experiences of Shiria Khatun, a secular Muslim who serves as a Labour Party councilor in Tower Hamlets, a borough of London and an Islamist stronghold. Police are investigating claims of harassment by locals objecting to her style of dress. She explains:

Ludwig von Mises Institute

Late last week, the Texas Board of Education, meeting in Austin, the state capitol, made some preliminary decisions about what the next generation of students will learn about subjects like history, economics, and sociology, when they take courses in those subjects in any of the Lone Star State's public schools. The board decided, for example, to make a fairly significant change in the existing official description of what a successful Texas student should know about the influence of 17th- and 18th-century ideas after completing a required course in world history in a Texas public school.

The existing description stated that a student who completed that course would be able to "explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present." The newly amended description states that a student completing the world-history course should be able to "explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone."

A House Homeland Security subcommittee meets Wednesday to discuss "Working with Communities to Disrupt Terror Plots." It's a great idea, and the kind of study the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment should undertake. Looking at the witness list, however, shows that the committee is seeking input from a narrow viewpoint - one that is sympathetic to Islamist extremist organizations here in America.

Like any religious and ethnic group, American Muslims hold a wide range of viewpoints about their faith, the role it should play in secular society, and ways to strike a comfortable balance. Nearly all the witnesses share a history of interaction with national Islamist groups - those that seek to infuse a religious ideology into the political debate - while contrary points of view are not given a seat at the table.