Education watchdogs want a Seattle school to discipline a math teacher who was caught raising money for Palestinian extremists and for her posts linking Israel with Nazi Germany.
Members of the National Education Association (NEA), a major union, and the Conservative Ladies of Washington group, said Sobia Sheikh should be held accountable for her fundraising and online activism.
Sheikh, a math teacher at Mariner High School, was exposed this month for urging a colleague to wire money to a charity led by a radical Palestinian cleric who denies Hamas atrocities and supports the use of sex slaves.
The school says it has ‘addressed the issue’ with Sheikh, but would not say what action it took.
Seattle area math teacher Sobia Sheikh urged a colleague to wire money to an extremist cleric
Jeannie Magdua, a member of the Conservative Ladies of Washington group, says the state’s schools have gone ‘woke’
The case spotlights tensions between parents and teachers in America’s culture wars, and raises tough questions about whether educators should float political ideas while at work.
Jany Finkielsztein, a public school educator and member of the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus, said Mukilteo School District needed to take action over Sheikh.
‘School administrators must set clear expectations and deter teachers like Sobia Sheikh from pushing and supporting extreme political views without consequences,’ Finkielsztein told DailyMail.com.
‘Urgent action is needed to address the rise of antisemitism in schools, ensuring transparency and oversight to prevent the indoctrination of anti-Israel falsehoods and hate among American students.’
Jeannie Magdua, a teacher at a private Christian school and member of the Conservative Ladies of Washington group, said Washington parents were losing faith in the state’s public schools.
‘The radical political activism among teachers, like Sobia Sheikh, is one of the reasons I withdrew my child from public school,’ Magdua told DailyMail.com.
‘Until there is a shift toward education and away from wokeness, the K-12 system will continue to lose students.’
Mariner High School serves 2,100 students in Everett, Washington — part of Mukilteo School District
DailyMail.com readers agree — our opinion poll showed that 96 percent of some 500 respondents said Sheikh should face disciplinary action.
Another 3 percent said she should not, and 1 percent was not sure.
Diane Bradford, the school district’s spokeswoman, told DailyMail.com that it has ‘addressed the issue with all parties and is not willing to further discuss personnel issues through the media.’
Sheikh’s controversial social media posts ‘do not represent the district,’ added Bradford.
‘We understand this conflict raises strong feelings and that Americans have the right to voice their opinions,’ she said.
Sheikh, a math teacher at Mariner High School, was exposed earlier this month for urging a co-worker to send funds to Waqforever in an email thread about helping Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.
The charity is fronted by Ali Hammuda, a bearded UK-based Islamic cleric, whose extremist views include endorsing sex slaves and denying Hamas atrocities in Israel on October 7.
Sheikh, who has served on the NEA board, also shared her own hard-line views, including Facebook posts that compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
One of Sheikh’s posts shows Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they make similar salute gestures
Another bears the phrase ‘Israel is the new Nazi Germany’ and says ‘Israel steals Palestinian organs’
The Palestinian-British cleric Ali Hammuda fronts the Waqforever charity that helps Gazans
Her email was uncovered in a public records request by Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, a conservative group that works to keep politics out of classrooms.
District superintendent Alison Brynelson started the controversial email thread to her staff on October 27.
She proposed donating to charity to ease suffering in the Israel-Hamas war, which began earlier that month.
Teresa Hoffman, a school counselor, then wrote to Sheikh, asking for recommendations for a charity.
Hoffman wrote: ‘I trust your judgement of where I can donate to support Palestinians needing emergency relief.’
Sheikh replied on October 30 with a link to Hammuda’s charity, saying: ‘You should be able to select US Dollar.’
On its website, Waqforever says it provides ‘food, disaster relief, and essential medical supplies’ in Gaza, where Palestinian health chiefs say more than 31,000 people have died in five months’ of war.
It is fronted by Hammuda, a Palestinian-born preacher connected to a mosque in Cardiff, Wales, who airs extreme views and was suspected of radicalizing teenage Muslims.
In a 16-minute YouTube video posted in October, Hammuda denied a ‘huge massacre’ of Israeli festival-goers occurred on October 7.
Hammuda made his controversial comments as ISIS fighters kept women captives as sex slaves in Iraq and Syria
The video has since been removed for violating the platform’s hate speech rules.
In it, Hammuda accused the media of ‘concocting stories… that a huge massacre took place at a rave where 260 people were killed as they were dancing and singing,’ according to the Daily Express.
‘Where is the evidence for all this? Where is the proof?’ the cleric asked his 161,000 YouTube subscribers.
‘How is this to be understood other than to say there was no massacre of 260 people, there was no mass rape that took place at all, there was not the beheading of a single child, let alone 40 of them?’
It’s not the first time Hammuda’s sermons courted controversy.
An undercover reporter recorded him preaching to teenage Muslim boys in 2014, saying that it is ‘permissible’ under Islam to have sex slaves, in a Doomsday interpretation of holy texts.
He told them: ‘Towards the end of time there will be many wars like what we are seeing today, and because of these wars women will be taken as captives, as slaves, yeah, women will be taken as slaves.
Radical cleric Hammuda denies the Hamas atrocities of October 7, though there is plenty of evidence that they did happen
Palestinians transport a captured Israeli civilian, center, from a kibbutz into the Gaza Strip during the Hamas incursion of October 7,
‘And then, er, her master has relations with her because this is permissible in Islam, it’s permissible to have relations with a woman who is your slave or your wife.’
Hammuda has since said those comments were taken out of context, that he was discussing scholarly texts, and that he did not support sexual enslavement.
‘I do not approve of sex slaves and consider it to be an abhorrent abomination,’ he later wrote.
Two young men and one 17-year-old who worshiped at Hammuda’s mosque, who became known as the three ‘Cardiff jihadis,’ travelled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS in 2014.
The mosque, Al-Manar, denied links with radicalism.
DailyMail.com asked Hammuda and his charity if any donations end up flowing to Hamas militants, but did not get a response.
Another of Sheikh’s social media posts suggests that schools are part of a broader political struggle
Sheikh, the Seattle teacher, has also courted controversy over the Israel-Hamas war.
On Facebook, she has shared posts that compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
One post shows Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they make similar salute gestures.
Another bears the phrase ‘Israel is the new Nazi Germany’ and says ‘Israel steals Palestinian organs.’
Hamas’ raids on southern Israel on October 7 killed around 1,200 Israelis and saw 253 abducted.
The attack, and Israel’s devastating military response on Gaza, are divisive political issues in the US that could impact the 2024 presidential election.
Mariner High School serves 2,100 students and has witnessed a series of tragedies over the decades, including a drive-by shooting in 2018 and a pepper spray incident in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk