COURAGEOUS Catholic School teacher under fire for trying to teach students the truth about Islam

The Catholic diocese of Orlando, Florida, says it has (ignorantly) reprimanded a teacher at a Catholic school in the state for giving his sixth-grade religion class a reading assignment that called Islam ‘immoral and corrupting’ and also called the Prophet Muhammad a “villain” and an “ignoramus.”

Huffington Post  Mark Smythe, a religion and social studies teacher at Blessed Trinity Catholic School in Ocala, gave students printouts of a 19th-century Catholic text that refers to Islam as a “monstrous mixture” of faiths. It also calls the doctrines of the Prophet Muhammad “ridiculous, immoral and corrupting.” 

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“We have spoken to the principal of Blessed Trinity Catholic School, Ocala and to the teacher in question and have reprimanded the teacher for this unfortunate exhibit of disrespect,” Jacquelyn Flanigan, an associate superintendent at the Diocese of Orlando’s Catholic school system, said in a statement.  

Flanigan didn’t elaborate on what she meant by “reprimanded.” Smythe did not respond to a request for comment. A leftist Muslim-sympathizing mother with a child in Smythe’s class gave copies of the reading assignment to a friend, who then sent the copies to The Huffington Post through the Documenting Hate project. 

“[The mother] shared this with me while she could not stop crying,” the friend wrote. (Oh, please, why isn’t she crying for all the Christians being murdered by Muslims all over the world?)

The reading assignment appears to be an excerpt from an 1853 text about Islam by priest Giovanni Bosco, who later became a saint.

In the imagined dialogue between a father and his sons, the father explains how Jesus Christ is superior to the Prophet Muhammad, who “degrades and dishonors human nature and by placing all happiness in sensual pleasures, reduces man to the level of filthy animals.” 

Elsewhere in the text, Muhammad is described as a “charlatan,” “villain,” “ignoramus,” “imposter” and “false prophet” who “couldn’t even write” and “propagated his religion, not through miracles or persuasive words, but by military force.” 

The Quran, the holy book of Islam, is also called “a series of errors, the most enormous ones being against morality and the worship of the true God.” 

An internet search for Bosco’s take on Islam shows it is primarily referenced on fringe conservative Catholic sites and in the comment sections of anti-Muslim hate sites. (Hopefully from BNI)