The Texas Board of Education has given final approval to sweeping high school social studies revisions that will shape how students learn about Islam, Christianity, American history, government, and world geography.

The vote followed hours of public testimony from residents, students, religious organizations, and curriculum specialists. Most speakers who appeared before the board opposed the final language, but the Republican controlled panel approved the changes Friday.

At the center of the dispute is a requirement stating that "radical Islam" motivated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Critics wanted the standards to focus more narrowly on the specific terrorist organizations responsible for the slaughter.

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The curriculum also directs students studying early Islam to examine Prophet Muhammad's "brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes."

Additional material addresses the "normalization of slavery" and the taking of female captives as "harem slaves."

Those provisions triggered fierce objections from Muslim advocacy groups and several Democratic members of the State Board of Education.

The board majority moved forward anyway, rejecting demands to strip the disputed descriptions from the standards.

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Muslim students also appeared before the board to argue that the language would affect how classmates view them.

Habiiba Quresh, a 15-year-old Muslim student, said, "I feel attacked, as if my religion doesn’t belong. I shouldn't have to defend my religion in the middle of history class because of one sentence someone on this board wrote."

At least three curriculum experts selected by the board raised concerns about the historical basis for portions of the material.

Their objections gave opponents additional ammunition as the debate grew increasingly heated.

Andrea Hutchison, a social studies curriculum coordinator for Prosper Independent School District, said the material did not "hold up to close historical scrutiny."

Robert Koons, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said most nonreligious scholars consider the underlying source unreliable and cautioned against claims lacking strong secular documentation.

CAIR Texas also condemned the vote, accusing the board of targeting Islam while mishandling other historical subjects.

The organization said the decision to "single out and denigrate Islam, minimize the brutal realities of slavery and segregation, and entirely erase Palestinian history is an affront to our system of education and the First Amendment."

CAIR Texas and CAIR Action Texas expanded that criticism in a joint statement aimed squarely at the board majority.

"No credible scholar of history validates the bigoted caricatures of Islam this curriculum teaches," the groups said.

"Even the board’s own appointed experts warned it doesn’t hold up to historical scrutiny, yet the board voted against removing it. Texas students of every background deserve an education that tells the truth about their history and their neighbors’ history, not propaganda that teaches them to see each other as threats or erases them from the story altogether."

State Board of Education Chair Aaron Kinsey rejected claims that the standards were designed to inflame religious divisions. He said opponents had "sensationalize[d] all these topics and [made] them seem more divisive than they actually are."

Kinsey also said members "worked through, democratically, how to make those choices on behalf of our constituents."

He defended the board's work as an exceptional effort, portraying the final standards as the product of public deliberation rather than the ideological ambush described by critics.

Republican board member Julie Pickren celebrated the approval as the culmination of years of work with Texas lawmakers.

For supporters, the vote represented a long awaited correction to social studies standards that too often tiptoe around uncomfortable historical facts.

"This social studies law that got us here, I've been working on for over 10 years with the House and the Senate, the Texas House and Texas Senate ... and so this is such a huge accomplishment; this vote kind of bookends 12 years of life's work," Pickren said.

The revised curriculum is expected to enter Texas classrooms during the 2030 to 2031 school year.

Until then, the political and academic fight over how schools describe terrorism, religion, slavery, and civilization is unlikely to cool down.

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