What If Schools Had to Teach Islam in Science Class?

Legislators in at least seven states have introduced “stealth creationism” bills this year, requiring educators to teach some form of “intelligent design” in schools—and some of those same people have also pushed laws banning Islamic Sharia rules from being used in the courtroom. The message is clear, writes David Sessions in the Christian Science Monitor: “We are all for government endorsing religion—as long as it’s ours and ours alone.”

Intelligent design is, after all, just biblical creationism scrubbed of any specifically Christian language. “Asking that this particular religious narrative be taught alongside serious science should strike Americans as no less alarming than US courts looking to the Quran for their legal reasoning,” Sessions argues. Of course, religious people shouldn’t want the government to do either. “Because getting government mixed up in your religious affairs in ways you like is the surest route to having it involved in ways you don’t.” (More separation of church and state stories.)