By John W. Lillpop
Khalid Chahhou is in his first and, it turns out, final year as a Spanish teacher in Smithfield, North Carolina.
Chahhou, who also teaches Arabic at a religious school affiliated with an Islamic association, attempted a very novel approach to teaching when he gave his students a worksheet in which they were to translate words and find them in a word-search puzzle.
In the process of solving the puzzle, students discovered some strange words and phrases.
"There were words like 'kill,' then I saw it said 'destroy America,'" one of the students said.
Students found that the puzzle contained a paragraph that contained the following phrases:
* Sharon killed a lot of innocent people, a possible reference to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
* Palestine is not a terrorist group, and
* Allah helped destroy this body of evil making humanity miserable.
Smithfield school administrators were not amused, and confronted Chahhou about an unidentified concern Wednesday.
To his credit, Chahhou resigned although he had this to say about the controversial assignment:
"When I made the assignment, I was upset and angry about a story I recently saw on the news. If any message appears, it is more of a message to myself, not to my students. I never meant to hurt or upset any students or parents," he said.
A word of advice should suffice to our Religion of Peace Spanish instructor:
Stop watching the news, and when the urge to create a hate puzzle possesses you, repeat “Khalid, you are a dim-witted camel jockey” until the urge passes, or until Allah rescues you with a fatal heart attack!
John Lillpop is a recovering liberal, "clean and sober" since 1992 when last he voted for a Democrat. Pray for John: He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where people like Nancy Pelosi are considered reasonable!
