Joe Biden’s Quote on ‘Teaching Islam in Schools’ Lacks Context

Joe Biden wanted Islam and other confessional faiths to be studied from a theological perspective.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden didn’t say he wanted American schools to teach Islam.

(Photo: The Quint)

An alleged quote by US Democratic Presidential Candidate for 2020 Joe Biden has been going viral claiming he said he wanted ‘American schools to teach Islam’.

However, we found that social media users relied on an edited clip to make that claim. What Biden had actually said was, “I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith. I wish we talked about all the great confessional faiths”.

CLAIM

A claim that Biden wants ‘American children to learn more Islam’ has been going viral.

Editor of Texas News Today Leisha D’Angelo published an article on a website called Kreately on 22 July that was titled, ‘Biden: “I Wish We Taught More Islam In Our Schools”’.

An archive of the post can be found here.(Photo: Screenshot/Kreately)

The report was read by 3.4 thousand people by the time this story was written. In the report, D'Angelo included a 13-second clip of Biden’s speech where he says, “I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.”

The report on Kreately was also shared by Bharatiya Janata Party member Kapil Mishra on his Twitter feed.

An archive of the post can be found here.(Photo: Screenshot/Twitter)

Several supporters of President Donald J Trump also took the statement in isolation and shared posts claiming that Biden is against Christianity.

An archive of the post can be found here.(Photo: Screenshot/Facebook)

An archive of the post can be found here.(Photo: Screenshot/Facebook)

An archive of the post can be found here.(Photo: Screenshot/Facebook)

In this post here, another quote attributed to Biden is “Inshallah”, which is something he said during the first Presidential Debate on 30 September. The term "Inshallah" is an Arabic word which translates into "if God wills it."

Incidentally, several Facebook posts about the previous claim, made around the date of the debate, garnered more than 5,000 likes and shares.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Upon conducting a reverse image search of one of the keyframes, we found several news articles about Biden’s statement.

We found that that statement was part of Biden’s speech at the Million Muslim Votes Summit on 20 July 2020. It was part of a voter outreach event aimed at Muslims. Upon listening to the full address, we can hear Biden say that he wished schools taught students more about the Islamic faith and all the great confessional faiths.

The statement can be heard at 48:00.

“Look, one of the things I think is important… I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith. I wish we talked about all the great confessional faiths. It’s one of the great confessional faiths. What people don’t realise is… One of my advocation is theology. Don’t realise is that we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental, basic beliefs.”

Joe Biden

Evidently, Biden’s quote was edited to leave out the statement where he mentions learning about “confessional faiths”. He didn’t say that ‘more’ Islam should be taught at school but that Islam should be studied from a theology perspective.

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