Business United for Scottsdale Schools (BUSS) is a workforce-development and education initiative that benefits Scottsdale Community College and Scottsdale Unified School District. A local Islamic group filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court against Scottsdale Community College and one of its professors for teaching material that it says condemns Islam.

A student and the Arizona chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed the lawsuit, asking that SCC and professor Nicholas Damask stop teaching the materials in question until they “do not have the primary effect of disapproving of Islam.”

The lawsuit comes after the student, Mohamed Sabra, posted three quiz questions from a world politics class to social media last month, igniting a firestorm of online criticism that caused the college’s interim President Christina Haines to apologize for the “inaccurate” and “inappropriate” questions.

Haines also said Damask would apologize to the student and remove the questions from his curriculum. Damask pushed back, saying he had no intention of apologizing and that his academic freedom was being threatened.

The chancellor of Maricopa Community College District, of which SCC is a part, stepped in and said the questions posted on social media were taken out of context and fell within the scope of the course. Chancellor Steven Gonzales said he would launch a Committee on Academic Freedom and pursue an investigation into how the controversy was handled. David Chami, an attorney representing CAIR, said the group filed the lawsuit to prevent Damask from “continuing to poison the minds of students.” “We have enough hate in this country. We have enough divide,” he said. “We don’t need our professors inflaming those seeds of hatred in students.”…

Continue reading at: The Arizona Republic