What? Is that true? Are you saying that a real person in a position of seniority in the Texas Republican party was not aware of algebra? That seems rather hard to believe. I mean was it a performative thing he did for the benefit of red neck cowboys who would be happiest if reading and writing was banned altogether? You know what, send me a link and let me get myself to the bottom of this mystery.
To be honest, I reckon that a big part of the problem is the name. Al-Jebra and Al-karizmh are clearly words whose origin is Arabic.In fact, it's not just that these words are Arabic that's the problem, my guess is the fact that if anyone finds the above interesting enough to stick a few words into google they will quickly discover that the backwards barbarians of the head-chopping religion were in fact way ahead!
While the ancestors of Mr Tea were living in a cave desperately trying to forage for food and constantly rubbing two sticks together (at least, I think that's what they were doing) and the ancestors of Mixed Biscuits were crawling around in the mud outside shouting utter bollocks about how fire doesn't work* their cousins in what we now call the Middle East were inventing new types of abstract thought and taking mathematics forward in leaps and bounds.
Obviously the Muslim religion is based around the worship of a second hand god that was handed down to them by the Jews, so Christianity is clearly superior by dint of the fact that it was.... hang on a sec, oh, they also worship the exact same god handed down by the Jews (but credit where credit is due, that was years before the Muslims got their hands on him). And so after looking at a few diagrams and stuff, even the most inbred and ill-educated fundie can grasp that, although to them it's completely obvious that Christianity is simply just better than everything else, some people are strangely reluctant to take their word for it and so it doesn't hurt to demonstrate some of the more worldly achievements which they claim were due to Christianity. And one thing they often talk about is the achievements in both cultures in various fields such as science, maths, art etc etc Discovering that the Muslims were so innovative might be a bit of a blow to the belief system of yer average potential GOP member and so I can see that those on high deciding precisely what a young Republican needs to learn at school to best equip him for a life of voting Republican, firing guns and never challenging the status quo in anyway, might deem it unnecessary for the waters to be muddied by that little historical error that in which the baddies accidentally got ahead for a while until in good time we invented cars and youtube and kicked their arses back to the 19th century or thereabouts.
*I dunno why neither thought to get some tips from my ancestors who lived nearby in a perfectly good house with a roaring fire and a garage with several horse-drawn carts or, in fact, any of the rest of the people in western civilisation who were lagging only slightly behind their eastern counterparts.