CAIR is fast becoming a contributor to our children’s public school education. Concerned parents of students in Houston’s Friendswood Junior High exposed an Islamic presentation during classroom time given by representatives of the Council on American Islamic Relations. The WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh exposing CAIR’s agenda in this Texas public middle school follows this commentary. First let’s look at CAIR’s participation in a Brooklyn, New York public school.
CAIR’s active participation as an educating organization working with the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an Arabic language and Arabic culture public school is documented in KGIA’s Executive Summary which states the American Muslim Association of Lawyers (AMAL) offers internships, and helps with a course in human rights (in 6th grade…) (P. 7, p. 18). The AMAL website appears to be inactive (http://www.theamal.org/index.shtml) but the group (or at least their website) was founded by Omar Mohammedi, President of the New York Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and lawyer for the infamous “6 imams” who have threatened to sue airline personnel and passengers for “profiling.” CAIR has been named in the Holy Land Terror-financing trial as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Frontpage contributes some background to CAIR’s history- “CAIR’s founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, was the IAP’s [Islamic Association of Palestine] public relations director with a long history of extremism. Awad openly praised Iran’s notorious Ayatollah Khomeini. He blasted the trial and conviction of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers – against whom the evidence of guilt was overwhelming – as “a travesty of justice.” At a 1994 Barry University forum, he candidly stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”
“CAIR has been the mouthpiece of some of the vilest anti-Semitism imaginable. For example, the organization co-sponsored a 1998 Brooklyn College rally at which a militant Egyptian Islamist led the attendees in chanting, “No to the Jews, descendents of the apes.” Hussam Ayloush, who heads CAIR’s Los Angeles office, contemptuously refers to Israelis as “Zionazis.” [http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5E5F4FCA-2B20-4393-917C-506AC4C756F7]
Consider the possibilities regarding what would be taught in a Khalil Gibran International Academy classroom. The KGIA Executive Summary. reveals a day in the life of an imaginary student in the school. “Although KGIA offers a variety of enrichment electives in the arts, sports, and technology beginning at 3:30, Fatin has chosen an elective on Human Rights. This class is being co-taught by one of the school’s full-time teachers along with an Arab-American lawyer. She can’t wait until the end of the semester, when one of the collaborating organizations, the American Muslim Association of Lawyers, will offer students internship opportunities at their members’ law offices for a semester.
An April 2008 Weekly Standard article, “CAIR vs. the NYPD The Wahhabi lobby attacks” by Stephen Schwartz documents that Almontaser, the former Principal-designate and architect of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, has once again joined forces with CAIR and Omar Mohammadi, CAIR’s NY President, to demand that the NYPD end its distribution of the report, “Radicalization in the West: The Home-Grown Threat” prepared by Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt of the NYPD Intelligence Division to other jurisdictions’ law enforcement agencies.
“This month, the Wahhabi lobby plans to drop its manifesto of grievances on Commissioner Kelly, on April 17. In minutes of a meeting held in New York on March 3, officials of CAIR present included Faiza Ali, Aliya Latif, and Omar Mohammadi, joined by Islamist agitator Syed Z. Sayeed, religious adviser to the Saudi-backed Muslim Students Association at Columbia University. They noted that the NYPD had asked for a detailed reply to the report. The participants at the March 3 get-together also observed that while they would prepare such a response, CAIR itself has financed and is working on a more thorough text designated its “long-term analysis/alternative model of radicalization.”
Perhaps the most remarkable detail about the March 3 conclave was the leading role taken in it by Debbie Almontaser, a New York resident who last attracted attention as the front-person for a middle-and-high magnet school to be established in New York, the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA). [Emphasis added] KGIA was intended as a special institution emphasizing an Arabic language curriculum and related studies, but its proponents were accused of trying to establish an “intifada academy.” Nevertheless, when Almontaser came under scrutiny as the project head she was defended by many in New York as a faultless moderate. Her involvement in CAIR’s counter-attack on the NYPD demonstrates otherwise: her assignment in dealing with NYPD was to organize an online discussion group for input into the Community Statement.
Such would not be a minor responsibility, and shows that she enjoyed the full confidence of the CAIR commissars. Debbie Almontaser appears to be a classic “stealth Islamist,” and KGIA looks like just the kind of radicalizing effort it was said to be by its critics. Almontaser resigned from her position as head of KGIA last August, but now claims she was forced out, and is pursuing a legal complaint to regain her place at the school. KGIA has been promised housing in an elementary school in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, but its future is little more certain than that of Almontaser’s own career.” [www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/968cekhc.asp]
In a recent Frontpage article by Phil Orenstein, “Almontaser has expressed virulent blame America attitudes in the past making statements in interviews such as: “I have realized that our foreign policy is racist; in the ‘war against terror’ people of color are the target….the terrorist attacks have been triggered by the way the USA breaks its promises with countries across the world, especially in the Middle East.”
Consider also a 2004 article in the American Thinker, “Your children may learn that Muslims discovered America”, describing CAIR’s involvement with stacking the deck in your child’s education as they stack American public library shelves with: “……the placement of propaganda in our schools by Muslim extremist groups. As the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation pointed out in a report issued this week titled, “The Stealth Curriculum:Manipulating America’s History Teachers” these efforts are intended “to use America’s public school classrooms to shape the minds of tomorrow’s citizens by manipulating what today’s teachers introducing into the lessons of today’s children”.
The article goes on to specify CAIR’s deliberate involvement:
The Council on American—Islamic Relations, some of whose members have been “outed” as terror supporters, has an active program to supply these this type of propaganda to libraries across the nation. Naturally, like schools, the librarians are more than happy to accept inexpensive, or free, material to fill their shelves. Yet these same books and audio—visual material are filling our children’s minds with lies that are tantamount to propaganda that teach hate. Efforts should be made by local activists and PTA or PTO members to scrutinize the reading lists at our “educational” institutions. http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/04/your_children_may_learn_that_m.html
BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
Texas children roped into Islamic training
Class by CAIR teaches: ‘There is one god, Allah’
By Bob Unruh, News Editor, WorldNetDaily,
30 May 2008
Public school students at Friendswood Junior High in the Houston area have been roped into Islamic training by representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations during class time, prompting religious leaders to protest over Principal Robin Lowe’s actions.
Pastor Dave Welch, spokesman for the Houston Area Pastor Council, confirmed the indoctrination had taken place and called it “unacceptable.”
“The failure of the principal of Friendswood Junior High to respect simple procedures requiring parental notification for such a potentially controversial subject, to not only approve but participate personally in a religious indoctrination session led by representatives of a group with well-known links to terrorist organizations and her cavalier response when confronted, raises serious questions about her fitness to serve in that role,” the pastors’ organization said.
According to a parent, whose name was withheld, the children were given the Islamic indoctrination during time that was supposed to be used for a physical
education class.
“I am simply trying to get the word out to those whose kids may not have told them about an Islamic presentation that all kids were required to attend,” wrote the parent, who was working to assemble protests to the school board.
WND previously has reported how public school textbooks being used across the nation have begun promoting Islam, teaching even the religious doctrines.
WND also has reported on several other school situations in which Islam has been taught as a required subject, and when administrators have defended those decisions.
In the Texas case, a school e-mail to parents provided only a half-hearted acknowledgement that such mandatory religious indoctrination might not have been the best decision.
“In hindsight, a note should have been sent home to parents indicating the purpose and content of the presentation in time for parents to contact me with questions or concerns or requests to exempt their child,” the school note from Lowe said. “This will be our practice in the future, should we ever have another presentation of a similar nature.”
School officials also said the “Islamic Awareness” presentation was “to increase understanding of the Islamic culture in response to racially motivated comments that have been made to students on campus.”
The pastors said in a statement: “According to students who were forced to attend these sessions, these Islamic evangelists taught them:
- Adam, Noah and Jesus are prophets
- There is one god, his name is Allah
- The 5 Pillars of Islam
- How to pray five times a day
- Islamic religious garb”
The pastors noted that the principal’s claim there were “comments” to students on campus was unverified. Nor does that excuse or justify “this infringement upon the religious beliefs of students and parents of the community nor the violation of school policy and possibly state and/or federal law,” they said.
“We do not believe that this unapproved action by Principal Robin Lowe represents the school district and certainly not the majority of students or parents in the Friendswood community. Our commitment is to support all appropriate administrative, legal and political remedies to assure that this will not happen again and these Islamic activist organizations are kept out of our schools,” the pastors said.
The parent reported the presentation was 30-40 minutes long and handled by two Muslim women from CAIR’s Houston office. CAIR, as WND has reported, is spinoff of the defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, launched by Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and former university professor Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Among the convicted CAIR staffers are former communications specialist Randall Todd “Ismail” Royer, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges he trained in Virginia for holy war against the U.S. and sent several members to Pakistan to join a Kashmiri terrorist group with reported ties to al-Qaida; and Bassem Khafagi, who was arrested in January 2003 while serving as CAIR’s director of community relations and convicted on fraud and terrorism charges in connection with a probe of the Islamic Assembly of North America, an organization suspected of aiding Saudi sheiks tied to Osama bin Laden. In October 2006, Ghassan Elashi, a member of the founding board of directors of the Texas branch of CAIR, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison for financial ties to a high-ranking terrorist.
The parent reported that Lowe told students her sister, niece and nephew were Muslim.
But the parent complained the Muslims “were given full attention of our kids, during academic school time, to present their religious beliefs … This was put right at the end of the school year … which will most likely prevent a Christian response.”
There also was no parental notification and students were required to attend.
“The kids did not even know they were having an assembly or what topic it pertained to until they entered the gym,” the parent wrote. “I send my kids to school for academics … I teach them religion at home.”
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