Khaleej Times: 25 teachers from US to visit Saudi Arabia

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/September/middleeast_September379.xml&section=middleeast&col=

By Habib Shaikh

29 September 2007

JEDDAH – A group of 25 teachers from the United States is to visit Saudi Arabia from November 21 to December 3 as part of the Educators in Saudi Arabia programme. The trip is sponsored by Saudi Aramco, and is administered by the Institute of International Education (IIE).

The visiting group of teachers will meet area experts in education, industry, history and culture, and global relations in the Kingdom. They also will tour schools, cultural and historical sites and industrial facilities in Dhahran, Riyadh and Jeddah.

“American middle school students have many questions about the Middle East,” Terry Christiansen, a West Branch Middle School teacher, in Iowa City, who is part of the group, said in information made available to Khaleej Times here. “I hope to answer some of those questions after returns from Saudi Arabia,” he added.

Christiansen, who teaches a seventh-grade social science review and an eighth-grade American history course, said he always is challenging his students. He said he first learned of the programme from West Branch Middle School principal Sara Oswald, who had e-mailed the staff about the Institute. He decided to apply for the programme “to live what you teach.” “I thought, what better way to challenge myself (than to go to Saudi Arabia),” said Christiansen, the first Iowan to be selected for the programme.

He said he hopes to relate a different perspective of Saudi Arabia than one of oil and extremism. He hopes to understand better the people’s devotion to Islam and the country’s work to balance traditions with the present.

“It should help us appreciate the perspective of Saudi Arabia. I hope I can eliminate some of the poor perception we as Americans have. I want to demystify some of the perceptions we have,” he added.

Chicago Sun Times: First Jell-0, Now Santa

OAK LAWN | School district considers banning traditions seen as offensive to Muslims

September 28, 2007
BY ANGELA CAPUTO Daily Southtown
So long, Halloween parade. Farewell, Santa’s gift shop.

The holiday traditions are facing elimination in some Oak Lawn schools this year after complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students.

Final decisions on which of the festivities will be axed will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122’s five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth said.

Parents expect that the announcement is going to add to the tension that has been building since officials agreed earlier this month to change the lunch menu to exclude items containing pork to accommodate Muslim students. News that Jell-O was struck from the menu caused such a stir that officials have agreed to bring it back. Gelatin is often made with tissue or bones of pigs or other animals.

That controversy now appears to have been been dwarfed by the holiday debate, which became so acrimonious Wednesday that police were called to Columbus Manor School to intervene in a shouting match among parents.

“It’s difficult when you change the school’s culture,” said Columbus Manor Principal Sandy Robertson.

Elizabeth Zahdan, a mother of three District 122 students, says she took her concerns to the school board this month, not because she wanted to do away with the traditions, but rather to make them more inclusive. “I only wanted them modified to represent everyone,” she said.

Nixing them isn’t the response she was looking for. “Now the kids are not being educated about other people,” she said.

There’s just not time in the six-hour school day to celebrate every holiday, said Smyth, who sent the message to principals that they need to “tone down” the activities that he sees as eating too much into instructional time. “We have to think about our purpose,” Smyth said. “Are we about teaching reading, writing and math or for parties or fund-raising during the day?”

Robertson is hoping to strike compromises that will keep traditions alive and be culturally acceptable to all students — nearly half of whom are of Arab descent at Columbus Manor, she says. Fewer than a third of students districtwide are of Arab descent, according to Smyth.

Following the example of Lieb Elementary School, Columbus Manor School will exchange the annual Halloween parade for a fall festival next month. The holiday gift bazaars at both schools also will remain, but they’ll likely be moved to the PTA-sponsored after-school winter festival. And Santa’s annual visit probably will be on a Saturday.

Sun-Times News Group

New York Sun: The Islamist Trojan Horse

The Islamist Trojan HorseBY YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
September 20, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/63064

“We’re fighting them there, so we don’t have to fight them here” has become a hymn for the American right and an abominable lie to the left. But drowned out by all the noise is the fact that “they” are here already, having landed a long time ago and gotten very busy indeed constructing the American wing of jihad.Have you watched the Arabic Channel, also known as TAC, which serves the New York region? Probably not, as most New Yorkers neither understand nor speak Arabic. But if you are among the estimated 1 million viewers – legal and illegal, new and old Arabic-speaking immigrants to the tri-state area – who tune in daily to Channel 507 on Time Warner Cable, this is what you can get:

• A daily dose of Islamic jurisprudence from an Egyptian sheik, Amr Khaled, who comes direct from Cairo as TAC’s prime advocate of “peaceful jihad,” on how the duty of every Arab-American is to become first, second, and only a member of the Muslim Ummah.

• A nightly helping of Syria’s CNN-style digest of the world, sent fresh from a Damascus studio where the Iraq war is nothing but an American butchery of Arabs, and the Zionist regime in Jerusalem is just biding its time until it gets what it deserves.

• A sprinkling of Egyptian and Syrian soap operas (though TAC completely avoids footage of “Oriental” dancing and other “infidel” joys of life).

On its Web site, TAC says it is now 14 years old and serves the “Greater New York City Metropolitan area, including Jersey City, Bergen County, N.J., and Mt. Vernon, N.Y.” through cable and satellite transmission.

TAC’s ownership and funding are, to put it mildly, ambiguous. What is clear is that someone is funding this Islamist Trojan Horse already anchored inside the American fortress.

Another Islamist Trojan vehicle that was once quietly thriving in America – until it was shut down by presidential order in 2001 – is the now infamous Holy Land Foundation, whose recent prosecution by the American government is in its final phase.

At the Holy Land Foundation’s trial in U.S. District Court in Dallas, the foundation and its many chapters stand accused of allegedly collecting some $57 million for radical Islamic causes and using the money as direct or indirect donations to the Palestinian Arab terrorist organization Hamas. Among other things, Holy Land is accused of allegedly organizing conferences and festivals with Hamas officials at which anti-Israel skits were performed as small children danced and waved flags. But the process was going on long before the Holy Land termination order and trial. It is naïve to not recognize the fusion between such militant proselytizing and the message spread by TAC.

Seemingly separate but unquestionably part of the same process of spreading militancy among immigrant Arab communities was the Debbie Almontaser episode of the Khalil Gibran School saga, in which what she saw as a benign use of the word “intifada” led to her being forced to quit as the school’s principal. Neither Ms. Almontaser’s project nor her unstated intention to create a Muslim school in Brooklyn under the guise of multiculturalism took place in a void. The common task among all these organizations and individuals is to instill the notion there are no Arab-Americans, only Muslim Americans.

What follows next, of course, is the “community’s” eventual embrace of jihad against the values and policies of the majority infidel. This is what has taken place in Britain among native British subjects of Muslim origin.

For those who do not understand Arabic, of course, there is the new Al-Jazeera in English, whose slick, transplanted British broadcasters and directors are dedicated to expanding the notion that America and Israel are always aggressive and morally wrong.

Al-Jazeera in English is accessible via the Internet and gains greater access every day to satellite dishes and bigger audiences, all of it sponsored by our ally, the government of the tiny emirate Qatar.

While American law enforcement is getting pretty good at spotting violence that emerges in the style of another paramilitary attack, a friend in the national security community in Washington told me that there “are no vehicles nor a body of laws” to stop or monitor that other kind of slow implantation.

Yaroslav Trofimov, a Wall Street Journal correspondent and the author of two impressive books, “Faith at War” and “The Siege of Mecca,” travels extensively across the Muslim world and has concluded, among other things: “Often, those with the most bloodthirsty ideas were the well-to-do and the privileged who have had some experience with the West, not the downtrodden and ignorant masses.”

Maybe Congress should find a way to legislate asking such well placed outfits as TAC, Holy Land, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations a question: Who, pray tell, are you working for, gentlemen?

Stop the Madrassa to NYC: Almontaser No, Investigations Yes

The “Communities in Support of KGIA,” a collection of far-left radical and Islamist individuals and organizations, is calling for Dhabah Almontaser’s reinstatement as principal at KGIA and for an investigation:

We, the undersigned, who stand together in support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy and its founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, call upon New York City Council to immediately establish a committee or task force to investigate the sequence of events leading up to Ms Almontaser’s resignation from her position and to make public the results of this investigation by October 15, 2007.

We disagree with that proposal in part. Almontaser should not have any positions, given her radicalism, in public education. But we absolutely agree that an investigation – with public exposure of all internal memoranda, related emails, drafts of statements and related documents – would greatly benefit the public discussion. The New York City Department of Education, through its refusal to release important KGIA planning documentation and instructional materials (actual curricula materials, lesson plans, hand-outs) has failed to comply with our Freedom of Information Law requests.

Albany may be more effective than the NY City Council in ending the DOE cover-up. And our legal initiative will go into the next stage in a few days – watch this space for the update.

Why should the NYC DOE not rehire Almontaser?

Here are three simple reasons.

[We expect the NYC DOE response on September 21 to our Freedom of Information Law request will provide many more reasons, unless the DOE continues their cover-up of the Mayor’s and DOE’s past and ongoing relationships with Almontaser.)

Reason #1: She supported t-shirts saying “Intifada NYC”: Her connection to the AWAAM group is not tenuous; she is both a founder and board member of the Yemeni American Association (SABA – YAA), and the AWAAM website (before it was quickly revised after the t-shirt exposé) directed “Contact Us” information to the YAA. The AAFSC, primary sponsors of KGIA, also sponsored the event where the t-shirts were sold. Her own words defending the “Intifada NYC” slogan were the greatest evidence against her being in charge of any institution, as quoted in the New York Post :

“The word [intifada] basically means ‘shaking off.’ That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic,” she said.

“I understand it is developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas. I don’t believe the intention is to have any of that kind of [violence] in New York City.

“I think it’s pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society . . . and shaking off oppression.”

Reason #2: She opposes the War on Terror and she blames the US for the 9-11 attacks : Shortly after 9-11, she gave an interview in 2002 to Amnesty International’s Norwegian office in which she stated:

…I would love to see a peace-loving country as Norway calling the USA to the carpet, telling that enough is enough. I would like to see Norway taking the risk demanding that USA stops the killings, spreading suffering, emergency and fear in countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela and Sudan, she says. – I would like to see Norway show its guts in the Security Council and protest against unfair and racist policies. Stop the sanctions against Iraq; can’t you see that it is the civil population that suffers? …..

…. Earlier you could be arrested for being black and driving a car, now it has become a crime to fly when you are brown. I believe a lot of Arab Americans have realized that we are in the same boat as the black Americans; we must learn from their experiences and struggle against racism. I have realized that our foreign policy is racist; in the “war against terror” people of color are the target….

…Today I believe that the terrorist attacks can have been triggered by the way the USA breaks its promises with countries across the world, especially in the Middle East and the fact that it has not been a fair mediator with its foreign policy. It is not true that the people in the Middle East and Southeast Asia hate our lifestyle, our freedom and our democracy. What disturbs them is that we in order to secure our own well being, deprive them of the possibility of achieving the same high living standard and freedom of choice that we have in the western world….

…The American people believes that everything is all right and that the USA lives by its ideals of democracy, individual freedom and the American dream out there as well. So did I, until 11 September 2001. But I have experienced that when you talk to people and explain what is going on, then they are as strongly against the “war against terror” as I. That gives me hope for the future.

Reason #3: She supports numerous radical organizations, including the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Trial for terrorist financing, where CAIR’s relationship to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, has been repeatedly argued by the prosecution. She accepted an annual award from CAIR in 2005. She is on the board of the Muslim Consultative Network, whose members include unindicted co-conspirator CAIR and the radical Islamic Circle of North America. The Muslim Consultative Network is a major sponsor of the Almontaser Recall Effort being announced in today’s press conference.

She also supports and is supported by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, whose founder and chairman emeritus, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, is the first name on the petition to recall her as KGIA principal. Abourezk stated on August 31, 2007 to al Manar Television that Hezbollah and Hamas are “resistance fighters” and not terrorist organizations. The ADC is listed as a primary partner of KGIA at the DOE school website, and the ADC provides biased instructional materials for middle schools and high schools with an overt ideological slant.

Interestingly, CAIR-NY sponsored the earlier statement supporting Almontaser, but has taken its name off the current one, indicating a growing weakness and disunity among these “Communities in Support of KGIA.” CAIR’s removal of their name from today’s statement calling for the “investigation” may also be a result of CAIR’s political strength waning, as their membership numbers shrink nationwide and their role is more widely known as an unindicted co-conspirator named in the Holy Land Foundation trial on terrorist financing.

Bottom line?

Almontaser, No. No way, no how.

Investigations?

You bet.

BBC teaches kids about 9-11: BLAME THE U.S. – will this be KGIA curricula?

To commemorate 9-11, the BBC Television network has put up a website with lessons for children that blames the United States for being the target of terrorist attacks.

The Department of Education and KGIA continue to refuse to disclose any instructional materials, other than the standard K-8 course of studies – which KGIA is designed to use as little as possible, creating its own instructional materials.

So we are compiling a repository of likely curricula and instructional materials that KGIA will used, based on the substance and intent of KGIA and DOE public statements in the press, and the clear statements from the KGIA Executive Summary.

As noted in the KGIA Executive Summary, they define the correct “end result” for indoctrination, and make the curricula fit that political goal:

Pedagogical Approach
We believe that people learn best by interacting with the social and material world and that the best vehicle for learning is to engage students collaboratively in solving real world problems. Therefore, in each unit of the school’s articulated 6th to 12th grade curriculum, students will focus on critical thinking and real world issues, past and present (i.e., global warming, poverty, and intractable conflicts), in an interdisciplinary approach.
The administration and staff of KGIA are committed to developing curricula and selecting instructional materials that will provide students with the tools to learn effectively. Backward planning will be the process we take when developing our curricula. It will be driven first by identifying the desired results and essential understandings (big ideas that can be transferred and applied in different situations). Then, it will be based on what students need to know and be able to do to achieve the desired results.

Here is today’s lesson from the BBC-TV, designed to provide the “desired results and essential understandings” referred to by the KGIA Executive Summary   Those “essential understandings” mean imputing no blame to al-Qaeda for the terrorist attacks that killed over 3,000 people.  Instead, this is what the BBC-TV presents as an “essential understanding” about 9-11:

Why did they do it?

The way America has got involved in conflicts in regions like the Middle East has made some people very angry, including a group called al-Qaeda – who are widely thought to have been behind the attacks.

In the past, al-Qaeda leaders have declared a holy war – called a jihad – against the US. As part of this jihad, al-Qaeda members believe attacking US targets is something they should do.

When the attacks happened in 2001, there were a number of US troops in a country called Saudi Arabia, and the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, said he wanted them to leave.

The presentation on al-Qaeda makes them sound a bit like the local Rotary Club – just another volunteer opportunity, since the word “volunteer” is used three times…

How did al-Qaeda start?Al-Qaeda, means ‘the base’.

The organisation was set up by a man called Osama Bin Laden in 1988.

Many volunteers from Arab countries had gone to Afghanistan during the 1980s. They wanted to help the Afghans fight in a conflict against a place called the Soviet Union.

The volunteers supported the Afghans as they were also followers of Islam. For them, the battle was a Jihad or holy war .

When the conflict was over, al-Qaeda was set up to continue the jihad against people the volunteers thought were enemies of Islam.

Al-Qaeda is thought to operate in 40 to 50 countries around the world.

Remember  that the designer and founder of KGIA, Dhabah Almontaser, taught this lesson about 9-11 a few months after it happened – from her interview with Amnesty International in Europe in January 2002, where she did not think it would be monitored….

 – I would love to see a peace-loving country as Norway calling the USA to the carpet, telling that enough is enough. I would like to see Norway taking the risk demanding that USA stops the killings, spreading suffering, emergency and fear in countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela and Sudan, she says. – I would like to see Norway show its guts in the Security Council and protest against unfair and racist policies. Stop the sanctions against Iraq; can’t you see that it is the civil population that suffers?

– Fundamentalist Muslims were blamed for the terror attacks, because of that I felt an urge to go out and tell people who the Muslims are and what Islam really stands for. Islam is a religion for everybody; it is about peace and love, not about war and blood revenge. Only by knowing Muslims and having knowledge of Islam can we have any hope of creating a harmonious multi cultural society.

he harassment has decreased. – The tendency in New York is that people embrace their Muslim and Arab neighbors. However, the same cannot be said about the American government’s policy, that fuels up under prejudice and mistrust towards every person with origin in the Middle East or Southeast Asia, Debbie thinks.

– Earlier you could be arrested for being black and driving a car, now it has become a crime to fly when you are brown. I believe a lot of Arab Americans have realized that we are in the same boat as the black Americans; we must learn from their experiences and struggle against racism. I have realized that our foreign policy is racist; in the “war against terror” people of color are the target.

-Why do you think terrorists attacked the USA?…Today I believe that the terrorist attacks can have been triggered by the way the USA breaks its promises with countries across the world, especially in the Middle East and the fact that it has not been a fair mediator with its foreign policy. It is not true that the people in the Middle East and Southeast Asia hate our lifestyle, our freedom and our democracy. What disturbs them is that we in order to secure our own well being, deprive them of the possibility of achieving the same high living standard and freedom of choice that we have in the western world.  – How do you think terror can be combated?

– At least not by bombing a country into pieces! We did not bomb the hometown of Timothy McVeigh to combat terror when he exploded the Oklahoma bomb in 1995. Great Britain does not bomb North Ireland to fight down the IRA, and Spain does not kill hundreds of civilians in their search for ETA terrorists. So which right do we have to kill Afghan women and children, old and young in the search for Al Qaeda?

– I have not seen the terror threat decrease by Bush’ “war against terror.” He is fighting a war against a ghost, a ghost called Osama bin Laden. What is the real and underlying motivations for the “war against terror” remains to see, but control over oil resources in the region and a shift in regime in Iraq is probably among Bush’s underlying goals.- Does the American people support president Bush’ “war against terror”?

– Many are protesting, but many more support him. But most people do not know what is going on. It is you Europeans who know about such things. The American people believes that everything is all right and that the USA lives by its ideals of democracy, individual freedom and the American dream out there as well. So did I, until 11 September 2001. But I have experienced that when you talk to people and explain what is going on, then they are as strongly against the “war against terror” as I. That gives me hope for the future.

Almontasar’s curricula and instructional materials were developed hand-in-glove with current interim-acting-principal Salzberg, who was her senior program officer throughout the months before KGIA opened.

Do you  think the KGIA teachers will teach anything different than the original undisclosed curricula that Almontaser and AAFSC created?

What do you think the children at KGIA were taught today about 9-11?

Le Monde: KGIA said to be “a seedbed of leftists and Islamists”

From Le Monde, on the opposition to Khalil Gibran International Academy:

Depuis des mois, l’ouverture de cette nouvelle école publique, la première où l’enseignement sera bilingue, en anglais et en arabe, fait l’objet d’une vive polémique. Divers groupes, emmenés par Daniel Pipes, ex-conseiller du président George Bush, et soutenus par le quotidien populaire New York Post (groupe Murdoch), ont demandé son interdiction.

Son encadrement, ont-ils plaidé, serait “une pépinière de gauchistes et d’islamistes”. Cette “madrasa”, ont expliqué William Mayer et Beila Rabinowitz sur PipeLineNews.org, “fonctionnera comme un centre de recrutement pour le djihad”. Elu démocrate de l’Etat de New York, Dov Hikind a jugé “l’idée d’ouvrir une école en arabe dangereuse”.

[Approximate translation]

In recent months, the opening of this new public school, the first where teaching will be bilingual, in English and Arabic, is the subject of a sharp polemic. Various groups, influenced by Daniel Pipes, ex-adviser of president George Bush, and supported by the popular daily newspaper New York Post (Murdoch group), have demanded its prohibition.

Its approach, they have argued, would be “a seedbed of leftists and Islamists”. This “madrassa”, explained William Mayer and Beila Rabinowitz on PipeLineNews.org, “will function as a center of recruitment for the jihad”. Democratic elected official of the State of New York, Dov Hikind has judged “the idea to open an Arabic school to be dangerous”.

CNN Live Event/Special with William Donohue, Pres. Catholic League

Excerpt from CNN Live Event Interview with William Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, aired September 4:

SANCHEZ: All right, you know this is going to be controversial. Let’s bring in some of the people now who have raised some questions about the Arabic school. None other than William Donohue, president of the Catholic League.

You know what I like about Bill Donohue? What I like about Bill Donohue is when people try and talk bad about my religion, as a Catholic, when someone tries to pour urine on the Virgin Mother, on the Holy Mother you fight for us. But, here you’re in a situation where you’re criticizing somebody else’s religion. Should you be doing that?

WILLIAM DONOHUE, PRES, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: Oh obviously, no question about it. Look, I got involved with this because Beth Galinsky is a Jewish activist and good friend of mine in New York asked me to look into this situation.

When we looked into it, we made some phone calls to the Department of Education. What do we want to know? The curriculum, the textbook, the handouts, things of that nature. Guess what? We were stonewalled. As recently as last Friday, August the 31st, stonewalled, they were telling us nothing. I spent 20 years in education, I taught everything from second grade through graduate school. You can’t get a course passed never mind a program or a school without having everything laid out there in the first place.

SANCHEZ: Well, let’s be fair. They do this kind of thing in New York. I know it’s different for somebody watching us in Kansas City. They’ve got a couple of French schools, they’ve got a humanity school where they pluck students out and put them in certain specialized interests.

DONOHUE: Do they have clergy as the advisors? Do they have imams associated with extremist versions (ph)? Look, the multicultural argument is pernicious. You know, there’s a big difference. A year ago the pope made speech that some Muslim didn’t like. What did they do? They shot a nun and they killed her. Jews don’t act that way when they’re not happy with the pope.

SANCHEZ: Let’s not go there. Let’s stick with the subject. Essentially what they’re saying they’re going to do, Bill, they’re going to create a school that’s going to be cultural. They’re going to try and bridge that gap between that society and us so we don’t have to kill each other any more and go to wars. Maybe we can work out our problems by understanding each other. Isn’t’ that a great thing?

DONOHUE: It is a great thing. It’s too bad, then, they appointed a principal who defended or refused to condemn, at least, initially, a pro-terrorist t-shirt, and said we didn’t give us any logical decision about the real word and Intifada didn’t mean that, didn’t mean terrorism.

Look, we know what the word Intifada means, Jews know it and I am fed up with the double standard. We got Islamic crescent star in the schools, I can’t put a nativity scene in the schools. What’s going on here?

SANCHEZ: Let’s stop here. OK, fine. But do you have one shred of evidence that you could bring to the table right now that would show that they’re going to be sharing or teaching nefarious things, that they’re going to teach the kids to hate the West or be involved in terrorism?

DONOHUE: I can tell you this much, the burden is on the Department of Education. How come when we called them all summer long they stonewall us. How come the Association of Muslim-American Lawyers, we find out almost none of them? Could you imagine a Latin school staffed by Catholic nuns and priests who were orthodox? People would raise holy hell in church and state.

SANCHEZ: You’re saying until they tell us what they’re going to bring we’ll continue to criticize?

DONOHUE: I’m trying to say is this an Arab school or Muslim school and what kind of Muslims? I want to know.

SANCHEZ: We’re out of time. Bill, thanks for coming.

DONOHUE: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Always a pleasure. Appreciate it. William Donohue with the Catholic League.

Stop the Madrassa Press Conference – Getting the Word Out!

Here’s a round-up of the extensive news coverage for the Stop the Madrassa News Conference, held September 4 on the New York City Hall steps. As you can see from the excerpts of coverage below and the videos and photos that start the links to coverage, press interest is intense in our next legal steps and expansion nationwide.

This is not all the coverage – Longer programs were done on CNN, Glenn Beck, Fox, Colmes radio show, as well as numerous radio interviews across the country. Stop The Madrassa volunteers have also discussed the KGIA scandal with reporters from Japan, France, Israel, Poland, the United Kingdom and several U.S. states.

First some photos so you can see the press attendance at the news conference:

From Urban Infidel:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46896052@N00/sets/72157601866412566/
With more photos and a report: http://urbaninfidel.blogspot.com/2007/09/opening-day-of-school-press-conference.html

Video of the Press Conference from Atlas Shrugs:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2007/09/stop-the-ny-pub.html

Here are excerpts from some of the press reports of the News Conference:

CNN: New York public school accused of radical Islamist agenda
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/04/arabic.school/

But a group called “Stop the Madrassa” insists there’s a more sinister agenda and is demanding the academy be closed.”We are paying with our public dollar for a religious school, a madrassa,” said Pamela Hall, a member of the group.

“The Arabic immigrant students will be isolated,” Hall said. “Whether that materializes instantly into terrorists, that’s a huge statement to make. But are these students not assimilating and becoming part of the American fabric? And is that potentially a problem? We think so, yes.”

ABC World News with Charles Gibson: Protest Greets the Opening of an Arabic School in New York
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3558134&page=1

Critics worry that students will be indoctrinated and point to the fact that the school’s first principal resigned after defending T-shirts that carry the word “intifada.”

“I think there’s a special problem with an Arab school because of the reality of the world that we live in today,” said Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind. “The sad reality is that a lot of the terrorism, not a lot, almost all of it, has come from a particular community — a minority — but a particular community. That’s a reality we better face.”

WCBS-TV: NYC’s Controversial Arabic Academy Opens rotestors Gather On City Hall Steps, Call School A ‘Madrassa’
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_247153747.html

Opponents of the school held a vocal protest on the steps of City Hall Tuesday. They claim it will be a “madrassa,” or a school to help train Islamic radicals.Even some 9/11 families are opposed to the school.

“The evidence is clear that this school would be a detriment to our national security,” says Desiree Bernstein, who lost her brother-in-law, William Bernstein, in the Sept. 11 attacks. “Are we understanding that we are a nation at war, there is a cultural war and we must preserve our Judeo-Christian heritage?”

Protestors say they have been unable to get the Department of Education to reveal the school’s curriculum or the textbooks it will use, which some say will come from Arab countries.

“It is well known that many of the texts emanating from countries like Saudi Arabia are filled with anti-American, anti-Zionist rhetoric,” says Irene Alter, who has been teaching foreign language in the city for 30 years.

Fox 5 News: Arabic-Themed School Opens in Brooklyn
http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=4261657&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Critics say it will become a training ground for extremists, who subscribe to strong anti-American views. (video of Irene Alter): “Many of the texts emanating from countries such as Saudi Arabia are filled with Anti-American, anti-Zionist rhetoric.”

NY1 News (Times Warner): Controversial Arabic-Language School Opens Amongst Protests
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=4&aid=73264

“The mayor and chancellor owe the citizens and taxpayers an explanation for the necessity of a school like this,” said protestor Irene Alter. “And, additionally, [an explanation of] how they plan to monitor it, since it’s well known that many of the texts emanating from countries such as Saudi Arabia are filled with anti-American, anti-Zionist rhetoric.”

WRCBTV: Arabic School Controversy
http://www.wrcbtv.com/news/index.cfm?sid=11002

The school has drawn fire from critics who claim it could become a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalists, but defenders say it will provide students much needed Arabic language skills…something that the federal government has identified as a crucial need.Others, including New York City Assemblyman Dov Hikind, disagree.

“When the likes of Arafat or Hezbollah are presented by some of these students as heroes because their parents think they’re heroes, what are you going to tell those children? They think they’re freedom fighters, not terrorists,” Hikind argued.

KWTX: Sparks Fly Over Public School Devoted To Arabic Language, Culture
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/9572757.html

Sparks flew Tuesday as a public school devoted to teaching Arabic language and culture opened its doors to students in New York City.Critics say the school could become a taxpayer-funded breeding ground for extremists and the president of the Catholic League said Muslims are getting special treatment over other religions.

WNYC New York Public Radio: Controversial Arab Language and Culture Academy Opens
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/84980

The new Arabic language and culture-focused public school has survived months of opposition – from parents who didn’t want their school buildings to house extra students; from critics who oppose the idea of public schools with a single cultural focus; and from pundits and bloggers who have raised questions about whether the school will violate the separation between religion and state by promoting an Islamic, or even Islamist curriculum.

Associated Press: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gGWCNVzlLI0Ve8f6qeNEymGgXErA

Protests against the school, which have been fervent since it was announced this year, were in another borough — on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan. Opponents have attacked the school as a potential training ground for radicals.

A group of protesters repeated those charges on Tuesday.

Reuters: Arabic school opens in New York amid controversy
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0442469020070904

Critics gathered later on the steps of City Hall. Groups including the Catholic League and Stop the Madrasa accused authorities of stonewalling about the school’s curriculum.

“At the moment, we have to go on the basis on what we know about the people who have brought us this institution,” said Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, adding that those involved included imams, or Muslim religious leaders.

“The burden of proving that it is not a madrasa” lies with them, he said.

Irene Alter, a Spanish teacher and a founder of Stop the Madrasa, said she feared books donated from Saudi Arabia, and which feature an anti-American or anti-Zionist theme, could become part of the curriculum.

WorldNetDaily: New York Islamic academy faces monitoring
‘We want to know about curriculum, text books, teachers and CAIR’
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57500

“The Law Center will continue to use the courts to get information on the school that the city has refused to provide,” spokesman Brian Rooney told a gathering of concerned citizens in New York.”We want to know what the curriculum is, what text books are being used, who the teachers are, and what groups affiliated with the school like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will have access to the children,” he added. “The Law Center will also monitor the school in order to ensure that it comports with state and federal law.

NY Daily News: Arab academy opens without protest
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/09/05/2007-09-05_arab_academy_opens_without_protest.html

Hours after the school opened, an opposition group, the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, protested at City Hall and announced the formation of a national group designed to “stop the radical Islamist agendas” in public schools.

“We have to be concerned with this type of school on a different level for the simple reason that … while today most Muslims are not terrorists, virtually all terrorists today are Muslim,” said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, of the Citizens for American Values in Public Education.

NY Sun: Getting the Instruction Right at Khalil Gibran
http://www.nysun.com/article/61911

By Daniel Pipes, September 5, 2007

This troubling pattern points to the need for special scrutiny of publicly funded Arabic-language programs. That scrutiny should take the form of robust supervisory boards whose members are immersed in the threat of radical Islam and who have the power to shut down anything they might find objectionable.

Arabic-language instruction at the pre-collegiate level is needed, and the American government rightly promotes it — for example, via the National Security Language Initiative on the national level or the Foreign Language in Elementary Schools program on a local one. As it does so, getting the instruction right becomes ever more important. Citizens, parents, and taxpayers have the right to ensure that children attending these publicly funded institutions are taught a language skill — and are not being recruited to anti-Zionism or Islamism.

NY Sun: Group Targets Middle Eastern Textbooks
http://www.nysun.com/article/61853

As schools citywide open their doors today, a group critical of a new Arabic-language public school is stepping up its opposition efforts, broadening its campaign to target national school curricula.The group, a coalition of community members, parents, and organizations called Citizens for American Values in Public Education, is seeking to stop the national use of textbooks that address Middle Eastern studies in ways the group says are too narrowly focused on Islamic culture. The coalition is an outgrowth of the group Stop the Madrassa, which has strongly opposed the creation of an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn, the Khalil Gibran International Academy.

“We want to offer textbooks and curricula that actually embrace a larger cultural picture,” a spokeswoman for the group, Pamela Hall, said. “We would like to make sure that there are textbooks offered that are not propaganda, and not offered by just one source.”

One News Now: Christian law firm representing citizens opposed to Islamic school http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/09/christian_law_firm_representin.php

The Thomas More Law Center believes the Khalil Gibran International Academy is nothing more than a thinly disguised incubator for Islamist radicalization. That is why the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based firm is weighing in on the controversy. Spokesman Brian Rooney says the Brooklyn school is a Trojan Horse that New York City is building with taxpayer money.

New York Post: ODD LESSON ON ‘JIHAD’ AT ARAB ACADEMY
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09052007/news/columnists/odd_lesson_on_jihad_at_arab_ac.htm

By Andrea Peyser, Sept. 5 2007

As students filed nervously into Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy yesterday, a key adviser to the school was defining the meaning of the loaded term jihad.

“Struggle,” Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, told me.

Say what? To most New Yorkers, including me, jihad means only one thing – holy war….. Department of Education spokesman David Cantor said Gibran’s advisory board, assembled by ex-principal Debbie “Intifada is Good” Almontaser, was disbanded.

But that was news to Abdur-Rashid. The imam, who has written on the way white Americans “robbed” Africans and Muslims of their heritage, said he was involved “strictly on the importance of the multi-cultural aspect of the school’s curriculum.”

National Catholic Reporter: New Arab academy caught in debate of religious pluralism, war on terror
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=25247

Yet it has been denounced as a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism by local critics, who have organized a grass-roots coalition called “Stop the Madrassa.” The opposition has attracted the support of national figures such as Daniel Pipes, an influential critic of Islam…Pipes argues that in principle having more Americans learn Arabic is a great idea, but that in practice Arabic-language instruction is rarely neutral, usually nudging students toward pro-Palestinian stances and hostility toward the West and the United States.The case that the Khalil Gibran Academy is dangerous is based largely on its potential associations. Critics say the school will use materials prepared by the Council on Islamic Education, a Saudi-funded group accused of supporting jihadist ideology. The school is located near the Masjid al-Farooq mosque, which had been attended by some of the figures involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Others oppose the academy on church/state grounds, arguing that public money should not be used to open a school that seems to favor a particular religion…Catholic reaction has been mixed. The Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit law firm specializing in religious freedom founded by Domino’s pizza magnate Tom Monaghan, has called the school “a Trojan Horse for radical Islam with taxpayer money.”

News Max: Group: NY Public School Has Radical Islamist Agenda
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/school_radical_Islam/2007/09/04/29750.html

A new public school in New York slated to teach Arabic language and culture will impose a radical Islamist agenda in its classrooms.”We are paying with our public dollar for a religious school, a madrassa,” Pamela Hall, a member of the “Stop the Madrassa” group told CNN.

“The Arabic immigrant students will be isolated,” Hall told the cable network.

CNS News: NYC Arab School Opens Amid Firestorm
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200709/CUL20070905a.html

Stop the Madrassa, a group of parents and teachers opposed to the school, called for its immediate closing. They also announced the creation of a new national organization to pressure New York City to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request to provide information to the public regarding the textbooks, curriculum, lesson plans and other material for the school.

Pamela Hall, a member of Stop the Madrassa, considered the rally a major success based upon the media attention it received.

“We are going national with a new group, Citizens Form American Values in Public Education,” Hall told Cybercast News Service. “We have a booklet that we introduced today to be used as a tool for parents and schools across the country to see what is in their children’s textbooks.”

Metro Newspaper: Academy welcomes students as ‘madrassa’ foes hit City Hall
http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Arabic_school_opens/9892.html

Meanwhile, at City Hall, a grassroots organization, “Stop the Madrassa,” called on city officials to answer three Freedom of Information Law requests concerning textbooks, curricula and other documents related to the school they feel could impose a radical Islamist agenda. Retired city teacher Irene Alter, a co-founder of the group, worried about what reading materials will be distributed to up to 60 students at the school, which will initially offer sixth-grade and is scheduled to add one level a year until grade 12.

“My initial reaction was that this defies all common sense,” Alter said. “At the very least, [Mayor Michael Bloomberg] and [Schools Chancellor Joel Klein] owe the citizens and taxpayers an explanation for the necessity of a school like this, and additionally, how they plan to monitor it since it is well known that many of the texts emanating from countries such as Saudi Arabia are filled with anti-American, anti-Zionist rhetoric.”

NY Sun – Getting the Instruction Right at Khali Gibran

 Getting the Instruction Right at Khalil Gibran
By DANIEL PIPES
September 5, 2007

The city’s Arabic-language public school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, opens its doors this week, with special security, for about 55 12-year-old students. One hopes that the prolonged public debate over the school’s Islamist proclivities will prompt it not to promote any political or religious agendas.

Count me as skeptical, however, and for two main reasons. First is the school’s genesis and personnel, about which others and I have written extensively. Second, and my topic here, is the worrisome record of taxpayer-funded K-12 Arabic-language programs from sea to shining sea.

The trend is clear: Pre-collegiate Arabic-language instruction, even when taxpayer funded, tends to bring along indoctrination in pan-Arab nationalism, radical Islam, or both. Note some examples:

• Amana Academy, Alpharetta, Georgia, near Atlanta: A charter school that requires Arabic-language learning, Amana boasts of its “institutional partnership” with the Arabic Language Institute Foundation. But ALIF forwards the learning of Arabic as a means “to convey the message of Qur’an in North America and Europe” and thus to “help the Western countries recover from the present moral decay.”
• Carver Elementary School, San Diego: A teacher, Mary-Frances Stephens, informed the school board that she taught a “segregated class” of Muslim girls and that each day she was required to release them from class for an hour of prayer, led by a Muslim teacher’s aide. Ms. Stephens deemed this arrangement “clearly a violation of administrative, legislative and judicial guidelines.” The school’s principal, Kimberlee Kidd, replied that the teacher’s aide merely prayed alongside the students and the session lasted only 15 minutes. The San Diego Unified School District investigated Ms. Stephens’s allegations and rejected them, but it nonetheless changed practices at Carver. Superintendent Carl Cohn eliminated single-gender classes and reconfigured the schedule so that students can pray during lunch.
• Charlestown High School, Massachusetts: The school’s summer Arabic-language program took students on a trip to the Islamic Society of Boston, where, the Boston Globe reports, students “sat in a circle on the carpet and learned about Islam from two mosque members.” One student, Peberlyn Moreta, 16, fearing that the gold cross around her neck would offend the hosts, tucked it under her T-shirt. Anti-Zionism also appeared, with the showing of the 2002 film “Divine Intervention,” which a critic, Jordan Hiller, has termed an “irresponsible film,” “frighteningly dangerous,” and containing “pure hatred” toward Israel.

  • Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, Inver Grove Heights, Minn.: Islamic Relief Worldwide, an organization that allegedly has links to jihadism and terrorism, sponsored this charter school, which requires Arabic as a second language. The academy’s name openly celebrates Islamic imperialism, as Tarek ibn Ziyad led Muslim troops in their conquest of Spain in 711. Local journalists report that “a visitor might well mistake Tarek ibn Ziyad [Academy] for an Islamic school” because of the women wearing hijabs, the carpeted prayer area, the school closing down for Islamic holidays, everyone keeping the Ramadan fast, the cafeteria serving halal food, classes breaking for prayer, almost all the children praying, and the constant use of “Brother” and “Sister” when adults at the school address each other.

  • Only in the case of the Iris Becker Elementary School in Dearborn, Mich., is the Arabic-language program not obviously pursuing a political and religious agenda. Its program may actually be clean, or perhaps the minimal information about it explains the lack of known problems.

  The above examples (see my Web log entry “Other Taxpayer-Funded American Madrassas” for yet more) are all American, but similar problems predictably exist in other Western countries.

  This troubling pattern points to the need for special scrutiny of publicly funded Arabic-language programs. That scrutiny should take the form of robust supervisory boards whose members are immersed in the threat of radical Islam and who have the power to shut down anything they might find objectionable.

  Arabic-language instruction at the pre-collegiate level is needed, and the American government rightly promotes it — for example, via the National Security Language Initiative on the national level or the Foreign Language in Elementary Schools program on a local one. As it does so, getting the instruction right becomes ever more important. Citizens, parents, and taxpayers have the right to ensure that children attending these publicly funded institutions are taught a language skill — and are not being recruited to anti-Zionism or Islamism.

  Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum.

Catholic League to join Stop the Madrassa Press Conference

Press Release from the Catholic League President Bill Donohue

August 31, 2007 Press Conference
Purpose: To raise serious questions regarding the propriety of opening Khalil Gibran International Academy

Participants: Coalition of New Yorkers across faith communities

When: 12:15 p.m., September 4, 2007
Where: Steps of New York City Hall

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why he is joining the rally:

“There are several reasons why the Catholic League is concerned about the founding of Khalil Gibran International Academy. They include:

· The pedagogical necessity of establishing this school.

· The stonewalling by the New York City Department of Education whenever we have sought information about the curriculum, textbooks, school’s advisors, etc.

· The paucity of information about the Association of Muslim American Lawyers, a group that is slated to play an integral role.

· The incredible disparity in the way the New York City Department of Education treats Muslims and Catholics: Arab Muslims not only have a taxpayer-funded school, but the Islamic religious symbol, namely the crescent and star, is permitted in all New York City public schools. However, the Department of Education bars the display of nativity scenes.

· The entire pro-terrorist T-shirt controversy and the initial selection of Debbie Almontaser as the school’s principal.

“The Catholic League is not making accusations, but it is raising serious questions. We will continue to do so until our concerns have been alleviated.”