Nationwide

Other State Madrassas

General Resources:

“Other American Madrassas” by Daniel Pipes

California:

Prayer OK at lunch, not classes at Carver
By Helen Gao
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

A San Diego school that drew international attention for setting aside time for Muslim students to pray in the classroom will no longer do so.Instead, Carver Elementary’s schedule will be reconfigured so students can say their required midday prayers during lunch. Courts have long upheld students’ rights to pray on their own during lunch or recess.

Another controversial element of Carver’s educational program geared toward Muslim students – single-gender classes – will be eliminated.

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Massachusetts:

Speaking Up
The Boston Globe
By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | July 15, 2007

On July 7, the students visited the Islamic Society of Boston, a mosque in Cambridge’s Central Square, where they sat in a circle on the carpet and learned about Islam from two mosque members. Peberlyn Moreta, 16, said she imagined that the women would be veiled head to toe, and was surprised to see only their heads covered.

“I was afraid,” said Moreta, a junior at Charlestown High. “I didn’t want to offend anyone by the way I was dressed or by my cross.”…

…Across the hall , another group of students watched the film “Divine Intervention,” a 2003 comic tragedy about love on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli border.

They giggled at the repeated scenes of a Palestinian woman holding hands with her lover. But the students quickly turned somber when their teacher, Lama Jarudi, delved into why some people martyr themselves in suicide bombings.

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Minnesota:

Brother’s Keeper
by Kevin Featherly
Minnesota Monthly

… Asad Zaman, principal of Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights, is making the rounds, checking on students….¶ Zaman is also an imam-a Muslim cleric-of some local importance, who in 1992 cofounded the influential and lately controversial Muslim American Society (MAS) of Minnesota. Within the walls of the school that abuts MAS headquarters, though, he is simply Brother Asad-principal, superintendent, and voice of authority. ..Zaman takes pains to point out that his school, which currently serves grades K-7 and plans to add high-school classes, is not a religious institution. That has been confirmed many times, he says-state education officials inspected the academy 11 times during its first year. “They really wanted to make sure,” Zaman says, smiling….Despite Zaman’s assurances, a visitor might well mistake Tarek ibn Ziyad for an Islamic school. Arabic as a second language is mandatory. Headscarves are voluntary, but virtually all the girls wear them. There is a carpeted prayer space in the middle of the building that is similar, Zaman says, to spaces provided by several Minneapolis public schools…

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St. Paul Pioneer Press Article, 2004

Ohio:

CAIR Goes Back to School
By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/23/2007

…two publicly-funded K-8 charter schools, International Academy of Columbus and Westside Academy, schools are sponsored under an Ohio Department of Education contract with the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation and operated by a politically-connected group of Islamic extremists associated with both the national and Ohio chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). At least one of the taxpayer-financed schools has been used during the last school year to play host to an anti-Israel CAIR-OH “teach-in”….

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