Perth: Muslim School Closed, Director Charged With Fraud

* We reported earlier this month on this case. But this is by far not the only Muslim school that sucks infidel taxpayers money for jihadi-causes.

Elizabeth Gosch
A PERTH Muslim school has been shut down for focusing too heavily on religious instruction, as its director was charged with fraud over the alleged theft of $355,934 from the college’s federal funding.

State Education Minister Mark McGowan yesterday closed Muslim Ladies College in Kenwick after a departmental investigation found the school was employing unregistered teachers and failing to comply with the West Australian curriculum.

With only five days to go until the end of term, Mr McGowan said departmental staff were working with parents to place their children in new schools from next year.

A separate police investigation has resulted in the arrest of the kindergarten to Year 12 school’s acting director, Zubair Sayed.

Mr Sayed, who has been filling in as director of the school in Perth’s southeastern suburbs since his brother Anwar went to Afghanistan earlier this year, appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Saturday charged with fraud.

Police prosecutor Scott McCormick told the court Mr Sayed wrote a Commonwealth Bank cheque for $355,934, drawing on federal government funding for the college.

It is also alleged the school had been overclaiming for both state and federal government funding.

“This is a matter which is of extreme seriousness, whereby Mr Sayed obtained public money from the commonwealth by deceit,” Sergeant McCormick said.

He told the court that detectives had discovered the money had been sent to Pakistan.

Mr Sayed was granted bail to reappear on January 2.

The Australian Federal Police said yesterday they were aware of the investigation but that at this stage it remained a state investigation.

Yesterday, Mr McGowan said the school, which had been inspected by the Education Department at least eight times this year, was not teaching students the subjects required under the curriculum.

* Why should a good Muslim be required to follow some infidel curriculum? All a good Muslim needs is the Koran!

“The school was not meeting the curriculum framework, with some of the students there undertaking religious instruction on a daily basis for 43 per cent of their time at school,” he said.

“At all schools around the state we expect they will spend at least 50 per cent of their time on literacy and numeracy so when a school is spending 43 per cent of its time on religious instruction it is not meeting that requirement.

“I have taken strong action, the strongest action really available to me, and that is to close that school.”

Mr McGowan said staff at the school had reported the problems to the department, which began its investigation in December last year.

Link

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Muslim youth ‘shop around for fatwas online’

Richard Kerbaj | The Australian

YOUNG Muslims are increasingly turning to the internet to get religious advice on jihad as national security agencies crack down on local hardline clerics.

With counter-terrorism agencies keeping a close eye on radical imams, moderate leaders fear impressionable young followers are seeking religious orders from other sources.

The concern centres on overseas-based websites issuing personal fatwas — religious decrees — on jihad or fighting in the name of Islam.

* But but… isn’t jihad ‘inner struggle?’

Senior Islamic leader Ameer Ali warned that it was difficult to ascertain the qualifications and identity of the clerics issuing the dangerous rulings.

The Australian Federal Police is investigating Somali community figures accused of encouraging young men to return to their war-torn homeland and fight alongside Islamic jihadists.

Dr Ali said young Muslims who embraced the information age and turned to the internet for answers to their religious questions were at risk of being captured by radical Islamist websites.

*   Read more on ‘inner struggle fatwa’s’ 

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