Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA)Â takes “confrontational road” with Education Department
* Â As usual, when it comes to Islam, its all about conquest: Tarek ibn Ziyad was the warlord who is credited with conquering and imposing Islam on Spain. But that is not the only problem, as Robert Spencer points out, here:
Here again we see the same story playing out: Muslims asserting a right to do things that are at variance with American law, or culture, or custom, and not being willing to compromise in the slightest degree, while American officials scramble to find ways to accommodate them.
This is the third story in this line that I have posted just today. We will see more and more of these stories, as Muslims demand accommodation of their practices in the U.S., and Americans bend as much as they can to allow for that accommodation — but what will be the outcome of all this? If no American entity is ever willing to draw the line and end the accommodations, when will the demands for accommodation end? At what point? When we have accommodated Islamic law in its entirety and have become an Islamic state? Is there any reason to believe that Muslims will stop pushing for accommodation at any point short of that?
An update on this story. “Storm brewing between state officials and Muslim school,” by Katherine Kersten for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, September 10Â
Last week, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) and the Minnesota Department of Education appeared to reach an understanding in the controversy over whether Islam is being promoted at this public school.But behind the scenes, a storm may be brewing.
TiZA officials have “taken a confrontational road” in discussions with the department, according to Deputy MDE Commissioner Chas Anderson, the department’s No. 2 official.
Anderson says that the two sides have not yet reached an agreement on one key issue and that MDE will be closely monitoring TiZA’s performance in future months.
TiZA is a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights, financed by taxpayers. Its students have scored well on standardized tests. But like all public schools, it may not encourage or endorse religion, or favor one religion over another.
A number of facts raise questions about TiZA on this score. Its executive director, Asad Zaman, is an imam, or Muslim religious leader. The school shares a building with a mosque and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society, which the Chicago Tribune has described as the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — “the world’s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is engaged “in America [in] a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” — Mohamed Akram, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” May 22, 1991
Most of TiZA’s students are Muslim, many from low-income immigrant families. The school breaks daily for prayer, its cafeteria serves halal food (permissible under Islamic law), and Arabic is a required subject.School buses do not leave until after-school Muslim Studies classes, which many students attend, have ended for the day.
Last spring, MDE opened an investigation after press reports raised questions about whether TiZA has been blurring the church/state line. The investigation focused on the school’s 30-minute Friday communal prayer event, among other issues. The service — led by adults — has been conducted on school premises, and both students and teachers have attended.
In a report issued in May, the MDE concluded that TiZA’s Friday prayer event violated the law and since then has been working with the school to make changes.
“We wanted TiZA to do Friday prayers the way all other public schools” handle similar activities — “as release time, under state law,” said Anderson. In a release-time arrangement, students move off-site for religious activities.
But TiZA said no, according to Anderson. Instead, the school will continue to hold Friday prayer on its premises. Students will lead prayer and staff will be present only “to ensure student safety,” said Zaman in a letter to the MDE.
In a response to Zaman’s letter, Anderson wrote complaining of what she called the “defensive tone” of the letter in which he set forth the school’s intentions. “It is inaccurate for TiZA to imply that MDE’s legal concerns regarding the school’s operations … were unfounded,” she wrote, “and it is of utmost importance that TiZA take seriously its responsibility to comply with applicable state and federal laws.”
TiZA now says it will shorten Friday prayers — whose length has been a potential concern because of instructional time requirements — though it has not said by how much.
MDE has agreed that TiZA’s new arrangement on after-school bus transportation will bring the school into legal compliance on that issue. But the department is highly skeptical that TiZA’s proposed arrangement for on-site, student-led Friday prayers will work. […]
While TiZA and the department don’t agree about the Friday prayer service — even over whether they have an agreement on it — there are other religious accommodations at the school that raise questions. In its May report, for example, MDE said that regularly scheduled daily prayers at TiZA appear to pass legal muster because they are “voluntary and student-led.”
But imagine the reaction if prayer time — reflecting only one faith — were built into the schedule at, say, Stillwater Junior High.
Asked if other public schools would be allowed to accommodate religion the way that TiZA accommodates Islam, Anderson said: “We sought guidance, we want guidance” from federal sources and the Minnesota attorney general, “but no one will give us a black and white answer.”
MDE says there are broader questions at issue. “This upcoming legislative session may be an appropriate forum” for “a serious discussion about the appropriateness of sectarian organizations sponsoring publicly-funded nonsectarian charter schools in the first place,” said Anderson in a statement Monday.
For now, she added, “This is a gray area. School authorities at TiZA know it’s a gray area, and they are walking right up to and over that line.”
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Indeed they are.
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Just to crack you up:
Here’s a letter that regularly appears wherever and whenever Muslim schools are involved in embezzlement or Koranic indoctrination:
Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. Muslim children are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. They face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the role of women in the society, and adherence to religious and cultural traditions. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters. There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Than little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.Â
The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background.
– Iftikhar Ahmad, LOndon United Kingdom
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Living here in the Minneapolis St.Paul metro, I am convinced why all this Islamic confrontation is happening here is because of Geographical location. We are almost dead spot the middle of North America. Muslims look a map of the continent and see this metro of 2 1/2 million and see a bulls eye target of striking at the heart of the western infidel kuffar land. Plus with the stronghold ultra left wing libtards within the heart of the Metro, so willing take upon themselves moonbat dhimmi status…the Muslim brotherhood is more than willing to stake claim with their help.
I don’t understand what “Gray Area” exists? You have a school that is publicly funded – it must abide by the laws of this country or the funding ends. There are no points for discussion, no need to validate any of the nonsense spouted by the TiZA administrators.
These people push because we have reached a point where common sense and the law are being shoved aside in a bid to appear “sensitive to diversity”. This country did not achieve greatness because of diversity – it was the single minded pursuit of our founding principles that made us great and it is villifying of these principles that weakens us.
If I, as an Atheist were to move to an Islamic country and tried to open an academy to educate young women, I would not be afforded the same courtesy.
The thing that really irritates me: They move to this country fully aware of what we stand for and then begin to set up communities with the same backward ass traditions. If they want to run a Islamic Schools…there are lots of countries that will accomodate them.
Islam will use our open system and fair mindedness to subvert us and overtake our system. This is the way they have always behaved throughout history.
If Islam is to be taught in schools it must be able to withstand query, academic research, and thorough vetting; otherwise it will always be labeled as an evil cult, which it is.