Director breaks wall of silence at Minnesota’s Muslim public school
Via Memeorandum, the MST reports on Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA):
Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.
TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.
Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food – permissible under Islamic law — and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day.
Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, “due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing.” But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond — even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.
There could be very reasonable explanations for each of those examples. This substitute teacher paints a picture that seems to make it seem like this really is an Islamic school funded by taxpayer money:
Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.
Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”
Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”
“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”
Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. “When I arrived, I was told ‘after school we have Islamic Studies,’ and I might have to stay for hall duty,” Getz said. “The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one — the board said the kids were studying the Qu’ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other.”
After school, Getz’s fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their “main reason for choosing TIZA … was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building,” according to a TIZA report. TIZA may be the only school in Minnesota with this distinction.
Where is the ACLU? Why aren’t they suing? Where is the Minnesota Department of Education?
According to Zaman, the department inspects TIZA regularly — and has done so “numerous times” — to ensure that it is not a religious school.
But the department’s records document only three site visits to TIZA in five years – two in 2003-04 and one in 2007, according to Assistant Commissioner Morgan Brown. None of the visits focused specifically on religious practices.
So 2 visits in one year and not another for one for 3 years constitutes regular visits?
What is an opponent of the phenomenon represented by TIZA to do? If TIZA’s arrangement passes muster with state authorities — who are both asleep at the switch and unequipped to police an institution such as TIZA for legal comliance — an opponent is left with two options. One must either await judicial intervention at the behest of some party with standing to bring a lawsuit raising the obvious First Amendment issues, or one must work for the demise of charter schools.
Vox:
There’s your stage call, o brave secular warriors of godlessness! I quite look forward to seeing your bold verbal attacks and insulting rhetoric directed towards this particular group of theists violating the hallowed separation of church and state… I mean, school. In the meantime, Minnesota Christians and other theists shouldn’t hesitate to push whatever religious beliefs they see fit at their local public schools, as the precedent has clearly been set.
LGF:
Teacher Blows Whistle on Minnesota Madrassa
Katherine Kersten exposes a publicly funded K-8 charter school in Minnesota that’s indoctrinating children into Islam, while pretending to be non-religious to keep receiving the infidel’s money
