Source: Act for America
“Wall of silence broken at Minnesota state Muslim public school”: rising concern over possible violation of US law by Cultural Jihadis
April 10, 2008
comment by Jerry Gordon
Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has done the citizens of Minnesota and all Americans, a service of inestimable proportions. She has fingered through her writings and investigations evidence that the Inver Heights school district and Minnesota State Department of Education – funded charter school. Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) is essentially an Islamic school that violates Federal Constitutional separation of Church (Mosque in this case) and, some have argued, Freedom of Religion doctrines.
Here is what Kersten encountered and reported on in this latest episode:
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.
In this latest episode of the TIZA saga, Kersten has uncovered proof of TIZA functioning as an Islamic School from an unlikely source-a substitute teacher.
Here’s what the substitute teacher Ms. Getz found:
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.”
Continue reading “Wall of silence broken at Minnesota state Muslim public school”
The Bible says that man cannot live by bread alone! We must have a balance to our lives. Not only do we need bread (food) to keep our earthly body alive but we need spiritual bread (the Word of God) to keep our spiritual bodies alive.
