Wall of Silence Broken at State’s Muslim Public School
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Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion.
{snip}
TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. {snip}
Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food—permissible under Islamic law—and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day.
{snip}
Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.
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.”
{snip}
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. {snip}
Why does the Minnesota Department of Education allow this sort of religious activity at a public school? 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.
The department is set up to operate on a “complaint basis,” and “since 2004, we haven’t gotten a single complaint about TIZA,” Brown said. In 2004, he sent two letters to the school inquiring about religious activity reported by visiting department staffers and in a news article. Brown was satisfied with Zaman’s assurance that prayer is “voluntary” and “student-led,” he said. The department did not attempt to confirm this independently, and did not ask how 5- to 11-year-olds could be initiating prayer. (At the time, TIZA was a K-5 school.)
Zaman agreed to respond by e-mail to concerns raised about the school’s practices. Student “prayer is not mandated by TIZA,” he wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, “students are released … to either join a parent-led service or for study hall.” Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other “nonsectarian” after-school options are available, he added.
Yet prayer at TIZA does not appear to be spontaneously initiated by students, but rather scheduled, organized and promoted by school authorities.
Request for volunteers
{snip}
TIZA’s operation as a public, taxpayer-funded school is troubling on several fronts. TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic school at taxpayer expense. {snip}
TIZA is now being held up as a national model for a new kind of charter school. If it passes legal muster, Minnesota taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for a separate system of education for Muslims.
(Posted on April 9, 2008)
Comments
What do you bet me the ACLU doesn’t file suit over this one?
Posted by Dwayne O. at 6:06 PM on April 9
Yet another confirmation that the white people of the West are being made to subsidize their own displacement and marginalization, sometimes by force, sometimes by stealth. They are becoming serfs (if they aren’t already) for the transnational elites that run their nations.
Posted by Zorba_the_Geek at 6:15 PM on April 9
If it was a ” Catholic ” school, all ” Hell ” would break loose from non-Christians. Double standards as usual. Did the Muslim build this country or did Christians and Jews ?
Posted by Michigan patriot at 6:20 PM on April 9
The people of Minnesota need to get a hold of their local politicians and demand action be taken against programs like this. The tax payer should never have to subsidize a religious institution, especially a religious institution such as this one.
Posted by Joseph at 7:44 PM on April 9
Completely illegal if taxpayer’s money is involved.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 7:47 PM on April 9
Makes perfect sense. Liberals do not care about so called separation of church and state. What they care about is eliminating Christianity. Why? Because Christian beliefs are the most effective bulwark against the evil they have been attempting to foster in the world for over 100 years now. Christians are simply not interested in becoming nazis and putting people into ovens.
But muslims are. They were right on board with Hitler the last time the world dealt with this problem.
Posted by at 9:21 PM on April 9
Yeah it’s completely religious but the politicians are scared of the Muslims because they will kill to have their prayer in public school andso would christians fifty years ago but incrementally we have allowed our religion to be marginalized to the point it’s something those strange people practice without knowledge of Darwin. Maybe we should be less passive of the public schools denial of Christian rights.
Posted by pat at 11:18 PM on April 9
*Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion.*
I’m wondering if any persons here thought to discover a little more about this nice “Tarek ibn Ziyad” fellow:
*Tariq ibn Ziyad or Taric bin Zeyad (Arabic: طارق بن زياد, d. 720), known in Spanish history and legend as Taric el Tuerto (Taric the one-eyed), was a Berber Muslim and Umayyad general who led the conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711 under the orders of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I.* - Wikipedia (Tariq ibn Ziyad - yes, I am loathe to use Wikipedia as a “main” source, but it’s quite fine for overviews).
A Muslim school *honouring* the Muslim commander who *overthrew the Catholic Visigothic Hispania, and helped institute centuries of Islamic rule in the Spanish peninsula*?
Can anyone say *Fifth Column*?
Posted by Obscuratus at 5:01 AM on April 10
Christians basically built the US. It seems that if one checks, taxpayers pay for all kinds of religious schools throughout the US. That is, all kinds of religious schools except Christian schools. That is verboten. All state support for ANY religious schools should be stopped, no matter what religion is supported.
Posted by Point out the facts at 3:16 PM on April 10
“If it was a ” Catholic ” school, all ” Hell ” would break loose from non-Christians. Double standards as usual. Did the Muslim build this country or did Christians and Jews ?”
Posted by Michigan patriot at 6:20 PM on April 9
> The answer is that a secular government was built by Christians inspired by Jews was created. But I agree that there is a double standard. That is mostly because the liberals in the region where this has occured have no nerve - they are afraid of Muslims where they know Christians (most of them - so far) will not physcially attack them.
Posted by Whiteplight at 4:18 PM on April 10
Having lived in Minneapolis I can understand where that sort of thing can happen. What suprises me is that they even made any sort of issue out of it. If it were an all white school it would have been in the headlines a long time ago.
Posted by at 7:59 PM on April 10