By Chuck Hustmyre
October 25, 2007
New York (Crime Library) — Classes started last month at the Khalil Gibran International Academy, but neither the school nor the New York City Department of Education is willing to provide much detail about what is being taught there, other than much of it will be taught in Arabic.
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| Former Gibran Academy Principal Dhabah Almontaser |
Last week, the founder and former principal, Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser, tangled with her employer, the city's Education Department, in a very public war of words, claiming she was forced to resign from her position as head of the city's new, and very controversial, first-ever Arabic-language school because of vast anti-Muslim smear campaign.
At an Oct. 16 press conference outside City Hall, Almontaser said:
"In early August of this year, under pressure from The New York Post, The New York Sun, and right-wing bloggers, representatives of the mayor, the chancellor, and New Visions demanded that I resign as KGIA's principal. They threatened to close down KGIA if I refused."
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| NYC-DOE Seal |
In a pair of statements, the Department of Education dug in its heels and fired back. In the second statement, which essentially called Almontaser a liar, a department spokesperson said:
"Neither the mayor's office nor the DOE threatened to close the school unless Ms. Almontaser agreed to resign. Preserving the school has been our priority throughout. Ms. Almontaser was never forced to speak to reporters, make statements, or otherwise act against her will."
Almontaser has been reassigned to another position within the New York City school system.
The Gibran Academy has been at the center of a maelstrom of controversy for months, with supporters claiming its curriculum mirrors all other New York public schools, except for its emphasis on Arabic language and culture, while its detractors decry it as a potential taxpayer-funded hotbed of radical Islamic teachings.
NYC Department of Education spokesman David Cantor defended the Gibran Academy, saying, "The school will not be a vehicle for political ideology."
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| NYC Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein |
The head of the school system, Chancellor Joel Klein, vowed, "If any school became a religious school, as some people say Khalil Gibran would be, ... I would shut it down. I promise you that."
Others are not so sure. A group of concerned citizens, activists, and some professional educators joined forces to oppose the school. They formed a grass-roots organization called Stop the Madrassa.
"One of our main concerns is that the school will be infiltrated by radical Islamists, who will be given free rein to inculcate the children with a doctrine that is anti-western, anti-any religion other than Islam, and anti-the values that we hold sacred," said Stuart Kaufman, a spokesman for the organization.
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| Girl Walking Into Gibran Academy |
Ever since her involvement with the Gibran Academy became widely known, Almontaser has been a lightning rod for criticism. While her defenders say she has long worked to promote tolerance and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims, her critics say her involvement with groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations sends up red flags.
The Justice Department named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case in Texas. The Foundation, which the federal government shut down two months after the 9/11 terror attacks, had strong ties to CAIR and was accused of funneling money to the Palestinian terror organization Hamas.
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| Council on American Islamic Relations Logo |
In 2005, CAIR presented Almontaser with a community service award, and representatives of CAIR's New York chapter stood beside the former KGIA principal at her Oct. 16 City Hall press conference.
An article that appeared on the Web site of The American Muslim the day after the press conference said, "CAIR-NY is a member of the Communities in Support of KGIA, a diverse of group of New Yorkers and community based organizations committed to quality education for all communities."
Many people view CAIR as a radical Islamist front group masquerading as a civil rights organization. During an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Ibrahim Hooper, one of CAIR's founding members and the group's current Washington, D.C.-based director of communications, said: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future, but I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
The battle over the Gibran Academy seemed to reach a boiling point in early August when the New York Post linked Almontaser to a group producing T-shirts with the words "Intifada NYC" printed on the front.
Almontaser at first claimed the Arabic word "intifada" expressed only the shaking off of oppression, but critics pounced on the long established link between "intifada" and Palestinian terrorism in Israel.
The group that produced the T-shirts has links to another group that actively supports the Palestinian terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, according to the Post.
Some critics charged that the message on the T-shirts was a call for a violent Islamic uprising in New York City.
Almontaser later modified her response to the T-shirt flap, saying, "The word 'intifada' is completely inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan. I regret suggesting otherwise. By minimizing the word's historical associations, I implied that I condone violence and threats of violence. That view is anathema to me."
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| Intifada NYC T-Shirt |
Despite her regret over the T-shirts, Almontaser resigned as principal of the school on Aug. 10. The Department of Education replaced her with interim Principal Danielle Salzberg, a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic, while it launches an aggressive campaign to find a permanent replacement.
Almontaser's involvement with the KGIA school didn't end with her resignation. Last week, she applied to get her job back. When the Department of Education refused to reappoint her, she promised to file a lawsuit against the school system, the city, and the mayor.
Meanwhile, Stop the Madrassa filed its own lawsuit in New York state court last week. The organization is trying to get access to documents it says the Department of Education failed to turn over to it after two public records requests. Stop the Madrassa and its new parent organization, Citizens for American Values in Education, are seeking curricula, lesson plans, and a list of textbooks and other teaching materials, among other documents, used at the school.
"We were stonewalled," spokesman Stuart Kaufman told Crime Library. "We weren't given anything."
Kaufman, a New York attorney, said that although the Gibran Academy's advisory board is made up entirely of clergy — Christian, Jew, and Muslim — the American Civil Liberties Union does not appear to have taken much interest in the school's potential conflict with the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which calls for the separation of church and state.
"They are amazingly silent here," Kaufman said. "They (the ACLU) are a bunch of phonies."
On Aug. 20, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a statement. In it, Executive Director Donna Lieberman said: "By all accounts the creation of the Khalil Gibran International Academy should raise no greater concern than any of the dozens of other theme schools that the Department of Education has created to improve the quality of education for children in New York City. There is no evidence that the school will promote religion."
In an interview with Crime Library, Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer was asked if the school teaches religion.
"Absolutely not," Meyer said. The school does, however, make special arrangements for Islamic prayers," she said. "It's not unusual for schools with large Muslim populations to make space available to students to accommodate their obligations for prayers."
Meyer cited as an example of that policy a high school in the Bronx that allowed Muslim students to pray in the back of the cafeteria during this year's observation of Ramadan.
The New York Daily News mentioned the school, Bronx High School of Science, in an article on Oct. 2. "We don't advocate or publicize the space, because we can't," Assistant Principal Phoebe Cooper said. "But it is off the beaten track, where they can pray at any time. We try to make whatever accommodations we can."
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