As the Bush administration winds down, Democrats are actually increasing their attacks. It’s like Wile E. Coyote just found out ACME was going out of business, and he only has two days left to catch the Roadrunner.
Democrats are especially unhappy about Bush's success in Iraq. That's because they were wrong when he was right, and because he stepped up in a way they never would. In the closing hours they're redoubling their lying claims that Bush lied and broke the law to get us into Iraq, and repeating as often as they can that, in spite of apparent successes in Bush's “so called war on terror,” we still aren’t any safer.
Applying myself to this logic, I’ve spent some time trying to imagine how the world would look come Inauguration Day 2009 (aka “The Moment”), had we not made things so much worse by deposing Hussein. These are only a few things that would be much better now if we had only listened to Joe Wilson:
ITEM: Saddam would still be Dictator of Iraq (or “President of a Sovereign Iraq” as he is described in Middle Eastern studies departments).
ITEM: CNN would still be able to broadcast from Iraq, in exchange for slavish willingness to lie about Saddam’s popularity and his brutal methods of maintaining control.
ITEM: Instead of 17 UN resolutions Saddam would be disregarding, there would now be 25 or 30, still a low number compared to what’s been piling up against Israel.
ITEM: Uday and Qsay would still be in line to succeed their father, guaranteeing what the State Department calls “stability” in the region, and what sane people call “rape and murder” for thousands of female Iraqis and their spouses, for decades to come.
ITEM: Iran, still feverishly working on getting the Bomb, would now have Saddam and his nuclear scientists next door to provide a “balance of power” in the region, a “stabilizing” factor considering the last war between these two bitter enemies--even without nukes--cost 300,000 dead and possibly 1-2 million casualties, or, as Reuters might report, was nearly as bad as the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza.
ITEM: The economies of the West Bank and Gaza would still be benefitting from Saddam’s $25,000 payouts to the family of every suicide bomber.
ITEM: Jacques Chirac, Kofi Annan and his son, and myriad other international parasites, would still be receiving illegal Iraqi oil credits in exchange for applying pressure through the UN to get rid of sanctions “containing” Iraq.
ITEM: By now, the sanctions/”containment” regime (long since denounced by the world as “American genocide against Iraq”), would have been lifted, with a resulting flood of medicine, foodstuffs, and dual-use technology flowing into the grateful hands of a small number of Baathist black marketeers, Saddam’s weapons scientists, and none of his people.
ITEM: The Shias in Iraq would not be suffering power outages as they sometimes do now, because Saddam would still be excluding them from the power grid.
ITEM: The Kurds in the North would not be suffering power outages as they sometimes do now, because Saddam would still be excluding them from the power grid.
ITEM: 28 million Iraqis would not be squabbling over political power as they do now, because they would be supporting Saddam’s re-election with 100% of the vote.
ITEM: Iran would not be forced to carry the burden of being the only Islamic nation in the region strong enough to wipe Israel off the map, as Saddam would still be able to make the same threats, too.
ITEM: Rather than suffer sectarian and religious divisions, Iraq’s Shia, Sunnis, Christians, and Kurds would all be united in the common national purpose of cringing in fear of the arbitrary madness of Saddam Hussein and his idiot sons.
ITEM: Rather than being forced into unemployment by colonial American powers, the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard would still be intact, and hard at work carrying out its duties of suppressing the Iraqis, punishing the Kurds, assisting in tortures and murders, having liaisons with al Qaeda, and firing anti-aircraft weapons at U.S. planes enforcing the No-Fly zone in the south for the 16th year in a row.
ITEM: Libya’s madman Khadaffi would not have been so “troubled” by U.S. actions in Iraq that he impulsively gave up his nuclear program.
ITEM: Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, in his guest suite at the Saddam House International Inn, would not have become so “troubled” by U.S. actions in Iraq that he shot himself in the head six times.
ITEM: Saudi Arabia would still be graciously welcoming the infidel U.S. Military (NO BIBLES OR CROSSES!) on Allah’s soil, as protection against another invasion from Saddam.
ITEM: We would not be hated by Frenchmen for our adventurism in Iraq. Instead, we would only be hated by Frenchmen for our liberation of their country in 1944 and 1914,
ITEM: We would not be hated by every Third World member of the United Nations for our adventurism in Iraq. Instead, we would only be hated by every Third World member of the United Nations for supporting Israel.
ITEM: Abu Ghraib prison, instead of becoming the notorious setting for prisoners forced to get naked or wear underwear on their heads on direct orders of Dick Cheney, would preserve its solid but little-known reputation as a place where Saddam’s torturers cut off people’s hands, tongues, heads, or genitals, and nailed their tongues to boards, and as the place where 30,000 Iraqis were murdered--but at least no one would have his junk pointed at by a girl soldier.
ITEM: Instead of Iraq becoming a gathering place for poorly trained al Qaeda operatives from throughout the Ummah, (“troubled” by U.S. actions in Iraq), and who promptly get martyred at the hands of coalition forces within days of arriving, the AQ fighters would have remained in their home countries, peacefully training, plotting, studying in madrasses, no threat to anyone or “troubled” by anything we’re doing (except maybe that military base in Saudi thing, or the support for Israel thing, or the infidel thing, or the 72 virgins thing, or the Crusades thing).
ITEM: Instead of America’s image abroad being that of a “cowboy nation” that “goes to war at the drop of a hat,” we would still be enjoying our immense pre-9/11 popularity as a “paper tiger” who either ignores terrorist acts of war, (out of sympathy for “root causes”), or defers to “international law,” (the UN Security Council) to guarantee our interests abroad and the safety of our homeland.
ITEM: Instead of exposing our “kids” in the armed forces to risk of death in combat in a war of liberation, we settle for exposing our “kids” in the armed forces to risk of being murdered abroad defenselessly in their barracks, on shipboard, or in discothèques or embassies by cowardly terrorists convinced we will never fight back.
ITEM: Seeing the logic of moral giants like Susan Sarandon (“What did the Iraqis ever do to us? (sob)”), we would not only refrain from invading Iraq, but we’d also promptly withdraw from Afghanistan and let it revert to the Taliban, because, to be fair, the Afghanis didn’t attack us on 9/11, either-- nor did the Taliban. Those hijackers were a lot of Saudis, a couple Egyptians, a Lebanese, and a guy from United Arab Emirates. America would thereafter try out a simpler, “fairness-based” terrorism policy by which we would only punish nations that actually produced terrorists who attacked Americans. But once we realized we’d still have to invade Iraq, in addition to Lebanon, Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan, the UAE, Qtar, Somalia, Indonesia, and probably France, Canada, and Denmark, this short-lived policy would be revised so we could just let the UN tell us what we can do, the way they do with population control.
ITEM: Instead of relying on “cowboy diplomacy” as a defensive posture, America would have adopted the much less threatening “helpless townsperson” defensive posture. This entails State Department personnel gathering in coveralls and slouch hats, wringing their hands and wondering forlornly "when someobody’s going to do something about them goldurng Dalton brothers?" Inexplicably, neither the French nor the Arabs hate us any less when we act this way.
ITEM: During Hurricane Katrina, 150,000 troops who weren’t being wasted on national defense in Iraq would have been available to be deployed to New Orleans to stop a Force 5 hurricane. During the much larger rescue operation that would have become necessary when 150,000 soldiers became stranded as a result of being deployed below sea level in the path of a Force 5 hurricane, not to mention confusion caused by the headlong abandonment of the city by the New Orleans Police Department, the nation learns to its shame that race is still a very potent factor in the slow response to the rescue of minority troops. Jesse Jackson demands to know why the armed forces weren’t deployed out of the country where it was safe.
ITEM: Had we not invaded Iraq in March 2003, the media and Democrats, not one day later than April 1, 2003, would have begun denouncing the war in Afghanistan as a “quagmire.” They would dub it “Bush’s war,” “endless,” and “lost.” They would complain that it had already lasted longer than American’s involvement in World War I. They would charge that Afghanistan caused us to “take our eye off the ball” in the war on terror. They would say bin Laden was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, so why weren't we at war there?
Showing posts with label Shia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shia. Show all posts
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Our American Imam Wants You to Know, 'I Am Not an Iranian Agent'
Detroit-area residents who can’t find copies of the Arab American News, or who’ve had their satellite link to Al Jazeera cut off, need go no further than the Op Ed page of the Detroit News to get a view of current affairs from the pro-Iranian side of the street.
That’s where editorial page editor Nolan Finley has given the Islamic House of Wisdom’s Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi a regular column, under the title, “Faith and Policy.”
The Imam’s faith happens to be Shia Islam, of the Hezbollah-are-freedom-fighters strain. Being a Muslim, of course, should not foreclose the Imam having a voice in a free press. And Finley explains his decision to give Elahi a megaphone by noting
that Elahi is considered a moderate in Dearborn's Muslim community.
"Extreme from our point of view and extreme from mainstream America's point of view? Perhaps." Finley said. "Extreme for that community? I'm not sure. I think he has a very large following--in fact, I know he has a very large following in that community, and speaks for a very large segment of that community.”
I’ll say. All the more reason to pay close attention, eh?
As to his policies, Imam Elahi is a big believer that while everything about the American foreign policy of George W. Bush since 9/11 is “a moral tragedy, ”the recent Iranian- and Syrian-backed sacking of the Lebanese parliament is a success story, as he described it in June 3rd column. (“Bush's Middle East foreign policy creates moral tragedies”).
He’s also stated in his column that,
Regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent call to wipe Israel off the map . . .:
--"It is very clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not making an anti-Semitic statement."
--"The Iranian president's quip can best be understood in the context of the Declaration of Independence.”
--and, “Israel must stop instigating violent conflicts in the Muslim world."
Another Elahi column described Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a ‘Palestinian spiritual leader, (who) had a heart full of love for humanity.’ Yet another compared the Iranian constitution to that of the United States.
Imam Elahi, was at one time the spiritual leader of the Iranian navy. The self-evident benefits of an armed force having a spiritual leader can be seen in recent news about the Iranian navy, featuring stories about the navy threatening to attack and “explode” U.S. warships, (“Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon”), unlawfully taking British sailors hostage, (“Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”), and how its Basiji Islamic Revolutionary Guard members brag that they’ve taken a suicide pledge. (“Iran navy in suicide attack pledge”):
“If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.
Whether or not all this misdirected belligerence is made wors or better by having “spiritual leaders” of the stripe of Imam Elahi, I’ll leave for the Imam Elahis of the world to explain.
After bucking up the Iranian sea dogs Imam Elahi came to the USA around 1991 on a 4-month visa. According to one source, that visa “enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran's network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran's influence on Shi'ite communities (in Dearborn)."
Now he’s an American citizen, which, if nothing else, grants him the right to use first-person pronouns when attacking the United States. Such as when he said in his Tuesday column,
“Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another”; or, “Our nation deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
I guess I shouldn’t knock him for it. Most Democrats are born here and still reflexively refer to most Americans as “them.”
Anyway, Elahi’s nostalgia for a period of respect and love for America that he’s never been around for is truly inspiring. I get dewy-eyed thinking back on those carefree days when it was Jimmy Carter that Ahmadinejad and his scruffy cohorts were burning in effigy as they brutalized our embassy staff.
But although he denies being an Iranian agent, Imam Elahi seems to have a one-track mind when it comes to the policies he preaches. They always seem to be pointed at benefits to Iran--or Iran’s creature, Hezbollah.
For example, to undo the “moral tragedy” of the Bush foreign policy, Elahi thinks we need “to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don't start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.”
But who’s to benefit from us “stopping” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In other words, who's to benefit from our withdrawing and leaving both newly liberated nations to the depredations of their strongest neighbor--Iran. And who’s the only Persian Gulf nation in the region there’s even the remotest chance of us going to war with? Iran.
Elahi continues: “There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons.” For this, Elahi cites the much-maligned National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which he says “confirmed that Iran's nuclear program has no military aspect -- it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Except the NIE didn’t. Instead, all 16 American spy agencies that contributed to the report stated “that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.’” (“U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work”).
But Elahi is particularly adamant that Iran is not nuke-bound, and he wishes Bush would quit taking the cautious route, (as if world peace depended on it, or something), pointing out how “United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding ‘fuel to the fire’ with bellicose rhetoric.”
But if there’s no fire, how can you add fuel to it? Besides, “watchdog” El-Baredei, even as he faces daily lies and obfuscation from Iranian authorities, has never been willing to admit there’s an Iranian bomb program, and probably won’t until he’s falling through space onto Tel Aviv straddling one Slim-Pickens style.
Imam Elahi does spare some concern for the nation he has adopted, instead of the one he's not an agent for. He cares deeply that America “deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
His advice is that the “United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace.” He’s short on specifics, but I think this translates this way: “Dump Israel, and let Iran have the bomb.”
Imam Elahi does think there’s a way we can still be friends with Israel, but we should imitate Jimmy Carter in showing how true friendship really works. “Honestly, the best friends of Israel are those who say it like it is. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy toward Gaza ‘one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.’”
(What do you bet it's been a while since Rosalynn asked Jimmy, "Does this dress make me look fat?")
Now we're all waiting for Jimmy to give Hamas some of the same depth of constructive criticism, and show them some true friendship.
That’s where editorial page editor Nolan Finley has given the Islamic House of Wisdom’s Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi a regular column, under the title, “Faith and Policy.”
The Imam’s faith happens to be Shia Islam, of the Hezbollah-are-freedom-fighters strain. Being a Muslim, of course, should not foreclose the Imam having a voice in a free press. And Finley explains his decision to give Elahi a megaphone by notingthat Elahi is considered a moderate in Dearborn's Muslim community.
"Extreme from our point of view and extreme from mainstream America's point of view? Perhaps." Finley said. "Extreme for that community? I'm not sure. I think he has a very large following--in fact, I know he has a very large following in that community, and speaks for a very large segment of that community.”
I’ll say. All the more reason to pay close attention, eh?
As to his policies, Imam Elahi is a big believer that while everything about the American foreign policy of George W. Bush since 9/11 is “a moral tragedy, ”the recent Iranian- and Syrian-backed sacking of the Lebanese parliament is a success story, as he described it in June 3rd column. (“Bush's Middle East foreign policy creates moral tragedies”).
He’s also stated in his column that,
Regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent call to wipe Israel off the map . . .:
--"It is very clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not making an anti-Semitic statement."
--"The Iranian president's quip can best be understood in the context of the Declaration of Independence.”
--and, “Israel must stop instigating violent conflicts in the Muslim world."
Another Elahi column described Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a ‘Palestinian spiritual leader, (who) had a heart full of love for humanity.’ Yet another compared the Iranian constitution to that of the United States.
Imam Elahi, was at one time the spiritual leader of the Iranian navy. The self-evident benefits of an armed force having a spiritual leader can be seen in recent news about the Iranian navy, featuring stories about the navy threatening to attack and “explode” U.S. warships, (“Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon”), unlawfully taking British sailors hostage, (“Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”), and how its Basiji Islamic Revolutionary Guard members brag that they’ve taken a suicide pledge. (“Iran navy in suicide attack pledge”):
“If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.
Whether or not all this misdirected belligerence is made wors or better by having “spiritual leaders” of the stripe of Imam Elahi, I’ll leave for the Imam Elahis of the world to explain.
After bucking up the Iranian sea dogs Imam Elahi came to the USA around 1991 on a 4-month visa. According to one source, that visa “enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran's network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran's influence on Shi'ite communities (in Dearborn)."
Now he’s an American citizen, which, if nothing else, grants him the right to use first-person pronouns when attacking the United States. Such as when he said in his Tuesday column,
“Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another”; or, “Our nation deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
I guess I shouldn’t knock him for it. Most Democrats are born here and still reflexively refer to most Americans as “them.”
Anyway, Elahi’s nostalgia for a period of respect and love for America that he’s never been around for is truly inspiring. I get dewy-eyed thinking back on those carefree days when it was Jimmy Carter that Ahmadinejad and his scruffy cohorts were burning in effigy as they brutalized our embassy staff.
But although he denies being an Iranian agent, Imam Elahi seems to have a one-track mind when it comes to the policies he preaches. They always seem to be pointed at benefits to Iran--or Iran’s creature, Hezbollah.
For example, to undo the “moral tragedy” of the Bush foreign policy, Elahi thinks we need “to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don't start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.”
But who’s to benefit from us “stopping” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In other words, who's to benefit from our withdrawing and leaving both newly liberated nations to the depredations of their strongest neighbor--Iran. And who’s the only Persian Gulf nation in the region there’s even the remotest chance of us going to war with? Iran.
Elahi continues: “There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons.” For this, Elahi cites the much-maligned National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which he says “confirmed that Iran's nuclear program has no military aspect -- it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Except the NIE didn’t. Instead, all 16 American spy agencies that contributed to the report stated “that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.’” (“U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work”).
But Elahi is particularly adamant that Iran is not nuke-bound, and he wishes Bush would quit taking the cautious route, (as if world peace depended on it, or something), pointing out how “United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding ‘fuel to the fire’ with bellicose rhetoric.”
But if there’s no fire, how can you add fuel to it? Besides, “watchdog” El-Baredei, even as he faces daily lies and obfuscation from Iranian authorities, has never been willing to admit there’s an Iranian bomb program, and probably won’t until he’s falling through space onto Tel Aviv straddling one Slim-Pickens style.
Imam Elahi does spare some concern for the nation he has adopted, instead of the one he's not an agent for. He cares deeply that America “deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
His advice is that the “United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace.” He’s short on specifics, but I think this translates this way: “Dump Israel, and let Iran have the bomb.”
Imam Elahi does think there’s a way we can still be friends with Israel, but we should imitate Jimmy Carter in showing how true friendship really works. “Honestly, the best friends of Israel are those who say it like it is. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy toward Gaza ‘one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.’”
(What do you bet it's been a while since Rosalynn asked Jimmy, "Does this dress make me look fat?")
Now we're all waiting for Jimmy to give Hamas some of the same depth of constructive criticism, and show them some true friendship.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Mecca to Dearborn: 'Take a Day Off'
The Dearborn Public School system has just made a last-minute announcement that, rather than Winter Break starting on Thursday, December 20th, it is being moved back a day to Wednesday, the 19th. The change is going to mess up the schedules of students and working parents, and the district has now had to rush negotiations with the “teachers union and the non-instructional union, which includes the bus drivers, custodians, food service, paraprofessionals and secretaries” about adjusting mandated and negotiated days off.
Here is what happened, as reported in the Dearborn Press and Guide. (“Late Eid scheduling throws district a curve ball”).
School officials met with union leaders last week to change the start of winter break to accommodate the Islamic celebration of Eid al-Adha.
Superintendent John Artis told the Board of Education at its Monday meeting the district anticipated the holiday would be celebrated Thursday.
Then school officials were notified that the High Judiciary Council in Saudi Arabia set the date for Wednesday.
“It wasn't until Monday [December 10] that Saudi Arabia announced it would be the 19th,” said David Mustonen, the district's communications director. “We tried to anticipate it and set the day, putting some buffer time in there.”
Another difficulty setting the date is that Sunni and Shia Muslims celebrate the first day of the holiday on different days.
“We received a fax from the Islamic Center of America that all the imams got together and said the 20th is when Eid would be celebrated,” Mustonen said.
DPS Trustee James Schoolmaster said,
“Leaving the calendar as is would result in high absentee rates among students and staff, which would translate into loss of state aid for the day, [DPS Superintendent John] Artis told the board.”
Eid al-Adha celebrates Ibraham’s (Abraham’s) willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. Eid also marks the conclusion of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Because the date of Eid is determined on a lunar calendar, its date is always different on the Gregorian solar calendar used by our public schools. The date may also vary from country to country as the moon is visible from those places or not.
Reports do not indicate why it is that Saudis had so much trouble figuring out the predictable lunar cycles before the last minute.
Unhappy parents and critics of this level of accommodation are going to have it pointed out to them that the school schedule already includes “Christian holidays,” so Muslim holidays should be entitled to the same consideration.
In Dearborn, they already do receive the same consideration, and then some extra consideration, too, as this episode shows. Namely, the need for the Dearborn Public School system, all its teachers, 18,000 students and their parents, and all DPS staff, to adjust their calendar on barely a week’s notice to facilitate the religious needs of the district’s Sunni Muslim population, which in turn has to wait for date rulings concerning Eid from the High Judiciary Council in Saudi Arabia.
Dearborn's nonMuslims don't begrudge anyone time off to keep religious holidays. But it doesn't look so good when there's an appearance that taxpayer-funded schools have to stand up, sit down, and turn around at the say-so of, literally, foreign princes. Remember all the flak JFK from fundamentalists worried he was going to get his orders from the Pope? This is sort of like that, except Rome never interfered with JFK, and even if it had, the Pope was never going to call up the White House on December 21st to announce a change in the date of Christmas.
This is one of those situations where, if Dearborn's Sunni leaders are smart, they'll graciously acknowledge that it was their own Saudi clerics who caused all this inconvenience, and show some remorse for the trouble its caused their neighbors, and even show some gratitude that the school system so readily cooperated. But I'm afraid that, as usual, Dearborn's Muslims will just take the DPS's above-and-beyond accomodation as nothing more than what Muslims are due by divine right.
Which is exactly what drives their nonMuslim neighbors crazy.
Here is what happened, as reported in the Dearborn Press and Guide. (“Late Eid scheduling throws district a curve ball”).
School officials met with union leaders last week to change the start of winter break to accommodate the Islamic celebration of Eid al-Adha.
Superintendent John Artis told the Board of Education at its Monday meeting the district anticipated the holiday would be celebrated Thursday.
Then school officials were notified that the High Judiciary Council in Saudi Arabia set the date for Wednesday.
“It wasn't until Monday [December 10] that Saudi Arabia announced it would be the 19th,” said David Mustonen, the district's communications director. “We tried to anticipate it and set the day, putting some buffer time in there.”
Another difficulty setting the date is that Sunni and Shia Muslims celebrate the first day of the holiday on different days.
“We received a fax from the Islamic Center of America that all the imams got together and said the 20th is when Eid would be celebrated,” Mustonen said.
DPS Trustee James Schoolmaster said,
“Leaving the calendar as is would result in high absentee rates among students and staff, which would translate into loss of state aid for the day, [DPS Superintendent John] Artis told the board.”
Eid al-Adha celebrates Ibraham’s (Abraham’s) willingness to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. Eid also marks the conclusion of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Because the date of Eid is determined on a lunar calendar, its date is always different on the Gregorian solar calendar used by our public schools. The date may also vary from country to country as the moon is visible from those places or not.
Reports do not indicate why it is that Saudis had so much trouble figuring out the predictable lunar cycles before the last minute.
Unhappy parents and critics of this level of accommodation are going to have it pointed out to them that the school schedule already includes “Christian holidays,” so Muslim holidays should be entitled to the same consideration.
In Dearborn, they already do receive the same consideration, and then some extra consideration, too, as this episode shows. Namely, the need for the Dearborn Public School system, all its teachers, 18,000 students and their parents, and all DPS staff, to adjust their calendar on barely a week’s notice to facilitate the religious needs of the district’s Sunni Muslim population, which in turn has to wait for date rulings concerning Eid from the High Judiciary Council in Saudi Arabia.
Dearborn's nonMuslims don't begrudge anyone time off to keep religious holidays. But it doesn't look so good when there's an appearance that taxpayer-funded schools have to stand up, sit down, and turn around at the say-so of, literally, foreign princes. Remember all the flak JFK from fundamentalists worried he was going to get his orders from the Pope? This is sort of like that, except Rome never interfered with JFK, and even if it had, the Pope was never going to call up the White House on December 21st to announce a change in the date of Christmas.
This is one of those situations where, if Dearborn's Sunni leaders are smart, they'll graciously acknowledge that it was their own Saudi clerics who caused all this inconvenience, and show some remorse for the trouble its caused their neighbors, and even show some gratitude that the school system so readily cooperated. But I'm afraid that, as usual, Dearborn's Muslims will just take the DPS's above-and-beyond accomodation as nothing more than what Muslims are due by divine right.
Which is exactly what drives their nonMuslim neighbors crazy.
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