Minnesota ACLU Gets Religion

This is one time the ACLU is on the right side of things.

The Minnesota ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit against the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, “named for the Muslim general who conquered medieval Spain,” the taxpayer-funded charter school operating as a private Muslim religious school. (“ACLU to sue Twin Cities charter school that caters to Muslims”).

You can read the Complaint here.

Besides requiring Islamic dress, serving halal food in the cafeteria, scheduling prayers during class times, and arranging the bus schedule so that students more or less have to attend Islamic religious classes at the end of each schoolday, “the school has issued a handbook instructing staff to not discuss what goes on at the school.” Charles Samuelson, state ACLU executive director, points out that “’You cannot have a broad secrecy oath’ in a school funded with public dollars.’”

Samuelson said the school has used some government aid money to pay rent to holding companies, which then funneled it to the Muslim American Society of Minnesota and Minnesota Education Trust, a group the ACLU says is a non-profit that also promotes Islam.

The MAS is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. As we have noted here time and again, the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood includes “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” And the school’s sponsor, Islamic Relief—USA, is a subsidiary of Islamic Relief Worldwide, which the Israeli government has identified as providing support and relief to Hamas.

According to Katherine Kersten, who broke this story early last year:

TIZA’s strong religious connections date from its founding in 2003. Its co-founders, Zaman and Hesham Hussein, were both imams, or Muslim religious leaders, as well as leaders of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN).

Since then, they have played dual roles: Zaman as TIZA’s principal and the current vice-president of MAS-MN, and Hussein as TIZA’s school board chair and president of MAS-MN until his death in a car accident in Saudi Arabia in January.

TIZA shares MAS-MN’s headquarters building, along with a mosque.

MAS-MN came to Minnesotans’ attention in 2006, when it issued a “fatwa,” warning Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that transporting passengers with alcohol in their baggage is a violation of Islamic law.

According to Kersten, and representatives of the ACLU, TIZA officials were evasive and squirrely about claiming to be in compliance with all state laws, when they clearly weren’t. They also dragged their feet when asked to make changes.

If this were a private religious school, none of this would matter to us. For that matter, I'm personally not that enamored with the current regime where voluntary religious activity and expression is completely eliminated from public schools.

Nonetheless, and in large part because of groups like the ACLU, that is the strict standard that everyone else—especially the majority Christian population—have been forced to accept. A double standard can’t be applied just for Muslims.

This isn’t just a misunderstanding. These scalawags knew perfectly well they were flouting the law, and taking taxpayer money to spread and finance Islam, to boot. I’m thinking they also had a pretty good idea that since they were Muslim there would be a “fear factor” preventing state authorities from taking too much notice. In other words, the whole thing followed standard operating procedure for people imposing creeping shariah.

The ACLU has applied a much, much lower standard when making cases against Christians. At least in this case, when the abuse was egregious enough, ACLU-MN did the right thing. I’m not sure ACLU-MI ever would.

Minnesota Charter Schools Train Pupils for the Future--(the Islamic Future)

Minnesota’s Islamic charter school, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA), is still asserting its independence from control by the state department of education, according to Katherine Kersten at the Minnesota Star Tribune. We've posted Kersten's reports about this Islamic academy situation before. (“Establishing Islam in Minnesota”; “Even ACLU-MN Sees the Problem in Minneapolis”). Now Kersten writes that discussions with the Minnesota Dept. of Ed to bring TiZA into compliance with legal prohibitons against publicly-funded charter schools endorsing religion have run into resistance:

TiZA officials have "taken a confrontational road" in discussions with the department, according to Deputy MDE Commissioner Chas Anderson, the department's No. 2 official.

Anderson says that the two sides have not yet reached an agreement on one key issue and that MDE will be closely monitoring TiZA's performance in future months.

TiZA is a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights, financed by taxpayers. Its students have scored well on standardized tests. But like all public schools, it may not encourage or endorse religion, or favor one religion over another.

A number of facts raise questions about TiZA on this score. Its executive director, Asad Zaman, is an imam, or Muslim religious leader. The school shares a building with a mosque and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society, which the Chicago Tribune has described as the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood -- "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group."

Most of TiZA's students are Muslim, many from low-income immigrant families. The school breaks daily for prayer, its cafeteria serves halal food (permissible under Islamic law), and Arabic is a required subject.

School buses do not leave until after-school Muslim Studies classes, which many students attend, have ended for the day.

Read about it here: Storm brewing between state officials and TiZA school .

'Establishing Islam in Minnesota'

The following report from Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, (link thanks to Act! For America), describes how a Minnesota charter school--still a public school paid for by taxpayers--is in effect an Islamic academy.

In many ways Minneapolis is a sister city to Dearborn. It was the Minneapolis airport that installed footwashing stations at public expense for the convenience of its Muslim cabbies. It was the Minneapolis Community and Technical College that first launched the footbath-as safety-and-hygiene--not religion explanation that was then adopted by the UM-Dearborn later.

Read and you’ll find how many of the same cast of characters from the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN) whose fatwa to airport taxi drivers in 2006 led to Muslim cabbies refusing to transport leader dogs or passengers carrying packaged alcohol. Star Tribune writer Katherine Kersten has written many articles throwing light on the activities of the MAS-MN and CAIR in the Minneapolis area.

Are taxpayers footing bill for Islamic school in Minnesota?

By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

Last update: March 8, 2008 - 4:43 PM

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) -- named for the Muslim general who conquered medieval Spain -- is a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Its approximately 300 students are mostly the children of low-income Muslim immigrant families, many of them Somalis.

The school is in huge demand, with a waiting list of 1,500. Last fall, it opened a second campus in Blaine.

TIZA uses the language of culture rather than religion to describe its program in public documents. According to its mission statement, the school "recognizes and appreciates the traditions, histories, civilizations and accomplishments of the eastern world (Africa, Asia and Middle East)."

But the line between religion and culture is often blurry. There are strong indications that religion plays a central role at TIZA, which is a public school financed by Minnesota taxpayers. Under the U.S. and state constitutions, a public school can accommodate students' religious beliefs but cannot encourage or endorse religion.

TIZA raises troubling issues about taxpayer funding of schools that cross that line.

Asad Zaman, TIZA's principal, declined to allow me to visit the school or grant me an interview. He did not respond to e-mails seeking written replies.

TIZA's strong religious connections date from its founding in 2003. Its co-founders, Zaman and Hesham Hussein, were both imams, or Muslim religious leaders, as well as leaders of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN).

Since then, they have played dual roles: Zaman as TIZA's principal and the current vice-president of MAS-MN, and Hussein as TIZA's school board chair and president of MAS-MN until his death in a car accident in Saudi Arabia in January.

MAS-MN came to Minnesotans' attention in 2006, when it issued a "fatwa," warning Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that transporting passengers with alcohol in their baggage is a violation of Islamic law.

Journalists whom Zaman has permitted to visit TIZA have described the school's Islamic atmosphere and practices.

"A visitor might well mistake Tarek ibn Ziyad for an Islamic school," reported Minnesota Monthly in 2007. "Head scarves are voluntary, but virtually all the girls wear them." The school has a central carpeted prayer space, and "vaguely religious-sounding language" is used.

According to the Pioneer Press, TIZA's student body prays daily and the school's cafeteria serves halal food (permissible under Islamic law). During Ramadan, all students fast from dawn to dusk, according to a parent quoted in the article.

In fact, TIZA was originally envisioned as a private Islamic school. In 2001, MAS-MN negotiated to buy the current TIZA/MAS-MN building for Al-Amal School, a private religious institution in Fridley, according to Bruce Rimstad of the Inver Grove Heights School District. But many immigrant families can't afford Al-Amal. In 2002, Islamic Relief -- headquartered in California -- agreed to sponsor a publicly funded charter school, TIZA, at the same location.
TIZA claims to be non-sectarian, as Minnesota law requires charters to be. But "after-school Islamic learning" takes place on weekdays in the same building under MAS-MN's auspices, according to the program for MAS-MN's 2007 convention. At that convention, a TIZA representative at the school's booth told me that students go directly to "Islamic studies" classes at 3:30, when TIZA's day ends. There, they learn "Qur'anic recitation, the Sunnah of the Prophet" and other religious subjects, he said.

TIZA's 2006 Contract Performance Review Report states that students engage in unspecified "electives" after school or do homework.

Publicly, TIZA emphasizes that it uses standard curricular materials like those found in other public schools. But when addressing Muslim audiences, school officials make the link to Islam clear. At MAS-MN's 2007 convention, for example, the program featured an advertisement for the "Muslim American Society of Minnesota," superimposed on a picture of a mosque. Under the motto "Establishing Islam in Minnesota," it asked: "Did you know that MAS-MN .. houses a full-time elementary school"? On the adjacent page was an application for TIZA.

In addition to the issues raised by TIZA's religious elements, there are reasons to be concerned about the organizations with which it is connected.

Group linked to Hamas
Islamic Relief-USA, the school's sponsor, is compared to the Red Cross in several TIZA documents. In 2006, however, the Israeli government announced that Islamic Relief Worldwide, the organization's parent group, "provides support and assistance" to Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist group.

Meanwhile, MAS-MN offers on its web site "beneficial and enlightening information" about Islam, which includes statements like "Regularly make the intention to go on jihad with the ambition to die as a martyr."

At its 2007 convention, MAS-MN featured the notorious Shayk Khalid Yasin, who is well-known in Britain and Australia for teaching that husbands can beat disobedient wives, that gays should be executed and that the United States spreads the AIDS virus in Africa through vaccines for tropical diseases.

Yasin's topic? "Building a Successful Muslim Community in Minnesota."

TIZA has improved the reading and math performance of its mostly low-income students. That's commendable, but should Minnesota taxpayers be funding an Islamic public school?