NEW YORK — An attorney representing the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, scaled the steps of City Hall yesterday to oppose the new Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), a public school that opened this week in Brooklyn.
“We are concerned that the city is setting up a segregated, separate but equal public school system: one for Islam and another for everyone else,” Rooney said.
Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the center said the school “lends itself to subtle and covert influence of these young impressionable children.”
more from source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle :: Brooklyn SPACE
Onto the first quote. If this were a Christian school I doubt very highly that the Thomas More Law Center would be stepping in in the capacity that they are at this moment. And the second quote. Does anybody see the irony of this statement? It would be ok, I'm sure, if we were to insert "Christian" after influence.
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Now that Dhabah aka Debbie Almontaser has resigned as the principal-designate of the Khalil Gibran International Academy and has been replaced by a Jewish woman, Danielle Salzberg, some assume the opposition to the school itself is over. That supposition would be false.
more from source: Where Is The ACLU? - August 15, 2007 - The New York Sun
In one part of this article the author states, "Meanwhile New York has created an Arabic public school which has several religious clerics on the advisory board." This in reference to the ACLU elsewhere tackling "Christian" related cases. My guess is that this school is not an Islamic madrassa as some people have been claiming but rather, I would think, an Arabic and Middle-eastern cultural studies school. That's why the ACLU isn't involved because it's not a civil liberties case. Cultural studies would immensely benefit this country. Instead you have the formation of organizations like the Madrassa Community Coalition. And the mention of "several religious clerics on the advisory board"; so what! Myself, I'd rather have no religious leaders in any public school setting, but you know what? There's got to be a good number of former or current priests, pastors and rabbis on plenty of other public school boards across the country. Why target this specific school? Xenophobia plain and simple.
