Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Khalil Gibran International Academy- Drawing the Line
Khalil Gibran International Academy- Drawing the Line
December 9, 2008
Khalil Gibran International Academy - Drawing The Line
Khalil Gibran International Academy - Drawing The Line
By WILLIAM MAYER
December 8, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - The latest defense of Brooklyn's failed Islamist experimental school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy [KGIA], takes the form of a droning 3,000 word essay penned by Seth Wessler in Colorlines a small circulation San Francisco based leftist publication which specializes in race pimping. [see, Seth Wessler, Silenced in the Classroom, Colorlines, http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=456]
In his haste to build a polemic in support of KGIA, beginning with the lead paragraph it's obvious that the author fails either to understand the controversy in any meaningful way, or possibly worse, approves of a curriculum prominently featuring an Arabic focus despite its inevitable fostering of Islamism.
"Sixth-grade students at the newly opened Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn were probably surprised last year when they opened their Arabic books to find photographs cut from the pages. "We cut pictures of mosques out of the Arabic books," said Hassan Omar, an Egyptian man who until last spring taught Arabic and humanities at the academy, the country's first Arabic-English, dual-language public school. "We are afraid that anything could be taken out of context."
As many noted at the time including this writer, the fact that KGIA's curriculum was designed from the outset to be Arab-centric was problematic in that such an emphasis would necessarily intrude far beyond what has been interpreted as permissible in secularized education - especially the sterilized brand of religion free indoctrination that leftists insist upon.
Wessler's noting of the prominent placement of an image of a mosque in the school's instructional material only hints at KGIA's flawed founding principles and the impossibility of separating Arabic culture from Islam.
As noted by Dr. Daniel Pipes.
"Regarding the practice of instructing students in Arabic, Dr. Pipes explains:
"Evidence from Algeria also points to the impact of Arabic instruction, as documented in James Coffman's breakthrough 1995 article "Does the Arabic Language Encourage Radical Islam?" He compared Algerian students taught in French versus those taught in Arabic and found that Arabized students show decidedly greater support for the Islamist movement and greater mistrust of the West. Arabized students tend to repeat the same simplistic stories and rumors that abound in the Arabic-language press, particularly Al-Munqidh, the newspaper of the Islamic Salvation Front.They tell about sightings of the word "Allah" written in the afternoon sky, the infiltration into Algeria of Israeli women spies infected with AIDS, the "disproving" of Christianity on a local religious program, and the mass conversion to Islam by millions of Americans." [source, Beila Rabinowitz and William A. Mayer, Khalil Gibran - Joel Klein Must Keep Promise And Shut Down Religious School, PipeLineNews.org, May 7, 2007, http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=jihadschool5707.htm]
The author's hard-left political philosophy imbues the piece, finding expression in for example his declaration that KGIA was necessary as, "a refuge in the midst of post-Sept. 11 New York City."
Such sentiments play into the grander leftist narrative post 9/11, that the Bush administration used the September jihadist attacks as a pretext for creating an American gulag, stoking anti-Arab racism to justify police state tactics.
That low level of discourse necessarily and correctly stigmatizes such essays, removing them from the realm of the serious as does their airing in publications such as Colorlines which features articles on the order of, One Nation Under Allah; For Jews Only: Racism Inside Israel and authors such as revolutionary Communist turned "educator" Angela Davis. Of note, Davis was the registered owner of the shotgun with which "Soledad Brother" sympathizer Jonathan Jackson (younger brother of jailed "Brother" George Jackson) used to blow Judge Harold Haley's head off during an abortive 1970 jailbreak.
That KGIA is garnering support from anti-American ideologues such as Mr. Wessler speaks volumes about the failed nature of the institution as does the way in which his ideology is so thoroughly accommodative of KGIA's pedagogy. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=colorlinesid=12.8.08%2Ehtm
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