Free Republic

Last week, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) and the Minnesota Department of Education appeared to reach an understanding in the controversy over whether Islam is being promoted at this public school. But behind the scenes, a storm may be brewing. 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.

Karachi Kids by: Robin Beshear, July 21, 2008 California-born Muslim Imran Raza takes Americans behind the doors of the radical madrassa Jamia Binoria in his upcoming documentary, The Karachi Kids. The film focuses on the story of two American boys from Atlanta who were sent by their Islamic father to the Taliban-affiliated madrassa in Pakistan. The film takes place over a four-year time period, showing the progression of brainwashing that happens at these madrassas. At the beginning of the film, the boys are eager to go back to America and be with their families. By the end, they want to...

War On Terror: After 9/11, Pakistan promised to close its radical madrassas as part of anti-terror reforms. Now we learn they're not only still open, but also recruiting and brainwashing American boys.All told, 600 American children are being indoctrinated into jihad in 22 madrassas across Pakistan. A U.S. filmmaker stumbled on them while tracing the path of the London suicide bombers. He discovered they attended the same radical Islamic schools. A congressional delegation has confirmed his findings. One particularly radical school in Karachi freely displays a banner at its main gate urging Muslims to join the Taliban. At least 80...

Madrassas do not breed terrorists: Musharraf ISLAMABAD: There is a need to dispel the western notion that Islamic educational institutions breed extremists and terrorists, President Pervez Musharraf said on Wednesday. Talking to International Islamic University (IIU) Rector Dr Manzoor Ahmed, the president said that the institutions of higher education were best placed to promote a critical dialogue within the Muslim world and that they could create an interfaith harmony. President Musharraf, who is also chancellor of the university, also discussed issues related to university academics, including improving the higher education system in the country, with the IIU rector. Sources said...

Islamofascism: Saudi money buys a lot in Washington, even an extension of a lease to an Islamic school that graduates terrorists and teaches its students it's OK to kill non-Muslims.A federal panel wants the Islamic Saudi Academy inside the Beltway shut down for promoting hate, something we've urged for years. But remarkably, this madrassa still has powerful backers — including the State Department. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last week released the results of a probe of the academy, which is financed and operated by the Saudi government. It found the school has failed to eliminate violent and...

The Afghan government has changed its policy on madrassas, the religious schools that inspired a generation of fundamentalists who became the Taliban. Rather than trying to freeze them out, it is trying to bring them into the state system, providing they widen their syllabus to teach other subjects. The Education Minister Hanif Atmar says: "We are critical of policies in the past. Actually it was a result of those policies to exclude these madrassas, keep them on the margin of the society, and then entirely hand them over to the fundamentalists." Under the reform the schools will be able to...

Roger L. Simon, last seen cavorting with Pajama clad babes on the floor of the BlogWorld convention like a latter day Hugh Hefner, sat down with Fred Thompson to discuss the Global War on Terror. Bob Owens, proprietor of the excellent Confederate Yankee blog, joined Roger in conducting the interview. I linked to this yesterday in my Republican race Q&A, but the interview itself merits a little post of its own. In no particular order, a few observations: 1) The long form interview allowed Fred to express his knowledge and thoughts on the war on terror. He was impressive. Believe...

Feds Recommend Closing Saudi School in Va. By MATTHEW BARAKAT The Associated Press Thursday, October 18, 2007; 12:25 AM McLEAN, Va. -- A private Islamic school supported by the Saudi government should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam, a federal panel recommends. In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools. Several advocacy groups in recent years have cited examples of inflammatory statements in religious textbooks...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A mother who tried to stop her son from carrying out a suicide bomb attack triggered an explosion in the family's home in southern Afghanistan that killed the would-be bomber, his mother and three siblings, police said Monday. The would-be bomber had been studying at a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan, and when he returned to his home in Uruzgan province over the weekend announced that he planned to carry out a suicide attack, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said. Surviving family members told police that the suicide vest exploded during a struggle between the...

Religious organizations are raising an unholy ruckus over proposed changes in religious worker visa regulations that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says would reduce rampant fraud in the program, reports The Washington Post: [R]eligious organizations that increasingly serve immigrant populations cite a need to bring in workers with the spiritual, cultural and linguistic expertise to serve them.Religious worker visas are used to bring in Catholic nuns, Hebrew teachers, Muslim imams and Baptist church administrators, among other workers. In 2006, more than 11,000 of the visas were issued, most to natives of Korea, Israel and India.Religious organizations say no other...

Political Correctness: Seems the ACLU couldn't care less that a San Diego public school has set aside 15 minutes of classroom instruction time for Muslim students to pray, while non-Muslims twiddle their thumbs. Right now it has no plans to legally challenge the budding madrassa as endorsement of a religion by government. Apparently the establishment clause only applies to the practice of Judeo-Christian rituals in public places. The special accommodations for Carver Elementary's nearly 100 Somali Muslims don't stop with organized prayer. The school cafeteria has banned pork and other foods that conflict with the Islamic diet.

Homeland Security: New York City plans to give Brooklyn Arabs and Muslims their own public school where they can speak Arabic. The idea is to promote cultural harmony. But it's Pollyannaish, and potentially dangerous. With this culture, tolerance is not mutual. Putting aside the issue of American taxpayers supporting a school dedicated to the study of a foreign culture hostile to our own, the move raises serious security questions. Will the school, located not far from Ground Zero, condone or encourage jihad? Will it act like a madrassa? How will authorities know any better, if classes are taught in Arabic?...

THE International Crisis Group has condemned President Pervez Musharraf's failure to curb Pakistan's extremist Islamic schools. A report released yesterday by the group, headed by former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, says promises made by General Musharraf in 2002 to reform madrassas, or religious schools, are "in shambles". Focusing on the city of Karachi as a hotbed of radical madrassa activity that reflects the situation persisting across Pakistan, the ICG report says: "Banned sectarian and jihadi groups, supported by networks of mosques and madrassas, continue to operate openly, with consequences for internal stability and regional and international security." (Excerpt)

Alert Abbas to PA textbooks [Palestinian 12th grade textbooks teach hating Israel, pursuing its destruction - religious duties.] By HAVIV RETTIG Talkbacks for this article: 11 "You can't have agreements while this kind of hatred is inculcated in the children," Knesset Education Committee Chairman Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad) said on Tuesday after seeing new 12th-grade textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority late last year. "I intend to demand from Prime Minister [Ehud Olmert] that he present the findings [of a new report on the textbooks] to Abu Mazen [PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] at their next meeting," Melchior said. Melchior's statements at...

OF SCHOLARS AND ZEALOTS Are Koran Schools Hotbeds of Terrorism? http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,472583,00.html By Bernhard ZandTo most Western minds, madrasahs are breeding grounds for terrorists. But that's only one side of the coin. The syllabus at many Koran schools is far removed from Islamist extremism. For millions of Muslims, these schools are the only hope of an education. One of the men is wearing a white turban and a mint-green cloak over his tailored dishdasha, the traditional Arab men's robe - pure silk, freshly ironed. When he sits down, the mere fall of its folds betrays that he is a man of...

Muslim leaders fear thousands of children are abused at madrassas Independent, The (London), Mar 22, 2006 by Robert Verkaik Legal Affairs Correspondent Thousands of Muslim schoolchildren are being physically and sexually abused by their religious teachers every year, according to a report into the Islamic education system in this country. The potential scale of the abuse has led to fears among Muslim leaders that Britain's Mosque-based schools will face the kind of child abuse claims that has recently scandalised the Roman Catholic Church. Up to 100,000 children are taught at 700 Islamic schools, or madrassas, of which almost a half...

WASHINGTON - Although Sen. Barack Obama is a Christian, his childhood and family connections to Islam are beginning to complicate his presidential ambitions. The Illinois Democrat spent much of last week refuting unfounded reports that he had been educated in a madrassa, or radical Islamic school, when he lived in Indonesia as a boy. “The Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa,” said a statement put out by the senator’s staff. But the school did teach the Quran, Islam’s holy book, along with subjects such as math and...

The Junior Scholastic "news magazine" that is written for elementary students and used in thousands of public schools across the United States has published an article promoting "madrassa" school life for American children who are Muslims, much to the outrage of some parents. "Remember way back in grade school and getting Junior Scholastic magazine in school? Well here is an example of what JS has devolved into. Force-feeding the barbaric propaganda of Islamic madrassas down the throats of my 7th and 4th graders. Disgusting," a father wrote WND about the issue, published in November. Scholastic spokeswoman Jennifer Slackman told WND...

Muslims ask to worship at Cordoba More than a million of Spain's 44 million inhabitants are Muslims [GALLO/GETTY] Spanish Muslims have written to the Vatican to demand the right to worship at Cordoba Cathedral. Spain's Islamic Board wrote to Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, calling on him to grant them permission to worship in the cathedral, parts of which were built as a mosque during Spain's period of Islamic rule. The group said in their letter: "What we wanted was not to take over that holy place, but to create in it, together with you and other faiths, an ecumenical...

LOS ANGELES -- The new documentary "Jesus Camp" is shocking Christians and non-Christians alike with its scenes of children sobbing and crying out to God at a Pentecostal summer camp in North Dakota. The film follows Midwestern children Rachael, now 10, Levi, now 13, and Tory, now 11, who attended Fischer's Bible camp in Devils Lake, N.D., in 2005, according to the Los Angeles Times. Filmmaker Heidi Ewing said she was raised Catholic and her co-director, Rachel Grady, is Jewish, enabling them to present what they hope is a neutral view of Pastor Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire" program. Grady...