Parents have vowed to continue protests and boycotts until Islamic College of SA board resigns

FOR years it was the pride of the Muslim community, a school that reached out to its neighbours and helped promote cultural understanding across Adelaide.

Migrant students from across the globe were taught to be proudly Australian, regularly singing the national anthem and their own school song. But they don’t sing any more.

A deep rift between parents and management threatens the future of the Islamic College of South Australia.

Relations have soured to the point where hundreds of parents kept their children at home on Friday in protest against the school’s board and they say they will organise more boycott days until the board resigns.

The warning signs began three years ago when principal Julia Abdelale was sacked, beginning a revolving door of school leaders who, parents say, are at the mercy of the board.

Many experienced teachers have been shown the door and replaced with younger ones, who earn less and are considered less likely to challenge board decisions, such as the controversial edict that all female staff wear headscarves.

Parents say educational standards are plummeting and a modest music program has been scrapped. They are also appalled at plans for a mosque and more classrooms on a school site that lacks playspace.

This year, a small band of parents began organising small public rallies but it was the sacking of beloved teacher and imam Brother Khalid Yousef last month and the expulsion of senior students for supporting him, that sent the school community into a frenzy of protest.

SA = South Australia, in this case. And in Australia, the term 'College' most often applies to what Americans would call a High School.

This is an example of moderate, reasonable Muslims, who want to fit into a mainstream western society standing up to the radical extremists. They had, over a decade and a half, developed a well regarded school that functioned in much the same way as most other faith schools in Australia (it was actually largely modelled on the Catholic schools here) providing secular education in classes like English and Mathematics and History and Science, and keeping its religious teaching primarily in Religious Education classes. It was set up by moderate Muslims who did not want to abandon their religion and who wanted their children to be taught it, but wanted to be Australian and to be part of mainstream Australian society. Many of the teachers of the secular subjects were not Muslim. They've had non-Muslim principals as well - the idea was to have the best teachers you could get regardless of whether they were Muslim or not, except in the religious education subject.

And now that has changed. The school is under the governing authority of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils who have the power to appoint is governing body - it's school board and a couple of years ago, it stopped appointing moderates who supported the schools approach and began appointing traditionalists, for want of a better term and the school has wound up with a much more hardline school council and specifically a chairman who has obviously decided it wasn't 'Islamic' enough by his definitions. He's ordered all female staff to wear headscarves including those who are not Muslim, in the clearest visible sign of the change in focus. Many senior staff have been sacked to be replaced with younger teachers who are less likely to stand up to authority and fight back. The moderate Imam who helped found the school in 1998 has been sacked and replaced. Their music program has been shut down, apparently regarded as 'un-Islamic'. They've also stopped singing the Australian national anthem at their school assemblies, which makes an interesting statement.

The senior students have protested about this. And some have been expelled for doing so. The parents are protesting as well, now - these are the moderate Muslims who often seem invisible, and who people including myself have asked in the past, why they don't stand up against the extremists. Well, here they are. Until recently only a minority of the parents were involved in the protests but their numbers are building.

I hope it works, and they can get their school back.

People will ask why the parents just don't pull their kids out - some have. But this school has been built up by the local Muslim community for the last seventeen years and many of these parents have put hundreds of hours of their time into the school, and thousands of their dollars, to try and make it a good school for their kids. I'd want to fight for it too in their situation, rather than just give it up to somebody else.

The radical Muslims always wind up in the driver’s seat, driven by fanaticism and hate which the moderates lack.

Or so-called moderates. I’m not saying every nonfanatical Muslim is a sleeper or a ticking time bomb, but they will when the chips are down go with the stronger horse.

I remember following the 1967 Six Day War how towns in northern Israel which had had a mixed population of Arabs & Jews were torn permanently apart when the Arabs believed the fantastical lies of Radio Damascus that the Syrian army had defeated the IDF & was preparing to sweep down from the Golan Heights into Israel proper.

Arabs in these mixed villages began talking openly & boastfully about how they were going to kill the Jewish men, take their houses & property, and kidnap Jewish women for sex slaves.

On the other front, Radio Cairo broadcast in Hebrew the suggestion that Israeli women should wear their most alluring clothing to welcome the conquering Egyptian army.

Needless to say, when the truth emerged about the tremendous Israeli victory & their taking Golan, Jewish villagers expelled the Arabs in their midst who had boasted of their intent to pillage & rape their neighbors, because trust was dead and the Arabs had killed it.

Now, that was nearly fifty years ago when Islam in the Arab world wasn’t nearly as radicalized as it is today.

It has been demonstrated that Muslims don’t have to achieve a majority amongst “infidels” to become a de facto ruling class enforcing Shariah. And yes, a million Arabs have Israeli citizenship, but their representatives in the Knesset are a quarrelsome & obstructionist bunch.

As for this school in Australia, it becomes clear once again that the less of a Muslim one is, the better a human being one becomes.

I am afraid that we “infidels” can’t afford to let our guard down, especially since last Sunday.

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