Posted on 10/24/2001 5:42:25 PM PDT by Parmy
New York--Since missles and bombs began falling on Afghanistan, Nidal Abuasi, principan of Al Noor School in Brooklyn, has condemned the war again and again to his students.
"You don't correct something terrible with something equally terrible." he said, describing what he has been telling them. "We cannot accept or tolerate that any Muslim civilians, or any civilians on earth, fall victim or be killed in an act of retribution."
In school assemblies, classroom discussions and individual conberstations, Abuasi has urged his 600 students, from kindergarten to 12th grade, to think critically about the way. Disagreeing with the government, he tells them, doesn't make you unpatriotic.
"American," he said,"does not want its people to be rubber stamps."
Islamic school educators have found themselves in a delicate position since the events on Sept. 11 and expecially since the U.S. military campaign began against Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and the al-Qaida terrorist network.
After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the answers were easier. Terrorism is wrong, teachers and principals told their students. Don't be ashamed of who you are, they said. Report any harassment to authorities.
The attack on Afghanistan, however, has complicated matters, according to several Islamic shcool principals. Competing allegiances to God and country must now be confronted.
Islamic schools, with their dual emphases on religion and academics, have flourished across the country in recent years as Muslim populations have boomed. There are more than 200 Islamic schools nationwide, according to the Council of Islamic Schools in North America.
Students at these schools, especially older students, are pressing their teachers to help them understand the history unfolding around them and sort through their loyalties.
"How long do the plan on bombing Afghanistan?" Javaira Moughal, a 17-year-old Al Noor student, asked during economics class. "It's already a Third World country>"
Her teacher, Maryam Sayar, said she didn't know and agreed that the bombing seemed pointless
"Why are they killing civilians?" another student asked.
"In all wars, innocent bystanders are going to be killed," Sayar said.
"Why doesn't the U.S. just listen to what Osama said and get out of the Holy Land:" asked Mona Widdi, 16.
"In my opinion, America in its foreign ppolicy has given these so-called terrorists the reason for their attacks," Moughal said.
"Why don't they just change their policies?" the students wanted to know. "Maybe because it's against their interests," Sayar said.
However, she has also tried to explain why the United States is targeting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. She has told her students that the Taliban leaders are wrong to force their harsh religious practices upon the Afghan people.
"I don't want them to think this is Islam," she said
Almost all the students in the school are American citizens, born in the United States to immigrant parents. Yet, they are torn between loyalty to the country of their birth and concern for the countries their parents came from. In discussing the war, they repeatedly use the pronoun, "they," no "we," when referring to the United States.
"We live here, so we are Americans," said Sana Obeid, 17. But when students see fellow Muslims dying on the news, they can't help but sympathize. Obeid said, "We think of it as if we were there."
Even before Sept.11, politics was never far below the surface at Al Noor. For many students and faculty, attuned to tumult in their homelands, it is intrinsic to their identities.
Abuasi, A Palestinian-American, shows visitors a picture he keeps in his office. It depicts a Palestinian teenager with a rock in his had facing down and Israeli tank.
It is important for Muslim children to understand politics so they can be leaders in the future, the principal said. "We politicize our kids, but in a constructive way. We train them to have opinions.
The Friday before the bombing began, Abuasi told his assembled students that Muslims encounter a double standard in the world. He called Israel's primeminister, Ariel Sharon, a terrorist because of his links to an incident in Lebanon two decades ago in which several hundred Palestinians were slaughtered by troops. At another gathering, Abuasi urged his students to work for Muslim control of Islam's holy places, including the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
"Be strong in every way, in political power, military power, as a Muslim nation," he said.
After the bombings began, Abuasi invited Mauri Saalakhan, the director of a Washington, D.C.-based Muslim human rights orgaization, to address his students. In a floweryoration, Saalakhan declared that Islam forbids terrorism, but he also said the Muslim Americans should not participate in the war agains fellow Muslims.
"Do not be afraid to stand up firmly and confidently for what you believe," he said.
Overwhelming, Al Noor's students agree with their principal and vigorously oppose the war, according to teachers. Many students are cynical about America's motives and see the bombing as an example of the United States bullying the Arab world.
Teachers insist they try to remain impartial, acting only as moderators during class discussions. However, their opinions creep in as students demand answers. As a result, what students at Al Noor and other Islamic schools hear about the war in their classrooms is markedly different from what students hear at other schools in the United States.
Founded in 1995, Al Noor has grown into the largest Islamic school in New York and one of the largest in the country, its principal, Abuasi, said. Starting with just grades K through 6, Al Noor added a grade every year. Its first-ever senior class will graduate this year. The students are about 60 percent Arab--mostly from Palestine, Egypt and Yemen--and about 40 percent South Asian.
In some ways, the school is like any other. Teen-agers giggle in the hallways; students play bolleyball in the courtyard; Pokemon and Winnie the Pooh stickers grace binder covers.
But students here are segregated by sex. The girls all wear Islamic head scarves, even while playing volleyball. Students and staff gather each morning and afternoon for prayer and recitation of the Quran. All students take Islamic studies and Arabic classes daily>
On Sept. 11, it was Al Noor's seventh-grade girls who ran through the halls, spreading the news they could see from their classrooms on the third floor: The World Trade Center was on fire. Within hours, passersby yelled epithets at the building. A man managed to slip inside the shcool, screaming, "You next, you next."
The school closed for a week. When students came back, the firest two periods for the rest of the week were devoted to students' fears and questions.
The next week, however, gradually, teachers tried to return to their lessons: ancient civilizations in the ninth-grade social studies class; women in Islam in the 12th-grade Islamic studies class.
The war caught the faculty by surprise. The school made no specific plans for what teachers should say. But the topic came up again and again in discussions, especially in social studies classes. That left teachers such as Sayar, a 22-year-old recent college graduate, bearing much of the burden.
Sayar, who wears a dark-blue veil that covers her entire face, except for her eyes, is Afghan-American. Her parents were anti-Communists and part of the mujaedeen movement, before coming to America. She has not heard from relatives in Kabul since the bombing began.
Most of her students did not even know where Afghanistan was before the war started, she said. So, she has taken it upon herself to educate her students on the events in her homeland, squeezing in time between regular lessons to explain the country's cycle of poverty and to describe how the Taliban evolved from the munahedeen fighters funded by the United States in the 1980's to fight Soviet invaders.
She taught her students that the United States violated the United Nations charter in its attack on Afghanistan because the United States lacked the proof needed to justify force.
She had also told her students that there are problems with the evidence against bin Laden. Sayar questioned the discovery of a passport belonging to one alleged hijacker in the wreckage. She wondered how something like that could have survived the fiery crash.
But Sayar has also taken pains to explain the other side. Knowing that some of her students are cheered by bin Laden's rhetoric against American support for Israel, she has taught them about the Jewish diaspora. She has explained that Jews have been persecuted, and laid out why they feel so strongly about Israel.
Be independent thinkers, she tells her students, and don't believe everything you read and hear in the media.
"I try to be a neutral party," she said.
When it comes down to it, however, Sayar acknowledges the obvious--that her teaching is colored by her experience.
Said Sayar: "I'm a Muslim."
Exactly right. You correct it with something much, much worse.
OHno not the "R" word! Yeah, don't be so overly critical of the muslim "race". LOL!
I'd apply the same standards to a Christian (regardless of what religious basis the founders of this country may or may not have had)....it doesn't negate the Pledge of Allegiance, the pledge which all citizens of the U.S. take. That's a PLEDGE. Maybe some people don't take that seriously. I find it highly disturbing the trend of judging human rights violations firstly on what religious faith someone is and if it's the same as yours, and THEN on their human condition. It should be the other way around. I also find the following deserving of criticism: "She taught her students that the United States violated the United Nations charter in its attack on Afghanistan because the United States lacked the proof needed to justify force."
This might be true if the Taliban were the recognized by the U.N. as the rightful Afghan government. They are not, therefore how can the U.S. targetting of the Taliban violate the charter? And just because she herself hasn't seen the proof justifying the attack, how can she assume that U.S. intelligence doesn't have the proof...does she have access to some info that everyone else doesn't? How can someone propose the spreading of rumour and assumptions as "teaching".
Should people of questionable allegiance be deported? That would be the easiest thing to do, and I hope it never comes to that....no matter how annoying it may be that Islamic critics live in the comfort of the U.S. all while nit-picking about our "foreign policy". They should, however, and WILL be criticized....to not do so would be neglectful of 1st amendment rights and the american way.
Hogwash.
Great question! I think every Muslim we meet should be asked this question. Chances are 90% however that the first word out of their mouths will be neither "Heaven" nor "Bell." Read the Koran and you'll see why duplicity is second nature to islam. Lying is not just normal, it's taught.
Remember, Christ was a carpenter, Moses was a moralist, but Mohammed was a conqueror.
Fred
And those are criticisms...what's wrong with that? I don't have a problem with criticism of the American government. I've been known to do it too. What I have a problem with is fallacy being taught in a school as if it were fact...i.e. (paraphrased) "we violated U.N. accords" or whatever, or "We don't have any evidence". And the whole "Oohhh, we don't care about MUUUUUSLLIMMMMS" thing. Well, excuse me, didn't we send our own troops into Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia to protect these muslims that we allegedly don't care about?! IT'S BS! I'm sick of it!
"So what do i call it then? Predjudice? Let's just call it ignorant hatred.
I don't know if ignorant hatred applies. We're dealing with islamofascism here. You'd have to wonder about people's mental health if they weren't paranoid. Is ignorant hatred blowing up Catholic churches in the Southern Phillipines to the cries of "Allahu Akbar"? It's probably those goshdarned Hare Krishnas, they're at it again! Books on enlightenment my bum! Were the Mennonites posting calenders in Islamic schools in the Netherlands that have pictures of airliners crashing into a NYC skyline with the arabic script (paraphrased)"I am conditioned by Allah to die for Allah"? Was it those mischievous Jains that were violating the borders of Yugoslavia and blowing up buses? Ahhh, let me guess, it was the BUDDHISTS raising money RIGHT HERE in the states for Al-Queda, Hamas, and other organizations, right? This horse is now officially dead, thank you.
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