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2010-03-13
NY Times
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2010-03-13
Gotham Gazzette
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2009-01-25
By Seth Wessler, Colorlines
When right-wing groups began attacking the U.S.’s first Arabic language public school, located in Brooklyn, they falsely accused its principal of being connected to a group that had printed T-shirts with the slogan “intifada NYC.” The principal lost her job and the New York City school is struggling now, but the group that printed the T-shirts—Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (also known as AWAAM)—is not remaining silent in the face of accusations that they aim to incite violence.
They’ve launched the i Word Campaign—“i” for intifada.
The campaign, explains Mona Eldahry, one of the group’s founders, “is a campaign of self-defense. It’s to say, ‘this is AWAAM. This is what we are about. Yes, we can use our languages. Yes, we can talk about our people’s struggles.’”
The campaign includes videos produced by the group’s members, a poll that asked the public to think about the word intifada, which literally means ‘shaking-off’, and a redrawing of the Handala, the iconic image of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, to show a girl holding a microphone.
The group was founded after Sept. 11 to give young Arab and Muslim women and other women of color opportunities to become community organizers and media producers. Conservatives who were trying to shut down the Arabic language school thought they could silence the group’s members by branding them as terrorists. But, says Eldahry, “we have gone out to tell our stories.”
C O L O R L I N E S Jan/Feb 2009
2008-12-16
By Dean Obeidallah
Comedy Central and the Colbert Report ended their season just one business day before Goeorge W nearly lost his head to a pair of size 10 loafers. That's their loss. Obeidallah's commentary is a welcome alternative.
Click on the link above.
2008-12-09
This is a very important expose about what's going on inside the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Please read on.
Silenced in the Classroom
By Seth Wessler
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.”
It was not exactly what teachers and the planning team had expected. The Khalil Gibran school was to have been a refuge in the midst of post-Sept. 11 New York City, a place where a mixed group of Arabic speakers and non-Arabic speakers would learn together. The school, which opened in 2007 with a sixth-grade class, was designed to grow into a middle and high school in the spirit of the more than 65 dual-language schools in New York City, which teach in Spanish, Creole, Russian and other languages. By graduation, it was expected that Khalil Gibran students would have a command of Arabic and an understanding of the cultural context in which the language exists.
But this past September, many of the original sixth-grade students had not returned as seventh graders. The school has cut back on Arabic language instruction, is no longer set to become a high school and has moved twice in its first year of operation. The founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, was forced to resign following a media storm over the meaning of the word “intifada,” and the school is being led by its third principal. None of the original teachers remain at the school, and those who have left claim they were fired or forced to leave because of the stress.
It came to this, critics say, because the school was targeted by a network of conservative organizations and their media outlets that have long been in the business of attacking educators with any perceived links to Palestine. In the words of Jeffrey Weisenfeld, one of the cohort’s most prominent speakers and a powerful trustee at the City University of New York, the school would have been a breeding ground for an Islamist “religious crusade” and anti-Israel extremism posing “a danger to the social fabric of the country.”
While the idea of sixth graders leading a religious crusade might sound ridiculous, the conservative groups succeeded in their attacks. Today, the school appears mired in an atmosphere of fear, tension and instability.
•••
The idea for the Khalil Gibran International Academy began in 2005. The New Visions for Public Schools, an education reform nonprofit organization in New York, proposed the idea to the New York City Department of Education, which agreed.
For many Arab families, the school offered the possibility of moving beyond racism and fear. “Since 9/11, Arabs have been targeted in New York,” said one Arab parent who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation by school administrators. “We wanted to have people come together to become global citizens and to have a different idea about Arabs.”
For others, like Serena Fakir, a 12-year-old girl of mixed Arab and South Asian descent, it was an opportunity to learn Arabic. “In my family, I feel a little bad sometimes that I am the only one who doesn’t speak Arabic,” she said.
As New Visions began looking for someone to lead the school’s design and implementation, public officials and community members repeatedly recommended Debbie Almontaser, an Arab and Muslim-American woman of Yemeni descent with a long history as a community leader, educator and inter-religious dialogue builder. “She is a person who brings people together,” said Carmen Farina, the recently retired deputy chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.
Almontaser spent more than a year developing plans for the school. “I wanted what we taught our students to be relevant to all communities, locally and globally, for a better understanding of the world we live in,” she said in a recent interview.
But as the school moved forward, a trickle, then a torrent of reaction burst forth. “The hate blogs went up upon the naming of the school,” said Adam Rubin, who has recently left his position as the director of policy and research at New Visions. “That was the big red flag.”
In April 2007, months before the school opened, the New York Sun (which shutdown in October), a neoconservative daily paper, published an editorial by Daniel Pipes, the director of the neoconservative think-tank Middle East Forum. The New York Sun was a natural venue for Pipes. It began publication after Sept. 11 with financial backing from board members of right-wing think-tanks like the American Enterprise and Manhattan Institutes. Pipes’s editorial, titled “A Madrassa Grows In Brooklyn,” referred to the Khalil Gibran school as a “madrassa,” the Arabic word for school that has come to be associated with Islamist extremism, and he called Almontaser by her given first name of Dhabah, even though she has called herself Debbie since she was a toddler.
Pipes’s stated problem, though, was not just Almontaser; it was the existence of the school itself. “Arabic-language instruction,” he wrote, “is inevitably laden with…Islamist baggage.”
Pipes refused to be interviewed for this story. He wrote via e-mail, “I am approaching the school specifically from the vantage point of its Islamist content. In other words, I have little to say about race and color.”
Two months after his op-ed was published, a group calling itself Stop the Madrassa Community Coalition sprouted up. Pipes is an advisor to the group, which by many accounts has only a handful of members. These people, however, suddenly found the microphone handed to them whenever they wished to speak on conservative, pro-war and anti-immigrant news shows and blogs. The group’s members did not respond to requests to be interviewed.
Stop the Madrassa enlisted the help of Weisenfeld, who said the school was part of a larger “creeping” threat to the United States and the West in general because Islam is “a culture of the worship of death.”
Pipes, Weisenfeld and several Stop the Madrassa members editorialized and blogged against the school. Their associates apparently tailed Almontaser wherever she made public appearances, trying to find information that could cast her as a radical.
One afternoon, a Stop the Madrassa member saw a T-shirt for sale during New York’s Arab Heritage Week. The shirt read “Intifada NYC” and was printed by the Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), a nonprofit that empowers Arab and Muslim girls to represent themselves and their communities through media.
The T-shirt was Pipes’s and Stop the Madrassa’s poison arrow. Almontaser sat on the board of an organization where AWAAM borrows office space, and though the T-shirt and AWAAM had no connection with the school, Stop the Madrassa accused Almontaser of supporting terrorism and harboring anti-Israel sentiments.
“All of the other news sources let the story go and saw that it was a ridiculous and unfounded accusation,” said Almontaser. But the New York Post called her three or four times a day. Though she refused repeatedly to be interviewed, fearing her views would be distorted, the Department of Education told her to do the interview, and against her better judgment she did, thinking that perhaps it would close the matter.
In August, the Post reporter, who interviewed Almontaser with a Department of Education staffer on the phone, pushed her to provide a literal definition of the word “intifada.” Almontaser provided the definition, which is a “shaking off,” the translation offered by many Arabic/English dictionaries. She then explained that it had come to be associated with violence because of the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Almontaser was careful with her wording.
On August 6, Almontaser opened the Post to see the headline, “City Principal is ‘Revolting’.” The story misquoted her. It accused Almontaser of trivializing the violence of the Palestinian intifada. The Department of Education issued an apology on Almontaser’s behalf for words the Post had misquoted.
Three days later, the Post published a letter from Randi Weingarten, who was then the president of New York’s United Federation of Teachers. Weingarten, who has since been elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, assailed Almontaser for not condemning the word “intifada” and wrote that parents and teachers would be justified in worrying about Almontaser’s leadership.
Weingarten’s comments are widely believed to have been the tipping point that cost Almontaser her job, according to people close to the controversy. Weingarten, who holds a seat on the board of New Visions, rejects this assertion. “I deeply regret that my comments were used as a basis of continuing that treatment because Debbie is an incredible educator and a gift to the city,” she said, “What ultimately happened I think is that the school system decided, for political reasons or based on merits, that Debbie was not going to cut it as a principal there and they used my comments as a way to make that decision....I think they probably set her up.”
The day after Weingarten’s letter ran in the newspaper, says Almontaser, a deputy mayor gave her a clear ultimatum: either leave, or the school will be terminated. Under duress, she resigned as principal and took an administrative position in the Department of Education.
Almontaser is now suing the city, claiming that the termination was discriminatory and violated her First Amendment rights. A federal appellate court judge, Jon Newman, condemned the city. He remarked, “So if a city employee speaks to the press, they’re at risk that the press garbles their remarks, and then they get fired? That’s quite a position for the City of New York.”
As ColorLines went to production, Almontaser’s lawsuit was in pre-trial proceedings. The Department of Education refused to comment on the case.
•••
Almontaser was not the first to be targeted by Pipes and his conservative allies. Many of those most active in the campaign against the Khalil Gibran school have long been involved in concerted and often successful blacklisting of professors perceived to have anti-American or anti-Israeli positions, which amounts to what some critics label a new McCarthyist assault on freedom of speech. The conservative groups in these attacks at university campuses have included Pipes’s Middle East Forum and its offshoot, Campus Watch, which monitors Middle East Studies programs and faculty for their positions on Palestine and Israel. They have also included the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which attacked professors who they deemed to be “unwilling to defend…civilization.” Senator Joseph Lieberman and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, are among this group’s founders. Numerous professors have apparently lost their tenure bids as a result of Pipes and his cohorts.
The difference in the case of the Khalil Gibran school, however, was that these groups moved from attacking college professors whose scholarship challenges their worldview to targeting a public school principal whose employer is the City of New York. Many community leaders insist that the city was complicit in these new attacks, and in response, they formed a new group called Communities in Support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. It’s made up of several community organizations—including AWAAM, Center for Immigrant Families, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice—and has been endorsed by dozens of other groups.
“Despite the attack by the right wing,” said Donna Nevel, a member of the Center for Immigrant Families, “had Debbie Almontaser received the support she deserved from the powers that be—the Mayor, the Chancellor of Education, New Visions, the UFT President—the smear campaign would not have achieved its goals, and she would still be KGIA’s principal.”
Rashid Khalidi, a Modern Middle East Historian at Columbia University who has been one of Pipes’s regular targets, agreed. “They should have fought back,” he said, referring to the city. “The only way to deal with these factions that tread in falsehood and intimidation is to push back as hard as possible.”
According to Larry Cohler-Esses, editor-at-large of The Jewish Week and author of an article titled “The New McCarthyism” for The Nation, nowadays “the mere fact of being Muslim can put one under suspicion in the eyes of these people.”
Almontaser’s hijab, her high-profile inter-religious dialogue work and her advocacy for Muslims and Arabs after Sept. 11 made her a prime target for Pipes and his allies. But it was their assertion of an anti-Israel perspective that appears to have been the lynchpin to rally support for Almontaser’s removal.
In a curious move that raises many questions, the first principal hired after Almontaser was a religious Jewish woman.
•••
According to some of the school’s original students, parents and teachers, the Khalil Gibran school retains little more than its name as it enters its second year. It is no longer a place where tolerance and respect are fostered. Hassan Omar, the humanities and Arabic teacher who felt so intimidated that he cut images of mosques from textbooks, remembered, “When I first heard about the school, I thought it was a dream, with a rigorous curriculum and intensive language program. The dream collapsed and became a nightmare.”
Teachers say the curriculum no longer builds a discussion of Middle Eastern history and culture into course work, and students and parents say students are being inadequately instructed in all subjects. According to Danielle Jeffries, who worked at the school, Arabic language instruction has been cut back by a period per week, and some parents say it is even more. Parents, who wrote a letter to the Department of Education, complained widely that they have been given little access to the school, and their children are without the necessary resources, books and staffing. Teachers agree and say that they have not been supplied with the resources and support they have been promised. The school’s third location is far from its original site in a neighborhood that had a larger Arab community, and this, too, is preventing the original group of students from continuing as students there.
Arab teachers say they were disrespected and scrutinized by administrators. “We’re treated as if we’ll touch the kids with our magic wands and they will become terrorists,” said Omar.
These concerns led Arabic language teachers to stop teaching students words such as salaam alaikum and inshallah, which are both used popularly despite their vaguely theological etymology—the usage is akin to saying “god bless you” in response to a sneeze.
Teachers’ efforts to protect themselves has not keep them safe, though. The four original teachers hired by Almontaser are no longer at the school. They were pushed out or left because of the stress, according to a number of people, including parents and educators at the school.
Sean Grogan, a young white man who taught science at the school until last May and was in his second year as a teacher, says he was subjected to a witch hunt for talking to the press about the lack of leadership and inadequate conditions inside the school, echoing what the federal appellate court judge had said about Almontaser. Grogan claims he was reprimanded at the school for things that were beyond his control, such as getting blamed for a student who got hurt during a science class. He also contends that the school administration was intent on gathering enough demerits to have him fired. Melanie Meyer, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, declined to talk about Grogan’s case, saying she couldn’t discuss specific personnel matters.
Other teachers told similar stories.
Hassan Omar said he was also fired from the school because of trumped-up and trivial accusations about his teaching, including that he neglected to use an overhead projector. He claimed there was no overhead projector in the classroom and that when he asked the new principal for instructions on how to improve his performance, she refused to help him.
While the school struggles, Stop the Madrassa continues its campaign against Almontaser, apparently not contented by her being fired. Three of the group’s members have filed a defamation suit against Almontaser for stating that members of the group have stalked her.
Though he believes he was wronged, Grogan was most emotional when he spoke about the students. “What happened to these kids? What did they learn from this? What they saw was teachers that love them, that cared for them, that they watched do the right thing and get crucified for it. What is that going to teach them?”
Twelve-year-old Fakir, who is no longer a student at the school, has already learned an unfortunate lesson. “I know there are so many people being racist against the school,” she said. “I don’t read the articles, but everyone is against learning Arabic as a second language.”
COMMENTS:
ASA
I started reading this article but did not finish. It's really disgusting to me to read all this talk about "fear". Why Fear? WE need to have an open dialogue concerning your self imposed fear. African American Muslims have no such fear. Fear is a prison. Let's get together. Please respond but whatever you do please do not try to justify your fear. And don't say it's not me, I was just mentioning what the people in the article said.
AQ
Your thoughts?
Send them to blog@awaam.org.
2008-12-03
How Does it Feel to Be a Problem in BK?
On Mustafa Bayoumis new book.
Colorlines Magazine
2008-10-08
Center for Immigrant Families and AWAAM on KGIA, Law and Disorder
...enter article...
2008-10-08
AWAAM Director Recieves Citation from Markowitz
by Brooklyn Eagle (edit@brooklyneagle.net), published online 09-29-2008
BROOKLYN — After being targeted by the media in an attempt to shut down New York’s first Arabic dual-language public school, and after a year of fighting the appropriation of their “Intifada NYC” T-shirt, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media’s founding director Mona Eldahry was honored by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz at an annual Ramadan event.
Brooklyn Borough Hall’s 5th Annual Iftar dinner at Borough Hall Courtroom this past Wednesday honored a handful of Muslim community leaders during the holy month of Ramadan.
“Positive recognition from an elected official in this time of growing anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment is an important gesture of affirmation and solidarity,” says AWAAM Media Mentor Roopa Singh. “With this citation, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and the Iftar Committee are sending a positive message to our embattled communities, the message that we should continue to strive for fair media coverage and equal access to education, public safety and civic institutions.”
In August 2007, AWAAM found itself at the receiving end of a campaign designed to shut down the Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York’s first Arabic-language public school. T-shirts that AWAAM had created to celebrate community empowerment were falsely associated with the founding principal of KGIA, resulting in a dual targeting of KGIA and of AWAAM.
In an effort to protect AWAAM as a safe space for young women who are Arab, Muslim and from communities of color, AWAAM launched its iWord Campaign, aimed at humanizing its members’ communities and asserting their right to use their languages and to discuss their struggles.
“Because of AWAAM, my daughter is comfortable speaking to adults and expressing herself in public,” says Naima Remmak. “She has serious career aspirations, and she has a much higher level of analysis when it comes to politics and social phenomena. Arab mothers are so happy to see a program dedicated to women of minority groups.”
2008-10-08
By BENJAMIN SARLIN, Special to the Sun | September 25, 2008
City Council members are calling on the state to give New York City children the day off from school on two Muslim holidays.
On Friday, the council will debate a resolution urging the state Legislature to pass a law declaring the Muslim holidays of Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha to be observed holidays in the city's public school system.
According to the resolution's sponsor, Council Member Robert Jackson of Manhattan, the issue is a matter of fairness, as Muslim students make up a significant percentage of the public school population.
"You have 10% of the student population out of 1.1 million children, so over 100,000 students, who are Muslim," Mr. Jackson said yesterday in an interview. "There was a situation about two or three years ago where they held a big exam on one of the highest holy days and parents had to make a choice: Do I send my kids in to take this exam or do we celebrate our religious holiday? That should not be the case. It doesn't happen on Christmas, it doesn't happen on Easter, it doesn't happen on other major religious holidays."
Bills that would give city schoolchildren the day off on the two holidays have stalled in the state Senate and Assembly, failing to get out of committee.
Mayor Bloomberg said earlier this year that he opposes creating new school holidays. There are too few school days, he said, adding that such a move could encourage other local religious communities to demand that their holidays be recognized, as well.
Mr. Jackson said yesterday that he does not believe that giving students the day off and extending the school year are mutually exclusive issues. "If they need to add more school days, then let's add more school days," he said. "No one is saying we can't increase New York City's school year."
Comment on this article: blog@awaam.org
2008-09-23
Israel-based group behind 'Obsession' distribution to 28 million U.S. homes
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/23/08) - A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today announced that it has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over the distribution of an anti-Muslim film to 28 million homes in presidential election swing states.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is urging the FEC to investigate whether the Clarion Fund, a shadowy non-profit organization that distributed DVDs containing “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” is really a front for an Israel-based group seeking to help Sen. John McCain win the U.S. presidential election. (No information about a board of directors, staff or even a physical address is offered on the fund’s website.)
In its complaint to the FEC, CAIR wrote in part:
“The Clarion Fund recently financed the distribution of some 28 million DVDs containing the film ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West’ in what many political analysts describe as ‘swing’ states in the upcoming presidential elections. Those same analysts say the distribution of the ‘Obsession’ DVD was designed to benefit a particular presidential candidate, namely Sen. John McCain…
“According to the website for the Secretary of State for New York, Clarion Fund Inc. is incorporated in New York as a Delaware based foreign not-for-profit corporation. According to the Delaware Department of Corporations, Robert (Rabbi Raphael) Shore, Rabbi Henry Harris and Rebecca Kabat incorporated Clarion Fund. All three of whom are reported to serve as employees of Aish HaTorah International, an organization apparently based in Israel. Also according to the Delaware Department of Corporations, the incorporators of the Clarion Fund used Aish HaTorah’s New York City address (150 West 46th Street, New York) to incorporate Clarion Fund in Delaware… [SEE: http://www.aish.com/aishint/wwprogram.asp ]
“It appears that the funding for the production, marketing and distribution of ‘Obsession’ may have originated from Israel-based Aish HaTorah International.”
To read the entire FEC complaint, click here.
http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/ObessesionlettertoFEC.pdf
There is at least one report of a person who received the DVD also getting an automated phone call asking that person to watch the film and then “keep it in mind when you go to the voting booth.”
“American voters deserve to know whether they are the targets of a multi-million-dollar campaign funded and directed by a foreign group seeking to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria as a way to influence the outcome of our presidential election,” said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.
Awad said CAIR has received numerous complaints from those who were sent the DVD in newspapers delivered to their homes and has recorded at least one report of an anti-Muslim bias incident directly resulting from the DVD distribution.
2008-04-29
NY Times Front Page
Battle Over a Brooklyn SchoolView Times Videos
Debbie Almontaser: The Path to ResignationView Timeline
April 28, 2008
Her Dream, Branded as a Threat
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”
Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a “terrorist,” staff members and students said in interviews.
The academy’s troubles reach well beyond its cramped corridors in Boerum Hill. The school’s creation provoked a controversy so incendiary that Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the founding principal just weeks before classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by training and an activist who had carefully built ties with Christians and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the mayor’s office following a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic agenda.
In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a “radical,” a “jihadist” and a “9/11 denier.” She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontaser’s longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly succeeded in recasting her image.
The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.
“It’s a battle that’s really just begun,” said Daniel Pipes, who directs a conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.
Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.
The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.
“It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia,” Mr. Pipes said. “It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.”
Mr. Pipes refers to this new enemy as the “lawful Islamists.”
They are carrying out a “soft jihad,” said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee of the City University of New York and a vocal opponent of the Khalil Gibran school.
Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive against the school as the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks intended to distort the truth and play on Americans’ fear of terrorism. They say the campaign is also part of a wider effort to silence critics of Washington’s policy on Israel and the Middle East.
“This is a political, ideological agenda,” said John Esposito, a professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University who has been a focus of Mr. Pipes’s scrutiny. “It’s an agenda to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major problem.”
That portrait, Muslim and Arab advocates contend, is rife with a bias that would never be tolerated were it directed at other ethnic or religious groups. And if Ms. Almontaser’s story is any indication, they say, the message of her critics wields great power.
Ms. Almontaser watched city officials and some of her closest Jewish allies distance themselves from her as the controversy reached its peak. She was ultimately felled by an article in The New York Post that said she had “downplayed the significance” of T-shirts bearing the slogan “Intifada NYC.”
Last month, federal judges issued a ruling — related to a lawsuit brought by Ms. Almontaser to regain her job — stating that her words were “inaccurately reported by The Post and then misconstrued by the press.”
While city officials and the Education Department declined to comment about Ms. Almontaser because of the lawsuit, a lawyer for the city said she had not been forced to resign.
In her first interview since stepping down, Ms. Almontaser said that education officials had pressured her to speak to The Post and had monitored the conversation. After the article was published, she said, the department issued a written apology in her name, without her approval.
“I kept saying I wanted to set the record straight,” said Ms. Almontaser, 40. “And they kept telling me, ‘You can’t undo what was done.’ ”A Call to Lead
In April 2005, Debbie Almontaser got a telephone call that would change her life. The man on the line, Adam Rubin, worked for a nonprofit organization, New Visions for Public Schools. He was exploring whether to help the city create a public school that would teach Arabic. The group already had seed money — a $400,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — but needed the right person to help lead the venture.
Everywhere Mr. Rubin went — from the mayor’s office to a falafel stand in Brooklyn — people mentioned Ms. Almontaser. She was a teacher, a native Arabic speaker and arguably the city’s most visible Arab-American woman.
After 9/11, Education Department officials had enlisted Ms. Almontaser to hold workshops on cultural sensitivity for schoolchildren. She spread the message that Islam was a peaceful religion. She told of how her own son had served as a National Guardsman in the clearing effort at ground zero. She was soon attending interfaith seminars, befriending rabbis and priests. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg honored her publicly. She became a ready commentator for the media, prompting some Muslims to joke that she was the city’s “talking hijabi.”
In fact, it had taken a long time for Ms. Almontaser to embrace the hijab, or head scarf. Born in Yemen, she was 3 when she moved with her family to Buffalo. Her parents encouraged her to blend in. She called herself Debbie rather than Dhabah, her given name. She began wearing a veil in her 20s, as a Brooklyn mother whose life revolved around PTA meetings and Boy Scout trips. She took to riding on the back of her husband’s motorcycle, her head scarf tucked beneath a black helmet. She got used to the stares and learned to be unapologetic.
In the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, she offered other Muslim women the lessons she had learned: “The only way to claim this as your country is to continue on with your life here,” she recalled telling them.
For years, Ms. Almontaser had hoped to become a principal. But soon after joining hands with New Visions, she faced her first challenge. To administer the Gates grant, the school needed a community partner. Two groups wanted the job: a secular Arab-American social services agency and a Muslim-led organization that runs Al-Noor School, a private Islamic establishment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Ms. Almontaser said she tried to remain neutral as discord erupted between the two groups. Quietly, though, she worried that if an organization linked to a private Islamic school took the lead, the city would never approve the project, despite the group’s pledge to keep religion out of the curriculum.
Ultimately, a steering committee led by Ms. Almontaser voted in favor of the social services agency. Leaders of the Muslim group walked away feeling disrespected and distrustful of her, several of the group’s members said in interviews. It was a rupture that would come back to haunt Ms. Almontaser.
As preparations moved forward, a design team assembled by Ms. Almontaser named the school after the Lebanese Christian poet and pacifist Khalil Gibran. A Palestinian immigrant had suggested the name, hoping it would deflect any concerns that the school carried a Muslim orientation.
In February 2007, the Department of Education announced that the school had been approved. It would eventually encompass grades 6 through 12, teach half of its classes in Arabic and be among 67 schools in the city that offer programs in both English and another language, like Russian, Spanish and Chinese. Ms. Almontaser designed a recruitment brochure to attract the school’s first class of sixth graders.
The leaflet cited the words of Mr. Gibran: “In understanding, all walls shall fall down.”
Opposition Forms
Irene Alter, a peppy, retired Queens schoolteacher, was sitting at her computer one morning that February when she read an article in The New York Times about the Khalil Gibran school, she said. A series of questions flooded her head.
Which courses would be taught in Arabic? How would Israel be treated in the study of Middle Eastern history? Then in April, she read an op-ed article by Mr. Pipes in The New York Sun.
Conceptually, such a school could be “marvelous,” Mr. Pipes wrote, but in practice, it was certain to be problematic. “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage,” he wrote, referring to the school as a madrassa, which means school in Arabic but, in the West, carries the implication of Islamic teaching.
Given how little Mr. Pipes knew about the school at the time, the word was “a bit of a stretch,” he said in a recent interview. He defended its use as a way to “get attention” for the cause. It got the attention of Ms. Alter, 60, who contacted Mr. Pipes and, with his encouragement, helped form a grass-roots organization in response to the school project. Mr. Pipes joined the advisory board of the group, which called itself the Stop the Madrassa Coalition.
Mr. Pipes, 58, has emerged as a divisive figure in the post-9/11 era. An author of 12 books who has a doctorate in history from Harvard, he has made a career out of studying and critiquing Islam. His research group, which he established in downtown Philadelphia in the early 1990s, “seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East,” according to its Web site.
Among his supporters, Mr. Pipes enjoys a heroic status; among his detractors, he is reviled. Those sharply divergent views reflect the passions that infuse Middle Eastern politics, arguably nowhere in the United States more than in New York City.
Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a national initiative he created to scrutinize Middle Eastern programs at colleges and universities. The drive has accused professors of, among other things, being soft on militant Islam and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It has stirred widespread controversy and, in some cases, may have undermined professors’ bids for tenure.
Mr. Pipes was joined in the monitoring effort by other self-declared watchdogs of militant Islam. Their Web sites are often linked to one another and their messages interwoven. One critic, David Horowitz, founded Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a campaign aimed at college campuses. He noted in an interview that monitors of radical Islam have increasingly trained their sights on nonviolent Muslim-Americans.
“They don’t throw bombs, but they create political cover for ideological support of this jihadi movement,” he said.
Mr. Pipes places Muslims in three categories, he said: those who are violent, those who are moderate and those in the middle. It is this middle group, he argued, that now poses the greatest threat to American values.
“Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture — are they on our side or are they on the other side?” he asked.
Ms. Almontaser never considered herself unenthusiastic about America, she said. But as the conflict over the Khalil Gibran school intensified, she came to be seen by many through Mr. Pipes’s lens. In his article in The Sun, he referred to Ms. Almontaser by her birth name, Dhabah, and called her views “extremist.” He cited an article in which she was quoted as saying about 9/11, “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.” (As The Jewish Week later reported, Mr. Pipes left out the second half of the quote: “Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and have stolen my religion.”)
The Stop the Madrassa Coalition focused primarily on Ms. Almontaser as a strategy, said Mr. Pipes, because the group could get little information about the school itself. The coalition quickly publicized several discoveries. Ms. Almontaser had accepted an award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim organization that critics claim has ties to terrorist groups (an assertion the group adamantly denies). In news articles, Ms. Almontaser had been critical of American foreign policy and police tactics in fighting terrorism. She also gave $2,000 to Representative Cynthia A. McKinney of Georgia, whom Mr. Pipes and others have characterized as an Islamist sympathizer. (Ms. McKinney, who is no longer in office and did not respond to requests for an interview, has had a strong following among Arab-Americans in part because of her criticism of the Patriot Act.)
Critics of the Madrassa Coalition say its tactics are typical of campaigns singling out Muslims: They lean heavily on guilt by association. The nuances of the claims against Ms. Almontaser were lost as the controversy lit up the blogosphere, said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a liberal organization outside Boston that studies the political right. One Web site, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, displayed photographs of Ms. Almontaser wearing her hijab in different styles, suggesting that she had undergone a public relations makeover to “disguise” her “Islamist agenda.” The criticism of Ms. Almontaser and the school spread to newspapers, eliciting negative editorials in The Daily News and The New York Sun.
Ms. Almontaser was stunned, she said: Her school would touch upon religion only in its global studies class, following the same curriculum as all New York public schools. She tried to keep her head down, she said, and set out to recruit students, half of whom she hoped would be Arab. But opposition to the school mounted after critics learned that its advisory council included three imams (along with rabbis and priests), that there would be an internship for students with a Muslim lawyers’ association and that the proposal for the school suggested it might offer halal food. (The advisory council never met and has since been dismantled, and the school does not offer halal food, Education Department officials said.)
As the attacks continued, Joel Levy of the New York chapter of the Anti-Defamation League published a letter defending Ms. Almontaser in The Sun. Mr. Levy made reference to the possibility that his organization would provide anti-bias training to Ms. Almontaser’s staff.
The letter caused a stir among some Arab-Americans, who were bothered by Ms. Almontaser’s ties to Jewish groups. In late June, Aramica, an Arabic and English newspaper based in Brooklyn, ran a cover story with the headline “Zionist Organization Supports Gibran School Principal,” focusing on the link between Ms. Almontaser’s school and the Anti-Defamation League.
In just five months, Ms. Almontaser’s image had been transformed. She was rendered a radical Muslim by one group and a sellout by another.
T-Shirts, and a Resignation
At first, some city officials rallied to Ms. Almontaser’s side. Among them was David Cantor, the chief spokesman for the Department of Education, who wrote in an e-mail message to the editor of The New York Sun, Seth Lipsky: “I won’t allow Dan Pipes a free pass to smear Debbie Almontaser as an Islamist proselytizer who denies Muslim involvement in 9/11. It is a false picture and an ugly effort.”
But behind closed doors, department officials were nervous, Ms. Almontaser recalled. With her help, she said, they drafted a confidential memo of talking points to review with reporters: the school was “nonreligious,” for example, and Ms. Almontaser was a “multicultural specialist and diversity consultant.”
The Stop the Madrassa Coalition pressed its campaign. In July, one of its members, Pamela Hall, made a discovery that would elevate the controversy. At an Arab-American festival in Brooklyn, she spotted T-shirts on a table bearing the words “Intifada NYC.” The organization distributing them, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, trains young women in community organizing and media production. The group sometimes uses the office of a Yemeni-American association in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Ms. Almontaser sits on the association’s board.
Ms. Hall took a photograph, and a few weeks later, the coalition announced on its blog that Ms. Almontaser was linked to the T-shirts.
On Aug. 3, Ms. Almontaser received a call from Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. “What does ‘Intifada NYC’ mean?” Ms. Almontaser recalled Ms. Meyer asking.
Ms. Almontaser was stumped, she said. She knew of the group. But she had never heard about the T-shirts, she said she told Ms. Meyer, adding that “intifada” meant “uprising” and was linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Most reporters lost interest in the T-shirts after Ms. Meyer explained that neither Ms. Almontaser nor the school was linked to them, but The Post persisted. Ms. Almontaser said Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor pressured her to respond to the newspaper in an interview.
“I said, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” recalled Ms. Almontaser, who was critical of The Post’s coverage of Arabs and Muslims. “ ‘I am not comfortable doing the interview.’ ”
Ms. Meyer promised to monitor the conversation, Ms. Almontaser said, and Mr. Cantor instructed her not to be “apologetic” about the T-shirts. While both Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor said they could not comment on the case, a city lawyer said that Ms. Almontaser was told to avoid discussing the T-shirts and intifada altogether, and was never pressured to speak to The Post.
During the Post interview, Ms. Almontaser said, she told the reporter, Chuck Bennett, that the Arab women’s organization was not connected to her or the school, and that she would never be affiliated with any group that condoned violence. Then Mr. Bennett asked her for the origins of the word intifada, she said.
“The educator in me responded,” Ms. Almontaser said. She explained, with Ms. Meyer listening in on the three-way phone call, that the root of the word means “shaking off.” Ms. Almontaser then offered what she described as a lengthy explanation about the evolution of the word and the “negative connotation” it had developed because of the Arab-Israeli struggle.
“The thought went across my mind to be extremely careful with my words — not to offend the Jewish community and not to offend the Arab-American community,” she said. “I was feeling pressure from all sides.”
Although Ms. Almontaser said she never spoke to the reporter about the T-shirts, she defended the girls in the organization because she believed that the reporter was set on “vilifying innocent teenagers.”
After the reporter hung up, Ms. Almontaser recalled, Ms. Meyer told her, “Good job.”
The next day, The Post ran the article under the headline “City Principal Is ‘Revolting’ — Tied to ‘Intifada NYC’ Shirts.” The article quoted Ms. Almontaser as saying that the girls in the organization were “shaking off oppression,” words that The Post, according to a ruling by federal appellate judges, attributed to Ms. Almontaser “incorrectly and misleadingly.”
Complaints about Ms. Almontaser began pouring into the Education Department, and Mr. Cantor informed her that an apology would be issued in her name. Ms. Almontaser objected, she said, and asked that the department clarify her comments to The Post, which she said were distorted, rather than apologize.
Mr. Cantor insisted on an apology, she said, and e-mailed her the proposed wording. The first sentence was not negotiable, she recalled him telling her. The apology began: “The use of the word intifada is completely inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan for teenagers. I regret suggesting otherwise.” Ms. Almontaser responded in an e-mail message that Mr. Cantor should change the latter sentence to “I regret my response was interpreted as suggesting otherwise.”
The press office issued the original apology. Pressure soon mounted for Ms. Almontaser to resign. Randi Weingarten, the head of the teachers’ union, published a letter in The Post criticizing Ms. Almontaser for not denouncing “ideas tied to violence.” On Aug. 9, Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott asked Ms. Almontaser to step down, she said. “The mayor wants your resignation by 8 a.m. tomorrow so he can announce it on his radio show,” Ms. Almontaser recalled Mr. Walcott saying.
She said he promised her that in exchange for her resignation, the school would still open, and she would remain employed. She resigned the next day, taking an administrative job at the Education Department. She kept her principal’s salary of $120,000.
On his radio program, Mayor Bloomberg announced that Ms. Almontaser had “submitted her resignation,” which “was nice of her to do.”
“She’s certainly not a terrorist,” he said, adding that she was not “all that media savvy maybe.”
Three days later, Ms. Almontaser was replaced by an interim principal, Danielle Salzberg, who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic.
Chaos in a New School
On Sept. 4, the Khalil Gibran International Academy opened its doors at 345 Dean Street as parents ushered their children past a throng of reporters, photographers and television crews.
Chaos soon erupted inside. Students cut classes and got into fights with little consequence, said staff members, parents and students. At least 12 of the 60 students showed signs of behavioral problems or learning disabilities, said Leslie Kahn, a licensed social worker and counselor who was employed at the school until January. (Education Department officials, who denied repeated requests by The Times to visit the school, said there are currently six special-needs students there.)
“Something is flying through the air, every class, every day,” Sean R. Grogan, a science teacher at the school, said in an interview. “Kids bang on the partitions, yell and scream, curse and swear. It’s out of control.”
Physical altercations are frequent, Mr. Grogan and others said, with Arab students and teachers the target of ethnic slurs. “I just don’t feel safe,” said an Arab-American student, 11, who will not return to the school next year.
In the first days after Ms. Almontaser resigned, she felt numb, she said. Her support among Arab-Muslims remained uneven. Had she not alienated some who wanted more of a role in the school’s creation, “the whole community would have stood behind her,” said Wael Mousfar, president of the Arab Muslim American Federation. “A lot of our kids would be part of that school.”
Ms. Almontaser soon found herself flanked by a new group of supporters, including Jewish and Muslim activists, who began lobbying for her to be reinstated as the school’s principal. On Oct. 16, Ms. Almontaser announced that she was suing the Education Department and the mayor. She claimed that her First Amendment rights had been violated because she was forced to resign after she was quoted as saying something controversial.
She requested that the city be prevented from hiring a permanent principal until her case was resolved. A judge rejected the request, and Ms. Almontaser appealed. In March, a federal appeals court upheld the ruling, but the judges were sharply critical of the city’s handling of Ms. Almontaser’s case.
“This was a situation where she was subject to sanction not for anything she said, not for anything she did, but because a newspaper reporter twisted what she said and the result of it was negative press for the city and the Board of Ed,” Judge Jon O. Newman told a city lawyer at a hearing in February.
Ms. Almontaser’s case will proceed in the Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The Stop the Madrassa Coalition continues to protest the school. The group sued the Department of Education in October, requesting detailed information about the school’s creation, faculty and curriculum. While the department has handed over thousands of records, the coalition’s lawyer said the documents leave many questions unanswered, including which textbooks the school is using to teach Arabic. A department spokeswoman said that a list of textbooks selected for the school was sent to the lawyer last fall.
The coalition has also broadened the reach of its campaign. Some members have joined with the Center for Policy Research in American Education, a new organization that will research the influence of radical Islam on public schools around the country.
In recent weeks, conditions at the Khalil Gibran school have improved, said several students and staff members. Holly Anne Reichert, who was appointed as the permanent principal in January, said in an interview that she had reduced some of the disruptive behavior by minimizing class sizes. She added that the media attention had led to a “chaotic experience” for students. “Adults have created this, and children are the ones who have had to endure,” she said.
The school will move to a larger space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, by next fall.
Ms. Almontaser still attends interfaith dinners and awards ceremonies. During the day, she works for the city’s Office of School and Youth Development. Part of her job entails evaluating other schools.
In an odd twist of fate, she was sent to the Bronx last fall to review a small, innovative school that had opened the same month as Khalil Gibran. It also taught a foreign language: Spanish. The students seemed to be thriving. As Ms. Almontaser walked the hallways, she was shaken, she said.
“It wasn’t that I was envious that her dream materialized,” said Ms. Almontaser, referring to the principal. “It was seeing her sixth graders, her teachers, and seeing that she did it. And I didn’t get a chance.”
Battle Over a Brooklyn SchoolView Times Videos
Debbie Almontaser: The Path to ResignationView Timeline
Your Thoughts? Send them to blog@awaam.org.
2008-04-27
On Sean Bell
Dear Readers,
today is a weird day in NY
looking black and brown people in the eye
aint no joke today
on the day when sean bell’s assassins
become officially state sanctioned
so many words that need to be spoken
how many feelings to be felt
Its Friday, April 25, 2008.
My mentor Cynthia Perez, founding mother of the Indigenous Women’s Network, woke me up with a command to get to the United Nations immediately. My heart starts beating, a session on Indigenous Women, geez, I think I’ll wear my Kota sari, the red and cream one. Cynthia calls me back, orders me to contact Mililani, Hawaiin sovereignty expert, about coming to the conference tomorrow. Cynthia barks at me to do something with my Boalt law degree already. We get off the phone. I’m still contemplating the sari, hanging like a Rajasthani candy cane, majestic in the corner.
Phone beeps. It’s a text from the homie Diana, “Not guilty 4 sean bell’s muderers “
Warm air through golden drape, I rise from my pallet like anger, like waves, like warriors.
Food and water for my cat, cereal and milk for me, John Meyer on the radio, fathers be good to your daughters, and there are teeth to brush, a laptop to pack up, writing to be done, there is writing to be done.
Sandals on, jeans snug, brown arms sun reveling, soca in the Prospect Park breeze, l’m walking to the Brooklyn Public Library. Cutting around the way girl back strokes through runners and joggers in their outdoor performance clothes, I’m walking out my feelings, wondering what poem do I write? Thumb on text. Breeze whispering in the sweat around my brow. I type in and “send to many” this short:
sean bell”s assassins not guilty
rewind us to a time
when life was more like sense
less pretense
fuk a white picket fence
these are the first 10 texts i got back, verbatim:
1. “As intense as jesus’ hands clinched-anger swirls like incense.” (from a jamaican-american sister poet in nyc)
2. “And 151 mil to put cops with machine guns on subways.” (from an arab-american sister organizer in the bk)
3. “I hear you princess. Aint no justice, just Us.” (from an african-american brother, business owner, king’s mall, brooklyn)
4. “please forward all cops in sean bell case found not guilty on all charges rally at queens da’s office 125-01 queens blvd 5:30pm today take f/4 to union.” (from a latina sister poet in nyc)
5. “I didnt even want to read the whole story! That shit has me heated! Nice ryhme Roo!” (from an african-american sister writer in the bay)
6. “ah.” (from an italian-american sister organizer in nyc helping to organize rally at the courthouse today)
7. “Wow that was def deep. I was already n the process of snding that txt 2 u whn u txt me. Either way, its not right how many times five 0 gets off 4 claiming the life of the innocent. I pray every day that my life is not taken by the hands of another n these times. God has my bck!” (from an african-american brother, banker, pittsburgh, pa)
8. “Yes.” (from an african and caribbean-american brother organizer and sister poet in the bay)
9. “Ridiculous!” (from a chinese-american brother, mc, houston, texas)
10. “its hard 2 make it thru the am with the acquittal.” (from an african-american sister educator and actress in the bay)
I’m writing to you from the 2nd floor of Brooklyn Public. Around me are vast windows letting air in from Prospect Park, it blows over us, mainly black and brown folks taking care of business, together and alone.
On my way past the stacks of knowledge, a book caught my eye.
An Amnesty International Report, entitled, “Political Killings By Governments.” The Table of Contents lists countries–Argentina, Guatemala, Uganda, Libya. No United States of America. Page 6 starts a new section, its entitled, “Responsibility.” Second paragraph reads, “There are two sides to investigation of reports of politically motivated killings: determining the immediate facts-’what happened’; and assessing whether the government is implicated-’who was responsible.”
What happened?
A racially motivated assassination, according to People’s Justice, an NYC based coalition working to end police violence.
A necessary, justifiable, and relatively routine response to belligerent and inebriated club goers, asserted the District Attorneys defending NYPD detectives Micheal Oliver, Marc Cooper, and Gescard Isnora.
Murder vs. Nothing Happened.
Who was responsible?
New York State vs. Sean Bell.
A Nation State vs. Its People.
On my right hand side is a big book called, “Insects: An illustrated survey of the most successful animals on earth.” Ima take a peek inside it before I head off to the rally. Learn me something useful. Oh damn, the Muslim sister stacking books just took it off the table, gotta bounce y’all, time to chase down my new knowledge for the day.
Stay tuned for more from me, politicalpoet, I got the news you need.
Peace,
rs/N
:::READING MATERIAL:::::
1. new york times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/nyregion/26BELL.html?hp
2. people’s justice press releases:
http://www.peoplesjustice.org
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR SATURDAY'S RALLY:
JUSTICE FOR SEAN BELL AND ALL VICTIMS OF POLICE VIOLENCE!!
COME OUT APRIL 25th - VOICE YOUR OUTRAGE!!
In Nov. 2006, Sean Bell was murdered by the NYPD in a hail of 50 bullets. His friends - Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman - were seriously injured. 3 of the officers involved were acquitted of all charges in a bold affront to the human rights of Sean Bell and all of us.
PEOPLES JUSTICE for Community Control and Police Accountability is calling for a rally and community speak-out in front of the Queens DA’s office ON THIS DAY*.
COME OUT: FRIDAY APRIL 25th 5:30 pm
@ the Queens DA’s Office
125-01 Queens Blvd. (between Hoover Ave & 82nd Ave.)
E or F train to Union Turnpike
The NYPD’s murder of Bell and attempted murders of Benefield and Guzman are NOT isolated or random events. They represent the continued targeting of communities of color by the police and the lack of accountability for police misconduct and abuse.
2008-03-20
Appeals Court Sends Arab American Educator's Case Back to Court for Full Trial
Contact: David Lerner or Shonna Carter, Riptide Communications
APPEALS COURT SENDS ARAB-AMERICAN EDUCATOR'S CASE BACK TO DISTRICT COURT FOR FULL TRIAL
District Court Told to Consider Whether Department of Education May Punish Debbie Almontaser Based on an Inaccurate and Misconstrued News Story
New York, NY March, 20, 2008: Today, the court of appeals declined to reverse the decision of a federal district court judge who had denied a preliminary injunction to the founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, Debbie Almontaser. The court did not say that it agreed with the district judge, only that his decision was not "an abuse of discretion."
In its opinion the appeals court made clear its concern that Ms. Almontaser was punished "for speaking accurately when her statement was, as her employer knows, inaccurately reported and then misconstrued by the press." However, the court said that was an issue to be first addressed by the district court.
The case will now return to the district court for a full trial.
"It is evident from the judges' opinion, as it was from their questioning of the DOE's lawyer when the case was argued, that the court is troubled by the actions of the DOE in Ms. Almontaser case," said Alan Levine, attorney for Ms. Almontaser. "The idea that people can lose their job because the press distorts what they say seems to disturb the court. It should disturb Chancellor Klein as well," he added. "There is something fundamentally wrong when the DOE insists that school employees speak publicly on an issue and then fires them when they do no more than accurately define a controversial word."
The district court originally denied Ms. Almontaser's motion for a preliminary injunction in December 2007. The case was then appealed, and during the argument of the appeal, judges criticized the DOE for overreacting to what they called "garbling" of Ms. Almontaser's words by a New York Post reporter.
In 2005, Ms. Almontaser was asked by New Visions for Public Schools, an educational reform organization that assists the DOE in establishing new schools, to spearhead the development of KGIA and then to become its founding principal.
KGIA was designed as a school that would focus on Arabic language and cultural studies, and, as one of its missions, would promote understanding between New York's Arab and non-Arab communities.
Ms. Almontaser was initially named Project Director, the title that is given by the DOE to all persons who lead the development of a new school. In July 2007, the DOE named Ms. Almontaser the interim acting principal of the school, which is the title that leaders of new schools are customarily given until a permanent principal is selected. During that time Ms. Almontaser supervised the development of curriculum, hired and trained staff, recruited students and parents, purchased supplies, and prepared the school for its September opening.
As a result of a series of attacks on the school by a conservative blog and an article in the New York Post that quoted Ms. Almontaser on a matter completely unrelated to KGIA, the DOE forced her to resign her post and further, denied her the opportunity to apply for the job of permanent Principal.
2007-12-05
Guantanamo Case, Asians in the Media, Debbie's Case
On Asia Pacific Forum, December 4, 2007
Center for Constitutional Rights on Guantanamo Case:
Tomorrow, December 5, the Center for Constitutional Rights will return to the Supreme Court for part III of what The New York Times has called "the most important civil rights case in 50 years." Please go to our website to learn more about the arguments and principles at stake in this Guantánamo case.You can also listen to the arguments in real time tomorrow on C-SPAN radio beginning at 11:15 EST.
In the lead up to this historic argument, CCR has been undertaking a major campaign to highlight the importance of this case. As part of this campaign we produced a television ad featuring actor and activist Danny Glover speaking about Bush administration's destruction of the Constitution. This ad was rejected by Fox News, their explanation being that we could "not document that Bush is in fact 'destroying' the Constitution." It is airing tonight in the DC area on CNN and MSNBC.
Read more and watch the video.
But the serious story behind the ad is CCR's historic case before the Supreme Court, which will in all likelihood determine once and for all whether there is a constitutional right to habeas corpus - that is, a fair hearing before a real court - for everyone detained by the U.S. government at Guantánamo.
This new case goes Beyond Guantánamo - we are directly challenging President Bush's unprecedented power grab, his use of torture in violation of domestic and international law, and his assertion that he can hold anyone indefinitely anywhere in the world on his word alone. The case also challenges the 2006 Republican Congress's attempt to clear his way with its passage of the Military Commissions Act.
In 2004, CCR won the first Guantánamo Supreme Court case - Rasul v. Bush - when the Supreme Court ruled that the men at Guantánamo have the fundamental right to challenge their detention.
Even though you're not in D.C. to see the arguments, you can still take action to make sure that our rights - and our Constitution - are rescued from the hands of the Bush administration, where they have been systematically shredded for the past seven years:
Send President Bush a copy of the Constitution (something he seems to have forgotten about);
Watch the controversial video with Danny Glover that was rejected by Fox News;
Watch other videos of Eve Ensler and Vanessa Redgrave speaking out against Guantánamo and forward them to your friends and family; or Attend a local event tomorrow, check our calendar of events for actions near you.
We need your help to restore the damage done to our most basic rights: join us today and take action to Rescue the Constitution. Let's move Beyond Guantánamo.
Center for Constitutional Rights
Let's Connect the Dots. Send us your blogs: blog@awaam.org
2007-11-21
What's interesting about today's article in the Jewish Week is that the writer, Larry Cohler-Esses, uses the same tactics that he decries in his recent article, The New McCarthyism, criminalizing Debbie for her association at the November 19th event with "radical" allies like AWAAM, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) NY, which has endured an slanderous attack claiming that it supports violence and terrorism, and Councilman Charles Barron. Meanwhile, Carol Horowitz of Brooklyn for Peace in her letter to the editor asks:
Where are the words in your article from Rabbi Matalon?
Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor Of Psychology and reknowed
eduator? Steve Questor from UFT? Gladys Sotomayor, Latina member of
the KGIA design team? Councilmember Robert Jackson, Chair of the
Education Committee? Abdeen Jabara former President of the Arab
American Anti Discrimination League? Bill Henning, Vice President of
the Communication Workers of America? Donna Nevel, Center for
Immigrant Families? and so many others from so many ethnic, religious,
and racial backgrounds and walks of life in support of Ms.
Almontaser's stellar educational background and fitness for the
position of Prinicipal of KGIA?
Cohler spoke with a coalition-member the day before the article's release to warn him that the angle was mainly his editor's doing, and that he had to cater to his readership. Well, guess what Larry, you're a big boy and an experienced journalist. If you were also an ethical journalist, you would have killed the story when your editor suggested changing the whole tone of it to cater to a supposedly racist and prejudiced readership. It is the responsibility of journalists to present the truth without bias. Any respectable newspaper makes positive assumptions about its readers' ability to question and analyze issues. Luckily, the mainstream Jewish community, to which the Jewish week claims to cater, has stood strong with us and with Debbie in our efforts to hold Chancellor Klein, Randy Weingarten, and Mayor Bloomberg accountable for their shameful actions against not the just New York's Arab and Muslim communities, but against all of us who seek quality education for our kids and safety on our streets.*
Mona Eldahry
Founding Director
AWAAM
*FBI and community reports show that hate crimes increase in realation to media campaigns that "have hyped the dangers of Islamic radicalization, seeing Muslim or pro-Arab radicals everywhere they look, and targeting academic freedom in the name of patriotism and the "War on Terror." From "Jeffery Wiesenfeld, Islamophobia, and the Madrassa", The Advocate.
Listen to our young women's first-hand experiences of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab interactions on the street.
2007-10-15
Debbie Almontaser speaks out for first time, reapplies for KGIA principal position.
Press Release: Oct. 15
Press Advisory
Contact: kgiasupport@gmail.com
Debbie Almontaser, Founding Principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, Speaks Out for the First Time
Parents, officials, and community leaders demand accountability and investigation
New York City, October 15,2007— Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) founding Principal Debbie Almontaser will speak publicly for the first time on October 16th at City Hall at 5pm. This is the deadline to reapply for the principal’s position. She will address her original vision for KGIA and her experience as the target of a campaign of smears and misrepresentation.
Debbie Almontaser will be joined at the press conference by some of the parents, public officials, rabbis, and other community supporters who, over the last two months, have come together to demand that the DOE support KGIA by defending the school against a concerted anti-Arab/anti-Muslim campaign and by inviting its founding principal to return so that she can help translate her creative vision into a strong dual language educational program.
Although New Yorkers of all religious, ethnic and political backgrounds have shown support for Debbie Almontaser, some of our current NYC leadership aren’t listening. Do some voices matter more than others? Over a month ago, Debbie Almontaser requested meetings with Mayor Bloomberg and with Chancellor Klein, but neither has responded. City Council members Robert Jackson and John Liu have written to re-quest a meeting with the mayor regarding this issue, but have yet to get a response. Why and what are the Mayor and the Chancellor hiding? Why have some New York officials been unwilling to stand up to the poli-tics of fear?
Today the Communities In Support of Khalil International Academy (CISKGIA) reaffirms its call for an in-vestigation into the series of decisions that led to the forced resignation of Principal Debbie Almontaser. What role did the Mayor’s Office play, and what role did the DOE play?
Attacks upon Debbie Almontaser and KGIA fit into a larger pattern of recent right-wing attacks on public schools and universities. In late October, for example, one such campaign, entitled “Islamofascism Week,” will—on campuses nationwide, including New York City—foster anti-Muslim stereotypes and whip up fear and hatred of Muslims and Arabs. It is time to stop pandering both to extreme voices and to those who speak in more moderate tones, but both reveal and support bias against Arabs and Muslims. It is time to listen in-stead to voices, like Debbie Almontaser’s, that seek not to divide, but to unite, by teaching students—and all New Yorkers—to learn from and respect our differences.
Location:
Tuesday, October 16, at 5:00 P.M. at City Hall
Speakers will Include:
* Debbie Almontaser, joined by her Attorney Alan Levine
* KGIA Parents
* Councilman John Liu
* Reverend Clinton Miller
* Other officials TBA
* Rabbis and Imams TBA
2007-09-21
KGIA Planning Team Member and AWAAM Director, Beyond the Pale
2007-09-10
NY times
Published: September 10, 2007
A tenure bid by an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College who has critically examined the use of archaeology in Israel has put Columbia University once again at the center of a struggle over scholarship on the Middle East. The professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, who is of Palestinian descent, has been at Barnard since 2002 and has won many awards and grants, including a Fulbright scholarship and fellowships at Harvard and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Barnard has already approved her for tenure, officials said, and forwarded its recommendation to Columbia University, its affiliate, which has the final say. It is Dr. Abu El-Haj?s book, ?Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society,? that has made her a lightning rod, setting off warring petitions opposing and supporting her candidacy, and producing charges of shoddy scholarship and countercharges of an ideological witch hunt. Judith R. Shapiro, Barnard?s president, who is also an anthropologist, said in a statement that the tenure process was ?one of the linchpins of academic freedom and liberal arts education,? and that despite the passions, it must be conducted ?thoughtfully, comprehensively, systematically and confidentially.? She added, ?This case will be no different, both in its rigor and its freedom from outside lobbying.? The fracas is one of a growing list of bitter disputes over the Middle East in academe, including charges a few years ago by Jewish students at Columbia that they were being intimidated by professors of Middle Eastern studies. A university investigation found no evidence of anti-Semitic statements by professors, but it criticized one professor for becoming angry at a student in his class in a discussion of Israel?s conduct. At DePaul University in Chicago, a tenure fight led to the resignation last week of an assistant professor, Norman G. Finkelstein. He has written that Israel and Jews have used the Holocaust for their own purposes, including to oppress Palestinians. Zachary Lockman, a professor at New York University who is the president of the Middle East Studies Association, said, ?It?s a very conflicted field, given the passions about the Middle East, and there are a lot of people outside academe who have very strong feelings.? Dr. Abu El-Haj, who is teaching a course on ?Race and Sexuality in Scientific and Social Practice? this semester, declined to be interviewed while her tenure was under consideration. Born in the United States in 1962, Dr. Abu El-Haj studied at Bryn Mawr College and earned a Ph.D. at Duke. In her book, which grew out of her doctoral research and was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2001, Dr. Abu El-Haj says Israeli archaeologists searched for an ancient Jewish presence to help build the case for a Jewish state. In their quest, she writes, they sometimes used bulldozers, destroying remains of other cultures, including those of Arabs. She concludes her book by saying the ransacking by thousands of Palestinians in 2000 of Joseph?s tomb, a Jewish holy site in the West Bank, ?needs to be understood in relation to a colonial-national history? of Israel and the symbolic resonance of artifacts. The Middle East Studies Association, an organization of scholars who focus on the region, chose her book in 2002 as one of the year?s two best books in English about the Middle East. The other was ?Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship,? by Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, published by Cambridge University Press. Jere L. Bacharach, a historian at the University of Washington who presented the awards, said at the time that both books were ?nuanced, nonpolemic works on subjects that too often lend themselves to political tirades and polemics.? Critics of Dr. Abu El-Haj?s book, however, said her aim was to undermine Israel?s right to exist, and challenged her methodology and findings. ?Serious people are outraged when people who are rank amateurs come in,? Jacob Lassner, a professor of history and religion at Northwestern University who wrote a negative review of her book, said in an interview. ?It?s insulting. Brain surgeons would be offended if a medical technician criticized their work. That?s what?s happened here. The problem, of course, is that she is politically driven.? As Dr. Abu El-Haj?s tenure deadline approached, Paula R. Stern, a 1982 Barnard graduate who lives in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, began an online petition against the professor for what it called her ?demonstrably inferior caliber, her knowing misrepresentation of data and violation of accepted standards of scholarship.? As of yesterday, it had more than 2,000 signatures, some of them from Columbia faculty members. ?I am horrified,? Ms. Stern said in an interview, ?that Barnard would even consider tenure for a professor who is so clearly unqualified.? But Dr. Abu El-Haj also has many supporters, particularly in her field, who say her book is solid, even brilliant, and part of an innovative trend of looking at how disciplines function.
They have produced a counter-petition, signed by about 1,300 people, including many professors around the country and abroad, urging that she receive tenure and calling the attacks on her ?an orchestrated witch hunt? by those trying to shut down legitimate intellectual inquiry. Paul Manning, a linguist in the anthropology department at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, who initiated the petition supporting her, said that he acted in part because ?Nadia has been targeted a long time, for years, and she?s not been having a very good time of it.? He was also concerned about the ?concerted attack on the autonomy of the tenure process,? Professor Manning said. He added that people were ?particularly angered? about the Barnard case because it came on the heels of the DePaul case, in which Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, campaigned to derail Dr. Finkelstein?s tenure bid. Dr. Abu El-Haj has some opponents at her own college. ?There is every reason in the world to want her to have tenure, and only one reason against it ? her work,? said Alan F. Segal, a professor of religion and Jewish studies at Barnard. ?I believe it is not good enough.? He said he was particularly troubled by her suggestion that ancient Israelites had not inhabited the land where Israel now stands, and he said that she had either misunderstood or ignored evidence to the contrary. ?She completely misunderstands what the biblical tradition is saying,? he added. ?She is not even close. She is so bizarrely off.? He also said that a Barnard official, whom he declined to name, had asked him to suggest people who were not Jewish to comment on Dr. Abu El-Haj?s work for the tenure review, and that he had refused. Elizabeth Gildersleeve, a Barnard spokeswoman, said that a high official of the college had met with Professor Segal on the tenure case and asked him to submit names for letters of reference. But Ms. Gildersleeve said that ?the charge that restrictions were put on that request is absolutely untrue.? Dr. Abu El-Haj?s supporters say that she has come under attack partly because she is a Palestinian-American and that her opponents often quote her out of context to distort her arguments. ?She is a scholar of the highest quality and integrity who is being persecuted because she has the courage to focus an analytical lens on subjects that others wish to shield from scrutiny,? said Michael Dietler, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, ?and because she happens to be of Palestinian origin.? Whether Dr. Abu El-Haj will win tenure is expected to be decided in the next few months. The tenure rate at Barnard in recent years has been high: The college said that of 37 faculty members nominated for tenure by departments since 2002-3, tenure was granted to 33.
Talk to us: Blog@awaam.org
2007-09-10
From Yemen to Coney Island
From Yemen to Coney Island; From Teacher to Community Activist
24 November 2004
Those who give their time freely to the “We Are All Brooklyn” cause have been working for peace in many ways. Larry Clamage found one such individual, who brings people of all different faiths and cultures together through both her community activism and her professional career.
TV report transcript
Debbie Almontaser
“My name is Debbie Almontaser. I am an educator as well as a community activist. The past five years, I’ve been residing in Midwood, Brooklyn, in the Coney Island Avenue area of Brooklyn—which is a very diverse community, you know: Christians, Jews, Pakistanis, Muslims, Indians, people from all over the world. But after September 11th, this very diverse community had fallen apart.
So, I left my job as a classroom teacher, took a leave of absence, to do Islam sensitivity training; Arab culture training, as well as presentations at churches, synagogues, community based organizations…wherever there was a need.
There was such animosity and fear, that it was important for me to help people understand who Arabs, Muslims and South Asians were.
Looking at my own personal family, each and every one of us had this horrible thing called racism and discrimination happen to us because we are Arab and Muslim. It affected us, my husband and I, but the way that it affected my children was much more. It was devastating for them to think that some of our neighbors hated us so much. Not only did we feel hated, but we also felt fear.
I remember it was September 18th, that I had to come into the city to go to CBS studios for a quick interview. And people on that train were looking at me… People would look at my hijob and look at the size of my bag and the way I’m holding it. It was just a very uncomfortable feeling to have all eyes on you, treating you like you’re a criminal.
And it was then that I realized that people, the first thing they see is a Muslim woman. They don’t see a woman who had been here all her life, who is an American as apple pie. And it was very difficult for me to be seen in that light…that I’m recognized first for a religious background rather than for an individual.
The fear and the hysteria that was existing within our community also existed in our schools. There were a few family members of either teachers or parents who died on September 11th. The Arab and Muslim and South Asian communities really feared having their kids go to school. So, they kept their kids home for weeks on end.
Children didn’t understand who their peers were, only what they’ve heard and read about through the media.
In the midst of all this I realize there was a great need to develop a sense of understanding within our schools, to really better treat them as peers rather than enemies or kids to fear.
So, we were fortunate to get the Christian Children’s Fund to pay me a part-time salary. I was able to work part-time and also do this work for free in our schools.
I did this through a great deal of workshops with teachers and students as well as with families, where we looked at ourselves as individuals and shared our own personal stories in order to understand and develop a sense of respect for the culture of the other.
Through this training, we broke these barriers, where we started to make people feel comfortable to be a part of the bigger community.
And out of this we organized interfaith events around issues of discrimination, bias, etc.
And you know, those issues do come up of people feeling solidarity with Israel or people feeling solidarity with Palestinians -- but people are strong enough not to let their views be acted out in the United States. They understand that they have a lot to lose.
The Coney Island area is really a living testimony that people are working quite hard to accommodate their neighbors.
One perfect example is the peace walk—over 200 people walking side-by-side together to bear witness that people of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim background can co-exist in peace.
To see this unique diversity and people being able to coexist in a community is quite amazing. People of all different faiths and cultures can live together. I think it’s really beautiful.
2007-09-08
Stop the Madrassa is Crashing Muslim Day Parade
"Muslims from throughout the metro area, including busloads from Long Island mosques, plan to gather at Madison Avenue and 41st Street at noon and march south to 27th Street, according to Ghazi Khankan of Long Beach, a Muslim leader who will be the master of ceremonies. The expected crowd of more than 15,000 will include leaders from New York's Jewish, Buddhist and Christian communities, organizers said."
-Excerpt from Bloomberg Rejects Campaign to Cancel Muslim Parade, News Day
Dear UFPJ member groups and friends,
We would like to encourage the peace movement in NYC to come out in solidarity to the United Muslim Day Parade on Sunday, Sept. 9 at 12 noon. The parade has been taking place for 22 years, but now the same group of individuals (including Fox News) that has been attacking Debbie Almontaser and the Khalil Gibran School is attacking the parade and has been trying to get the mayor to disallow the parade.
We hope that your organizations will be able to march or support from the sidelines on Sunday. Stand against the demonizing of Muslims, anti-Muslim prejudice and the use of Islam phobia as a justification for war. The march begins at noon at 41st Street and Madison.
Please let us know if your organization will be marching and where you will be assembling and we can then let others know.
Peace,
Leslie Kielson
NYC-UFPJ
Send blogs and media to blog@awaam.org.
2007-09-08
unpublished letter to the times..
I sent this (unpublished) letter to the Times...
Donna
September 1, 2007
To the Editor:
Samuel Freedman ("Critics Ignored Record of a Muslim Principal,"
8/30/07) describes in compelling detail the six-month anti-Arab and
anti-Muslim smear campaign against the Khalil Gibran International
Academy and its founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, a campaign that
culminated in her resignation. The campaign "worked," as Mr.
Freedman says; however, the article leaves some unanswered questions
about why it worked:
Where was Ms. Almontaser's employer, the DOE, during this time? Where
were its support and outrage when she and the school were being so
recklessly defamed? And, with the recent attacks on Ms Almontaser--so
obviously a part of this campaign of lies and hatred--why, rather than
standing up for her, did the Mayor "welcome" her resignation and
Chancellor Klein say her resignation was in the best interests of the
school? And why did UFT President Weingarten say "maybe, ultimately,
she should not be a principal."? Had she received the support she
deserved, the smear campaign would not have achieved its goals.
Donna Nevel
2007-09-07
Finkelstein * Mearsheimer/Walt * Khalil Gibran School
AP reports that "a DePaul University professor who has drawn criticism for accusing some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust agreed Wednesday to resign immediately 'for everybody's sake.'
"University officials and political science professor Norman Finkelstein issued a joint statement announcing the resignation, which came as about a hundred protesters gathered outside the dean's office to support him.
"Finkelstein was denied tenure in June after spending six years on DePaul's faculty, and his remaining class was cut by DePaul last month."
JOHN K. WILSON
Author of the forthcoming book Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, Wilson said today: "One of the most notable developments in the 'war on terror' has been the extension of college censorship to supporters of Palestinian rights. Most of the attempts to cancel campus speakers and fire professors for their views have been aimed at critics of the Israeli government."
Wilson is the founder of the Institute for College Freedom and blogs about intellectual freedom. He has written extensively about the Finkelstein case as well as others.
He is also the author of four other books, including The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education and Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest.
More Information
LAURIE BRAND
Brand is chair of the Committee for Academic Freedom for the Middle East Studies Association. The group wrote a letter this week to the president of DePaul University, stating: "However one judges Professor Finkelstein's qualifications for tenure, it seems clear that DePaul has mishandled his case in a variety of ways and has repeatedly violated generally accepted standards of academic process and fair play. In so doing your administration has in effect given aid and comfort to those who seek to undermine the academy as a bastion of academic freedom and as a forum for the open and critical discussion of issues of vital public concern." Brand is a professor and director of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California.
The group also recently wrote a letter regarding the cancellation of a scheduled talk by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (authors of the new book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy) at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
MONA ELDAHRY
Eldahry is founding director of AWAAM: Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, an organization that provides young women and girls with opportunities in media production and community organizing. She said today: "Politicians in New York are saying they support the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which just opened as the first Arabic-language school in New York City. But for six months, there was a smear campaign that culminated with United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten's denouncement of the school's founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, which led to her resignation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein welcomed her departure. The school had been incorrectly linked to our organization -- we put out T-shirts reading 'Intefadah NYC.' When asked about the T-shirt, Debbie correctly noted that 'intefadah' means 'shaking off' and then found herself compelled to resign for the good of the students and the school. This is part of how prejudices tie the Arabic language to criminality. If they really want to support the school, our public officials should offer the school the PR support that it needs and invite Debbie Almontaser to resume her position as principal."
See the Economist, "Words of the prophet: Arabic-language teaching arrives in New York."
More Information
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.
2007-09-07
Arabic Public School Will Unite, Not Divide Us
NY DAILY NEWS
Arabic public school will unite, not divide, us
BY DEBBIE ALMONTASER
Sunday, May 20th 2007
Be Our Guest
Even though the Khalil Gibran International Academy -for which I will serve as the founding principal - won't open its doors for another three months, the school has already attracted national and even international attention.
Some critics claim that we will be segregating students based on their cultural identity - which they argue is contrary to the mission of public schools. Others have gone so far as to call our school "Khalil Gibran Islamist Academy" and "a taxpayer-funded madrasah."
I can't say I'm surprised at the reaction. But the claims are unfounded and unfair. Gibran Academy aims to offer all its students, from sixth through 12th grade, a rigorous, well-rounded and completely secular education that broadens their horizons. It is the type of school that can strengthen and unify the city - not, as some allege, tear it apart.
In 2005, when I first discussed creating an Arabic dual-language public school in New York City, controversy was far from my mind. I was thrilled then - and still am thrilled - by a vision of offering a Regents-based curriculum enhanced by intensive instruction in Arabic and the study of Middle Eastern history and culture, to give students unique and powerful preparation for success in the 21st century.
Such a school would graduate students with the skills they need to become independent thinkers, able to work and collaborate with cultures beyond their own in our increasingly global world. They would be equipped for careers in international affairs, diplomacy and business, among others.
My background was suited to creating such a school. I am an Arab-American, born in Yemen and raised in the U.S. I have worked for the New York City public schools for more than 15 years as a special education teacher, literacy trainer, youth development specialist and coordinator of cultural diversity and community-based programs.
I have also been extensively involved in interfaith and community work, promoting tolerance and bridge-building alongside people from different backgrounds all across the city.
This work proved crucial to the creation of the academy. My plan was to open the school in Brooklyn in an effort to serve both the Arab-American community and the broader community. This is a critical point; the school is not designed for Arab-American children. Rather, it is for students of all backgrounds to learn about the world, with a special focus on Arabic language and culture.
In the spring of 2006, the Arab American Family Support Center joined me as the school's lead partner, bringing expertise in language instruction. And I recruited the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding to help develop a curriculum in conflict resolution, a skill we consider essential for the internationally minded citizens the school would produce.
My belief that KGIA will be a jewel among the city's public schools is undimmed by the recent criticism. I welcome anyone to visit the school in the fall. You won't find religious or political indoctrination or anti-Americanism. What you will see is a diverse group of several dozen sixth-graders beginning an educational journey during which they will become fluent in Arabic. They will become versed in Arab history and culture, among others. They will master and surpass city and state standards in English, math, science and social studies.
Students will graduate emulating Khalil Gibran's quote, "The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe."
Almontaser is principal-designate of the Khalil Gibran International Academy.
2007-08-30
The Times Gets it Right!
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: August 29, 2007
Last Feb. 12, you may recall, New York education officials announced plans to open a minischool in September that would teach half its classes in Arabic and include study of Arab culture. The principal was to be a veteran teacher who was also a Muslim immigrant from Yemen, Debbie Almontaser.
The critical response began pouring in the very next day.
“I hope it burns to the ground just like the towers did with all the students inside including school officials as well,” wrote an unidentified blogger on the Web site Modern Tribalist, a hub of anti-immigrant sentiment. A contributor identified as Dave responded, “Now Muslims will be able to learn how to become terrorists without leaving New York City.”
Not to be outdone, the conservative Web site Political Dishonesty carried this commentary on Feb. 14:
“Just think, instead of jocks, cheerleaders and nerds, there’s going to be the Taliban hanging out on the history hall, Al Qaeda hanging out by the gym, and Palestinians hanging out in the science labs. Hamas and Hezbollah studies will be the prerequisite classes for an Iranian physics. Maybe in gym they’ll learn how to wire their bomb vests and they’ll convert the football field to a terrorist training camp.”
Thus commenced the smear campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy and, specifically, Debbie Almontaser. For the next six months, from blogs to talk shows to cable networks to the right-wing press, the hysteria and hatred never ceased. Regrettably, it worked.
Ms. Almontaser resigned as principal earlier this month. Nominally, she quit to quell the controversy about her remarks to The New York Post insufficiently denouncing the term “intifada” on a T-shirt made by a local Arab-American organization. That episode, however, merely provided the pretext for her ouster, for the triumph of a concerted exercise in character assassination.
After initially consenting to an interview for this column, Ms. Almontaser backed out, saying she did not want to “do anything that would jeopardize the school,” which is still set to open next month in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn. One of her longtime colleagues, however, spoke candidly about her emotions.
“She feels that she’s been violated, personally and professionally,” said Louis Cristillo, a research professor at Teachers College at Columbia University who has studied the experiences of Muslim children in the New York public schools. “To be painted as somebody who’s un-American, questioning her patriotism, is extremely hurtful for her. She’s really shocked at how devastatingly effective the defamation was.”
For anyone who bothered to look for it, Ms. Almontaser left a clear, public record of interfaith activism and outreach across the boundaries of race, ethnicity and religion. Her efforts, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks, earned her honors, grants and fellowships. She has collaborated so often with Jewish organizations that an Arab-American newspaper, Aramica, castigated her earlier this summer for being too close to a “Zionist organization,” meaning the Anti-Defamation League.
Ms. Almontaser has twice been profiled on Voice of America as an accomplished Muslim American. Her son, Yousif, spent several months on rescue efforts at ground zero as a member of the Army National Guard. Four of her nephews and cousins have served in the United States military in Iraq.
None of these details were exactly hidden under a rock. But her critics ignored them. In syndicated columns by Daniel Pipes, in articles and editorials in The New York Post and The New York Sun, on such Web sites as PipeLineNews and Militant Islam Monitor, both concerned with radical Islam, the Gibran school was repeatedly characterized as a “madrassa,” an Arabic term plainly meant to evoke images of indoctrination into terrorism and holy war.
Bella Rabinowitz, writing on March 9 in PipeLineNews, called Gibran “an Islamist public school whose curriculum shares the same ideology as the Sept. 11 terrorists.” Alicia Colon wrote in The Sun on May 1, “How delighted Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda must have been to hear the news” that New York “is bowing down in homage to accommodate and perhaps groom future radicals.”
Just as the school was caricatured, so was Ms. Almontaser. Although she has used the first name Debbie since childhood, her critics relentlessly identified her by her legal name Dhabah, the better to render her alien. Some articles would add the phrase “a k a Debbie,” treating her chosen name as a sort of criminal alias.
What all the attacks lacked was a single solid example of Ms. Almontaser having espoused Islamic extremism, much less jihad, during her 15 years as an educator. They have described her as a “9/11 denier” on the basis of one statement that “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.”
Yet, as Larry Cohler-Esses noted in an incisive article in New York Jewish Week, these foes conveniently overlooked what Ms. Almontaser went on to say in the same interview: “Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and stolen my religion.”
What Ms. Almontaser has done — as a private citizen, not in her classroom — is assail the Bush administration for its domestic surveillance and for its Middle East policies. She has said that desperation and oppression contribute to terrorism. You can disagree with her positions and still not believe they should be the basis for destroying her career.
“There’s zero correspondence between the caricature and the actual person,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman of Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation in Park Slope, who was on the Gibran school’s advisory board. “The words that were used to describe her, the fears that were evoked, are absolutely unrelated to her and her life’s work. Not in any way, shape or form.”
Another rabbi who has worked with Ms. Almontaser on interfaith efforts, Michael Feinberg of the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition, said: “It’s all about insinuation and innuendo and this formula of Arab equals Muslim equals terrorist. The viciousness and the vileness of this case surpass anything I’ve seen before.”
That vileness also did no favors to the responsible critics of the Gibran school, whether they were parents worried about school overcrowding or scholars like Diane Ravitch and Richard Kahlenberg, who believe that public schools should reinforce a common American culture rather than promote ethnic identity. Their worthy voices got lost in all the bile.
For now at least, Ms. Almontaser remains employed by the Department of Education. What she requires, though, is something harder to obtain than another job. As another victim of a different smear campaign put it once: “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
Samuel G. Freedman is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. His e-mail is sgfreedman@nytimes.com.
2007-08-29
Public Education and Global Politics
Naomi Braine, Jon Moscow, and Lee Schere.
The authors are NYC educators, and Jewish social justice activists.
Two weeks ago, the principal of a new middle school resigned in the
wake of an incident in which a reporter asked her a question about a
t-shirt slogan. The shirt was produced by an organization
unaffiliated with the school, and her response was simply to define
the non-English word used in the slogan.
Of course, the real issues here have nothing to do with t shirts.
Debbie Almontaser, then principal of the Khalil Gibran school for
Arabic language and cultures, was asked about a slogan using the
Arabic word 'intifada', and chose to translate and situate the word
culturally, rather than engage in a partisan exchange. Her questioner
worked for the New York Post, a newspaper with a strong editorial
position in support of the Israeli government, and he tried to force
her to take a position on a highly charged political issue. While she
has been accused of political naivety, her choice to try to sidestep
global politics in favor of a larger linguistic and cultural education
seems anything but naïve under the circumstances. The problem lies
not in Ms Almontaser's answer but in the original question, and the
use of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a form of litmus test in
the United States.
This country has a long history of demanding loyalty oaths,
particularly from those positioned as ethnically suspect at any given
historical moment. The McCarthy era is, no doubt, the most famous of
those but it is hardly unique in our history. The search for
communists caused witch hunts, purges, and political purification
rituals from, at various points in the 20th century, union officials,
Jews, Italians, immigrants generally, homosexuals and public school
teachers. African American public figures have been regularly asked
to deny all connection to outspoken members of the Black community.
Martin Luther King, Jr may be a national icon now, but during his
lifetime he was seen by J. Edgar Hoover as dangerously un-American.
The primary function of these political assaults has always been to
define permissable limits of political discourse and silence dissent
The leading targets of US security policing are now Islamic
'fundamentalism' and 'jihad,' not communism , and Palestinian
resistance to Israeli occupation plays a central symbolic role. The
phrase 'Palestinian resistance' has become, in itself, a potent
political locator, and we use it intentionally. When the principal of
the Khalil Gibran school was asked a question about a t-shirt slogan
that used the word 'intifada', she was being asked to publicly
repudiate the struggles of Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza
Strip and East Jerusalem. Anyone who considers this statement an
exaggeration should look carefully at how her refusal to take a
position on the Israel-Palestine struggle resulted in her being forced
to resign. Ms Almontaser's rejection of partisan political ritual
should not be a matter of concern for the NY public; her professional
credentials, experience, and approach to public education are a
legitimate focus, and she demonstrated relevant skills in those areas
by refusing to engage with political provocation.
As Jewish New Yorkers, we have a complex relationship to both loyalty
oaths and the invocation of Israel as a political tool in NYC.
American Jewish communities have considerable experience with
accusations of political disloyalty, and with being subjected to
ethnic prejudice based on religious identity. We find these forms of
bigotry equally abhorrent when directed at Arabs, Muslims, or any
other social groups. We also feel a particular obligation to protest
when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used as a weapon to
marginalize Arab Americans. Elements of the Jewish and Christian
Zionist movements have deliberately created the strong American
identification with Israel that enables the use of the intifada as a
litmus test of political loyalty in the US. The exercise of prejudice
does not enhance anyone's safety, and demanding ritual denunciations
of the intifada will do nothing to reduce terrorism in the US.
We are particularly disturbed that Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Klein,
and teachers union president Randi Weingarten did not resist and
condemn the attacks on Ms. Almontaser. They surrendered to those who
seek to exploit Israeli-Palestinian tensions to create and exacerbate
fear and suspicion in New York City, and to foster Anti-Arab
prejudice. In doing so, they have undermined the Kahlil Gibran
Academy's mission and added to the barriers of mutual suspicion and
isolation that it hopes to tear down. Their failure to stand up for
Ms. Almontaser will weaken educators who are willing to try new things
and to take risks for New York's children—the very qualities that the
school system needs. Students need to learn history, culture,
language, and, yes, politics, but they do not need to be drilled in
the recitation of rote responses to complex issues. New York needs
more educators who will teach our children to be thoughtful,
principled, and engaged citizens of a global world.
2007-08-25
by Fadi
The Khalil Gibran International Academy is one of several dual-language public schools in New York City. The school plans to supplement the general New York public school curriculum with Arabic language and Arab culture lessons. As a result, some residents of New York City, harboring a racist hatred of anything and everything Arab, created the Stop the Madrassa Coalition to pressure the New York City Department of Education to shut down the school before its inaugural semester this Fall. Though it appears that the school will open as planned, the Coalition has succeeded in forcing the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, the school's Principal, after Almontaser claimed that the word "intifada" means "shaking up." In fact, the word "intifada" does mean "shaking up." The campaign to expel Almontaser, like the mission of the Coalition, was entirely racially-motivated.
KABOBfest has discovered that a number of the Coalition's Board members have a long history of actual racism (as opposed to the fantasy allegations drummed up against the school's Board members) against Arabs, Muslims, and/or Blacks. For example, the Board includes notorious free-thought hater Daniel Pipes. Among Pipes's many racist declarations, perhaps the most instructive on the Coalition's motives is his belief that "increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews." Mind you, this is a man who has expressed support for the U.S.'s internment of Japanese during World War II.
Most illuminating, though, is the Coalition's Treasurer, David Yerushalmi. As an Israeli settler in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, Yerushalmi proudly and openly flouts the Fourth Geneva Convention. Among his accolades, Yerushalmi is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). SANE recently published a policy proposal that shows just how poor of a lawyer (and racist) Yerushalmi is:
"[A]dherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the U.S. Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari'a on the American People. . .It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam." Yerushalmi's website also states:
"There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote." -AND-
"Is there something unique about the Black American (or, at least the Black New Yorker) that leads him to murder so disproportionately and to most often kill and victimize his own? Do we see patterns of Black culture that arise out of Africa and the wanton murder of blacks by blacks there? Why have the colonized blacks of the African continent, after having acquired their freedom and independence, so willingly slaughtered their own and live in despicable disease and squalor despite a land of enormous riches while Indians of the Indian sub-continent have successfully moved from British rule to democracy and relative civility even in a country that still maintains social inequalities as a fact of their culture?" (tarboush tip: CAIR)
Though none of these sexist and racist declarations bothered his fellow Board members and friends, Yerushalmi's recently discovered anti-Semitic remarks have finally raised some eyebrows.
Notwithstanding, Board member Pamela Hall defends Yerushalmi's hatred of Jews with the same silly, stupid, and offensive logic of the Coalition that has me wondering, has racism against Muslims and Arabs in this country reached such a level that people are deferring to this (at least enough deference to generate a controversy over a harmless public school): “If he’s speaking of the radical liberal Jews who were at the [pro-school] rally Monday, then these people deserve to be criticized. These people are anti-America. These people are extreme, outrageous leftists. They work so hard to destroy this country ... and, sadly, many of them are Jews.”
This article was taken fromKabobfest
2007-08-24
New Arabic Language School Raises No Red Flags For NYCLU
August 20, 2007 -- The NYCLU today commented on the opening of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, the city's first public school dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture. The following can be attributed to NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman:
"By all accounts the creation of the Khalil Gibran International Academy should raise no greater concern than any of the dozens of other theme schools that the Department of Education has created to improve the quality of education for children in New York City. There is no evidence of discrimination in the admission of students. There is no evidence that the school will promote religion. And there is a good deal of evidence that the organizers of the school thought long and hard about creating an atmosphere of tolerance and diversity.
It is indeed ironic that a school funded in part by a federal program to meet a pressing need for Arabic studies, should be the target of attack because it seeks to do just that. It would be unfortunate if an undertaking designed to foster education and tolerance was thwarted into a success story for the ethnic and religious prejudice against Arabs and South Asians that has been far too prevalent in post-911 America."
New York Civil Liberties Union
****************************************************************************
Send us an article, personal story, opinion, creative peice, or comment about Intifada NYC, media coverage, the resignation of KGIA principal, etc. We'll be posting regularly.
blog@awaam.org
2007-08-23
KGIA Design Team Member Speaks Out
Yesterday, supporters of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) (KGIA) and Debbie Almontaser held a rally in front of the Tweed Courthouse. It was an attempt to set the record straight as well as to make sure the DOE knows that community support for the School and for Debbie is strong.
I was asked to speak because I was a member of the KGIA Design Team. And, both as a member of the KGIA Design Team, and as a white Jewish parent from Brooklyn, I wanted to make clear that the stated mission and purpose of the school is the opposite of what it’s opponents are making it out to be.
The other speakers at the rally were: Rabbi Michael Feinberg, Executive Director of the
Greater New York Labor Religion Coalition; Mona Eldahry, Founding Director, AWAAM; Priscilla Gonzalez from the Center for Immigrant Families; Sara Said, sister of a KGIA student; and Reverend Clinton Miller from the Brown Memorial Baptist Church.
Reverend Miller, whose 1,000 member congregation supports KGIA, aptly pointed out that we can’t afford to be afraid of different cultures and that if we have a global economy, we need to have a global educational system. He also stated:
“The DOE should not allow conservative elements of the press to engage us in hysteria. We already know what happened when religious fundamentalists used hysteria to rally the citizenry – that’s what led to the unjust financing of the immoral War in Iraq.”
Rabbi Feinberg called KGIA a “gift to the children of New York City and all of our communities” describing it as a “vision of tolerance, cooperation, and community understanding.” He pointed out that the vision for KGIA came into being in the person of Debbie Almontaser who has, more than any other community leader in New York City, worked “tirelessly to bring communities together and foster mutual understanding and respect.”
Mona Eldahry asked, "Why all of a sudden is the Arabic language such a threat? Why has an Arabic-speaking educator and the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy been pressured to resign because she chose to educate the public about an Arabic word using a definition that you will commonly find in any Arabic language dictionary?"
Priscilla Gonzalez criticized Randi Weingarten and the DOE for failing to stand by Debbie. She spoke about the need to celebrate schools like KGIA and educational leaders like Debbie that strive to educate NYC’s children in ways that reflect and respect their multiple cultures and identities.
Sara Said spoke about the importance of a school like KGIA for Arab-American and Muslim families. She spoke about her experiences in NYC public schools in which she and her friends were harassed, spit on and called derogatory names, even before 9/11. There were times, she said, when they had no choice but to skip lunch to avoid verbal and physical attacks. A school like KGIA would provide a safe haven that is not available to Arab-American students in other public schools.
As the speakers made clear, KGIA, rather than serving to isolate Arab-Americans or indoctrinate anyone, is a vehicle to counter the racist fallout from the 9/11 attacks by making it possible to build bridges with the Arab-American community and enable NYC students to learn about Arab culture.
It is because I saw KGIA as an opportunity to create a school based on inclusion, diversity and community that I joined the Design Team. In my role as a Design Team member, I was part of a small core group who focused on drafting the proposal that was submitted to the DOE. There is no one else as familiar with that proposal than us. I wrote some of it and I had a hand in editing all of it. So I can say with complete confidence that none of what the School’s opponents are saying is true.
Let me make it perfectly clear:
KGIA is not and was never intended to be an Islamic School. It is a public school that focuses on the study of the Arabic language, culture and history.
KGIA’s curriculum will follow all the NYC DOE standards for a public school.
KGIA is not a school open only to Muslim or Arab children. The intent of the school was to have as diverse a population as possible – ethnically, racially, economically, religiously.
To counter the misinformation that is spreading all over, I think it’s important to quote directly from the materials we wrote. KGIA’s mission is to “graduate life-long learners who have a deep understanding of different cultural perspectives, a love of learning and a desire for excellence with integrity.”
KGIA is designed to:
be “a multicultural oasis of community, connection and learning, preparing graduates to become ambassadors of peace and hope who are able to create bridges of understanding across cultural and other differences.”
create a school culture that is “rooted in caring and trusting relationships that enable each student’s talents and contributions to be nurtured, acknowledged and celebrated. The entire KGIA community … will foster an inclusive environment in which multiple perspectives and differences are valued.”
“prepare students of diverse backgrounds for success in an increasingly global and interdependent society.”
provide a “diverse, supportive and collaborative learning environment in which students can reach their full potential and grow into knowledgeable and socially responsible global leaders.”
“foster the critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills necessary for our students to become ambassadors of peace and hope, who are able to create bridges of understanding across cultural and other differences.”
And, the proposal also states:
“Today’s children face a world of polarization and disconnection. KGIA will provide our students with a place where they and their families can feel connected to a community that is focused on their success. KGIA’s graduates will develop a strong sense of pride in their own culture while developing an understanding and respect of other cultures. Through understanding their commonalities and appreciating their differences, they will become ambassadors within and outside the school community to bridge differences.”
I cannot even begin to tell you how much time and energy Debbie put into making this school a reality. It is her dedication, commitment and ability to attract other committed people that made the school possible. It is precisely because she is a woman of peace with ties to both the Arab and the Jewish communities that she is the perfect leader for this school. The school would not have been created without her and should be able to go forward with her back on board.
This school was Debbie’s vision. The DOE should never have accepted Debbie’s resignation. Instead, the DOE should have provided her with the support she needed and deserved.
(For those of you interested in hearing the full content of the speeches, they are on the AWAAM website).
-Deborah Howard
KGIA Design Team Member
View our youth organizers' video regarding the controversy:
Silenced by the Media, by AWAAM Youth Organizers
2007-08-22
Politics, Media, Culture and Life from a Queer Boriqua in Brooklyn
This is fairly short notice for this alert, but I want to really encourage folks to show up Monday afternoon for a gathering in support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a soon-to-be-opened NYC public school that will focus on Arabic language and culture (for folks unfamiliar, many NYC public schools have foci like this, cultural or otherwise.) The school has been the subject of racist and anti-Islamic attacks from many conservative pundits and media sources, as in this NY Sun article and an edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes that was written up over at Media Matters. However, the school has been under especially harsh attack since Debbie Almontaser, now ex-principal of the school, came under fire from such sources for not condemning a t-shirt created by an organization that is unrelated to the school. Since then, Almontaser has resigned from her position, stating that she “became convinced yesterday that this week’s headlines were endangering the viability of Khalil Gibran International Academy, even though [she] apologized.”
The t-shirt, which reads “Intifada NYC,” was created by a NYC community organization, AWAAM: Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media. The group’s mission states that it “provides comprehensive leadership opportunities in community organizing, art and media skills to young women and girls … to empower a generation of young women with the community organizing and media skills necessary to act as leaders within their communities, which have endured increasing hardship in recent years.” On Democracy Now! last Monday, Mona Eldahry, founding director of AWAAM, said this about the t-shirt’s origin and meaning:
Now, “Intifada NYC” is not a call for terrorism, as they say. It’s not a call for violence or, if I could quote one of the publications, “Gaza Strip uprising in the Big Apple.” “Intifada NYC” is a term that, you know, we developed maybe two, three years ago in the years since September 11th. Basically, for myself — everybody interprets it differently — but for myself, I feel, as an Arab woman, as a Muslim woman and as a woman of color, pressure from two sides … on one hand, from the community discrimination — from the outside, I mean, you know, discrimination on the streets — and then from our own communities, you know, we’re told, you know, “Be careful. You know, don’t — you know, don’t go to demonstrations. Don’t be too outspoken, you know,” you know, especially when we were young …
“Intifada” means “shaking off,” you know, so shake off these pressures that we’re feeling, both from the other side and from our side. You know, we have to speak out. And if we don’t speak up for ourselves, who will?
This clarification of the literal Arabic meaning of intifada is what got Debbie Almontaser into so much trouble. Essentially, both she and AWAAM are coming under fire for owning their own language and for refusing to allow it to be constrained to which others wish to limit it. A recent editorial in the New York Post gives this definition of the word: “terroristic assault and murder, undertaken by Palestinians against Jews in the Middle East.” (No mention, of course, of the terroristic assault, murder, and oppression of Palestinians by Israel.) The editorial then calls Almontaser’s explanation of the Arabic definition of intifada “malarkey.” Because apparently, the editorial staff of the New York Post deems itself more qualified to give the definition of an Arabic word than an Arab-American speaker of Arabic. And although it may be true that the word is most often associated with Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation, such a definition even leaves out the many non-violent elements of those struggles, including “civil disobedience, general strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, graffiti, and barricades.”
The repression, stamping out, robbing and perversion of language and cultural identity have long been important tools of colonialism, imperialism, and racism. Right now, it is in the interest of conservatives, racists, warmongers, and anti-Islamic people to promote only those perceptions of Islam and Arabic culture that support american wars and policies of aggression and imperialism in the Arabic world, as well as the oppression of Arabic people in this country. The Khalil Gibran International School is coming under attack because it will not promote the prescribed view of Arabic history, culture, peoples and languages; it’ll actually strive for a fair and complete perspective, one which will go counter to one that props up war and oppression. The attacks themselves - calling the school a “madrassa” (another Arabic word twisted by the media and conservatives) that will serve to “groom future radicals” - continue to promote the twisted view of Arab people, assigning sinister, violent, and anti-american motives to the mere study of Arabic language and culture.
The preservation of language and culture is threatening to american hegemony, to american imperialism, and to american racism. African languages were quite literally beaten out of Africans in slavery; Native languages and culture were wiped out with their people. Today, “Welcome to America, now SPEAK ENGLISH” is a popular t-shirt slogan, Latino kids are suspended from school for speaking Spanish in the halls, and travelers are stopped from boarding planes because they’re wearing t-shirts written in Arabic:
So the security officers and the JetBlue officers at that time told me that wearing an Arabic T-shirt and coming to an airport in the US is like going to a bank while wearing a T-shirt that reads, “I am a robber.”
And a principal can be forced to resign because she makes the mistake of defining a word in her own language, instead of allowing her language to be defined for her by those who do nothing but malign her culture.
Intifada NYC, indeed - for there’s a whole lot of bullshit to be shaken off.
Angry Brown Butch
2007-08-20
What do you think?
Send us your article, personal story, opinion, creative peice, or comment about Intifada NYC, media coverage, the resignation of KGIA principal, etc. We'll be posting regularly.
blog@awaam.org
2007-08-17
Letter CIF sent to UFT President Randi Weingarten
Dear Randi,
We are deeply disappointed and upset by your statements in opposition
to Debbie Almontaser. We believe your statements have played a role
in furthering the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism that pervades and infects
our City.
Aside from everything else that points to the racist nature of this
whole incident, do you not know that in most parts of the world, the
word intifada connotes resistance to an unethical and illegal and brutal
occupation? It is not the word intifada that promotes violence or that
should be denounced; rather, what should be denounced is an occupation
that promotes violence and that made the intifada necessary.
And do you also not know that if principals were forced to resign for
making a statement that someone thought was insensitive or
inappropriate or stupid (which this was not), we'd likely have almost
no principals left in NYC?
Finally, as you know, New York City has one of the most inequitable
and discriminatory school systems in the country--one that has grossly
under-served low income and families of color. It is our view that we
should be doing everything possible to support, not destroy efforts to
strengthen schools that promote critical thinking and a concern for
the world around us and that reflect, respect, and serve our many
different communities.
You are certainly entitled to your personal views on this matter, but
you represent the teachers of this city and need to be held
accountable for your public statements and positions. For the sake of
the children of our city and for a commitment to fighting racism and
injustice, we urge you to make a public apology for your comments that
helped lead to the resignation of Debbie
Almontaser.
Sincerely,
Center for Immigrant Families
New York City
For those who wish to send in emails of support, below is the contact info for the Board of Ed and other involved parties.
Joel Klein
email
Randi Weingarten (call and write)
United Federation of Teachers
52 Broadway, New York, NY 10004
212-777-7500
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (phone, fax and email him)
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
PHONE 311 (or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC)
FAX (212) 788-8123
email
New York Post
letters to the editor
NY Sun
105 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007
Main Telephone: 212-406-2000
Main Fax Number: 212-608-7348
Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr.
22-45 31st Street., Astoria
Astoria, New York 11105
District Office Phone No.: (718) 274-4500
District Office Fax No.: (718) 726-0357
Assem. Dov Hikind
1310 48th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11219
718-853-9616
-a
2007-08-14
Statements of support
I am so sorry for all that your organization has been going through, I would very much like one of the intifadah NYC shirts, are you still selling them? I have volunteered in Palestine with the ISM and have many shirts from many demos here, but I can always use more!
thanks
B
Dear AWAAM,
I think it's spiteful, ignorant, and shameful. May we both live to see those who created the controversy sneered and jeered at by a more enlightened generation.
A
Hello,
Please tell me how I can buy an "Intifada NYC" T-shirt.
Also, a suggestion: Perhaps it's time for an "Intifada Media" T-shirt.
Thank you,
KC
Warm Greetings to all of you at AWAAM:
Have we reduced education to a knee-jerk reaction to a t-shirt? Has the President of AFT stopped learning? I support you wholeheartedly in continuing with this school, and as a teacher of English in high school, I would not hesitate to be a part of such an admirable venture. I applaud all of you and your efforts.
Anyone who has studiied another language understands that one cannot take a word out of context and assume that one understands the complexities and the subtleties of the word, especially in a language they do not speak. I am sorry that the principal has decided to let thier ignorance interfere with her realization of a dream such as this, but she must be true to herself. I respect her humulity and dignity.
I hope that you all will continue to move forward and challenge these small ideas and this need to dehumanize people whom we fear. We all know that ignorance breeds fear and fear breeds prejudice and discrimination. This must be challenged specifically by such institutions through information, if we are to teach all of our young people what Kahlil Gibran communicated in The Prophet. I was reading over my copy and found this:
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear
is in your heart and not in the head of the feared.
Thank you for what you are doing. It seems that the path to peace and understanding is always bumpy and rarely peaceful.
Sincerely,
KW
Give them hell.
They are the problem.
Racist fools don't deserve polite words.
Be outraged.
Do the world a favor:
Expose the ignorance.
Expose the Zionist angle.
Stand tall.
Your cause is beautiful and right.
'Intifada' USA!
Greetings from the rest of the world, suffering the same ignorance in US bully policies!
C
Dear Sisters,
Salaamz.
I saw the piece on DemocracyNow! and it was great. I hope that you will be successful in your mission.
Yours fraternally,
MA
Atlanta
Assalaamu alaikum sisters,
Congratulations on your well presented piece on
"Democracy Now." Insh'allah, the civil rights
struggles by Muslims, Arabs and all people of
color should slowly fade after the Bush-fostered
climate of fear slowly passes. However, I would
expect that courageous, persistent educational
and legal efforts will be necessary for a very
long time. As one can see in the world, ignorance
and racism seem to have been pandemic for perhaps
as long as humans have existed. The real silent
majority, I think, learned from the struggles in
the 60's and might be a broader source of social
support and justice. Developing collaborative,
community links outside the ignorant groups above
could spread greater social understanding and
justice.
As we can see, any democracy must always work to
maintain and improve its status as such. I hope
everyone who is elligible to vote, will do so, in
response to this big picture and I applaud your
continuing efforts.
Salaams,
JG
Colorado Springs, CO
hello all,
i watched the democracy now interview this morning & hav nuthin but [love] 4 u all.
i [heart] the fakt that u alluded 2 "littl rok" integr8shun in the 50z & 60z.
such a 1derfull interview & itz good 2 c beautifull sisterz in the struggl.
i will 4ward both the interview & the website 2 uther good peepz.
i'm jus a male who residez n c attl but if i can b uv inny help 2 u let me know.
b well,
S
Hello,
Is it possible for me to get an "Intifada NYC" t-shirt? That would be a men's x-large. I will happily wear it in protest of those who just don't get what you're trying to do.
Thanks,
JW
I heard about your problems on the radio show
Democracy Now, and I would like to apologize on behalf
of all American women and especially the ignorant
general right-wing fearmongers. MOST of the American
people (and especially the women), are, I believe,
tolerant and have a live-and-let-live type attitude.
What is being done to you is shameful, and although it
stems from fearful ignorance, that is no excuse for
treating ANYONE this way.
Please know that you are in my heart and prayers and
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!
With love,
PC
Hello AWAAM,
I once studied at an orthodox rabbinical school which
I left on account of the unbelievable racism and
stupidity I found there directed against Muslims and
Arabs. This went hand-in-hand with a contempt for
women which I found astonishing.
I know that thousands - if not millions - of people
have similar stories to tell.
Having heard your representative on DemocracyNow this
morning, it sounds to me like what you're doing is
much-needed and courageous.
Don't let the haters get you down.
Best Wishes,
JL
Hello,
I just wanted to write and let you know that I am appalled at the negative reaction that the "Intifiada NYC" t-shirts are getting to the point that the principle of a school has been forced to resign. Recognizing that the US is in the midst targeting Arabs and Muslims, we have a long road ahead of us. But I just wanted to lend a voice of support. Though I live on the West Coast, I would be very happy to buy some of the T-shirts for me and other supporters to wear and use as a teaching tool. Please let me know if you are interested in selling and shipping 3-4 shirts.
Please let me know what other means of support would be useful to you.
Thank you.
-C
Hi,
Are you still selling these t-shirts? How can I get one? Can you ship them?
-T
I am of Indignous culture being a Maya-Lenca originally from Honduras, Central America. The reason I am writing
is to let you that I support you. The acts, comments and media attacks on people of Arabic and people of the Moslem culture and religion is hurtful, ugly and can not be tolerated. I have a friend in Albuquerque the family is from Lebanon and she told me not to mention that her family was from Lebanon she was born here and realy has fear.
It breaks my heart because Indignous people have also been through this and still those mixed with white want to pass as white it is internal racism due to the assault.
Saying all this I respect your intention with the T-Shirt because one can help but be angry. At the same time choosing this particular slogan is not an act that can build better understanding. My thoughts that I want to share is that the language has been corrupted by the political power who want to divide people and may another way to approach
this would be to pring in your blog the real meaning of Intefada and all those other words that power's to be have
decided to tell us what they mean. I feel is important right in this issue to contearct the missinformation that is putting so many people in danger. Many american people don't have an interest in getting to know other cultures or people
in the schools racism is part of the institution and it also permeates the society. People are afraid to have real discussion. It is easier to protest the war than to bring people together to really discuss the racism because of knowledge that really exist.
Personally I believe from my own experience that we need to change from violence, in words and thoughts and not imitate those who invest in hate and separation. This is why with all my spirit I hope you take your words back and print real meanings and make it a campaign and also create community events to bring people together showing the beauty of your cultures, people, music, poetry and art to conteract the negativity that has been creater.
I know you probably are familiar with the AIM the American Indian Movement. AIM had wonderful things that it brought to our Indigenous communities it said hold your head up, stand up for your rights, and mary people within your communities because the US government is trying to close reservation and indigenous communities accusing them of being white mary too many time and they are not longer Indians. This was positive political action. Then they picked up guns and the media began a campaign that Indians were planning to attack the American way of life
and added words to our movement that had nothing to do with what we were about. The CIA, FBI went after all of our leaders one by one and systematically killed them, jailed them. Our loss was terrible they did not kill our spirit but there people who could being an asset to our community as elders who are not here today.
We are all hated equally by the oppresers and the people who believe in total contral and to take over countries. But we must think about changing how we act. Please consider my thoughts I have a love for all your people and many friends from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria and Hebrew allies we need yell and scream in own groups and get the hate out and refuse to put ourselves in danger while we are trying to make changes. Walking in peace from within we can be so powerful that eventually we will win over the ignorance that stopping your school and looking at your people this time as the enemy. The American people are dangerous although there is a few like the Quakers and Menonites and others who can help the majority of Americans believe that they are unique and every one else is their colony. This is why the government has the policies of invention and hate with no regard for what they the people of this country are responsible in my humble opinion. I have lived here 50 years and I have gotten to know the people from one end to another and they are like many other societies to ready to pick an enemy out ignorance and fear. Please be careful I would like to invite to come to New Mexico Albuquerque to do a meeting of exchange and celebration to conteract this fear and ignorance. The T-shirt although I understand your anger and pain I can not in my heart support but I do support you in the effort to stop the violence and to do it changing the model of you hate so I will also.
My culture is May-Lenca and my prayers are not part of organized religion I am spiritual in my learning from birth I hope I hear from you and my thoughts will be connected with you to keep you safe.
MD
Hi there:
About "intifada" or "madrasa", or "jihad". It's the language.
People, especially Americans, are afraid of what they do not
understand.
It's like having a tshirt saying "Jewish" during Nazi Germany. (or the lead-up).
May I suggest proceding completely in English (spoken word in class and press releases,
etc) until at least you get your school started. After the heat cools off a little, gradually
start introducing things "arabic".
I know you probably dont have lots of money (maybe you do), but I would suggest
hiring a public relations firm.
As you know, it's all about sound bites, and first impressions.
And your group is at the bottom of the barrel in terms of acceptance. Afterall, the US
has been involved in or supporting actions against people that speak Arabic or practice
Islam for decades now.
Remember, any publicity is good publicity. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.
Try to get that lady back that just resigned, at all costs, even behind the scenes.
Your opposition wins whenever they discourage good people from helping you.
This is an age-old game.
I'm no scholar, but this reminds me of how Hawaiians were outlawed from speaking
their language for years. And I'm sure speaking Japanese during or shortly after WWII
would have gotten the same response from locals and the "Fox News" of the time.
Good Luck.
Just pretend you are Jewish trying to setup a Jewish school in Germany decades ago.
They wouldn't have given up, and neither should you.
A
Hi Ladies!
Marhaba!
I was fortunate to remember to watch DemocracyNow! On satellite this morning and watched the representative from AWAAM talk about the
Insane mess in NYC concerning the Khalil Ghibran School and the neo-CONartists who have been causing all the ruckus...again...and think
That if nothing else, now the ENTIRE US that listens/watches Democracy Now! Is aware that an Arabic cultural school is going to open
In NYC soon...somewhere very soon and that that school and the others that WILL follow will tell the story of the struggle to open and to
Be Arabic and Muslim in Amerikkka in 21st century Bush/Cheney US. It will be like hearing about Rosa Parks and Malcolm X of the
Civil rights struggle in the 60s...for the generations to come....have heart and keep hope--!!! This exposure of the bigotry and ignorance
Of the Pipes and other neoCON artists will blow back in their faces....because, in the end result..JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL...keep on
Keeping on sistahs..!!
Consider that here I am..1 little person in the Western US...(New Mexico) one of millions who listen or watch that news program faithfully...
To learn what is REALLY going on....and they now broadcast over 500 television stations across the US and countless radio stations and
Blog and Spanish and for blind/deaf as well...Your story has reached many thousands if not millions as a result of their stupidity and
prejudice....they LOOSE!
Now, my last request....How can I purchase (others will want to know too) your TEE shirt that says INTIFADA on it? Have you considered
Making different /similar Tees? Like by city or state? Or different colors? Like black with white letters....in English and Arabic too?
If not, I'd like to have 1 of your tees..the khaki color with Intifada NYC...that's lovely!!...pls contact me by email or by phone...
-MA
Shukran ikteer for all the good work you are doing for women and girls in NY! And everywhere else.....
Salamat
-MA
Albuquerque NM
Not all of us Americans are ignorant. I think what you are doing is long overdue.
Good Luck with your endeavors.
-MB
Hi
I heard you on DN! Thank you for speaking up, thank you for representing the voiceless. As a queer Arab woman I get my strength from people like you.
-T
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