NYPost forces out principal of city school, Khalil Gib

SevenOneEighty wrote:
But what would you make of a person opening up an English language academy in Palestine defending the sale of and use of the phrase "Crusade Palestine" T-Shirts by associates they shared an office space with? The explanation would go something like:

"Well, a 'crusade' is really a campaign of providing information and I think its a great thing that these girls are being entrepreneurs...."

Seriously, what so you think the reaction of the Palestinians/ Muslims would be? CAN YOU IMAGINE? Much LESS has happened before (cartoons) and blood is in the streets almost immediately in the Muslim world.

And for what feels like the millionth time 7180, "SHE" did not share an office with the tshirt group. She sat on the board of a group that did -- which I'm sure you must understand makes the connection ridiculously flimsy.
Sorry she didn't jump high enough when the NYPost asked her the meaning of the word "intifada"? These are the same people now going with a sexist antisemitic sounding attack on the new leader of the school. Nice. These are the people you are listening to?

pitu wrote:

If I saw someone wearing a nazi T-shirt or , for example, "Final Solution, NYC" tshirts (while eloquently providing a dictionary definition of the words, "Final" and "Solution"), I would also politely ask them, what the f*ck their problem was if they were in my' hood.

As should everyone else.

Really? You talking to every teen in your neighborhood that has a tshirt on that promotes gun violence? I don't believe you..

I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist

That is something the west is going to need to come to grips with and deal with sooner or later.

This is only one example; there are many others:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=465570&in_page_id=1770

By HASSAN BUTT - More by this author » Last updated at 07:38am on 2nd July 2007

hassan butt

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

Read more...

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More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers.

And as with previous terror attacks, people are again saying that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.

For example, on Saturday on Radio 4's Today programme, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said: "What all our intelligence shows about the opinions of disaffected young Muslims is the main driving force is not Afghanistan, it is mainly Iraq."

I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers. But if I were still fighting for their cause, I'd be laughing once again.

Mohammed Sidique Khan

Mohammed Sidique Khan met with the author on two separate occasions

Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the July 7 bombings, and I were both part of the network - I met him on two occasions.

And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism.

Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.

But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.

The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief.

For my generation, we were born here, raised here, schooled here, we work here and we'll stay here.

But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.

However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.

And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

DEB LOSES KHALIL APPEAL
AP

October 19, 2007 -- An educator who helped found the city's first Arabic-themed public school and resigned as its principal after defending the use of "intifada" on a T-shirt will not be rehired, school officials said yesterday.

Debbie Almontaser will not be renamed principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, said David Cantor, a spokesman for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Cantor said that in August, "she resigned to ensure the stability of the school. The chancellor agreed with her decision . . . and now considers the matter closed."

Almontaser had applied for the job along with 24 others before the application deadline on Tuesday at 5 p.m.

The former principal, a Muslim of Yemeni descent, held a news conference Tuesday, saying she was forced out and, as a victim of injustice, vowing to sue.

A message left for her representative was not immediately returned yesterday.

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By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: November 20, 2007

The founding principal of the city’s first Arabic-language school has filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court against the city’s Education Department, Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, claiming that they violated her right to free speech and “conspired to deny her the opportunity to regain her position as principal” of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, in Brooklyn. The principal, Debbie Almontaser, resigned under pressure this summer, following a furor that erupted after she was quoted in The New York Post defending the use of the word “intifada” on a T-shirt sold by a Brooklyn-based organization of Arab women. Last month, Ms. Almontaser said she was a victim of a smear campaign by conservatives and would apply to get her job back. But Education Department officials said they would not consider her application among the 25 others that were submitted at the time.

Subject: Update

THE 'CRY SCHOOL' PRINCIPAL
'INTIFADA' CASE IN COURT

By KATI CORNELL

December 1, 2007 -- The ousted principal of a controversial Arabic public school in Brooklyn bawled on the witness stand yesterday as she described how the Bloomberg administration pushed her out of her job after she publicly defended the use of the slogan "Intifada NYC" on a T-shirt.

A weepy Debbie Almontaser, founder and former acting principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, accused the city of rushing to judgment based on media pressure and claimed she agreed to an abrupt resignation in a bid to save the fledgling school.

"I was absolutely devastated," Almontaser said, recounting a fateful meeting with Deputy Mayor Dennis Wolcott on Aug. 9. It was just days after she was quoted defining the word "intifada," commonly associated with Palestinian terror, as "shaking off oppression."

"At that point I realized there was nothing I could say or do," Almontaser testified through tears. "I thought of the 44 students . . . I did what I did [in resigning] to ensure the safety and security of the children."

Almontaser took the witness stand in Manhattan federal court in a bid to stop the city from appointing a new principal at the academy, a selection process that is set to wrap up next week, and to force the Department of Education to consider her for the position.

The longtime educator has sued the city for allegedly violating her rights to free speech and due process by forcing her resignation in a lawsuit naming Mayor Bloomberg and Walcott as defendants.

The firestorm was sparked by an Aug. 6 story in The Post in which Almontaser failed to condemn "Intifada NYC" T-shirts that were distributed by an organization sharing office space with Saba Association of American Yemenis, a group where she sat on the board.

Almontaser blamed everyone from the media to Bloomberg for ruining her career and ripping her away from her pet project.

"What upset me, I knew Mayor Bloomberg . . . I couldn't believe he was taking the word of The Post over my word," Almontaser testified.

The hearing is set to resume on Monday.

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Subject: City Names New Principal for English-Arabic School

City Names New Principal for English-Arabic School
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: January 9, 2008

On Tuesday, the New York City Education Department named an educator who has a “working knowledge” of Arabic as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, the embattled Brooklyn school whose founding principal resigned under pressure after being quoted as defending the word “intifada” as a T-shirt slogan.

The new principal, Holly Anne Reichert, 42, has worked in the city public schools for more than nine years, first as an English as a Second Language teacher and, later, as a teacher mentor.

She has also spent much time in the Arab world, including stints as a Peace Corps volunteer in Yemen, as a teaching fellow at the American University in Cairo, and as head of the English department at an English-Arabic dual language school in Bahrain.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Arabic Language and Social Anthropology from the University of London, and master’s degrees from the American University in Cairo, Teachers College at Columbia University and Baruch College.

The Khalil Gibran school, which opened in September with about 60 sixth graders, is the city’s first school based on the theme of Arabic language and culture. It will eventually grow into a 6th-through-12th-grade, dual-language school, in which many classes will be taught in Arabic.

The school has generated controversy since it was announced last February, with some critics calling it a “madrassa” that did not belong in a public school system.

The founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, was forced out in August after she defended the T-shirt slogan.

When she was asked by The New York Post about the phrase “Intifada NYC,” which had been printed on T-shirts sold by a Brooklyn organization, she said, “The word basically means ‘shaking off.’” Of the T-shirts, she said, “I think it’s pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society” and “shaking off oppression.”

Through her lawyer, Ms. Almontaser declined to comment on Tuesday on Ms. Reichert’s appointment.

Since August, the school has had an interim acting principal, Danielle Salzberg.

At a news conference on Tuesday announcing Ms. Reichert’s appointment, which takes effect on Wednesday, the new principal declined to comment on the events surrounding the removal of Ms. Almontaser, who has since filed a lawsuit, now pending before a federal appeals court, charging that she was unfairly dismissed from her post.

“I’m here to start something new, and things that have happened before my appointment that starts tomorrow are things that I had no part in,” Ms. Reichert said at the news conference.

She sidestepped questions about how she would handle sensitive topics, saying that “all students in New York City and all students at Khalil Gibran will be studying the same things, the same conflicts.”

But in a telephone interview later, Ms. Reichert elaborated on her feelings about the word intifada, saying, “It’s a word that connotes tremendous violent conflict, and I don’t think it should be used casually, as on a T-shirt.”

The Arab-American Family Support Center, a social service agency that helped open the school, released a statement praising Ms. Reichert “as incredibly qualified for the position.” But the appointment is not likely to end the controversy over the school.

Immediately after the news conference, Ms. Almontaser’s supporters released a statement criticizing the appointment as “illegitimate” because Ms. Almontaser’s challenge to her dismissal, and to the Education Department’s refusal to reconsider her application, is still pending in court.

“We challenge any self-respecting professional who would accept a position at this school at this time given the evidence of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism that hangs over Debbie Almontaser’s discharge,” the statement said.