Minnesota State funded Muslim public school
Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion. Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers. TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.
Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food – permissible under Islamic law — and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day. Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, “due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing.” But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond — even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.
Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA. Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch. Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”
Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”
“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”
Sounds like a Religious school to me. Why is this funded by taxpayers? Fear of backlash? Even in the Catholic School I attended, no one was forced to take religious training and all denominations including Jews were accepted. My parents paid my tuition; there was no state funding.
#26 – #23 & 24. You can’t waste what you don’t have. That’s the point. If it isn’t taken from you in the 1st place the gov’t can’t waste it. Can they?
What?
Reagan, Bush, and Baby Bush all proved that, yes, indeed you can waste what you don’t have.
This entire war in Iraq is paid for by money we don’t have.
Sure, you will trash the economy in the process, but you can do it.
#30 – Cool, so you’re opposed to cutting off the $ and having a balanced budget amendment?
Yea Pat, that would be nice.
The republic party has created so much debt we may never come out of it.
It’s a complete myth that republicans are better for the economy and holding down the debt.
http://tinyurl.com/5mq65x
Sorry to be off topic a bit, Pat. I know how you don’t like that.
#31 – #30 – Cool, so you’re opposed to cutting off the $ and having a balanced budget amendment?
Recognizing that something is possible is hardly an endorsement.
I am in favor of a balanced budget amendment.
Here is what I fear in a balanced budget amendment. In order to spend more, they actually would have to tax more. I want caps to taxes and rules that limit what sort of taxes could be collected.
I’m not sure how I would write a new tax code, but you can bet I’d favor starving the beast to control its power.
one problems in balanced budget amendments… they make economic woes worse and make boom times even bigger booms. they don’t allow for the government to give actual stimulus when it is needed. this is especially true in stagflationary situations, like we are in right now.
do people want it because previous politicians screwed up? heck yes. is a balanced budget good in 95% of the cases? of course. but the actual numbers show a different story from the theory..
#33 – Agree 100%. I’m for a sales tax exempting food, medicine & reasonable primary residence.
People who buy lots of stuff pay more automatically. Corps spend a lot on purchases…
#34 – Governments don’t need to give “stimulus”. If they have that much $ hanging around it has taken too much from the economy where it should be in the 1st place.
What we see here in the example of this school is a failure of “western” society.
Each and every societies on the world are homogenic, there never was and there is no such thing as “diverse society” in any part of the world.
What are you people complaining here? The fact, that some muslims in your country are using your own inane laws for their advantage (with your permission, I must add), or the fact that some muslims in your country don’t want to become “westernized” and become like *you*?
Make up your mind.
Isn’t your country based on “religious freedom” and “free” and praised as “diverse society” as all of your liberal and politically-correct idiots want it to be? Then don’t complain your muslims creating islamic schools!
I could be mistaken, but I think we have a “Muslim” charter school in Portland, OR.
As it was explained to me, it’s technically Arabic but it’s effectively Muslim.
I’m not sure how I feel about it. Certainly, if Christian schools get federal money, so should Muslim. That’s just fair.
#37–Greg==being “fair” is what destroys societies. The grow and maintain only when being “unfair.”
Fair or unfair–the express goals of any person/group/organization can not include the overthrow of the government of the USA. Overthrow to include the adoption of any particular religion as the only religion to be authorized in the country.
This determination to be made in a court of law and enforced as any other law in the USA.
Isn’t that already the law????
#34 – You’re no liberal. Liberals believe 100% taxation is still not necessarily enough.
The solution to the school problem is to eliminate taxpayer funded public education completely. It’s all a money grabbing scam anyway. This is not the only scandal in MN schools. The latest is that too many communities have been voting no to referendums. Well, one proposal that’s come up in the legislature is to allow school boards to raise levies without voter approval. Another is to raise a new, huge state tax that can be doled out to schools. All of it is a bad comedy.
#40–TGW–neocon dogma. Liberals do NOT want to raise taxes. However, Liberals also want the kiddies to get a good education and Liberals THINK is is most correct to pay for what you want–so general or property tax to support schools is the main support.
You fail to mention any alternative you would support? Sounds like you support no education at all, or deficit spending. Please advise.
Personaly, I say ban religion from public life. If you want to be void of reason, do so within the confines of your home.
#41 – I agree that Libs believe in paying for what they want. Problem is, they don’t prioritize what they want to pay for. Dems took a majority in the MN legislature and within a month proposed over 20 new taxes. It is NOT demogogery, it is observable fact.
The accusations directed at this school are false.
I have visited it and I know the directors. It is a nonreligious school that, like many neighborhood schools and charter schools, caters to a particular community. Some communities have a common ethnicity or nationality. This one has a common religion. So, therefore, the kids that go to this school — and please remember when you type your vicious insults that they are children, and teachers who care about them — these kids happen to follow religious practices, by their choice and their parents’. The kids initiate the religious practices. The school, like any U.S. school must, accommodates the kids’ religious choice.
So why would you be surprised to know that a Muslim kid who fasts at home during Ramadan also fasts at school during Ramadan?
Why would you make a big deal out of it? We know why: You have a thing about Muslims. You don’t like them. So you jump all over this false report.
Here is the fact: The so-called “whistleblower” spent only a few hours at the school and didn’t understand what she was seeing. The so-called reporter failed to mention that her single source was also a Republican party activist. The reporter, actually an opinion columnist, has a track record of witch-hunting Muslims. She had been looking for something to nail this school on. She found one source and pretended the woman was credible. And because she retains a column in a mainstream newspaper, everybody picked it up, and you guys had another opportunity to kick Muslims for the day.
Find another hobby. What you’re doing is not patriotic. It’s the majority bullying a minority. Very ugly.
#44–Daniel==EXCELLENT response. Bravo. I can see the credibility of what you post. How can the public determine what is true when two different stories are presented?
I guess we’ll have to wait for the followup investigation.
But “one way” to investigate a subject is to take EVERYTHING you say as true, and evaluate that. Should, contra to your term “must”, tax supported schools accommodate religious practices? The answer is NO. Only reasonable accommodations, those that don’t interfere with the main non-sectarian mission of the school, are required.
So, purely analytically, you are wrong. How this bias might affect your objective reporting would be interesting to plumb.
If you post back, if you can, comment on the buses not leaving after school is over and on the flag not being raised? thanks.
From today’s Star Tribune:
“WHAT’S GOING ON AT TIZA?
High achievement
I have worked at Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) for three years, and as a lead teacher I am responsible for helping to implement the teacher-pay incentive program and curriculum. I am writing to correct misconceptions created by a substitute teacher’s aide who worked at the school for one day. (It is interesting that this sub also happens to be a Republican Party activist.)
I am often in classrooms observing teachers and modeling instructional strategies. I have never witnessed any religious instruction during school or any pressure to adhere to particular religious beliefs. In fact, I am a Christian and have always felt completely welcome at TIZA. Why would the school hire a Christian to implement curriculum if it were indoctrinating students in Islam?
I have witnessed excellent teachers from different religious and cultural backgrounds focused on improving instruction and student achievement. That’s why student achievement is so high.
WENDY SWANSON-CHOI, EAGAN”
TheGlobalWarmer said,: “Well, one proposal that’s come up in the legislature is to allow school boards to raise levies without voter approval.”
Why not? It worked for Carl Pohlad’s new stadium to the tune of over $392 million in public money that was denied a referendum. I think the kids deserve it more than a billionaire.