An Arabic-themed public school will open next week with extra security after months of protest by some who say it will be a training ground for radical Islam. AP/Yahoo
The text on the subject on the "family Matters" site is thrid rate at best: how can you write lines like "... according to my read of the NYPD Report." - According to my reading of the declaration of independence, the bible and the cereal box, that's the writer's own bullshit dressed in fancy clothes.
Still, there seems to be a double standard - no religion should contaminate teaching. Islam or christianity - a school should be a place that prepares citizens, not members of this or that group. I know that's highly ideological and wishful thinking. Usually the stumbling block is that the jesus christers read "american culture" as exclusively christian culture, hiding their faith-based worldview behind a false patriotism.
Anyway, a serious challenge to schools with strong ties to religion can't be mounted through the kind of insinuations laid out by the writer on the "family matters" site, Richard Thompson (president and chief counsel of The Thomas More Law Center, that opposes the new school) "I wonder what they will be talking about [in an afternoon discussion group]. Will it be about al Qaeda or Hamas, the Palestinian issue, Muslim versus Jew, Muslim versus Christian, anti-American diatribe? Who knows?" That's low and lousy writing, and bad reasoning. Even from a lawyer bent on winning a case.
Related,
In the NYT SUnday Edition,
The venerable Times legal essayist Noah Feldman actually covered the case of the Khalil Gibran school last Sunday in an article on religion in schools.
Check it out....
Feldman was also on WNYC on Monday discussing this with Brian Lehrer.
Harvard law professor Noah Feldman looks at the controversy over a public Arab-language school in Brooklyn and a Hebrew-language school in Florida, plus Mona Eldahry, founding director of Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, or AWAAM, protests the resignation of the founding principal of the new Khalil Gibran Leadership Academy.
“The school’s name, borrowed from a noted Christian-born Lebanese-American writer of universalist sympathies, appears calculated to signal that the school is not narrowly Muslim.” Noah Feldman
This is one of the most ludicrously ill-advised calculations I’ve ever seen. I’m inclined to suspect that it’s a dim-witted interpretation of “dual-use”.
^ Yes, if in fact true. Either way it's evidence of flawed judgment. Consider a similarly daft proposal: let’s create a school called MLK and to its board of advisors we’ll add three white supremacists with known ties to the kkk.
Gibran's legacy deserves better.
Introducing duplicity to inter-faith/cross-cultural relations is asking for trouble (unless that's the goal). Especially if Thomson’s insinuations are materially substantiated by another non-partisan and credible source. The presence of a smoking gun in other words. It’s this kind of suggested impropriety that fuels irrational dissent and erodes empathy. There may be a potential FTC violation here as well as the “state educational standards” issue.
"Anyway, a serious challenge to schools with strong ties to religion can't be mounted through the kind of insinuations..."
Clearly their strategy is to achieve a subtler, legalistic (obviously anti-Islamic) goal by other means, re state edu standards. Ultimately, it's "The Sword and the Shield for People of Faith" vs. “The Koran is our constitution; Jihad is our way; and death in the way of Allah is our promised end.”
What's peripherally interesting about this is how the principle of "dual use" informs the design process, as in the foot-cleansing device.
Sep 2, 07 3:32 pm ·
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well, if all those christian schools keep pumping out "end of day" wacko's hell bent on getting control of nukes and such, i say go for it.
The text on the subject on the "family Matters" site is thrid rate at best: how can you write lines like "... according to my read of the NYPD Report." - According to my reading of the declaration of independence, the bible and the cereal box, that's the writer's own bullshit dressed in fancy clothes.
Still, there seems to be a double standard - no religion should contaminate teaching. Islam or christianity - a school should be a place that prepares citizens, not members of this or that group. I know that's highly ideological and wishful thinking. Usually the stumbling block is that the jesus christers read "american culture" as exclusively christian culture, hiding their faith-based worldview behind a false patriotism.
Anyway, a serious challenge to schools with strong ties to religion can't be mounted through the kind of insinuations laid out by the writer on the "family matters" site, Richard Thompson (president and chief counsel of The Thomas More Law Center, that opposes the new school) "I wonder what they will be talking about [in an afternoon discussion group]. Will it be about al Qaeda or Hamas, the Palestinian issue, Muslim versus Jew, Muslim versus Christian, anti-American diatribe? Who knows?" That's low and lousy writing, and bad reasoning. Even from a lawyer bent on winning a case.
if all goes well at khalil gibran, maybe you'll see some positive vibes comes out of it.
you want to make some people MORE radical?: deny them the freedom to form this school and make it a success.
Related,
In the NYT SUnday Edition,
The venerable Times legal essayist Noah Feldman actually covered the case of the Khalil Gibran school last Sunday in an article on religion in schools.
Check it out....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
Feldman was also on WNYC on Monday discussing this with Brian Lehrer.
Harvard law professor Noah Feldman looks at the controversy over a public Arab-language school in Brooklyn and a Hebrew-language school in Florida, plus Mona Eldahry, founding director of Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, or AWAAM, protests the resignation of the founding principal of the new Khalil Gibran Leadership Academy.
“The school’s name, borrowed from a noted Christian-born Lebanese-American writer of universalist sympathies, appears calculated to signal that the school is not narrowly Muslim.” Noah Feldman
This is one of the most ludicrously ill-advised calculations I’ve ever seen. I’m inclined to suspect that it’s a dim-witted interpretation of “dual-use”.
What do you mean? that the name is calculated to work as a smoke-screen?
^ Yes, if in fact true. Either way it's evidence of flawed judgment. Consider a similarly daft proposal: let’s create a school called MLK and to its board of advisors we’ll add three white supremacists with known ties to the kkk.
Gibran's legacy deserves better.
Introducing duplicity to inter-faith/cross-cultural relations is asking for trouble (unless that's the goal). Especially if Thomson’s insinuations are materially substantiated by another non-partisan and credible source. The presence of a smoking gun in other words. It’s this kind of suggested impropriety that fuels irrational dissent and erodes empathy. There may be a potential FTC violation here as well as the “state educational standards” issue.
"Anyway, a serious challenge to schools with strong ties to religion can't be mounted through the kind of insinuations..."
Clearly their strategy is to achieve a subtler, legalistic (obviously anti-Islamic) goal by other means, re state edu standards. Ultimately, it's "The Sword and the Shield for People of Faith" vs. “The Koran is our constitution; Jihad is our way; and death in the way of Allah is our promised end.”
What's peripherally interesting about this is how the principle of "dual use" informs the design process, as in the foot-cleansing device.
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