TheMidevils's Blog

This information was coagulated with not only the help of a Star and Tribune reporter, but the internet.    If this is so, then why is the Holy HELLO are we paying for a Muslim School at our expense?

What about the separation of State and Religion?   Why is it that our children's cannot say the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of their class morning, but we can pay for students (immigrants) to use their religion freely?    This is ludicrous.   This is moronic.   This is not the country we grew up in, and it's high time that we quit funding everything for the immigrants so that the rest of the country can go to HELLO.

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA)   

Is named for the Muslim general who supposedly conquered medieval (get it?) Spain.  It is a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights (a suburb of Minneapolis) and contains about 300 or so students that are mostly the children of low-income Muslim immigrant families, many of them Somalis.     The school is in huge demand, with a waiting list of 1,500. Last fall, it opened a second campus in Blaine (a 2nd northern suburb)

According to TIZA, they use more the language of culture rather than religion to define its program intinary in their public documents.    Per the school's statement, the irschool "recognizes and appreciates the traditions, histories, civilizations and accomplishments of the eastern world.  (this involving the Middle East, Asia, Africa, etc.)

Somehow though, they have embattled the differences between what are religious and cultural factors, which implicates a very strong role or indication of of religious role at TIZA.   TIZA is a public shool, financed by all the Minnesota taxpayers. Under both the U.S. and state constitutions, a public school can accommodate students' religious beliefs but cannot encourage or endorse religion.

TIZA's was founded by  Amad Zaman and Hesham Hussein, both Muslim religious leaders, and leaders of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN).    Zaman is TIZA's principal and currently vice-president of MAS-MN, and Hussein was TIZA's school board chair and president of MAS-MN until he died from a car accident while he was in Saudi Arabia.    TIZA shares MAS-MN's headquarters building, along with a mosque.

MAS-MN in 2006 issued a "fatwa," warning the Muslim taxi drivers at the Mpls-St. Paul International Airport that carrying any or all passengers with alcohol in their baggage is a violation of Islamic law.   We actually witness a Muslim taxi cab driver who refused to assist a blind lady through the snow drifts piled up by the city's snow crews because she had her seeing eye dog with her, and rules are that they cannot have a dog in the car (not exactly how their belief on this is.)

According to the Minneapolis Star and Tribune's reporter, the school's cafeteria serves halal food (permissible under Islamic law). During Ramadan, all students fast from dawn to dusk, according to a parent quoted in the article.

In fact, TIZA was originally envisioned as a private Islamic school. In 2001, MAS-MN negotiated to buy the current TIZA/MAS-MN building for Al-Amal School, a private religious institution in Fridley, according to Bruce Rimstad of the Inver Grove Heights School District. But many immigrant families can't afford Al-Amal. In 2002, Islamic Relief -- headquartered in California -- agreed to sponsor a publicly funded charter school, TIZA, at the same location.

TIZA claims to be non-sectarian, as Minnesota law requires charters to be. But "after-school Islamic learning" takes place on weekdays in the same building under MAS-MN's auspices, according to the program for MAS-MN's 2007 convention. At that convention, a TIZA representative at the school's booth told me that students go directly to "Islamic studies" classes at 3:30, when TIZA's day ends. There, they learn "Qur'anic recitation, the Sunnah of the Prophet" and other religious subjects, he said.

TIZA's 2006 Contract Performance Review Report states that students engage in unspecified "electives" after school or do homework.

Publicly, TIZA emphasizes that it uses standard curricular materials like those found in other public schools. But when addressing Muslim audiences, school officials make the link to Islam clear. At MAS-MN's 2007 convention, for example, the program featured an advertisement for the "Muslim American Society of Minnesota," superimposed on a picture of a mosque. Under the motto "Establishing Islam in Minnesota," it asked: "Did you know that MAS-MN ... houses a full-time elementary school"? On the adjacent page was an application for TIZA.

In addition to the issues raised by TIZA's religious elements, there are reasons to be concerned about the organizations with which it is connected.

Group linked to Hamas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Islamic Relief-USA, the school's sponsor, is compared to the Red Cross in several TIZA documents. In 2006, however, the Israeli government announced that Islamic Relief Worldwide, the organization's parent group, "provides support and assistance" to Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist group.

Meanwhile, MAS-MN offers on its web site "beneficial and enlightening information" about Islam, which includes statements like "Regularly make the intention to go on jihad with the ambition to die as a martyr."

At its 2007 convention, MAS-MN featured the notorious Shayk Khalid Yasin, who is well-known in Britain and Australia for teaching that husbands can beat disobedient wives, that gays should be executed and that the United States spreads the AIDS virus in Africa through vaccines for tropical diseases.

Yasin's topic? "Building a Successful Muslim Community in Minnesota."

TIZA has improved the reading and math performance of its mostly low-income students. That's commendable, but should Minnesota taxpayers be funding an Islamic public school?

Thanks to Katherine Kersten @ Minneapolis Star and Tribune for her writing of this story.