MN taxpayers fund islamic elementary schools

[kellymaureen]

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25470#continueA

Can you imagine a public school founded by two Christian ministers, and housed in the same building as a church? Add to that -- in the same building -- a prominent chapel. And let’s say the students are required to fast during Lent, and attend Bible studies right after school. All with your tax dollars.

Inconceivable? Sure. If such a place existed, the ACLU lawyers would descend on it like locusts. It would be shut down before you could say “separation of church and state,” to the accompaniment of New York Times and Washington Post editorials full of indignant foreboding, warning darkly about the growing influence of the Religious Right in America.

But such a school does exist in Minnesota, in a different religious context, and so far the ACLU has uttered nary a peep.

Tax dollars are currently at work funding the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a popular, rapidly growing K-8 charter school with campuses in Inver Grove Heights and Blaine, Minnesota. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, as a Minnesota charter school implementing a statewide “performance and professional pay program” known as Q-Comp, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy pocketed $65,260 in state money for the 2006-07 school year. The school’s website, meanwhile, boasts that it offers a “rigorous Arabic language program” and an “environment that fosters your cultural values and heritage.” Whose cultural values and heritage? According to the indefatigable investigative reporter Katherine Kersten of the Star Tribune, “there are strong indications that religion plays a central role” there.

Where is the ACLU on this one.....likely getting ready to defend them if any infidels decide to get uppity and protest this.  I wonder if anyone in MN knows or cares that the school was named after the muslim who lead the conquer of Spain?
There are more of these kinds of schools in Ohio http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=DBE795F9-740C-4F7C-8BC9-FD39070399CE  I have to wonder how many there are in the US, its very difficult to find.

[Vito]

This is worse than the madrassa in Brooklyn...

[kellymaureen]

http://www.aclu-mn.org/home/news/aclumnopensinvestigationof.htm

For Immediate Release
March 18, 2008

After receiving complaints that Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights is violating the Establishment Clause the ACLU-MN sent a letter to the academy questioning their practices. In the letter that was sent the ACLU-MN questions some of their practices, including addressing allegations that the school sponsors prayer.

Teresa Nelson, an attorney for the ACLU of Minnesota, says "We currently do not have enough facts to state whether or not the school is in violation of the establishment clause. The American Civil Liberties Union is a strong defender of separation of church and state and will take action if we find they are violating the establishment clause."

Im still skeptical, lets see what they do about it.

[newman]

In the unlikely event they (the American Communist Lawyers Union) do anything it'll be a half-@ssed, watered-down effort, I guarantee it.