Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Islam - What Are Islamic Schools Teaching?

Daiel Pipes asks.


“Shocked” is how Aisha Sherazi, principal of the Abraar Islamic school in Ottawa, described the reaction of the school’s administration and board on learning last week that two of its teachers had incited hatred of Jews.

And “shocked” was how Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau, described his own reaction to the front-page news about the Abraar school.

But they may have been the only two persons on the planet to be “shocked” to learn that teachers at an Islamic school are promoting anti-Semitism or other aspects of the Islamist agenda. The fact is, inquiries into Islamic schools repeatedly discover just such a radical Islamic outlook. Some examples:

New York City: An investigation by the New York Daily News in 2003 found that books used in the city’s Muslim schools “are rife with inaccuracies, sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians, and triumphalist declarations of Islam’s supremacy.”

Los Angeles: The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 Korans (titled The Meaning of the Holy Quran) to the city school district in 2001 that within months had to be pulled from school libraries because of its antisemitic commentaries. One footnote reads: “The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts…Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy.”

Ajax, Ontario, 50 kilometers east of Toronto: The Institute of Islamic Learning is a Canadian emulation of the extremist Deobandi madrassahs of Pakistan. It focuses exclusively on religious topics, has students memorize the Koran, demands total segregation from the Canadian milieu, and requires complete gender separation. Former students complained about the school’s cult-like devotion to its head, Abdul Majid Khan, and complained that it “twisted religion and used it to its own benefit.”

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