Political wind

CAIR, Political wind

Only Arabic public school choice wrong: NY Sun

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New York City axed plans Friday for a publicly funded Arabic school in Brooklyn. The Khalil Gibran International Academy would have been co-located with P.S. 282 and its curriculum would have been “devoted to the study of the Arabic language and culture.” This morning, the New York Sun offered an equitable solution to liberals there while making no apologies for that newspaper’s critical commentaries of the school and its promoters:

“…Its principal, Dhabah “Debbie” Almontaser, accepted an award in 2005 from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. When Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 named a CAIR official to the city’s human relations commission, it set off a firestorm of complaints. CAIR had cosponsored an event at Brooklyn College where attendees chanted “no to the Jews, descendants of the apes,” and the organization posted a letter on its Web site suggesting that Muslims could not have been responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

CAIR is a highly divisive institution in this city and country. It is funded in part by the same Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, whose $10 million donation Mayor Giuliani rejected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when the prince called for America to rethink its support for Israel. When one of our reporters asked Ms. Almontaser whether she considers Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist organizations and who she thinks was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she declined to answer, suggesting she shouldn’t be singled out for such questions.

Yet if Ms. Almontaser cannot bring herself to address such questions from a newspaper, how is she going to do it in school? We do not believe such skepticism makes one intolerant, or, as some have insinuated, an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigot. Arabic Islamist terrorism in Brooklyn is a genuine threat. This is a city that saw Ari Halberstam shot to death on the Brooklyn Bridge after his assailant, Rashid Baz, listened to a sermon at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge. And more recently saw a clerk at an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, Shahawar Matin Siraj, convicted of a plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station.

Not long ago, a man from Yemen who owned an ice cream shop in Brooklyn was convicted of sending nearly $22 million abroad for use by a sheik with ties to Hamas and Al Qaeda. The “landmarks plot” to blow up the United Nations and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels was hatched on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn by Omar Abdel-Rahman and others. A civil rights lawyer and her interpreter were convicted of aiding Abdel-Rahman by transmitting messages from him to a terrorist organization in Egypt. This is not a time when concern over these issues can be dismissed as bigotry.
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How to sort all this out? … A taxpayer-funded Arabic school would only underscore the injustice of allowing one group of parents to educate their own children in a school that elevates their language, civilization, and religion at taxpayer expense, while depriving other parents of the same choices. Our test for whether all of the parties to this controversy are standing on principle will be their position on vouchers.

Separating children in public schools from other cultures, religions, and ethnic groups does nothing to promote tolerance. CAIR attempted to create a mini-madrassa in Brooklyn and New York City officials once thought that was a good idea. Politicians wanted to make a political payoff to a targeted group using public funds. Yet those same politicians routinely cite the separation of church [and state] when denying school vouchers to those wishing to educate their children in other religiously oriented private schools.

Political wind, Turkey

Islamism in Turkey stalled

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After hundreds of thousands took to Istanbul’s streets in protest and the military threatened a coup, a high court in Turkey delayed the Islamists’ plan to install their party’s founder as President. Islamists already hold a wide majority in Turkey’s Parliament yet risk continued exclusion from the European Union. United Press International editor Claude Salhani provides and update and explains what is at stake in commentary this morning in the Washington Times:

Turkey’s latest crisis began when Mr. Erdogan’s Islamic AKP — Justice and Development Party — set its eyes on the presidency. The position is largely ceremonial but still carries a certain amount of clout. The Turkish president, who serves a seven-year term, can block laws and official appointments. The president nominates the judges of the Constitutional Court and military advocates.

Winning the presidency would have consolidated the AKP’s power, but also set a precedent in the modern Turkish republic by mixing politics and religion.
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Mr. Gul, who is also co-founder of the ruling moderate AKP, however, failed to win the necessary two-thirds majority of the Parliament, or 367 votes in the first round of voting. But a victory by Mr. Gul in a third round was a certain shoo-in, given that he would only need a simple majority to win.

Then there were massive demonstrations in the Turkish capital of Ankara and in its commercial center, Istanbul, with more than 1 million people taking to the streets in protest. And perhaps of greater importance was the not-so-thinly veiled threat from the country’s military — traditional guardians of the Kemalist secularist notion — of having the armed forces intervene.
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Turkish politicians know better than to tempt their military. Turkey’s generals have intervened four times in the last 40 years to protect the secularist Kemalist tenet. Three coups d’etat — in 1960, 1971 and 1980 — brought the military out of their barracks and the politicians into line. The military’s latest incursion into the country’s politics was no later than in 1997, when they forced the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the head of government and leader of an Islamic party.

As could be expected, the EU has reacted with alarm to threats by Turkey’s military forces. A military coup at Europe’s doorstep is indeed a frightening prospect. But then again, so is an Islamist state for the vast majority of Europeans.

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