Religions > Atheism > Muslims getting in trouble in CANADA - teaching their children to hate, kill, and die
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Religions > Atheism |
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"some other guy" |
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25 Mar 2005 12:04:49 PM |
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Muslims getting in trouble in CANADA - teaching their children to hate, kill, and die |
Province to investigate school after student's anti-Semitic report
Ministry responds to fear of Islamic schools becoming 'incubators of hate'
Juliet O'Neill
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, March 25, 2005
Ontario Education Minister Gerard Kennedy launched an investigation
yesterday into the "deeply disturbing" situation at the Abraar Islamic
School after two teachers were suspended for their involvement in a young
student's writing project, which glorified martyrdom and violence against
Jews.
Mr. Kennedy said he hoped an Education Department supervisor's investigation
"into what is going on" at the private school will find this is an isolated
incident. He also said it could lead to a reference to the Ottawa police for
a hate crimes investigation. He said the government is also looking into its
powers to deregister a private school. If the teachers are certified by the
Ontario College of Teachers, they may lose their certification.
The education supervisor is scheduled to go to the school Tuesday. Abraar
School provides full-time education for about 260 students ranging from
junior kindergarten to Grade 8.
Mumtaz Akhtar, president of the Muslim-Community Council of Ottawa-Gatineau,
said he was stunned when he saw the student project published on the front
page of the Citizen.
"This is against our religion, against our character," he said in an
interview. "Whoever did it must have a very low esteem. I am really shocked.
We all ran away from those countries to come here and live peacefully. The
only thing I can say is it's very shameful."
The government intervention under a never-used power in the Education Act
was requested by the Canadian Jewish Congress, which said it was astounding
and frightening that a teacher could permit, let alone encourage, the
glorification of violence.
"The danger to students is so great that we believe that the Ministry of
Education has no choice but to become involved," said Frank Bialystok,
chairman of the Ontario community relations committee of the CJC.
B'nai Brith Canada, a Jewish human rights organization, warned that if no
action is taken, "such schools will become incubators of hate." The
organization's executive vice-president, Frank Dimant, called for
intervention by educators, police and Muslim leaders "to prevent a poisonous
and dangerous environment from firmly taking hold" in schools and other
institutions.
The Congress request was backed by Ed Broadbent, Ottawa Centre MP and former
New Democratic Party leader, who issued a statement saying that
encouragement of hatred by teachers must be strongly condemned. "Such
activity is not only immoral in Canada, it is also illegal," he said.
An Ottawa police spokeswoman said no formal complaint had been laid under
hate crimes law, so there is no police investigation under way. A Canadian
Security and Intelligence Service spokeswoman, Barbara Campion, could not
confirm or deny that the agency has been, or is, investigating, but she said
such things concern the service because "it is the type of activity that
could be construed as inciting extremist or radical beliefs."
The education investigation came amid statements of shock and alarm from an
array of Jewish and Islamic organizations about teacher involvement in a
student's eight-page story of revenge on Israelis. It was illustrated by a
drawing that showed a burning Star of David, a machine gun and the
Palestinian flag atop the Dome of the Rock, an ancient Muslim shrine in
Jerusalem. One teacher allegedly helped with the illustration and another
praised the story in marginal notes.
It should be kept in mind the story itself was a work of fiction by a boy
who is of Palestinian origin and whose extended family "lives under the
jackboot of Israeli occupation," said Riad Saloojee, director of the Council
on American-Islamic Relations. It is the teachers, he said, and not the boy,
who must be investigated and whose actions must never be repeated.
"The teacher should have moved quickly and addressed in a very balanced
manner the importance of working towards a peaceful resolution and saving
human life in any conflict, and certainly not praise the contents," Mr.
Saloojee said. "That's the more troubling dimension." The council released a
statement saying Canadian Muslims reject the glorification of violence or
the promotion of hatred against any ethnic community.
While Mohamed Elmasry, head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, also joined
the chorus of shock about the incident, he also noted that while there was
great media interest in the Abraar school, no reporter had called him the
previous day when he called for Jewish leaders to re-evaluate what young
Jewish Canadians are taught at Hebrew schools. He cited a recent letter to
the editor of the Kingston Whig Standard from a nine-year-old Hebrew school
student which said Israel does not want to fight and the Palestinians wanted
to push the Israelis into the sea.
"It's the responsibility of the ministry of education to look at the
curriculum of all private schools, including Jewish and Muslim schools," Mr.
Elmasry said. He hoped both communities would learn a lesson from these
incidents. He also said the boy may have learned his views from TV or the
Internet, not from teachers. "I hope it's a single incident."
Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker was affronted by Mr. Elmasry's comment. "It's
very sad that when we're all faced with this blatant evidence of what's
being taught in an Islamic school, that anybody is trying to move the
attention to Jewish schools when it is simply not the fact," he said. "To
teach understanding of Arabs of Islam, I'm all in favour, but to turn this
into some kind of balancing act just adds to my concern."
Mr. Baker had weighed in with a call for "drastic action" by Canadian
educational authorities and Muslim leaders, saying it is a short leap from
glorified fantasy violence to the real thing. "The last thing I would like
to see is for this type of thing to happen in Canada, to move from the story
mode in a school project out into the street and out into society," he said.
" I think this should be treated as ringing a very loud bell and turning on
a very bright red light for attention within Canada."
Mr. Kennedy said in an interview that even though private schools exist in
an unregulated "wild west" environment, the education ministry and he "have
responsibility for the welfare of those children." He said the regulation is
so light over private schools that basically all the department does is
periodically confirm that there are at least five children in a classroom.
"We're treating it as a general power to go in and check what's going on in
that school and we'll deal with our findings when we've arrived at them,"
Mr. Kennedy said. "This power has not been exercised before that we know of.
It's important that we send a signal that we are interested that standards
are not being breached even in the private schools that are not directly
supervised by the ministry. Obviously we are deeply troubled by the
potential ... for any kind of school that would seem to be a site for that
kind of intolerance."
Mr. Kennedy said he was heartened that the administration of the school had
suspended the teachers. The teachers were suspended Wednesday after a
translated version of the writing project, which was handwritten in Arabic,
was brought to the principal by the Citizen for comment. She called an
emergency meeting of the seven-member school board and the instructors were
suspended pending an internal investigation.
Mr. Kennedy said there's a better than 50-per-cent chance the teachers are
not certified "and that's partly why we're looking into it." "It's deeply
disturbing," he said. "We would like there to become some reasonable
expectation on any institution that has minor children in this province,
that they would have some standards they have to meet. Certainly we may end
up exploring that out of this incident. Right now we'll just deal with the
incident itself."
Bernie Farber, director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said the story and
teacher's praise "comes close to the legal definition of hate propaganda and
it has to be taken very, very seriously." "It's a major eye-opener and it's
something that the ministry of education has to take seriously," he said.
"This is not something for an internal investigation. This is something for
an objective educational specialist to come into a school and to ensure that
this is not going on any place else."
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