Author: Denis Schulz
Well, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Nazi thugs didn’t parade around Vienna in the 1930s in T-shirts emblazoned with words like ‘Anschluss’ or ‘Annexation Now!’ And the cadets at the Citadel or William T. Sherman’s Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy didn’t sport T-shirts proclaiming a right to secede from the Union. Sure, the Bowery Boys wore shirts that said “East Side Kids Suck,” but the school had nothing to do with it. It was Slip Mahoney’s idea and he was ten years older than the principal.
There are T-shirts for every occasion—Save the Whales; Save Monty Python; Send Blinky Palermo’s Kid to College, but few calling for annexation or secession. So why would the principal of the first New York Charter School for girls think she could sell T-shirts sporting the words “Intifada—NYC” without raising a rumpus? You have ten seconds. Give up? The chances are she thought she could. Hubris can cloud a person’s mind—Islamic hubris can cloud a person’s soul.
The school had the unqualified support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the usual bevy of liberal PC politicos, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—and look at the name they chose: the Kahlil Gibran International Academy! How could they miss? A dead poet is worth two saints, three generals and four NFL Quarterbacks. Henry David Thoreau is out; Kahlil Gibran is in and has been for a long time.
The school was to serve the needs of New York’s growing Arab American population. It would spread Arab culture and foster an understanding of Islam. The Liberals loved it—so did CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
John Lennon fell in love with Gibran’s poetry. That was good enough for millions of Beatle fans. Gibran had been dead for more than thirty years when Lennon immortalized him in the Beatles’ 1968 Album. “Half of what I say is meaningless,” wrote Gibran, “but I say it so that the other half may reach you.” (Quick! Which is the meaningless half? Beatle fans didn’t care—they were scarcely aware of Gibran—and as Tim Conway’s befuddled old man would say, “He’s gone!)
The chances are Gibran would not have been pleased to see his name plastered all over this school. He was not a devout Muslim and he had this thing about being used as a Trojan horse. Dhabah Almontaser, the school’s ci-devant principal, admits she may have made a mistake. The Intifada T-shirts were not such a good idea. Maybe Dhabah just wasn’t one to keep up with the news. Every six months or so—for decades and decades—some high school or university athletic team would drop the name Crusaders. It was offensive—to Muslims. Even Bat Man is no longer a Crusader, caped or otherwise—he is now the Dark Knight. This is the kind of cultural exotica that a principal—even a ci-devant principal like Almontaser—should keep up with. Didn’t she say, “You won’t find religious or political indoctrination or anti-Americanism” at Kahlil Gibran? Yes, she did—but what if one takes a good look? Seek and ye shall find!
There is Imam Khalid Latif, a member of the advisory board for the proposed school. The Imam protested a NYU student group’s intention to display the Jyllands-Posten Mohammad cartoons. Latif dashed off a letter to the President of NYU. “These cartoons have led to riots…the pictures themselves are just hatred…the potential of what might happen after they are shown…the repercussions that would take place outside the university are potentially huge.” Was Latif threatening NYU? “Let’s show these people that if they mess with Muslims in New York they mess with all of us.” East Side Kids Suck!
Nor is Dhabah Almontaser ‘roach’ free. One might not find political indoctrination and anti-Americanism in Gibran—if it ever gets off the ground—but what about Dhabah the Hut? Dhabah immigrated to the United States from Yemen. She became a schoolteacher. Does she practice anti-Americanism? She says she doesn’t. But she did tell the kids in her 6th grade class that Arab Muslims had nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center. Mohammad Atta? Hani Hanjour? Not Arab? Not Muslim? “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims,” she said. Well, it sure wasn’t Heinrich and Bubba! Even Susan Sarandon would have trouble with Dhabah’s ethnic and religious memory lapses.
But there’s more! For the mere price of a seat in her classroom Little Mohammad gets indoctrinated, propagandized, bamboozled and lied to—and hopefully scared. That’s right—scared! “Right here in this community (right after 9/11),” she told the kids, “we started to see people literally disappearing…the police came and took them in the middle of the night and we were, like, ‘What is going on?’” It must have made her homesick for Yemen.
Another gem: “President Busy is trying to destroy the United States that I love and of which I am a result…he is a nightmare.” (Only if he starts wearing a burqa)
“I realize our foreign policy is racist.” Almontaser might be qualified to run a Mad-Rats-Asses school in Saudi Barbaria but an International Academy in Brooklyn? Not even with the Bowery Boys as janitors!
In the end it is poor Kahlil Gibran who suffers. Born in Lebanon, the son of Maronite Christians, Gibran grew up in poverty, rose to fame as a poet and artist and now this! Fagan could have named his school for pickpockets after Gibran; the Purple Gang could have named its daycare center after Gibran; Uncle Jed could have built a school just so Jethro could be its principal and named it after Gibran—but a Mad-Rats-Asses school? It is the ultimate insult! If Gibran has any heirs, they should sue. One can only hope Almontaser will have no heirs—at least not spiritual or political. (Almontaser was given an award by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Saudi-funded Hamas front group)
What would Gibran say to all this? “The teacher who is wise does not bid you to enter the house of wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”
That sounds more like Socrates than Mohammad; more like Thomas Jefferson offering advice to a young man about to embark for Europe than Omar Bakri Mohammad trolling for suicide bombers.
“There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet.” That is not Gibran.
Who recommended Almontaser for headmaster—Ward Churchill?
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