Terror Linked Bridgeview Mosque Behind Push For Arabic Language Instruction In Illinois' Public Schools
By WILLIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
June 18, 2009 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Illinois' public schools are being targeted by a coalition of Chicago and out-of-state Islamists who have worked a back room deal to introduce Arabic language programs. [see Illinois Senate Resolution 0290] The stealth campaign whereby this initiative was launched was referred to in an April 2009 message on the website of one of the most radical and well attended mosques in the United States, the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation.
Addressing the issue its president, Dr. Zaher Sahloul writes:
"In the last local election on April 7th, 2009, three candidates running for the School Board of District 230, Laura Murphy, Carol Baker and Michael Hastings won their seats. In a recent Candidate Forum organized by the Mosque Foundation, these and other candidates in neighboring school districts pledged to support the introduction of Arabic language to the curriculum in their public schools. This is a landmark moment in the Mosque Foundation initiative to introduce Arabic Language to our Public Schools."
If this idea gains widespread support it would indeed be a "landmark," though not in any positive sense of the word. [Note: the program is already being offered on a limited basis, as SR Res 0290 states, "A few public schools in this State have already
begun to offer Arabic as a foreign language, such as Lindblom
Math & Science Academy, Lincoln Park High School, Roosevelt
High School, Volta Elementary School, Durkin Park Elementary
School, and Peck Elementary School."]
The teaching of the Arabic language comes complete with a far-reaching set of unique difficulties, as Middle East historian Dr. Daniel Pipes has observed.
"Evidence from Algeria also points to the impact of Arabic instruction, as documented in James Coffman's breakthrough 1995 article "Does the Arabic Language Encourage Radical Islam?" He compared Algerian students taught in French versus those taught in Arabic and found that
'Arabized students show decidedly greater support for the Islamist movement and greater mistrust of the West. Arabized students tend to repeat the same simplistic stories and rumors that abound in the Arabic-language press, particularly Al-Munqidh, the newspaper of the Islamic Salvation Front. They tell about sightings of the word "Allah" written in the afternoon sky, the infiltration into Algeria of Israeli women spies infected with AIDS, the "disproving" of Christianity on a local religious program, and the mass conversion to Islam by millions of Americans. I was not the only one to notice this distinction. When asked if the new, Arabized students differed from the other students, many students and faculty answered an emphatic yes.'
Coffman also find a similar trend in other Arabic-speaking countries:
'...because Arabs draw so close a connection between classical Arabic and the faith of Islam, Arabization invariably leads to an identification with the (supranational) Islamic religious tradition. Even the most secular Arab nationalists (such as the Ba'thist variants in Syria and Iraq) must appeal to Islamic symbolism to bolster sagging legitimacy and to mobilize the masses (as Saddam Husayn did in his wars against Iran and the U.S.-led coalition). Hence, Arab nationalism has, however inadvertently, contributed to the rise of Islamism. Indeed, today's Islamist surge is the natural, perhaps inevitable consequence of the Arab nationalist policies of thirty years ago.'" [source, http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2007/03/the-arabist-and-islamist-baggage-of-arabic.html]
Aside from the question as to the advisability of introducing Arabic language instruction, there is the issue of the nature of the mosque which is pushing this program.
As these author's noted in a series of articles published in 2004 [see for example, http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=ctu%2Ehtm Interfaith Outreach & "Excessive Placidity" Towards Islam] Chicago's Bridgeview Mosque aka the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation has history of functioning as a locus for radical Islamist activity, at times resembling "jihad central."
Below an extended excerpt from the piece:
"The Bridgeview Mosque has a history of terrorist ties going back to the 1990's, and has been under federal watch for many years. The Mosque's [then] spokesman was Rafiq Jaber, he is the head of the Islamic Association in Palestine, the U.S. wing of Hamas.
Some of its members have been arrested on terror related charges.
'In 1993 a Palestinian-American who was a member of the mosque was convicted in Israel of distributing money and weapons to operatives of Hamas, the terrorist Palestinian group. He was given a five-year sentence.' - New York Times, September 21, 2001
That Palestinian American is Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, head of the Quranic Literacy Institute.
Jamal's Mosque has also been linked to the following groups.
Islamic Association for Palestine - 'The FBI memo said that the Islamic Assn. for Palestine, like Holy Land, had received "large sums of money" from Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook' LA Times Editorial December 6, 2001.
The American Middle Eastern League for Palestine - 'These facts strongly suggest that the IAP and the American Middle Eastern League for Palestine [a sister group] are part of Hamas' propaganda apparatus.' - Statement by the Department of Immigration & Naturalization
The North American Islamic Trust [the mosque's owner] - Owns approximately 25% of US Mosques, is funded by Wahabi/Salafi radical Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Siraj Wahhaj was a character witness for the "Blind Shayk" Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Wahhaj was also listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 1995 plot to blow up New York landmarks. Wahaj is a former board member of NAIT. NAIT also owns the Islamic Academy of Florida - "a criminal enterprise" as described in the federal indictment handed down in February against the school's founder - Sami al-Arian and others alleged to be Hamas fundraisers.
The Holy Land Foundation - Shut down by FBI as a known Hamas front group [successfully prosecuted by the federal government in the United States' largest terror funding case. All of the defendants were convicted on all charges].
Steven Emerson - a pioneer in the field of investigating radical Islamic activity - described a visit to the Mosque in his book American Jihad - '...the Imam of the Mosque was Jamal Said...the walls of the vestibule were covered with Hamas posters...you could see daggers plunged into Jewish hearts wrapped in the American flag.'
Jamal Said was the Bridgeview Mosque Imam in 2001. After 9/11 the Bridgeview Mosque held a press conference, Jaber, Said, and Jamal, were in attendance. Oussama Jammal was quoted as saying "How certain are we that Arabs were behind it?"
Unbelievably it is this terror linked institution which is behind the push to get Arabic language instruction into the Illinois public school system.
In an April 2009 message on the mosque's website, President Dr. Zaher Sahloul wrote:
"In the last local election on April 7th, 2009, three candidates running for the School Board of District 230, Laura Murphy, Carol Baker and Michael Hastings won their seats. In a recent Candidate Forum organized by the Mosque Foundation, these and other candidates in neighboring school districts pledged to support the introduction of Arabic language to the curriculum in their public schools. This is a landmark moment in the Mosque Foundation initiative to introduce Arabic Language to our Public Schools." [source, http://www.mosquefoundation.org/articles/articletype/articleview/articleid/303.aspx ]
In order to provide additional support for this idea, on May 21st the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago organized a lobbying effort in the Illinois state legislature which was comprised of "More than 500 Muslim leaders, activists and students are expected to flock to Springfield to meet and lobby their State representatives for several initiatives including the introduction of Arabic language in Public schools.." [source, ibid]
The language initiative was presented to the Illinois State Legislature in the form of a resolution authored by Senator Jacqueline Collins [D] and co-sponsored by Representative Paul Froehlich [D].
Legislation offered at the behest of special constituencies is nothing new in politics, however this proposal is worlds apart from the norm in that it represents a back-door effort by Muslim radicals to institute a program that will have a substantial and negative effect because Arabic language instruction tends to serve as a pathway to Islam something that should be deeply troubling in any secular society.
In an article entitled, The Arabist and Islamist Baggage of Arabic Language Instruction, the above referenced Daniel Pipes engages the issue again:
For the heavy Islamic freight that Arabic instruction carries, see "Does Learning Arabic Prevent Moral Decay?" where one learns that some Muslims believe "Knowledge of Arabic can then help the Western countries recover from the present moral decay." (This is not as surprising as it sounds, for Muslims commonly assume that a non-Muslim who learns Arabic is en route to conversion to Islam; I experienced this many times during my Cairo years." [source, http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2007/03/the-arabist-and-islamist-baggage-of-arabic.html]
Of note, the same Muslim organizations which are supporting this effort to introduce Arabic culture into the public schools acknowledge Dr. Pipes' main point, that is serves as a gateway to Islam.
Writing on its website, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago recently posted a piece, The Importance Of Arabic, which reads in part, "For Muslims, Arabic holds a special place in their hearts as it is the language of the Quran. The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, spoke Arabic and many major Hadith collections and Islamic literature were originally written in Arabic. American Muslims may not all understand Arabic, but they value it. They believe that it will be a great benefit if their children get an opportunity to become conversant in Arabic through the public school system." [source, http://www.ciogc.org/Go.aspx?linkv54857 ]
This proposal, which Rep. Paul Froehlich and Senator Jacqueline Collins and other political figures are blindly pushing, will have a very deleterious effect on the educative process in a city already infamous for broken schools.
The idea itself did not arise out of a perception that it might help bolster a failing public education system. Far from it, this idea is being promulgated by a hard-line coalition of Muslim activists [allied with a reprehensible Hamas-linked mosque] who fully understand and support its stealth jihad overtones.
As a result we believe that this now very limited program should be discontinued immediately. It's disingenuous, bad public policy, deadly from a national security perspective and ultimately violative of the First Amendment's "establishment" clause.
©1999-2009 PipeLineNews.org LLC., William Mayer, Beila Rabinowitz.
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