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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wow. From Americans for Peace and Tolerance: School Trip to "Moderate" Mosque: Inside Video Captures Kids Bowing to Allah (Note that here in Boston, like New York, the mosque is also referred to as a "cultural center.")

Today, Americans for Peace and Tolerance released a video showing 6th graders from Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to the largest mosque in the Northeast. Teachers did not intervene. Parents have not been told.

The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center - Boston's controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque - during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly mis-educated about Islam. A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed's 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago. This seems to be an increasingly recurring theme in American schools - the denigration of western civilization and the glorification of Islamic history and values. In fact, just recently, the American Textbook Council revealed that the New York State high school regents exam whitewashes the atrocities that occurred during the imperialistic Islamic conquest of Christian Byzantium, Persia, the African continent, and the Indian subcontinent, even as it demonizes European colonialism in South America.

The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.

For the past three years we've been sounding the alarm about the radical leadership and Saudi funding of the Boston mega-mosque and the organization that runs it, the Muslim American Society, which has been labeled by Federal prosecutors as "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America."...

More here.

Charles Jacobs dedicates his Jewish Advocate column this week to the issue, presented in full here:

A scandal in Wellesley

Many of my liberal Jewish friends react negatively to religious Christians and especially to any attempt by Christians to insert religion - prayer in particular - into the public square. Jews generally have had a phobia about Christians proselytizing in public schools; it's a reasonable fear given the history of European Christian attempts to convert the Jews to accept Christ as their savior.

How would Jews react to the news that on a visit by public school students to a church, the priest invited them to join him in prayer? Imagine the outrage from the ACLU, the ADL and First Amendment activists. Imagine the reaction from our civic, political and religious leaders. What would the Globe headline be?

Well, in a way, we are about to find out - except the real incident did not take place in a church, but in the Saudi funded mega-mosque in Roxbury, Boston.

In late May, Wellesley Middle School students visited the controversial mosque run by the Muslim American Society. As time came for the Muslim mid-day prayer, the students were separated by gender, and the boys were asked to join the Muslim adults in prayer. Several of the public school boys took part. They stood with the Muslim men at the mosque and then, along with them, bowed and prostrated themselves with their heads touching the floor in the traditional Muslim prayer ritual.

None of the public school teachers who were escorting the boys intervened.

The school asked parents for written permission for children to visit the mosque - to study its architecture and to give the students "an authentic experience" by observing Islamic religion first hand.

According to a parent escort, a mosque spokesperson gave a presentation that distorted history and sought to make Islam's past appealing to modern sensibilities. The presentation was far from "educational." To this parent, it seemed to come close to proselytizing.

Quote: "At the time of Prophet Muhammad women were allowed to express their opinions and vote. In this country women didn't get that right until less than a hundred years ago."

In reality, 7th century Arabia at the time of Muhammad was a theocracy, and Muhammad was a supreme ruler who claimed divine sanction from Allah. No one, not even men, were allowed to vote, and in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia today, both men and women have few political rights. Indeed, women still aren't even allowed to drive. But it's not surprising that the Boston mosque would seek to minimize the oppression of Saudi women - more than half of the mosque's final $15 million price tag was paid by donors living in Saudi Arabia.

Next, the students were told that "holy war" is a false definition of jihad and that it actually only refers to an internal "personal struggle" to improve character. But scholars identify more than 100 violent verses in the Koran that seem to define jihad as an armed struggle in the name of Allah against "unbelievers." For the past 25 years, we have seen radical Muslims call for jihad against Russia, Israel, India, Southern Sudan and America.

How can this happen? How many public school children are being invited to pray in mosques and taught that women under Mohammed were freer than under Theodore Roosevelt?

We know that across the country, there are reports of radical Islamic groups targeting schools to engage in dawa, which literally means "proselytizing for Islam," by taking advantage of poorly considered social studies curricula and ideologically driven "educational" non-profits.

One such Dawa organization, Dawa Net, even offers a helpful guide for proselytizing in public schools, noting that students are "receptive to new ideas" and that "schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students."

Indeed, the Boston mosque's top donor and trustee, Walid Fitaihi, has boasted about the increase of proselytizing opportunities in Boston. There definitely seem to be many such opportunities.

So will my liberal friends be outraged by this? Or will they continue to make apologies, denying the obvious so as not to undermine their politically correct narrative?

It will be most interesting to see what the ACLU will do: Its New England education director, Nancy Murray, is a strong supporter of the Muslim American Society. Will principle and integrity trump ideology?

In any case, this incident is a wakeup call for schools and elected officials. Our schools must provide honest and unbiased teachings about Islam and take a more vigilant approach in screening for extremist groups like the MAS, which might use educational trips to proselytize to our public school students.

We call on Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and responsible school officials to launch an investigation into the relationship between the Roxbury mosque and Massachusetts public schools, as well as to take immediate corrective action.

Moreover, Wellesley Middle School principal Joshua Frank, Wellesley School Superintendent Bella Wong, and the town's School Committee and Board of Selectmen need to investigate this incident, hold those responsible accountable and ensure that it will never happen again.

4 Comments

Beyond tolerance: compliance, and simulated servitude!

What PC, multi-culti chin-pullers will do, in terms of religious tolerance, once the Pentagon, a couple of towers, etc., etc. have been destroyed by self-immolating mass murders; once some heads have been sawed off; once acid is thrown in the face of women who fail to comply; etc.

One cannot help but be impressed with this new-found tolerance, and compliance, and understanding, and openness to the other, etc., etc., harrumph, harrumph, harrumph ... One cannot help but be impressed.

ACLU in Boston is busy planning a retirement party for Nancy Murray, its educational director, so that she can now do her anti-Israel, pro-Hamas activism full time. Wait, she's already been doing it full time.

I heard they offered the position to Hillel...

Talk about twisting the truth. The film clip itself is woefully twisted. Are there not bigger issues to worry about?

While near me a Federal judge ordered a World War I memorial cross covered by a plywood box saying it favored Christianity. This is in the Mojave Desert in a place where people couldn't even see it unless you drove there specifically.

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