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| 11/23 |
| 2005/8/1-2 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:38909 Activity:nil |
8/01 And the JEWS are POISONING your BANANAS!
http://csua.org/u/cvq
But I guess it's a step up from learning to kill Jews at summer
camp:
http://csua.org/u/cvr |
| 11/23 |
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| csua.org/u/cvq -> www.theage.com.au/news/war-on-terror/muslims-sound-alarm-over-schools/2005/07/30/1122144058379.html?oneclick=true Islamic school Werribee College, where a visiting imam is alleged to have told students Jews were poisoning their bananas. Islamic school Werribee College, where a visiting imam is alleged to have told students Jews were poisoning their bananas. Photo: Craig Abraham The teacher could not believe what he overheard. The "visiting" imam was launching into a tirade against the Jews and Americans that bordered on the ludicrous. "The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat the m" The imam was told to ease up on the inflammatory language after staff obj ected. Werribee College is from all accounts an Islamic school with a difference . According to former staff it was a longstanding practice of the school principal, Omar Hallak, to have Muslim staff sleep on the premises afte r big international terror attacks such as those in Bali and the London tube bombings to prevent retributive attacks. The Sunday Age has been told that Werribee College appears intent on expo rting its particular brand of Islam to Indonesia, an achievement made po ssible by generous commonwealth and state grants estimated to be in ex cess of $3 million a year. Canberra's big spending laissez-faire approach to non-government school f unding, intended by former education minister David Kemp to boost the nu mbers of Christian schools, has fuelled an increase in community-based I slamic schools across Australia which qualify for the same subsidies. Although the vast majority of these schools established schools such as King Khalid Islamic College in North Coburg or newer schools such as Mo unt Hira College in Keysborough are run openly and with regular contac t and activities with students from non-Muslim schools, there are a smal l number, including Werribee, that shun scrutiny and contact. Last week, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils warned that youn g Muslims were prey to visiting imams and religious scholars. Council pr esident Ameer Ali said Muslim extremists were posing a problem for "vuln erable and impressionable youth". Visiting imams were being brought to A ustralia by new and emerging groups unknown to the community, he said. H is words were endorsed by outspoken Sydney cleric Sheikh Taj al-Din al-H ilali, who said the Muslim community had not done enough to confront ext remists. Inquiries by The Sunday Age last week revealed an alarming lack of offici al scrutiny not just of Muslim schools but of a plethora of non-governme nt schools advocating all manner of religious faith. State and federal e ducation departments have little idea of the curriculum content for juni or grades, the quality of education being offered or extremist views tha t may be perpetuated in the name of religion. Werribee College appears to be the domain of Mr Hallak and his family, wh o last week declined invitations to talk to The Sunday Age about the abo ve incident involving the visiting imam and the school's management prac tices. As with all non-government schools, Werribee College is subject to few ch ecks. It is not a member of the Australian Council for Islamic Education in Schools that has a charter to promote tolerance, oppose violence and condemn hatred. Although children at year 12 perform well above average , there are concerns among former teachers and members of Melbourne's Is lamic community about the overall quality of education the 600-plus stud ents receive. The treatment of female staff and students has become an issue over recen t years, with attempts to pay female teachers less, prevent them from sh aring offices with male teachers and the imposition of strict dress code s While such practices have alarmed education professionals, teacher unions and the broader Muslim community, there is a reluctance to deal with th em and regulatory hurdles that make this difficult. Cultural and religio us sensitivities make investigations tricky unless there has been an off icial complaint. "Without somebody making a sworn statement, it is hard to act without being accused of racial or cultural bias," said a promine nt education professional who declined to be identified. Although the Federal Government seeks to promote "a pluralist and toleran t society" in providing hundreds of millions of dollars to non-governmen t schools, it carries out no day-to-day monitoring of courses or managem ent standards. This is left to the states, whose monitoring is at best c ursory. Even then, there is little direct state control over the quality of teach ing or the content of courses except at year 11 and 12 level. Like the C hristian schools the funding regime was intended to encourage, Muslim sc hools are free to shape and direct students in a religious environment o f their choosing. And there is nothing illegal about teaching students a bout the Taliban, Osama bin Laden or extreme interpretations of Islam. Keysar Trad, the founder of the Islamic Friendship Association of Austral ia, says the proliferation of Islamic schools is causing concern in the Muslim community. "This proliferation means that small groups can go and set up schools and run them in the name if Islam. But the problem is that the argument can also be made about oddball Christian schools as well," he said. "Political, r eligious and ethnic divisions within the community also make it hard to agree on standards. Dr Fethi Mansouri, associate professor of internal and political studies at Deakin University, says it would be a mistake to cut off funding to I slamic schools such a move could force the schools and visiting imams into remote corners of society where there was no scrutiny or accountabi lity. "In France and Holland there is no funding for religious schools a nd that has led to serious problems," he said. "A better idea is to have non-government schools sign off on an agreed se t of principles which would be conditional for funding. The state school system has identified a set of values, there is no reason why they coul d not be applied to non-government schools." There are seven known Islamic schools in Victoria employing about 360 tea chers including a significant number of non-Muslims teaching an esti mated 5000 students. With combined state and federal funding averaging a bout $7000 for each student, the total taxpayer commitment is more than $32 million a year. Prejudice in a class of its own The teacher was alarmed by what she discovered in the school library. An image of Christ in a book on comparative religion had been defaced. When she asked students to explain, they told her that another teacher, a devout Muslim, had asked them to demonstrate that Islam was the one tru e faith by striking the picture with sharpened pencils. "They told me they had been made to line up and one by one stab the pictu re," the teacher told The Sunday Age. It was not the first incident or the last that would disturb this teacher and several others during her two years at one of Melbourne's lesse r-known Islamic schools. At the same school, the teacher said, complaints by the science co-ordina tor about an incompetent year 12 physics teacher were dismissed by the p rincipal on the grounds that the teacher "was hired to teach about Islam , which he was very good at". At other Muslim schools, The Sunday Age ha s been told, administrators banned all overt signs of other faiths. In one case a non-Muslim member of staff was told to remove a crucifix fr om the dashboard of a car parked in view of the students and a female Hi ndu teacher was ordered to remove marriage jewellery. The teacher, who was dismissed from the school because she was "over qual ified", is now employed at a Christian faith-based school. "When you asked children to write about their favourite hero, they nearly always wrote about Osama bin Laden." Many of these incidents have been reported to the Australian Federal Poli ce, who interviewed the teacher. ASIO also knows about the claims, and i s believed to regularly make background checks. |
| csua.org/u/cvr -> sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/31/HAMAS.TMP Email This Article Seventeen-year-old Osama Abu Asi knows what Hamas stands for: swimming le ssons, horseback riding, potato sack races and other summertime fun -- i ncluding religious education and paramilitary training. This is summer camp in the Gaza Strip, as organized by Harakat al-Moqawam a al-Islamiyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas - - which is officially regarded by the United States and many other count ries as a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Israelis. All summer long, at camps in playgrounds, in dirt-poor neighborhoods and on glittering Mediterranean beaches, Palestinian boys and young men get together in safe, well-managed, comfortable facilities decorated with th e fluttering green flags of Hamas. "In this camp we learn the important things of life -- good behavior, res pect," said Osama, who was spending the summer at a Hamas-run camp on th e beach outside Gaza City. They also learn how to sing "intifada songs," including one urging them t o "kill Zionists wherever they are, in the name of God." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Ra'anan Gissin described the summer camps as "indoctrination camps" comparable to the Hitler Yout h camps, and accused Hamas of taking advantage of Gaza parents' desperat e economic straits by offering to care for and feed their children while concealing the organization's true motives. "This is where you create cultural hatred, so by the age of 15 or 16 you can send them out as suicide bombers. As he spoke, fellow campers ran laughing through the shimmering breakers, rolling in the white sand. Nearby, a group of camp "graduates" -- young men now regulars in Hamas -- played volleyball in an enclosed area. Up the beach, families relaxed under tents, while women walked into the sea wearing long dresses and with their hair covered by a hijab, maintainin g their modesty in the surf. Other campers gave similar responses when asked what they were learning f rom the bearded instructors who stood nearby as they spoke and sometimes whispered suggested answers. "Math, sports, swimming, Islamic behavior," said Ibrahim El-Kanua, 12, at a camp in a playground near the Jabaliya refugee camp where he lives. The camps are especially popular with Palestinian families in Gaza, where Hamas is perceived as both less corrupt and more administratively compe tent than the ruling Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas. The movement did well in municipal elections in December, January and May , and now controls 50 of 121 Palestinian local governments, mostly in th e Gaza Strip. Observers believe it would have done equally well in parli amentary elections that have been postponed. For Gaza parents, the camps provide an alternative for their children dur ing the summer school holidays when there is little to offer in the way of recreation on Gaza's dusty streets, and kids are often seen playing i n the raw sewage that flows to the sea. "The Hamas summer camp is teaching them good behavior, teaching them to h onor and respect people, instead of losing them to the streets," said 60 -year-old Abdullah Fatah, as he came to check on his four grandchildren enrolled in a playground camp near his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp . More than 80 percent of the 13 million people in the Gaza Strip live bel ow the poverty line, with an unemployment rate of 50 percent. More than half of the population is 14 years old or younger. "If Hamas won't watch them, who would keep them busy during the summer br eak?" asked Ibrahim Salah, an accountant who is also head of Hamas' educ ation department. "When they're in the hands of Hamas, they're in good h ands." At Hamas camp, every camper gets a crisp green baseball cap. Camp officia ls said they have already given out 12,000 caps this year in 60 Gaza sum mer camps, out of 100,000 caps they ordered from a Chinese company. "This is one of the basic things we can provide these kids -- a cap and a T-shirt," said Jasser Shameyah, a Hamas administrator. "We try to take them once in a while to a playground, special beaches with entry fees -- we can pay up to five shekels a kid." At four separate camps visited earlier this month, the campers, who range d in age from about 8 to 18, were organized into groups of a dozen or so with individual instructors, playing tug-of-war and wrestling, learning the Quran -- campers easily recited long sections by heart -- and munch ing on pita bread stuffed with hummus and a mystery meat as unidentifiab le as that in any Boy Scout lunch. Fatah, the ruling Palestinian party in the occupied territories, and othe r groups -- Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, for example -- a lso offer camps. But a tour of camps in Gaza found most bearing the gree n flag of Hamas. Some American and European programs offer summer camps in Gaza, which bri ng Jewish and Muslim children together and emphasize peace and reconcili ation. But those groups tend to attract far fewer children, from mainly well-to-do backgrounds, and put them in a Western environment, one Hamas instructor asserted, where girls without head coverings are thrown in w ith boys, something many Muslim parents consider unacceptable. Hamas, following its interpretation of Islamic principles, runs separate camps for boys and girls. The children pay for the camp on a sliding sca le -- from a shekel (about 25 cents) to 10 shekels for the duration, dep ending on their ability to pay, Hamas officials said. "The main reason for Hamas summer camp is just for fun, to take them from the killing environment. They've gone through things they weren't prepa red for," Salah, the Hamas education chief, said. "The main thing is to teach them to love their nation, Palestine. But while Hamas leaders point to their social programs as the reason for the camps' popularity, Israelis -- and some Palestinians -- are far more critical of what the young campers are learning besides horseback ridin g and the backstroke. At one beach camp, attended by approximately 100 kids, an instructor wore a heavy flannel shirt under which a webbed belt could be seen strapped to his stomach. Asked by a reporter what it was, he answered, with a bro ad smile, "Boom!" The instructor led a group of young teenagers through marching drills on the sand -- facing movements, close quarter drill. With a smile at the r eporter, he put a megaphone to his lips. As the instructor, Sa'eb Dormush, stepped aside for an interview, a youth in the group shouted out "moqawama!" "That is the first word they learn when they are born," Dormush said with a laugh. Across camp, a group of younger children -- most between 10 and 12 -- sat in a circle in the sand singing one of the "intifada songs" they learn at camp. One boy sang verses in a rolling soprano as the others joined i n on the one-word chorus. Such activities prompt Israeli officials to look harshly at the camps, es pecially when combined with statements from Hamas officials such as Gaza leader Mahmoud al-Zahar, who said in a recent interview that despite th e current shaky hudna (truce) with Israel, Hamas will continue to attack Jewish settlements in the West Bank until Israel disengages from that a rea. He also said that he remains devoted to the elimination of the stat e of Israel altogether. "These summer camps are an industry of a culture of hatred," said Gissin, Sharon's spokesman. Gissin said the Palestinian Authority should take over supervision of the camps and their curriculum. But the minute they engage in incitement, we thr ow the book at them." Last September, several days after a double suicide bombing claimed by Ha mas killed 16 Israelis on two buses in the southern desert town of Beers heba, Israeli helicopters attacked what Israeli government officials sai d was a Hamas training camp, located on a soccer field and playground th at was used as a summer camp during the day. According to Hamas, Palestinian Authority officials have cited the Hamas camps' military training activities as the reason to bar Hamas from hold ing such camps in Palestinian public schools -- a sign, say Hamas offici als, that the Palestinian Authority fears the competition... |