Posts on New York

The New York Times has published an extensive feature revisiting the unfortunate public battle that emerged last summer over the opening of a charter school offering Arabic language and cultural instruction. As we wrote in September, while 67 other schools in New York City were earning applause for dual-language instruction, the announcement of the Khalil Gibran International Academy resulted in a right-wing backlash that seemed to presume Arab American culture to be of a piece with international terrorism. In the end, a handful of fringe websites and third-string commentators, with promotion by two conservative newspapers, managed to force the resignation of the respected founding principal and to tarnish the new school, essentially sabotaging the first year of the educational effort.

Daniel Pipes led the charge against the school and its architect, Debbie Almontaser. He described to the Times how he sees openly Muslim Americans as posing a new threat, not of violence or law-breaking but of cultural change:

The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.

“It’s a battle that’s really just begun,” said Daniel Pipes, who directs a conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.

The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.

“It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia,” Mr. Pipes said. “It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.”

Almontaser is suing the city for forcing her resignation, but it’s remarkable that such a small group of people—led by activists like Pipes and Aryeh Spero, who are as a rule ignored—could intimidate New York City, armed only with overactive imaginations and a paranoid suspicion of Muslims.

“Dual-language classes give U.S. an edge,” read the headline of an AP story printed last Tuesday in the right-wing Washington Times, lauding New York City’s 67 schools that offer instruction in English plus immersion in a foreign language to student bodies comprised of about half native English speakers and half children with a background in the other language. The two-way immersion approach has not been without pedagogical controversy, but programs in French, Spanish, Chinese, Creole, and other languages have not produced widespread criticism. That changed with the proposal of a dual-language program for Arabic.

Since Truman, U.S. presidents have issued annual proclamations declaring a non-sectarian National Day of Prayer, and this year is no different. What has changed in recent years is the rise in influence of a sectarian group that has appointed itself the “official” organizer of the occasion. The National Day of Prayer Task Force, headed by James Dobson’s wife Shirley and based out of Focus on the Family offices in Colorado, admits that its purpose is “organizing and promoting prayer observances conforming to a Judeo-Christian system of values” – in particular, evangelical Christianity based on Biblical inerrancy and fighting the “cultural war” – but it acts like it’s a federal agency and the arbiter of the holiday itself.

This past week, prior to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s signing of a state proclamation on the day of prayer, Dobson issued an attack on his radio program. Focus’s Citizenlink web site published this indignant article on Friday accusing Spitzer of purposefully “insult[ing] and offend[ing] millions” of “people of faith”:

We want to make you aware of a slap in the face the governor of New York has delivered to people of faith all across the country.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer – who just a few days ago promised to sign a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in his state, should one land on his desk – apparently has refused to sign a proclamation supporting Thursday’s observance of the National Day of Prayer. The governors of the other 49 states have already issued such proclamations, acknowledging the need for America to unite in prayer.

Won’t you take a minute or two – no matter what state you live in – to let Gov. Spitzer know what you think about his refusal to acknowledge the National Day of Prayer? Remind him that this country was founded as a Christian nation – and he will insult and offend millions if he continues down the path he is on.

At NYU.

Group wants to make local police enforce federal violations. Also eyeing localities in California, New York, and Texas.

For 43 states.

In an e-mail to supporters, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins complained about a court decision in New York that purportedly requires certain religious employers to cover contraception in their health insurance plans. Writes Perkins:

This should serve as a serious warning to religious groups that the court is intent on spreading its gospel of secularism to faith-based organizations at all costs. This decision is less about birth control and more about the kind of protection we need from activist judges.

What this dire warning does not mention is that it was the elected legislature that passed this regulation into law – nor does it mention the religious exemption, which shields employers that hire and serve primarily members of the same faith. (The case affects more secular enterprises that some churches are involved in, such as hospitals.)

“Fanatical secular progressives,” he says, are behind brawl at Columbia University, aka “University of Havana, North.” Transcript. Video: Broadband or Dial-Up.

Suffolk County, NY (pop. 1.5 million) bill, likely to be signed, targets businesses.

In Maryland and New York.

The House Republicans’ summer-long immigration road show continues, with so-called hearings in New Hampshire on Thursday and Illinois next Tuesday. Meanwhile, a hearing planned for upstate New York has been cancelled for unknown reasons. Perhaps even members of the House committees behind the hearings have begun to sense the futility of such political exercises.

At one hearing last week in Georgia, Rep. Charlie Norwood lashed out at a witness from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service who wasn’t making the congressman’s points properly:

"What I wanted was witnesses who agree with me, not disagree with me," Norwood said after presiding over an immigration hearing Tuesday in Gainesville.

On Wednesday, the Augusta Republican took center stage over two congressional colleagues at a hearing in Dalton, telling a federal bureaucrat with whom he didn't agree that he would be calling her boss to complain.

Alison Siskin, an immigration specialist with the Congressional Research Service, said studies have been unclear about whether illegal immigrants have had much impact on government health care.

"The studies are all over the place," she said. "There are not studies that have shown rampant abuse."

Norwood told Siskin he was "disappointed" in her testimony, and that he planned to complain to her superiors.

“Facts are stubborn things,” said John Adams, and some studies show immigrants use less, not more health care than others. Perhaps Norwood, who said he did not learn anything new from the hearings he held, prefers Ronald Reagan’s version: “Facts are stupid things.”