Promoting intercultural understanding in America...

...isn't always easy.

Certain people on this board have claimed that Muslim Americans should be doing more to promote good relations between their community and Christian America. Here's one who tried. It did not end well -- she got crucified by Daniel Pipes and his gang.

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/nyregion/28school.html ]

I got pretty depressed by this story. If I was American, or a New Yorker, I would also be outraged. Are the trenches really this deep?

“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.”

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I love that quote, it just works on so many levels.

I think this quote says it all:

In just five months, Ms. Almontaser’s image had been transformed. She was rendered a radical Muslim by one group and a sellout by another.

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This is indeed, a depressing article. I suppose we should be encouraged that the school is still in existence and attempting to go on.

The scariest thing about this to me is the power of the media to rewrite reality. And the willingness of the average person to accept it.

There are as many as 12 million muslims living in America (no one knows for sure). Their culture is a significant part of American culture. This story and others like it is fairly typical of how some people, in even the best of circumstances, find ways to hate and distrust each other.

Thankfully, this story is an exception and not the rule. The answer to your question, PJ, is probably yes and no. There are probably many more examples of this sort of thing going on, but that's in the context of a common perception of little or none of it going on.

V7 said:

I love that quote, it just works on so many levels.

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Yeah. What a sweetheart, that one.

magerette said:

The scariest thing about this to me is the power of the media to rewrite reality. And the willingness of the average person to accept it.

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You have said it all magerette. The average person is ulikely to check sources and compare data and yet they form so called "public opinion".

What? Who's poking me?

Certainly a disappointment; although, I'm not sure this school represents the specific "awareness campaign" I was recommending. Initial forays, such as this school represents, are always met with a fair bit of backlash, though. Aggressive bigotry is certainly nothing new, nor is it solely contained within any demographic, be it right wing, Christian, or American. This is easily seen in the beating she took from "her own side" for a supposed sellout.

While it seems that this lady had good intentions, I am glad that the school was not allowed to be single ethnicity. IMO, that is a step backward. And given that many (though certainly not all) of the Mosques in NYC preach a very strict interpretation of the Koran, that can often be twisted into the same flawed interpretation that Osama and his gang follow, I think having an all-Arab-American school would be a very, very tempting place target for them to preach their hate, whether it was banned or not.

Her heart was in the right place, but her methods doomed the effort from the beginning.

Public schools follow "public" opinion, what do you expect?

blatantninja said:

While it seems that this lady had good intentions, I am glad that the school was not allowed to be single ethnicity.

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Um, BN? Did you actually RTFA? The school was never intended to be single-ethnicity, and it says so in the first damn paragraph:

New York Times said:

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

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My mistake, I may have confused this with another school that was attempted a few years ago up here (that was essentially single ethnicity).

Regardless, this paragraph raises concern about how much diversity she really wanted:

Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American.

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To me, that means she wanted at least a majority of the students to be of a specific ethnicity, and I see that as a problem.

Regardless, I don't think this type of endevour is what public schools need to be focusing on. NYC schools have enough problems to handle without catering to a specific language or ethnicity.

This woman got the shaft, no doubt, and I feel for her, especially given how the media (if the Post even deserves that title) twisted her words.