The recent Bush administration report on inner-city education shamelessly advocates massive public funding for religious schools. In addition to voucher subsidies, tax credits and something called “backpack” scholarships (another kind of voucher), it promotes “faith-based charter schools.”
The report, issued Oct. 3 by the White House Domestic Policy Council, notes that charter schools, because they are publicly funded, cannot have “an explicit faith component.” Yet the report gives charter school operators a roadmap around the church-state wall.
"[A]s one scholar has noted,” the report advises, “public charter schools can use the flexibility allowed under State charter school laws to accommodate the faiths of their students. This flexibility can take many forms, though it is also limited in important ways. For example, a charter school could have faith leaders sit on its governing board, close for religious holidays observed by its students, and arrange its schedule to enable students to participate in faith-based activities after school (that are not operated or required by the school itself).”
The report adds that “a school could allow for voluntary, student-led prayer and offer a course on culture and general morality.”
Funny, this Bush administration-approved circumvention of church-state separation is almost an exact description of a charter school in Minnesota that has sparked intense controversy.
According to reports in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and elsewhere, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) blurs the church-state line.
The Star-Tribune‘s conservative columnist Katherine Kersten has challenged the academy’s practices.
Kersten writes, “Its executive director, Asad Zaman, is an imam, or Muslim religious leader. The school shares a building with a mosque and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society, which the Chicago Tribune has described as the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood – ‘the world’s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group.’
“Most of TiZA’s students are Muslim, many from low-income immigrant families. The school breaks daily for prayer, its cafeteria serves halal food (permissible under Islamic law), and Arabic is a required subject.
“School buses,” she continues, “do not leave until after-school Muslim Studies classes, which many students attend, have ended for the day.”
Needless to say, public funding for an Islamic charter school that seems to be pushing the church-state line — or eliminating it altogether — has not gone over well in some quarters. Some of Bush’s right-wing friends in particular have been apoplectic.
Jan Markell, founder and director of Minneapolis-based Olive Tree Ministries, told the American Family Association’s news service that political correctness is causing Minnesota officials to look the other way.
"[T]he Minnesota Department of Education … did visit the school and they were told nothing strange is going on here, [and that] this is not an Islamic school,” the fundamentalist Christian leader groused.”
Markell told OneNewsNow that she is fearful that her home state is on its way to becoming the “Islamic Republic of Minnesota.”
At WorldNetDaily, a far right online site, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was also very unhappy.
“Can you imagine a public school founded by two Christian ministers, and housed in the same building as a church?,” Spencer blustered.
“Add to that – in the same building – a prominent chapel. And let’s say the students are required to fast during Lent, and attend Bible studies right after school. All with your tax dollars,” he observed. “Inconceivable? Sure.”
Now the Bush administration may not have had Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in its thoughts when it spoke so glowingly of religiously grounded, publicly funded charter schools. The supportive comments came in a section of the report talking about the transformation of inner-city Catholic parochial schools into charter schools.
But under the U.S. Constitution, what’s okay for the Catholics is okay for the Muslims too, right?
We at The Wall of Separation happen to agree that the Muslim academy’s practices raise some troubling church-state questions. And we’re pleased that the Minnesota ACLU is looking into the situation. The Minnesota Department of Education has also investigated the allegations and is working with the school to clear up the problems.
Nonetheless, the Minnesota episode richly illustrates the potential difficulties that occur when the government tries to fund religious schooling, either directly or surreptitiously. Whether it’s a Muslim school, a Catholic school or a Baptist school, sectarian education should be paid for with private funds, not the taxpayers’ dollars. The Bush administration report is likely to make church-state matters worse, not better.
We hope the staff at WorldNetDaily and OneNewsNow tell the White House that religious school funding schemes may have unintended consequences. They have better contacts there than we do, so, right-wing folks, get on the phone with W.'s staff.
Let’s keep religion and government separate for everyone’s sake.
