September 5, 2007 -- HERE we go again. As students filed nervously into Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy yesterday, a key adviser to the school was defining the meaning of the loaded term jihad.
“Struggle,” Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, told me.
Say what? To most New Yorkers, including me, jihad means only one thing - holy war.
“And that’s not my definition,” the imam insisted. “That’s a common definition - struggle on various levels.”
What on earth are they teaching at this school?
One thing they don’t seem to be teaching at Gibran Academy - the city’s new Arabic-themed public school - is when to quit.
Department of Education spokesman David Cantor said Gibran’s advisory board, assembled by ex-principal Debbie “Intifada is Good” Almontaser, was disbanded.
But that was news to Abdur-Rashid. The imam, who has written on the way white Americans “robbed” Africans and Muslims of their heritage, said he was involved “strictly on the importance of the multi-cultural aspect of the school’s curriculum.”
It didn’t help that the ousted Almontaser, who was replaced as school chief by a Jewish woman, squealed to CNN International yesterday that she wasn’t a terrorist - her critics were.
“To me, [they] seem more like terrorists. They’re the ones who are terrorizing us,” said Almontaser. She remains an employee of our city’s schools.
And this was just Day 1.
Extra cops came out, along with droves of teachers carrying “Welcome” signs, to usher children into a school that’s made critics, including me, say New York needs this place as much as it needs another 9/11.
But Chancellor Joel Klein said Gibran was misunderstood.
“The school is not a religious school in any way, shape or form. It’s not a place for political indoctrination in any way, shape or form.”
We’ll see.