Letter from a School Parent

by

David A. Harris

February 4, 2002

            As a parent of two Horace Greeley High School graduates and one child currently enrolled in the school, I would like to bring to the attention of the Board of Education a matter of serious concern.

            On Friday, February 1, an assembly entitled “Living as an American and as a Member of the Islamic Faith, Before and After September 11” was convened for the entire Greeley student body.

            The notice indicated that the “assembly program will consist of a panel, members of the Niazi family, our Chappaqua neighbors, who will share their culture and beliefs with us.  Following their remarks, we will provide time for some questions and answers from the audience.  After that, we will break into Forum groups for continuing discussion and reflection.”

            I do not question the good intentions of the Greeley administration in planning such a program, or the equally good intentions of the Niazi family in their willingness to appear before the school community and talk about their religion and values.

            What I do question, however, is whether this was the appropriate way to present an enormously complex subject to an impressionable audience, and especially at a particularly sensitive moment in American and world history.  Incidentally, this very concern was expressed in a phone conversation with a senior school administrator on January 31, but clearly to no avail.

            Rather than assemble a panel reflecting a range of thinking on the many and varied currents in Islam, the school instead chose to invite members of one family who, in their remarks, reinforced each other’s idealized and uncritical views of their religion.  They, of course, have every right to their beliefs and those beliefs deserve respect, but this cannot be the beginning and end of a discussion on Islam, any more than the mirror images of this family’s views in other great religious traditions could suffice to represent those religions in their entirety.

            As an editorial in the Financial Times (December 27, 2001) said: “Just like Christianity, Islam is open to a wide range of interpretations.  There has long been a heated debate over whether a justification for suicide attacks can be found in the Koran.  There is no consensus on the Koranic teachings regarding women’s rights….The blurred separation between church and state makes interpreting Islam all the more difficult.”

            In preparation for the assembly, the students were given two brief and, if we may say, rather selective articles to read from among the multitude written since September 11.  One was a sympathetic assessment of Islam and the other an examination of five typologies of anti-Americanism in the world today, including in the Middle East.

            The students also had available to them an article written by Zareen Niazi, a Greeley student and one of the four family members who spoke at the assembly.  This article appeared in the Greeley Tribune on November 15, 2001 (Forum, p.3). 

            Ms. Niazi is entitled to her views. Nevertheless, her opinion piece was replete with historical inaccuracies (e.g., comparing the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, as shameful as it was, to Hitler’s policy of extermination of European Jewry), glaring omissions (e.g., referring to those who killed thousands on September 11 as merely “a small group of confused human beings” or speaking of “whoever did this atrocious deed,” as if it were unknown who committed these horrific acts, and in the name of what), and hyperbole (e.g., describing “Muslim men beaten and burned to death” in America, or asking “How can Americans claim to want to bring justice overseas when they are the cause of injustice in their own home?”). These statements should have alerted school officials to the need for adequate planning, preparation, and a balancing viewpoint for any assembly on such a “hot” topic.

            Greeley assemblies with outside speakers are far from a daily occurrence.  Thus, there is almost inevitably a certain authority conferred on those outsiders invited to address the entire school body.  They become the filter through which the students are introduced to a particular issue.

There were no other voices at the assembly – neither outside guests nor administrators and teachers – to present what the Financial Times referred to as the “wide range of interpretations,” whether about the various meanings of jihad, the different schools of Islamic thought, the status of women in Muslim society, the record of treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim-dominated countries, the tense relationship of Islam to modernity and democracy, or the very real struggle between moderate Muslims who seek accommodation with the West and extremist Muslims, like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Osama bin Laden, and others, who seek to wage war against us. 

            Further, it was abundantly clear in the question-and-answer period that the students were either ill-equipped or simply hesitant to broach these entirely legitimate – and controversial – issues.

            Moreover, there was one particularly disturbing moment in the assembly. 

Mr. Niazi asked the students to repeat the Arabic words “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”).  He was disappointed with the response after the first attempt, so he called on the students to repeat them more emphatically a second time.

He may have simply been trying to introduce a central phrase of the religion to the students, but that was nonetheless unfortunate.  It is precisely these words that are widely known to be the very last words uttered by radical Islamic suicide bombers.  Thousands of Americans and other victims of terrorism have perished as a direct result of the abuse of these very words.  Again, there was no intervention on the part of the school to put things in perspective for the students.

I understand that the smaller Forum groups were designed to address issues in greater depth, but they could not possibly deal with the full impact of what took place in the gym in front of the entire student body.

Finally, lest there be any misunderstanding, this letter should not in any way be construed as casting aspersions on the Muslim religion or seeking to deny the children of Chappaqua the opportunity to learn more about Islamic tradition and faith (or, for that matter, the tradition and faith of any other religion, consistent with Constitutional safeguards). 

Rather, it is, as I said at the outset, an expression of deep concern that this important and complex topic was not handled by school officials with the skill and nuance that we have come to expect from Horace Greeley.  As a result, in my view a potentially important educational opportunity was lost.