TV News Crew Attacked at Twin Cities Muslim School

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

In response to the Minnesota Department of Education directing the TiZA Academy on Monday to "correct" two areas related to religion at the school, Twin Cities ABC affiliate KTSP sent a news crew to TiZA to interview school administrators on the matter.

Shortly after arriving onscene, the news crew was attacked by two staffers at the TiZA Academy. They grabbed the KTSP photojournalist's camera and tried to take it from him. A tussle ensued, police were called, and the photojournalist was treated by paramedics at the scene for minor injuries.

You can watch the KTSP video report here.

This is even more bad publicity for TiZA, which has denied all allegations of promoting Islam at the taxpayer-funded school, and has been hostile in the extreme to news reporters and organizations trying to get to the bottom of the story.

Also, by state law TiZA was required to fly the American flag, which it hadn't done for at least two years since collecting taxpayer funding. The administrators stated they didn't know how to do it, but an American flag was seen flying at the school shortly after TiZA received bad publicity over it and the State began investigating them over promoting Islam at the school.

Some more background, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Tarik ibn Zayad Academy, which focuses on Middle Eastern culture and shares a mosque with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, came under fire after a teacher alleged that the school was offering religious instruction in Islam to its students.

"The Minnesota Department of Education goes to great lengths to make clear to charter schools and their sponsors that, while schools should appropriately accommodate students' religious beliefs, they must be 'nonsectarian' under the state's charter school law," said the state's education Deputy Commissioner Chas Anderson.

On April 9th, Katharine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune began digging into TIZA and religious activities there that violated their tax-funded status. When Kirsten asked to visit TiZA, an official told her she could not be accommodated because of statewide testing.

When Kersten discovered testing wouldn’t begin for several weeks, the school refused to return her calls and e-mails.

However, one substitute teacher at TiZA had a lot to report to Ms. Kersten.

From Ms. Kersten's article at the Star Tribune:

Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

Were TiZA a private school, they could promote a strictly religious schedule and program if they so desired, as have Catholic schools for many decades now.

However, once they accept taxpayer funding, they are subject to all state restrictions and guidelines with respect to proselytizing and promoting religious activities as part of the curriculum.