Brooklyn school and American hypocrisy

Kathryn sent me this really interesting and in many ways disturbing NYTimes story about a NYC educator, Debbie Almontaser, who was recently more or less forced to step down from her position of principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy public school in Brooklyn.

Almontaser has been accused of being unamerican and using the Academy to indoctrinate students with a jihadist agenda. The situation with Almontaser have clearly brought out the worst in post-9/11 fear-mongering, anti-Islamic sentiment and highlights the increasing marginalization of an entire section of the American population.

I've had several conversations with friends in the past about how ridiculous it is for countries such as Italy to refuse building mosques and France for keeping Muslim women from wearing head scarves. What this story demonstrates is that the ideal of America as land of the free is an arrogant fallacy. Buildings, clothing and languages don't cause fear, violence or terrorism - If anything, misunderstanding, liminality and the limitation of an entire culture and religion do.

A commenter on the story added this quote from Abe Lincoln that is particularly salient, I think:

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are createdequal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotismcan be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy."