{"id":10,"date":"2010-03-15T07:29:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T07:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html"},"modified":"2010-03-15T07:29:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T07:29:51","slug":"panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html","title":{"rendered":"Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has concluded that New York City&#8217;s Department of Education wrongly fired Debbie&nbsp;Almontaser, a Muslim American from Yemen, discriminating on the basis of her&nbsp;race, religion and national origin. Almontaser was the founding principal of the Arabic-themed Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language&nbsp;public school that opened in 2007, but was pressured to resign due to public outrage over her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lohud.com\/article\/20100313\/NEWS05\/100313001\/-1\/newsfront\/EEOC-rules-NYC-wronged-Arabic-language-principal\">attempts to explain the word &#8220;intifada&#8221; &#8212; most commonly associated with the Palestinian uprising against Israel &#8212; does not mean &#8220;terrorism<\/a>.&#8221; (Read<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/13\/nyregion\/13principal.html\"> this story for more details <\/a>&#8211; it&#8217;s written by Andrea Elliott, who won a<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/topics\/news\/national\/series\/muslimsinamerica\/index.html\"> Pulitzer Prize for her series about an immigrant imam&#8217;s struggles <\/a>in America.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sunherald.com\/2010\/03\/12\/2022500\/cair-ny-welcomes-eeoc-finding.html\">The Council on American-Islamic Relations <\/a>and other groups representing Arab and Muslim Americans, including <a href=\"http:\/\/muslimmatters.org\/2010\/03\/14\/eeoc-rules-in-favor-of-debbie-almontaser\/\">MuslimMatters.org<\/a>, have applauded this &#8220;good news,&#8221; but the DOE maintains that it did not discriminate against Almontaser and will not reinstate her; Almontaser is appealing her lawsuit against the city. We&#8217;ll see where this goes.<\/p>\n<p>As a New Yorker and a religion reporter, I wasn&#8217;t surprised when this controversy erupted, given that <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>the city remains scarred by&nbsp;terrorism and is home to the largest population of Jews outside Israel. (In an odd twist, the interim principal who replaced Almontaser was Jewish.) If the &#8220;intifada&#8221; uproar hadn&#8217;t happened, something else would have set Islamophobes off against the head of a proposed&nbsp;Arabic-themed school.<\/p>\n<p>The Khalil Gibran academy (named for&nbsp;the celebrated Lebanese American poet, who happened to be Christian) is&nbsp;among dozens of specialized schools in NYC, including LaGuardia Arts, the high school that inspired the &#8220;Fame&#8221; movie and TV shows. Other linguistic-themed options include the Hebrew Language Academy and&nbsp;the Hellenic Classical Charter School, which offers Greek and Latin. Public schools can&#8217;t have religious affiliations, but it&#8217;s inevitable that&nbsp;some confusion will ensue when the language being taught&nbsp;(Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin) is closely tied to a particular faith (Judaism, Islam, Orthodoxy Christianity, Catholicism). Isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p><span><br \/><\/span><span class=\"apple-style-span\"><span>*<\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\"><span>Click here to<\/span><span class=\"apple-converted-space\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><strong><span>subscribe to Belief Beat<\/span><\/strong><span class=\"apple-converted-space\"><b><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/a><span class=\"apple-style-span\"><span>and<\/span><\/span><span class=\"apple-converted-space\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\"><span>click here to<\/span><span class=\"apple-converted-space\"><span>&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><strong><span>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/span><\/strong><\/a><span class=\"apple-style-span\"><span>.<\/span><\/span><span class=\"apple-style-span\"><span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has concluded that New York City&#8217;s Department of Education wrongly fired Debbie&nbsp;Almontaser, a Muslim American from Yemen, discriminating on the basis of her&nbsp;race, religion and national origin. Almontaser was the founding principal of the Arabic-themed Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language&nbsp;public school that opened in 2007, but was pressured&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has concluded that New York City&#8217;s Department of Education wrongly fired Debbie&nbsp;Almontaser, a Muslim American from Yemen, discriminating on the basis of her&nbsp;race, religion and national origin. Almontaser was the founding principal of the Arabic-themed Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language&nbsp;public school that opened in 2007, but was pressured&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-03-15T07:29:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal - Belief Beat","og_description":"The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has concluded that New York City&#8217;s Department of Education wrongly fired Debbie&nbsp;Almontaser, a Muslim American from Yemen, discriminating on the basis of her&nbsp;race, religion and national origin. Almontaser was the founding principal of the Arabic-themed Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language&nbsp;public school that opened in 2007, but was pressured&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-03-15T07:29:51+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html","name":"Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-03-15T07:29:51+00:00","dateModified":"2010-03-15T07:29:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/03\/panel-nyc-wrong-to-fire-muslim-principal.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Panel: NYC was wrong to fire Muslim principal"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for The New York Times and other media outlets. She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}