Egg on your face...
Our confused Christian friend William Wallace has his own blog site where he posted an article about “Where is the ACLU now?”
William Wallace wrote:
After the government funded Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) in Minnesota stonewalled conservative journalist Katherine Kersten, a substitute teacher by the name of Amanda Getz spilled the beans about the Islamic school.
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.”(Kersten 4-9-2008)
Where is the ACLU? The ACLU was all over the Dover PA school district for merely suggesting that life might have been designed by some unidentified creator as a violation of the so-called separation of of church and state. But here in Minnesota, it is “halal” (kosher) to fund Islamic schools.
If William Wallace had done his homework and done some original research (something I have been encouraging him to do so) he would have known that the ACLU had indeed sent a letter objecting to exactly these practices. What was so funny or sad is that the letter was a month old…
Once again we see how foolish comments can turn into something much bigger.
What was William Wallace’s ‘response’?
William Wallace wrote:
The letter you cite is very interesting, in that is very friendly. It is as though the ACLU wants to teach the school how to continue to be a public Islamic school. I’ll analyze the letter in more detail later; might make for an interesting blog.
Or his later ‘defense’ that the letter was far more friendly than a letter send in a case of defending the ““right” of students to disrupt learning with gratuitious (sic) use of the word “vagina”.”
Fascinating ‘logic’
But things get worse much worse… In an effort to wipe the egg off his face, William Wallace makes the following claim
William Wallace wrote:
As Katherine Kersten points out, the liberal ACLU is begrudgingly investigating TIZA.(Kersten 4-9-2008)
Begrudgingly?…
From the actual article
In addition, schools cannot favor one religion by offering services for only its adherents, or promote after-school religious instruction for only one group. The ACLU of Minnesota [1] has launched an investigation of TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education has also begun a review.
Referring to TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, who is a Muslim imam, or religious leader as ‘soapy Asad’, William Wallace insists on adding more egg…
William Wallace wrote:
Soapy Asad basically admits that he has been advised and counsiled (sic) by the Minnesota ACLU with this:
That particular statement was placed with the intent to ensure that no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers. Once the ACLU brought to our attention that this may have represented an appearance of impropriety, we immediately removed it although we have not been informed that there has been any legal violation of the law and we believe that we are not in any legal violation of the law — Asad Zaman(Kersten 4-8-2008)
And then finally, lacking much of any evidence and contradicted by the facts William Wallace insists that
William Wallace wrote:
So yes, “Bad”, it does appear that the ACLU has been coaching TIZA to ensure that they can game the system.(Bad 4-10-2008)
to which “Bad” responded in the comments
Bad wrote:
By “appear” you seem to mean “I made it up in my head” because you still haven’t supplied any evidence of this accusation. The ACLU telling them what they can’t do is not “coaching” them to “game the system.”
It’s still quite amazing that after making such a colossally silly accusation, instead of retracting it and maybe thinking why you got it so wrong, you’re still straining to find some way to redeem your paranoia.
William Wallace recently updated his inaugural posting to read
William Wallace wrote:
While I pray that I do not mislead any others through my comments or through intemperate behavior, this is not an evangelical blog, and I am not going to hold back.
It seems to me that his prayers have yet to be answered.
[1] ACLU of Minnesota Press Release
After receiving complaints that Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights is violating the Establishment Clause the ACLU-MN sent a letter to the academy questioning their practices. In the letter that was sent the ACLU-MN questions some of their practices, including addressing allegations that the school sponsors prayer.
Teresa Nelson, an attorney for the ACLU of Minnesota, says “We currently do not have enough facts to state whether or not the school is in violation of the establishment clause. The American Civil Liberties Union is a strong defender of separation of church and state and will take action if we find they are violating the establishment clause.”
PS: Various other religious conservative blogs have picked up the story and are also repeating the nonsense about the ACLU. Seems ignorance spreads quickly and is quite contagious.