As it chug-chugs towards the vote
As the end nears for the Loudon County School Board vote on whether or not to allow yet another US tax-funded Gulen-inspired charter school to open, Board members are facing a rather unusual dilemma. For the most part the Gulen schools have been allowed to open with a great deal of fanfare and way too little scrutiny – but not in Loudon County.
A dedicated group of opponents have fiercely taken on the boys and their dubious plans to operate a charter school in Loudon County, Virginia. As noted in previous blogs, the boys made a colossal blunder when they decided to open up shop in Loudon County, an area that claims a higher than average income and hosts a wealth of intellectuals and politicians (not to be confused as one and the same).
Indeed, the boys ventured out from their usual modus operandi, which is camping out in lower socioeconomic areas where parents welcomed them like the second coming -- parents oblivious to their true motives and agenda, and just grateful to have some sort of educational opportunity other than that of failing public school districts.
It’s the archetypal story – the Gulenists just got too greedy and too powerful, flying under the radar for over 12 years, unscathed and unnoticed –until now.
And now comes the catalyst that might just turn it all around. If the Loudon County School Board members turn the Gulenist’s down, ignoring all of the boys’ trumped up charges of discrimination and Islamophobia, they might just actually set a precedent that will finally slow down the Gulen express – causing it to eventually lose stamina and eventually derail.
Frank Gaffney of The Washington Times has written an article about the impending show down in Loudon County and the article is posted below:
ENDGAME FOR GULEN IN LOUDOUN?
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
The Washington Times
Imagine if a cultish German nationalist were operating a chain of schools across the United States promoting in impressionable young Americans his strain of Aryan supremacism. Would your school board think twice about approving an application for a charter school that would allow millions of tax-dollars to flow to a group of Germans “inspired” by such a problematic figure?
Not bloody likely. Yet, the Loudoun County School Board is reaching the denouement of a multi-year deliberation about an application for a charter school that has many of these attributes. The only difference is that the cult leader behind this proposal is Fethullah Gulen, who happens to be a Turkish Islamist, not a German nationalist. And his followers are cultivating in some 135 American charter schools their brand of supremacism, which is all about an increasingly shariah-dominated Turkey, rather than some sort of authoritarian Reich.
Incredibly, the Loudoun School Board’s members are studiously avoiding any acknowledgment or discussion of the role of Fethullah Gulen and his movement. They have wrestled for many months with a host of problems with the application – such as serious deficiencies with the proposed curriculum, the financing, the management, the teachers and the school in Anne Arundel County specifically cited as the “model” for the Loudoun Math and Information Technology Academy (LMITA).
But the members of the school board have, to date, been unwilling to recognize that these problems are actually endemic in Gulen-associated schools. And that includes the stated model: Maryland’s Chesapeake Science Point Academy.
They are also much in evidence in three Gulen charter schools in Fulton County, Georgia. Two of the three have lost their charters; the third – an elementary school – may soon follow suit.
I had the occasion to visit Fulton County last week and talked with several people involved in one aspect or another of its difficulties with the Gulenists. These included a former teacher, the parent of a former student and a local administrator. One thing is clear from these conversations: You simply cannot begin to understand, let alone cope with, the sorts of issues inherent in “Gulen-inspired” schools if you indulge, for whatever reason – “political correctness,” sensitivity to “diversity,” fear of litigation or being branded an “Islamophobe,” racist, etc. – in the pretense that applications like that in Loudoun County can be properly evaluated while excluding from the evaluation process the 800-pound gorilla in the room: The applicants’ manifest associations to the Gulen Movement.
Fortunately, the Loudoun County School Board is expected to hear on February 19th, in the course of its last public input session on the LMITA application, from Mary Addi. Ms. Addi and her Turkish husband, Mustafa Emanet, both formerly taught in a Gulen school in Cleveland, Ohio. They have courageously made public their insights into issues sure, as with others throughout the country, to afflict the Loudoun County school system if the LMITA application is approved: systematic mismanagement; use of Turkish teachers who are unqualified to teach, do notspeak English comprehensibly or both; visa fraud; financial irregularities;chronic deviation from the curriculum and other rules and regulations meant to govern its operations; and so on. Ms. Addi and her husband have even contributed to an ongoing investigation of the Gulen Movement and its schools by the FBI.
In a letter previously submitted to a select committee of the Loudoun School Board that – to its credit – actually recommended rejection of the LMITA application, Ms. Addi wrote:
“ According to my husband, in addition to garnering as much taxpayer money aspossible, the Gulen movement's other agenda is to spread Islam though subliminal indoctrinations. More specifically, the mission is to spread Islam by means of the Turkish events such as trips to Turkey, the Turkish Olympics, other cultural events and teaching Turkish as a second language.
“Although the Gulenists are careful not to speak directly about their religious beliefs, it is their hope that by indoctrinating American students and parents with their culture and hospitality, that the students will likewise be more susceptible to religious conversion.”
Such behavior would, of course, fall afoul of prohibitions in the Virginia code barring proselytization in public schools. But like the rest of the Gulen program, unless the application is rejected, it is predictable that Loudoun County will find itself wrestling with what other school systems have confronted elsewhere: an entrenched school, indifferent to its obligations and responsibilities – and exceedingly difficult to discipline due, in part, to the Gulenists’ intensive efforts to buy political protection from county supervisors, state legislators, governors and others.
If the mere prospect of those sorts of vexing problems were not grounds enough to reject the LMITA application, this passage from the Loudoun County School Board Code of Conduct should be: “I must never neglect my personal obligation to the community and my legal obligation to the State, nor surrender these responsibilities to any other person, group, or organization; but that, beyond these, I have a moral and civic obligation to the Nation which can remain strong and free only so long as public schools in the United States of America are kept free and strong.”
Keeping our public schools free and strong means keeping them out of the clutches of cultish supremacists, be they of the Turkish Islamist stripe or any other.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. formerly acted as an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. He is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio.
A dedicated group of opponents have fiercely taken on the boys and their dubious plans to operate a charter school in Loudon County, Virginia. As noted in previous blogs, the boys made a colossal blunder when they decided to open up shop in Loudon County, an area that claims a higher than average income and hosts a wealth of intellectuals and politicians (not to be confused as one and the same).
Indeed, the boys ventured out from their usual modus operandi, which is camping out in lower socioeconomic areas where parents welcomed them like the second coming -- parents oblivious to their true motives and agenda, and just grateful to have some sort of educational opportunity other than that of failing public school districts.
It’s the archetypal story – the Gulenists just got too greedy and too powerful, flying under the radar for over 12 years, unscathed and unnoticed –until now.
And now comes the catalyst that might just turn it all around. If the Loudon County School Board members turn the Gulenist’s down, ignoring all of the boys’ trumped up charges of discrimination and Islamophobia, they might just actually set a precedent that will finally slow down the Gulen express – causing it to eventually lose stamina and eventually derail.
Frank Gaffney of The Washington Times has written an article about the impending show down in Loudon County and the article is posted below:
ENDGAME FOR GULEN IN LOUDOUN?
By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
The Washington Times
Imagine if a cultish German nationalist were operating a chain of schools across the United States promoting in impressionable young Americans his strain of Aryan supremacism. Would your school board think twice about approving an application for a charter school that would allow millions of tax-dollars to flow to a group of Germans “inspired” by such a problematic figure?
Not bloody likely. Yet, the Loudoun County School Board is reaching the denouement of a multi-year deliberation about an application for a charter school that has many of these attributes. The only difference is that the cult leader behind this proposal is Fethullah Gulen, who happens to be a Turkish Islamist, not a German nationalist. And his followers are cultivating in some 135 American charter schools their brand of supremacism, which is all about an increasingly shariah-dominated Turkey, rather than some sort of authoritarian Reich.
Incredibly, the Loudoun School Board’s members are studiously avoiding any acknowledgment or discussion of the role of Fethullah Gulen and his movement. They have wrestled for many months with a host of problems with the application – such as serious deficiencies with the proposed curriculum, the financing, the management, the teachers and the school in Anne Arundel County specifically cited as the “model” for the Loudoun Math and Information Technology Academy (LMITA).
But the members of the school board have, to date, been unwilling to recognize that these problems are actually endemic in Gulen-associated schools. And that includes the stated model: Maryland’s Chesapeake Science Point Academy.
They are also much in evidence in three Gulen charter schools in Fulton County, Georgia. Two of the three have lost their charters; the third – an elementary school – may soon follow suit.
I had the occasion to visit Fulton County last week and talked with several people involved in one aspect or another of its difficulties with the Gulenists. These included a former teacher, the parent of a former student and a local administrator. One thing is clear from these conversations: You simply cannot begin to understand, let alone cope with, the sorts of issues inherent in “Gulen-inspired” schools if you indulge, for whatever reason – “political correctness,” sensitivity to “diversity,” fear of litigation or being branded an “Islamophobe,” racist, etc. – in the pretense that applications like that in Loudoun County can be properly evaluated while excluding from the evaluation process the 800-pound gorilla in the room: The applicants’ manifest associations to the Gulen Movement.
Fortunately, the Loudoun County School Board is expected to hear on February 19th, in the course of its last public input session on the LMITA application, from Mary Addi. Ms. Addi and her Turkish husband, Mustafa Emanet, both formerly taught in a Gulen school in Cleveland, Ohio. They have courageously made public their insights into issues sure, as with others throughout the country, to afflict the Loudoun County school system if the LMITA application is approved: systematic mismanagement; use of Turkish teachers who are unqualified to teach, do notspeak English comprehensibly or both; visa fraud; financial irregularities;chronic deviation from the curriculum and other rules and regulations meant to govern its operations; and so on. Ms. Addi and her husband have even contributed to an ongoing investigation of the Gulen Movement and its schools by the FBI.
In a letter previously submitted to a select committee of the Loudoun School Board that – to its credit – actually recommended rejection of the LMITA application, Ms. Addi wrote:
“ According to my husband, in addition to garnering as much taxpayer money aspossible, the Gulen movement's other agenda is to spread Islam though subliminal indoctrinations. More specifically, the mission is to spread Islam by means of the Turkish events such as trips to Turkey, the Turkish Olympics, other cultural events and teaching Turkish as a second language.
“Although the Gulenists are careful not to speak directly about their religious beliefs, it is their hope that by indoctrinating American students and parents with their culture and hospitality, that the students will likewise be more susceptible to religious conversion.”
Such behavior would, of course, fall afoul of prohibitions in the Virginia code barring proselytization in public schools. But like the rest of the Gulen program, unless the application is rejected, it is predictable that Loudoun County will find itself wrestling with what other school systems have confronted elsewhere: an entrenched school, indifferent to its obligations and responsibilities – and exceedingly difficult to discipline due, in part, to the Gulenists’ intensive efforts to buy political protection from county supervisors, state legislators, governors and others.
If the mere prospect of those sorts of vexing problems were not grounds enough to reject the LMITA application, this passage from the Loudoun County School Board Code of Conduct should be: “I must never neglect my personal obligation to the community and my legal obligation to the State, nor surrender these responsibilities to any other person, group, or organization; but that, beyond these, I have a moral and civic obligation to the Nation which can remain strong and free only so long as public schools in the United States of America are kept free and strong.”
Keeping our public schools free and strong means keeping them out of the clutches of cultish supremacists, be they of the Turkish Islamist stripe or any other.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. formerly acted as an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. He is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio.
