Insulting The Prophet

A newly established public school in Brooklyn (NY) named after the Lebanese poet Gibran Khalil Gebran causes an uproar.

“God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.” Gibran Khalil Gebran

Pity the New York Department of Education who had nothing but good intentions. 

In its efforts to promote multiculturalism, it established a public school that teaches much of its material in Arabic and has some courses on “Arab Culture”. The officials decided to name it after the famous Lebanese poet/author Gibran Kahlil Gibran, who lived much of his life in the US.

The author who promoted peace couldn’t get any of it. The school’s initially appointed principal Debbie Almontaser was sacked because she failed to condemn the use of the word “intifada” in one of her side projects. This caused New-York style fireworks with Jewish groups demonstrating and condemning the opening of the new “Madrassah” (a derogative word that refers to Pakistan’s terror breading religious schools). They successfully replaced Ms. Almontaser with a Jewish principal who doesn’t speak Arabic.

It gets even better: A group named “Friends Of Gibran Council” was scandalized by the fact that an Arabic school was named after Gibran. So they released a press statement. Gibran, whose “ancestry was Lebanese, Christian and Maronite (Aramaic-Syriac)” they argued, shouldn’t have his name used for an institution that teaches Arab culture:

Gibran, although a great artist and poet and fluent in Arabic was not an Arab poet or painter. To analogize in a very basic manner, Americans speak English but are not English.

It makes you feel sorry for Gibran’s memory that bigots from all sides are fighting over his legacy.