From Mustapha at Beirut Spring
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 teach 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.
Related posts:
- Speaking of scary Arabic terms…
- Stop the Madrassa Coalition: “Arrest all Muslims”
- Remembering Alex Odeh
- Using the “I” Word
- Insulting Picture Stirs Controversy
holy f****ing…
jesus christ!
tell me this isn’t true? captitulations this bad make it better not to have the school at all. this is depressing. it’s making me come down from my high of gonzales resigning and another gay republican being outed in one week.
Posted by Anonymous | August 29, 2007, 7:25 amFYI, two of the board members of this Friends of Gibran group are on the board of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition. John Hajjar and Tom Harb.
Posted by Fadi | August 29, 2007, 7:46 amUnreal.
Posted by Pali-American | August 29, 2007, 8:17 amI’m maddest at the park slope parents. Their fake-ass Free Tibet multiculturalism gets tested and what do they do? Throw the Gibran Academy out of their neighborhood. Fucking phony liberals.
Posted by Saladin | August 29, 2007, 9:30 amA lot of Maronites dont see themsleves as arabs and its their right to do so
Posted by Anonymous | August 29, 2007, 1:55 pmyes, Anon 1:55, this is true. But this is not the issue. The issue here is Khalil Gibran. Gibran did see himself as an Arab – for example, he contributed to and later founded Arab periodicals and was outspoken in support of a unified Arab front against Ottoman rule. It’s both odd and sickening that this group (many who are affiliated with the fascist terrorist group Guardians of the Cedars) is claiming otherwise because of their own personal beliefs. They can have their own beliefs, but to impute it on others is boring and irrelevant.
Posted by Fadi | August 29, 2007, 2:45 pmAnon 1:55,
Did Gibran consider himself an Arab? If the answer is no, then your comment has some merit.
If the answer is no, and he did conisder himself an Arab…then you’re a dipshit.
Posted by Pali-American | August 29, 2007, 2:48 pmEven though he hailed from North Lebanon and lived there till the age of 11, why would a man born to Arab parents in Arab land and raised in that land for a number of years consider himself Arab? It makes no sense.
And why would a man born in the Levant who fought for a united Syria consider himself an Arab?
It makes no sense:
While serving as secretary on this committee (Syrian Liberation Committee, “Lijnat Tahrir Surya”, Gibran produced an elaborate statement of his political ideas. But it was his pride in the committee that stole the show, so to speak. Gibran wrote: “It is a great responsibility but I must shoulder it. Great tragedies enlarge the heart. I have never been given the chance to serve my people in a work of this sort.”
His obsession with a liberated Syria even affected his creative process:
the vision of a united Syria remained a thorn in his side: “The real truth is this… that I am a little chaotic inside. I have a notebook filled with things that came to me those days when I was doing the drawings… They are waiting to be worked on. My Madman is on my brain – I want to have him published – (But) the Syrian question, as you know, is always with me…”
“A sick friend in a Brooklyn hospital, sensing Gibran’s infatuation for Syria, took his hand and tenderly said: “Gibran, go to Syria – go to your Old Mother – she loves you much – go to Syria, Gibran”.
Oh, now I understand what the Friends of Gibran Council was talking about. He didn’t identify as an Arab…because he identified as a Syrian national! Now, that makes sense!
(all quotes from http://www.kahlil.org/nationalidea.html and other claims from the brain of a Syrian obsessed with a certain Syrian poet)
Posted by Maytha | August 31, 2007, 12:09 amAnd let me go a step further (I love playing self-identification police: the idea that it is Maronites’ “right” not to identify as Arabs is complicated, as their asserting that right contributes to the psychotic anti-Arab racism endemic in the west. Offendedly going “er, um, no, I’m like Phoenician or some shit”, *as if being called an Arab is an insult* contributes to anti-Arab racism. Therefore while it may be their right, it’s also utterly apporopriate that the people whose stigmitization is furthered by that nonsense will call them sellout assholes.
Posted by Saladin | September 1, 2007, 4:18 pmPlus, the best part is (he said gloatingly), despite all of their wanna-be white efforts, Americans will still think they’re camel jockeys anyway!
[cue Simpsons' bully] Ha-HA!
Posted by Saladin | September 1, 2007, 4:22 pmWell, actually Saladin, there is one instance when America does consider them white- when it comes to being exempt from minority privileges or preferences, as in government contracts and university admissions.
Posted by Maytha | September 1, 2007, 10:00 pm@ maytha
True dat…
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