Arab-language education was smeared as terrorist by guilt-by-association campaigns

Evidence

Indeed, their first success was a campaign against the Arab American schoolteacher Debbie Almontaser, who was to serve as the principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy. The academy, a secular public elementary school with an English-Arabic curriculum, was proposed for construction in Brooklyn as one of sixty-seven bilingual schools in the New York City system. Almontaser, a longtime educator of Yemeni descent, was accused of being a jihadist and a 9/11 denier by Stop the Madrassa, a coalition launched by the Islamophobia network. Geller, who was just cutting her teeth as an Islamophobic warrior, blogged that Almontaser “opposed the war on terror,” was associated with CAIR, and had even had the audacity to accept an award from this “radical” group. She went on to accuse Almontaser of “whitewash[ing] the genocide against the Jews.” Daniel Pipes, who was involved in the campaign against Massad and the Boston Islamic center, claimed that the school should be stopped because “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” The campaign reached fever pitch when the new McCarthyites found a picture of a T-shirt with the slogan “Intifada NYC” produced by the group Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), a local Arab feminist organization. The connection between AWAAM and Almontaser was that they shared an office with the Yemeni-American association on whose board Almontaser sits. This was all the “evidence” that the Islamophobic warriors needed to brand Almontaser as a “jihadist” since she supported Palestinian rights. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 670

Categorization

• XREF: This directly corroborates the existing vault cluster claims about Islamophobia-as-imperial-policy — the Stop the Madrassa campaign and Pipes/Geller network echo Aziz and Rana’s documented weaponization of terrorism accusations against Muslims. — connects to: The network smeared a secular educator by fabricating guilt-by-association with Muslim groups; Charity toward expelled coreligionists was read as Arabic-learning conspiracy — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1094; Guilt by the thinnest association sufficed to brand an educator a jihadist. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 531 (+2 more)
• SEED: The Almontaser case is a tight narrative spine for an essay on how anti-Muslim campaigns manufacture evidence — a T-shirt sharing an office becomes proof of jihadism.

Broader Connections

• The network smeared a secular educator by fabricating guilt-by-association with Muslim groups #corroborates (0.90)
• Guilt by the thinnest association sufficed to brand an educator a jihadist. #corroborates (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 531
• Charity toward expelled coreligionists was read as Arabic-learning conspiracy #exemplifies (0.85) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1094
• Tenuous guilt-by-association ties branded a US teacher a jihadist over Palestinian-rights support #exemplifies (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 682
• Arabic-language media credentials could damage Arab-American careers #exemplifies (0.75)