By Debbie Schlussel
America is finally waking up to Islamic charter schools, an issue I’ve been complaining about for at least two decades. It’s a problem created not by liberals, but by conservative Republicans.
I’ve long marched to a different beat than the blind-faith conservatives who sing the siren song of charter schools. When I was in grad school in Wisconsin in the early to mid-1990s, I watched as the primary driver behind that state’s charter schools was a female Black Muslim legislator, hailed by the conservative masses without any critical thinking skills. And soon after her work was passed, Milwaukee had Nation of Islam charter schools. And so did Detroit, after Michigan passed its law. And Arab Muslims took advantage, too, in Michigan and Minnesota and many other places. But, whenever I’d raise the questions about these schools to conservatives, they didn’t want to hear it. They insisted there was oversight, but in fact there isn’t. In Michigan, for example, most of these schools are “supervised” by small state colleges hundreds of miles away, with those colleges rubber-stamping the charter schools’ qualifications and collecting oversight fees. In recent years, conservative state legislators from various states have contacted me to consult on how to regulate and prevent these Muslim charter schools. My answer: get rid of charter schools. There is no other way. And the Gulen Islamic charter schools, which often go by the name “Harmony Schools” or “Horizon Schools,” are Exhibit A of my argument. The Islamic charter schools are the fault and creation ENTIRELY of the right and conservative Republican legislators around the country. Remember, liberal Democrats opposed charter schools. And even though it was for the wrong reasons, they were right.

CBS’ “60 Minutes” Whitewashes the Gulen Islamic Charter Schools
In case you did not see CBS News’ “60 Minutes” last night, I recommend that you watch the video report below, which ran on yesterday’s show. The report, about the Gulen charter schools, run by the Turkish imam, doesn’t really cover any new ground, since I’ve been hearing from concerned parents and citizens about these schools for years, and the story has been covered in places like the Wall Street Journal. But, per usual and like most of the mainstream media reports, CBS News’ Leslie Stahl largely whitewashes the schools, which are basically Islamic charter schools funded by American taxpayer dollars. And they are also mills for immigration fraud by Turkish Muslims and kickbacks to the Gulen Islamic machine.
(Read the transcript of the report here.)
Even though Stahl mostly gives the Gulen schools a pass, I have to say she points out more criticism of the schools than I’ve seen from the mainstream media so far. The most marked point, aside from those I just mentioned, is that the schools get special talent visas for Muslim teachers teaching subjects for which there are many unemployed, qualified American teachers currently seeking work, including math and . . . ENGLISH!
Still, some of her statements are ridiculous. Stahl says that she and CBS News confirmed that Islam is never taught in the schools because that would violate the law. Um, how does she know this? Has she simultaneously been in all of the dozens of Gulen schools in 22 states across the United States for every hour on ever day the schools are opened? Nope, she spent a few hours at a few schools. That’s it. And they gave her their best show, just like the Nazis did with their few model concentration camps they showed the Red Cross. I mean, this is supposed to be an “investigative” journalism news outfit. And, yet–par for the course–she makes a blanket statement absolving the schools with absolutely no evidence to back that statement up. Read the rest of this entry »