Debbie Almontaser is a Yemeni-American educator who spent a career trying to build bridgesDebbie Almontaser between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans. With backing from the Gates Foundation and a secular Arab-American community organizing group, she chartered and became founding principal of an Arabic-immersion public school in Brooklyn, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, named for the famous Lebanese Christian poet. That would have been a worthy culmination of her decades of service to her own community and the broader community of New York City, had she not almost immediately become the target of a campaign of defamation that led to her widespread portrayal in the New York media as a closet jihadi, forced her to resign her position at the school, and which hobbled the operations of the KGIA from before its first day of classes.

As is often the case in apparent instances of paranoid popular uprisings against basic liberal freedoms --- see the Intoonfada --- the none-too-deeply buried truth is that the disgusting libels to which Almontaser has been subjected, and the larger effort to shut down her school, are the product of resentment and outrage fabricated and stoked by cynical elites. In this case, the editorial board of the New York Post, which deliberately warped Almontaser's words in order to slander her as a supporter of the Palestinian intifada, and the soi-disant middle East expert Daniel Pipes, are substantially responsible for wrecking the reputation of an innocent, honest, productive woman, and for harpooning her attempt to offer New York City public school students an education in a language perhaps more important than any other for Americans to learn.

All that Pipes knew about Almontaser last April was that she had said of the September 11 attacks, "I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims. Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and have stolen my religion" --- i.e., that she explicitly repudiated those within her community who support terrorism --- and that she had once received an award from CAIR. What else was a propagandist to do but launch an actionably dishonest editorial in the New York Sun, describing KGIA as a "madrassa" in its headline, and featuring a truncation of Almontaser's thoughts about September 11 to just that first sentence about not recognizing the perpetrators as Arabs or Muslims, thereby implying that she is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.

But then, Pipes didn't feel he had to know anything at all about Almontaser or KGIA to claim publicly that she is an Islamist and the school would be. Almontaser is an Arab offering to teach Arabic, and that's all he cares about: "In practice...Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage...[L]earning Arabic in of itself promotes an Islamic outlook."

Never mind Pipes' extraordinary racism and xenophobia, loathsome though they are. Never mind that Pipes himself claims to have studied Arabic, and Islamism is one pathology from which he certainly does not suffer. Never mind that Pipes' evidence for the inevitability of education in Arabic being "laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage" consists in one example from America published in Pipes' own preposterous journal, one example from Cairo, and one example from Algeria at the height of Franco-Algerian antipathy.

There is perhaps no cheaper, easier way to foster understanding and cultural exchange between the Arab and Muslim world and the west, bolster American national security, and improve long-term economic prospects all in one fell swoop, than to massively encourage and support American students studying Arabic, Persian, and other western and central Asian languages. Pipes and his lackeys claim to be home-front foot-soldiers in the struggle against Islamo-fascism. What they have accomplished, in the name of pursuing their vendetta against anyone who prays out of the Koran --- apart from destroying the reputation of an innocent woman, ruining at least one academic year in the lives of 60 New York City students, stifling academic freedom, and creating huge disincentives to chartering schools that teach important but politically sensitive material --- is to make the United States demonstrably less safe and more vulnerable to Islamist (or any other kind of) terrorism. Well done.

Put down the Matisyahu and pick up the Y-Love.

"This is Babylon," the new album from Hasidic emcee Y-Love (AKA Yitz Jordan), seamlessly blends rhymes in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, and even Aramaic, all the while mixing sounds and beats evocative of DJ Shadow, The Streets, Mos Def, Chuck D, and a host of others. Thought-provoking political verses reside naturally beside electronic dance tracks. Y-Love calls it "global hip hop," and considering that he's a convert to Judaism, he can spit some pretty fast Yiddish.

The album functions on a couple of levels: You can chill with it and meditate on his words, or let them seep in as you move. Fresh and inspired, Urb calls "This is Babylon" a "soundtrack to social progression" and describes it as "a head nodding, fist lifting, wake-up and do something kind of record."

Already available for download on iTunes and Amazon, the album will be in stores on Tuesday, April 29.

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Everybody get together: Try to love one another right now.So, here in Chicago, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs is doing some great work as part of their Jewish-Muslim Community-Building Initiative that I wanted to tell you about super-fast before Shabbes.

Jewish-Muslim text study will be held on Thursday January 24th at 6pm at Bourgeois Pig Cafe in Chicago. In the recent email I was forwarded about this event, I read, "Torah? Qur'ran? What are the differences? What are the similarities? At our first monthly text discussion, we will exchange ideas, thoughts and stories from our separate yet bound traditions. This evening's focus will be on Abraham/Ibrahim. Future texts, as well as locations, will be decided by the group.This group will meet monthly." Hit this link to send the required RSVP.

Cafe Finjan (Finjan, a word in both Arabic and Hebrew, is a metal pot for brewing coffee in the traditional Middle Eastern style, not only in the home, but also on a campfire, with friends gathered around for warmth) will be held Thursday February 7th from 7-9pm at Mercury Cafe in Chicago. The event description reads: "Jewish-Muslim arts exchanges -- an evening of Muslim and Jewish poetry, storytelling and song in an intimate coffee-house setting.  Come join new and old friends for a night of comedy, music, song, and spoken word.CAFÉ FINJAN is a series of interfaith arts exchanges, begun in 2004 by the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs as part of its Jewish-Muslim Community-Building Initiative. The series establishes points of contact, and nurtures a greater understanding between Jews and Muslims of Chicago while creating spaces for Chicagoland Jews, Muslims, and others of diverse backgrounds to come together and give voice to their identity and experience as part of a larger community." RSVP here.

Also, Cafe Finjan is looking for performers of any sort (writers, poets, singers, songwriters, dancers, essayists, storytellers, etc.) for their events. Just email and include your name, phone, email, details of your performance and the community (Jewish or Muslim) with which you identify yourself for a five-minute time space.

But, don't stop there.  Hit their website for information on all sorts of events, including something called Chocolate for Change, which, well, sounds rather interesting...

An Iranian-American feminist has "reinterpreted" the Koran's prescriptions for male behavior towards women. Not knowing Arabic, let alone its classical idiom, I naturally defer to speakers on this question. However, common sense does obtrude when one is confronted with this semantic disparity:

The passage is generally translated: "And as for those women whose illwill you have reason to fear, admonish them; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them; and if thereupon they pay you heed, do not seek to harm them. Behold, God is indeed most high, great!"

Instead, Bakhtiar suggests "Husbands at that point should submit to God, let God handle it -- go away from them and let God work His Will instead of a human being inflicting pain and suffering on another human being in the Name of God."

Stalin once said the method of extracting confessions was "Beat, beat and once again, beat." Now if I were to say that in the original Russian, this translates back to, "Hey, don't sweat it. Just give him time, he'll come around," what would you say? (And Russian is a language with literally two words for truth: pravda, the big, metaphysical Truth, and istina, empirically verifiable fact.)