TiZA is for Trouble

This August, Minnesota Department of Education [MDOE] officials said they will be investigating the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy’s use of state “lease aid” grants. The charter school has been paying rent to Muslim religious organizations.

Chas Anderson, deputy commissioner of MDOE told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the inquiry was sparked by a January American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, reported Tony Kennedy on August 29.

“TiZA spokesman Darin Broton said the school will cooperate, but he accused officials of conducting a politically motivated investigation,” he wrote. “[Broton] said the department has conducted 19 TiZA inquiries in the past year and a half.”

The ACLU lawsuit alleges that TiZA’s principals are subject to “conflicts of interest” and that the school’s “operation and public funding” violate the Establishment Clause. It also names the Minnesota Department of Education as a co-defendant because “The Commissioner and the Department have not terminated the sponsorial relationship, have certified funds for the school, and have disbursed funds to the school despite repeated violations of [Minnesota law].”

“TIZA, the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, MAS Minnesota
Property Holding Corp., Minnesota Education Trust, and Blaine Property Holding
Corporation are linked by a complex interconnecting set of personal, corporate, and operational relationships,” stated the complaint.

Indeed. TiZa academy’s Inver Grove Heights campus is located in St. Paul, Minnesota, and shares the same address with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MASMN). Thus the building doubles as a charter school, MASMN headquarters, and a mosque.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) describes the Muslim American Society (MAS), MASMN’s parent organization, as the “United States chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood,” predominately founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and training its members in the ideology of Sayyid Qutb.

At the Inver Grove Heights campus (there is a second one located in Blaine), TiZA students study in an atmosphere where the dress code and diet are dictated by Muslim religious beliefs, asserted the ACLU lawsuit. “A large space in the school is covered by a prayer rug that apparently is used for primarily for religious purposes” and “Teachers regularly participate in prayer activities by leading students to the restroom for the Islamic washing ritual prior to the prayer and then leading them to the prayer location,” the lawsuit asserted.

MASMN was in the news this July after the Minnesota Republican Party “called for a congressional investigation into Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison’s 2008 trip to Mecca,” reported Megan Boldt for the Pioneer Press on July 27. “Asad Zaman, the school’s executive director, also accompanied Ellison on his 16-day trip, Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert said,” wrote Boldt.

The IPT dossier on the Muslim American Society notes that in 2004 the MASMN website hosted the essay “To Be a Muslim” which quoted from MB founder Hassan Al-Banna and stated that “Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful.”

TiZa, between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, received 98.9% of its $4.3 million in revenue from government sources. It has received “a total of $2.23 million in rent money from the state’s lease aid program, records show,” reported Kennedy.

TiZA rents its Inver Grove Heights campus from the MASMN Property Holding Corp. and the Blaine campus from the Blaine Property Holding Corp., both of which currently transfer their funds to the Minnesota Education Trust (MET), a religious non-profit which states its mission is to “PROMOTE THE MESSAGE OF ISLAM TO MUSLIMS AND NON MUSLIMS…” [sic].

According to ACLU documents, TiZA and MASMN Property Holding Corp. were incorporated on the same day by Khalida Shaheen.

Asif Rahman, a trustee at TIZA, is also the President of the MASMN Property Holding Corporation and the Blaine Property Holding Corporation. He is also the President and incorporator of the Minnesota Education Trust.

MET has registered itself as a non-profit under Section 170(b)(1)(A)(I) as a “church, convention of churches, or association of churches,” according to public Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents.

Zaman, the principal at the Inver Grove Heights Campus and an imam, is identified as the “Executive Director” and “Treasurer” of TiZA on this organization’s 2005, 2006, and 2007 Form 990s. In the 2007 return he was also identified as the “Chair” of TiZA.

The 2007 public tax documents for Minnesota Education Trust and the MASM Property Holding Corporation both indicate that “[t]he books are in the care of” Asad Zaman. Zaman co-founded MASMN in 1992, reported Minnesota Monthly in 2007.

In other words, in 2007 Zaman occupied several paid roles at a charter school receiving millions of dollars from the government at the same time that he kept the books for the holding corporation receiving these government-subsidized rental payments, funds which were then transferred by the holding corporation to an organization which he had co-founded, the MASMN.

In 2007 the MASM Property Holding Corporation began transferring these funds to MET, at which point Zaman was holding the books not only for the transferring entity (MASM Property Holding Corp.) but also the recipient organization (MET).

In their tax filings these two organizations didn’t hide their proselytization efforts, as can be demonstrated by excerpts from their Form 990s. The 2007 MASM Property Holding Corp. form lists its primary purpose as “Holding Co for Exempt School” and describes itself as “HOLDING COMPANY FOR EXEMPT ORGANIZATION MUSLIM AMERICAN SOCIETY GIVES GRANTS FOR SCHOOLING RENTS ARE PAID TO COMPANY AND IT GIVES IT TO THE SCHOOL [sic].”

Except that it was transferring money to a religious organization and away from the school—both before and after MET was founded. As for the Minnesota Education Trust, it defined itself in its 2007 Form 990 as a religious organization with the primary exempt purpose of “CHARTER SCHOOL” [sic]. The filers defined MET as “CHARTER SCHOOL TO PROMOTE THE MESSAGE OF ISLAM TO MUSLIMS AND NON MUSLIMS AND PROMOTE UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THEM PROMOTE INTERFAAITH ACTIVITIES AND DIALOUGE SUPPORT SCHOOLS COMMUNITY CENTERS MUSQUES AND ORTHER ORGANIZATIONS THAT SERVE THE GOALS OF THE ORGANIZATION [sic].”

Clearly, the non-profits’ administrators saw little difference between the functions of MASMN, MET, and the ostensibly secular charter school.

Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.