Crusaders are Bad; Jihadists are Good

The good folks over at Phi Beta Cons, a sub-blog of National Review Online, yesterday published a comment on, with a link to the video of, a scuffle begun between two men working for a Muslim school named Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (often called TiZA charter school). This place has apparently been in the news quite a bit because their curriculum is suspected not to stay entirely on its side of the revered wall separating Church and State. They require ritual observations, such as the removal of shoes, various washings, and prayer times. They apparently also make it hard to leave until after Muslim instruction classes end, an hour after by school, by delaying busses until that time. This obviously leads to all sorts of questions regarding charter schools, school choice, and the rest, and not all of the answers are obvious. The main point I wish to bring up, however, is this: Tarek ibn Ziyad is a Muslim warrior who led the conquest of what Wikipedia calls Hispania – in other words, the Iberian peninsula, modern day Spain and Portugal – in the days when it was apparently run by the Visigoths. I just know that I’ll catch hell (assuming anyone’s reading) when I suggest that there are no public or semi-public schools named after Crusaders (there is one named after a Viking – Leif Ericson Scholastic Academy on Chicago’s West Side, oddly enough), but I can’t imagine a modern charter school – one set up with government funds – being able to set itself up with the name of a great Crusader. Richard the Lionheart Academy? Don Juan of Austria High School? Pope Urban II Kindergarten? I’d be surprised.