FBI raids yet another Gulen School

Christopher Holton writes  in Louisiana Hayride about an FBI raid about the Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School in Baton Rouge , “Now Maybe They Will Pay Attention To The Gulen School”.

He writes about this latest episode in an effort to rein in the expansion of Gulen charter schools in Louisiana:

Wednesday afternoon the story broke in Baton Rouge media that the Kenilworth Science & Technology School had been raided by the FBI.

The FBI indicated that the raid, which evidently was conducted to gather material evidence in the form of documents and computers, was not a matter of public safety. As a result, it probably was not related to a report earlier this year that a teacher at the school was accused of having inappropriate pictures of children on his cell phone.

Had those charges stuck, that would have been the second scandal of a sexual nature involving a Gulenist school in Louisiana. Abramson Science & Technology Charter School in New Orleans was shut down back in 2011 in the wake of a scandal that started as an investigation into sexual activity involving students at the school and evolved into a possible public bribery investigation. Abramson operated under the same charter organization that Kenilworth operates under: Pelican Educational Foundation.

During the course of the investigation into Abramson, Pelican’s ties to the Gulenist movement were revealed

[ . . . ]

State Representative Cameron Henry in the 2013 legislative session …  filed a bill that would have limited the number of employees hired by Louisiana state-funded charter schools who were in the country on H1-B visas. Henry’s legislation would have gotten right to the heart of the matter – with a very reasonable restriction that no more than 3.5 percent of the school’s employees be H1-B visa recipients (or 1 in 29), and that the people or groups submitting requests to start charter schools be American citizens.

Unfortunately, Henry’s bill hit hard where it hurt for some powerful, politically connected people in Louisiana. It seems that the number one donor to the Louisiana Republican Party in 2012 was none other than a Gulenist organization out of Texas. Kemal Oksuz, president of the Turquoise Council, a Texas-based group closely related to the Gulenist movement and the Harmony charter schools in that state, donated $83,000 to the state GOP, making him its largest donor during 2012.

I am not making an accusation that this donation bought the Gulen movement any special treatment by the state GOP, or the Jindal administration. In fact, members of that administration told supporters of the Henry bill that they were in favor of it.

But the charter school industry itself, which has stood by silently as this foreign influence in US education spawns scandal after scandal, didn’t share that position. In Louisiana the industry went even further, defending Kenilworth and Pelican despite the prior scandal involving Abramson. This took the form of hiring high-priced, politically-connected lobbyists to label Henry’s bill “racist” and “xenophobic.”

And the bill was killed in the House Education Committee after a host of parents with children in charter schools testified against it. This followed an interesting bit of romance the Gulen movement attempted within the state legislature the Hayride was able to expose.

The question is, does the charter school industry know about all of these disturbing details surrounding the Gulenist movement and its charter schools and choose to look the other way, or are they simply ignorant as to the facts?

With the FBI raid a new chapter in this saga has opened in Louisiana – and the charter school industry and lobbyists won’t be able to run interference for the Islamists any more. For many of us who are in favor of school choice and charter schools, the Kenilworth-Gulen debacle is a disaster on two levels: first, granting charters and dispensing taxpayer dollars to an Islamist movement with such a shady history is outrageous and dangerous in its own right. And second, there will be real damage from this scandal – damage those who are comfortable trapping disadvantaged children in lousy public schools will use to their advantage.

Sheikh Muhammad Fethullah Gulen

This is an important  expose and pushback against .the Islamist  Gulen Islamist movement  that has relentlessly penetrated and exploited  both the H1-B Visa and  Charter school programs  throughout  the US.  Chris Holton’s report on the FBI raid on Kenilworth  Science and Technology  School  in Baton Rouge, also addresses similar Charter school problems in Louisiana and failure to pass restrictive legislation in the 2013 Louisiana legislative session.  He also notes that  other states have passed similar Visa restrictive legislation while local communities have rejected similar Gulen Charter school applications.  As  Holton’s report implies there should be Congressional oversight hearings should focus on the abuse of H1-B visa program, the  Islamist doctrine of the Gulen  movement and its shadowy billionaire Turkish Islamist leader Sheikh Muhammad Fethullah Gulen.

Gulen  has been  a resident since 1999  of a fortified compound in the Poconos Mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania.  He is considered “the world’s most dangerous Islamist”.  See our Iconoclast post on Tennessee laws adopted in 2012 pushing back on the Gulen movement  abuse of the H1-B Visas for employees of Charter Schools in the Volunteer State.   That also  contains  a 2010 New English Review  Interview with Professor Raphael Israeli about Gulen ideology and  the  movement’s exploitation of Charter Schools in the US.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

---