Work Starts on Islamic Elementary

For Samar Aziz, the road to providing her sons with an Islamic-based education is 76 miles long and full of gridlock.

“It’s a killer,” she said of the drive between her Tustin home and the private Islamic school in West Covina where her boys, ages 4 and 5, are taught not only to read and write--but also what it means to be a Muslim. “It’s hard. It takes a toll on the family.”

Aziz has prayed for relief, and on Saturday, in a field of dirt and rocks in Irvine, her prayers were answered. Ground was broken for an Islamic elementary school that will serve Orange County’s booming Muslim community.

The New Horizon School off Jeffrey Road will be the Islamic Center of Southern California’s fourth campus and its first in Orange County.

The $4-million project, which will serve 180 students from preschool through sixth grade, has been years in the making and is among a growing number of Islamic schools nationwide.

“In the past few years, people in the American Muslim community have realized that their money is better spent building schools than building mosques,” said Magdy Eletreby, the Islamic Center’s chairman. “School plays a much bigger role in shaping a child’s character and morals than anything else.”

In today’s work-obsessed world, Muslim families, like all families, find it harder to instill values at home, he said. “You can’t do everything in the two or three hours you see [your children] every day.” Public schools, he added, fail to fill the gap.

“The problems we face are the same ones faced by any parent who wants their children to learn the moral and ethical values that are the foundation of this country,” Eletreby said. “Values like respect and tolerance and truthfulness and work. Here, these will be stressed every day and in every subject.”

An attempt last year to build the school in Rancho Santa Margarita was resisted by homeowners who worried about increased traffic. It also led to two anonymous hate calls to school backers.

Irvine officials, however, embraced the plan along with the building of a mosque and Islamic community center next door.

“They had absolutely no problems, and I made sure they didn’t,” Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea said. “People think of Irvine as vanilla, but we are very multicultural and it’s something I’m very proud of.”

The number of Muslims in Orange County has doubled in the past decade to 200,000, Eletreby estimated. An Islamic school in Garden Grove run by another organization is full, and Eletreby expects there will be a waiting list at New Horizon’s campus when it opens next fall.

For $6,000 a year, New Horizon students will take classes in Arabic and Islamic studies. Even basics such as math and science will be taught with a cultural subtext.

“God exists in everything,” Eletreby said.

The weaving of academics and religion appeals to parents such as Maya Ascha, who plans to move her 8-year-old son, Omar, to New Horizon from the Montessori school he now attends.

“The education at Montessori is very good,” Ascha said. “But it’s missing something. I don’t want [my son] to forget who he is.”

Omar was born in America; his mother is from Syria. Arabic is spoken at home, and Ascha takes Omar to Sunday school at their Mission Viejo mosque and to private language and cultural lessons once a week.

But it’s not enough, she says.

“He sometimes gets confused at school,” Ascha said. It’s a cultural confusion that comes at times such as Christmas, which isn’t celebrated by Muslims but is prevalent in American society.

For Aziz, the problems at another private school began when her oldest son, Zak, was laughed at by classmates when he said grace before lunch.

Embarrassed, Zak stopped saying his prayers at school. Then he refused to speak Arabic to his mother in front of other students.

“The peer pressure is incredible,” Aziz said. “He takes ketchup with his chicken nuggets, but it’s only because all the kids there took ketchup with their chicken nuggets.

“If you can see it in something so simple, can you imagine what will happen later on?”

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Islamic School in Irvine

Construction of Orange County’s second full-time Muslim school began Saturday in Irvine. The first proposed site had been in Rancho Santa Margarita but met with strong resistance from neighbors, who opposed potential traffic.