JUNE 19, 2012 AT 5:02 PM
Law center wants AG to probe sale of Farmington school to Muslims
- By Oralandar Brand-Williams
- The Detroit News
Detroit—The Thomas More Law Center is urging Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette Tuesday to investigate “allegations of corruption” involving the sale of a Farmington Hills elementary school to a Muslim group.
Richard Thompson, the president and chief counsel of Thomas More Law Center, based in Ann Arbor, said Tuesday that he has asked Schuette to investigate the 2011 sale of Eagle Elementary School, located on 14 Mile and Middlebelt Roads, to the Islamic Cultural Association.
Thompson alleges that the Farmington Public School district rebuffed other potential buyers for the school and favored the Islamic Cultural Association instead which, according to Thompson, is connected to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which Thompson alleges has “financial ties” to terrorist groups.
The decision to sell the school to the Islamic Cultural Association drew protests and demonstrations in the area surrounding the sale of the school.
“By agreeing to sell Eagle Elementary to the ICA under these suspicious circumstances, Farmington Schools sacrificed the interest of their children and taxpayers to bring into their community an organization with ties to terrorist organizations,” said Thompson in a press release Tuesday. Efforts to reach the Islamic Cultural Association were not successful. A spokeswoman for the Farmington Public Schools has not commented on the claims.
Joy Yearout, a spokeswoman for Schuette, confirmed his office has received the letter but “we have no further comment at this time.”
Meanwhile the head of the local office of CAIR condemned the allegations by the law center.
“These shenanigans are nothing but a means to intimidate and harass the Muslim community and fellow Americans who accept that we have the right to full participation in civil society,” said Dawud Walid, the executive director of CAIR-Michigan. “Though CAIR-MI has no formal written contract with ICA, we are proud to stand up for the constitutional rights of this center and others, which has always been our practice.”
Walid added “the McCarthy era tactic of smearing groups through guilt by association to convict people in the court of public opinion is a common tactic used by the Islamophobia network, which the Thomas More Law Center is a part of.”
