American Muslims Name School after Islamic Conqueror of Spain

About a month ago or so, a scandal broke out into the media sphere and the blogosphere in the USA about a Muslim charter school in Minnesota. The school was controlled by Muslim private persons, yet it received substantial public funding. The scandal arose from violations by the school of the conditions of its receiving public funding. The scandal intensified when non-Muslim journalists were attacked on school premises when trying to investigate the charges. This school was/is called the Tariq ibn Ziyad Academy. The major question that has not been asked by most media --MSM or blogs-- reporting on this affair is just who is this Tariq fellow. The answer to that question would tell us with whom these American Muslims identify.

Here are accounts of Tariq by respected historians Bernard Lewis & Carl Brockelmann:

It was in Spain that the Arabs achieved their greatest and most enduring conquest in Europe. . . Tariq, a Berber freedman [that is, a former slave] of Musa ibn Nusair, the Arab governor of north-west Africa, prepared a larger [second] expedition [to Spain] and in the Spring of 711 . . . landed some 7,000 men at Gibraltar (Jabal Tariq). From here he advanced into the interior [of Spain]. . . [after 712] the Arab advance was rapid and by 718 they had occupied the greater part of the peninsula [Spain & Portugal] and crossed the Pyrenees into southern France where their advance was checked only by the Franks under Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers in 732. . ."
[B Lewis, The Arabs in History (London: Hutchinson 1970), pp 120-121]

Tariq ibn Ziyad [and Musa ibn Nusayr]. . . subjugated all of northern Spain from Saragossa to Navarre. [C Brockelmann, The History of the Islamic Peoples (New York: Capricorn 1960), p 84]

So these American Muslims using Minnesota state funds to propagate their religion, are telling us that they identify with a Muslim military leader who conquered a Western country which was subject to discriminatory Muslim rule over non-Muslims, in whole or in part, for nearly eight centuries. Did the Minnesota department of education approve of the choice of name? Could we say that the Muslims who set up the school were metaphorically spitting in the faces of non-Muslim Minnesotans?? Could we call the school's name a provocation?? Does naming their school after a bloody conqueror mean that George Bush's view of Islam as a "religion of peace" might be mistaken??
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Here is info on the Tarek ibn Ziyad [Tariq ibn Ziyad] Academy and the violence on its campus:
Assault on TV news crew, Tariq ben Ziyad Academy & here & here.

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Coming: More on Jews caught up in the Armenian genocide, Obama Is the War Candidate, peace follies, propaganda, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, the Land of Israel, archeology in Jerusalem, etc.