Muslim organizations call on board of Amsterdam school to resign

A group of Islamic organizations issued a joint call on the board of Cornelius Haga Lyceum to resign. The want the administrators to take responsibility for the controversy that arose around the Amsterdam secondary school last week, AD reports.

Last week the national coordinator for counterterrorism and security NCTV warned Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema that teachers at the school devote part of the curriculum to "Salafist doctrine". According to information from the NCTV and intelligence service AIVD, school employees also had links with terrorist organization Caucasian Emirate in the past. The school received multiple threatening emails after this revelation.

"In the discussion that erupted in recent days around the Cornelius Haga Lyceum, we increasingly see that individual interests prevail over the general interests of good Islamic secondary education", the Islamic organizations said in their joint statement. The organizations want the directors of the Islamic education foundation SIO, which covers the Cornelius Haga Lyceum, to put aside their personal interests. "So that the Cornelius Haga can continue to exist and we can further develop the school with the knowledge and experience gained and the involvement of the local Muslim community. The children of the Cornelius Haga Lyceum deserve this."

According to the organizations, many years of hard work went into the quality of Islamic education. "And that is bearing fruit. There is a growing number of excellent Islamic schools in the Netherlands. The bar is high and we want to live up to those expectations."

The statement is signed by the Islamic school boards organization ISBO, the union of Moroccan mosque organizations in the Netherlands UMMON, the Home Empowerment Foundation, the Euro-Mediterranean center for migration and development Emcemo, the Moroccan Initiative Foundation Amsterdam and Nisa for Nisa.