By Ann Marie Angebrandt and Kirsty Ross
A WERRIBEE Islamic school is considering legal action against “horrible and inaccurate claims” that have left the school shocked and deeply wounded, said its principal.
In two recent articles, The Sunday Age alleged Werribee Islamic College on Sayers Rd promoted racism, sexism and religious intolerance, provided substandard teaching and used school funds to expand overseas.
Principal Omar Hallak said the claims were unfounded and the school would consider fighting them in court.
The school has engaged former Werribee mayor and wellknown lawyer Frank Purcell to act on its behalf.
“We don’t understand why anyone would do this to us because there is nothing concrete to attack us with,” he said.
“We are Australian Muslims here, not Muslim Australians.”
He said he hoped the newspaper attack was not a reaction to the growing fear of global terrorism.
The Sunday Age has since printed only a small portion of Mr Hallak’s letter to the editor refuting the claims, as well as an editor’s note pointing out it had wrongly identified the Werribee school when reporting an incident of a teacher defacing an image of Christ.
The article was based on information from an unnamed, disgruntled former teacher and unnamed parents, Mr Hallak said.
“We just don’t understand how they can get everything about us so wrong,” he said.
The principal said he wanted to invite the Sunday Age journalist Russell Skelton to the college to see the truth.
The 800family school community spent much of last week in shock about the claims, said Mr Hallak.
“We have had many phone calls from other local schools, from the council, from parents, saying they support us and questioning why,” he said.
“We now want to move forward and talk about our future.”
It has been more than 20 years since Mr Hallak – then president of the Islamic Society of Victoria and founder of the school – chose 50 acres of lowcost land in Truganina as the site for the school.
“At the time, there was many Muslim kids who were feeling outside their culture and we knew we had to do something,” he said. The school’s mandate was to create “goodquality Muslims” who would make strong contributions to the community, Mr Hallak said.
It opened in 1986 with only 25 children who came from right across the West.
Today the PreptoYear12 school has some 1050 students from 23 countries, including Turkey, India, Fiji, Lebanon and Egypt, with 200 more on the waiting list.
They still come from as far away as Preston and Flemington.
Mr Hallak said he is unconcerned about the disparaging claims in the article about substandard teaching, confident the school’s academic results speak for themselves.
And allegations that the school practises a fundamentalist brand of Islam and hosted racist visiting teachers couldn’t be further from the truth, said Mr Hallak.
He pointed out 65 per cent of the teachers were nonMuslims who taught a mainstream syllabus to students 90 per cent of whom were born in Australia.
The attack on the school comes the same week the Labor Party called for legislation to force Muslim schools to teach mateship and tolerance.
Further allegations the school was misspending funds to establish a school in Jakarta were also unfounded, Mr Hallak said.
Land for the school was purchased three years ago, funded by the Islamic Trust Council, but has not yet begun construction.
Some of the funds had been donated to tsunami victims instead, he said.
Mr Hallak also pointed out students regularly integrated with other local schools, including Westbourne Grammar School located opposite.
“We believe in tolerance and good will to people of all religions and nationalities, but we have not had that same courtesy.”
