“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That phrase is common to many children in the United States; this phrase gives an empowerment to show that those who tend to tear you down with words will not be successful and makes it seem as if words are harmless. In the case of Dhabah “Debbie” Almontaser, the words were not harmless and they stripped her from the pinnacle of her career in education. The freedom of speech was overextended in favor of a practically libelous article by the New York Post damaging the reputation of Almontaser; the press should not be permitted to make malevolent claims without legitimate reason.
New York City had numerous dual language schools, but one of the notable ones was the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which was the first Arabic-English dual language school in the United States (Bloomfield). This school was set to study both the language and the culture surrounding the Arabic language (Shouting Fire). However, the notion of an Arabic-English school outraged a number of Anti-Islamist extremists;
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In the case of Debbie Almontaser, the New York Post created articles that inferred that she was a terrorist or preparing to teach Islamic law to the children at the Khalil Gibran International Academy. As previously stated in the article, there was a piece written about Almontaser when she resigned called “Jihad’Ya Later.” While the New York Post never made direct claims that Almontaser was a terrorist or supporter of violence, it did infer that she was at least a sympathizer of it. When Bennett wrote, “the pro-violence shirt is being defended by principal Debbie Almontaser,” he hinted that she agreed with terrorism (Bennett). Almontaser strictly reported that she did not agree with any sort of conflict in New York City and that her words were contrived out of context (Shouting