VAN NUYS : Koranic School Struggles to Reopen

A 5-year-old Koranic school in Van Nuys, which closed its doors last month when dwindling funds were finally exhausted, is struggling to reopen in September, the director of the school said Tuesday.

Mirwais Tarin, who heads the Muslim school at the fundamentalist Afghan Mujahideen Information Bureau, said that about 90 students, mostly Afghans, regularly attended the Saturday classes before the closure.

The program included lessons in the Koran, the Pashto and Dari languages and Afghan history for students ages 5 to 11 years old. The students gathered in four makeshift classrooms above a hardware store at 7901 North Sepulveda Blvd., and were usually served a traditional Afghan lunch of potatoes and meat during their break.

“Many of these children were born here,” Tarin said. “They should learn their history or they won’t know where they came from.”

The school survived on private donations, which became scarce last spring, which Tarin attributed to the recession.

“Our friends just couldn’t help us anymore,” Tarin said.

Mohammed David Abedi, one of the organization’s leaders, said the center will have to raise at least $18,000 to keep the school running for six months.

But some Afghans, of which there are about 1,000 in the Valley, said the problem with the school is not financial.

Abul Khalili, a leader of the Afghan Islamic Studies and Invitational Center in Van Nuys, which runs a Koranic school for about 40 students, said community support for the Mujahideen center has waned.

“People are not sending their children there because of the fundamentalist politics (they teach),” Khalili said. “They just don’t have students anymore.”

Members of the Mujahideen center support the current fundamentalist government of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.

There are three other Islamic centers in the Valley that offer Koranic classes, according to a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Northridge.