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November 27, 2007
Some Questions for Muslim Schools
The Islamic Saudi Acadamy, located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC, should be closed simply because it is operated and funded by the Wahabist government of Saudi Arabia, which is a totalitarian nightmare. But what about Muslim schools where we cannot find a direct link to a jihadist government or organization? How do we determine if the school has a jihadist or Islamist curriculum, or whether it is simply a religious school that happens to be Islamic?
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim American and former Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, answers these questions in an article posted at Family Security Matters. Mr. Jasser is the founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Phoenix based organization. That Family Security Matters is a pretty conservative outfit vouches for the AIFD by itself, but please visit his website if you'd like to be reassured. These days, it's understandable.
In the article, Mr. Jasser pulls no punches in his description of the Saudis, who's "Wahabism is arguably the primary cancer cell in global militant Islamist ideology." But we shouldn't just stop with the Islamic Saudi Academy, he says, but rather we should use this as a "first step" in bringing accountability to other Islamic schools in the U.S. It's not a small issue, either, for his article cites a 2004 National Center for Education Statistics study which determined that there were 182 Islamic private schools in the United States. This may seem a small number, but these schools can graduate a lot of students. History shows that determined minorites can make a disproportionate impace.
Harboring no illusions, he warns that
The (Islamist) schools around the country are all relatively new and wasting no time in creating a generation of students which are more likely than not to be defenders of Islamism over anti-Islamist systems based in universal liberty. While only a minority of Muslims send their children to these schools, they are a growing and significant minority countered only by a silent majority of Muslims.
What we need to do is "discuss in a comprehensive public manner, the context in which Islamic parochial schools teach Islamic history." This means examining their curriculum. Mr. Jasser has a series of questions that we need answered by Islamic schools:
1. How does the school teach American history and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights? What is taught about the struggle of our founding fathers against theocracy? Is European Enlightenment ideology taught? Are students encouraged to learn from non-Muslim philosophers especially those who influenced our founding fathers and taught liberty and freedom?2. Are students taught that sharia is only personal or that it also specifically guides governmental law? Does their answer change whether Muslims are a minority or a majority?
3. Do they view non-Islamic private and public schools as part of a culture of ‘immorality’ and decadence since they are not Islamicized or can non-Islamic schools be morally and equally virtuous?
4. Do they teach their children that ‘being American’ and being ‘free’ is about moral corruption or is being American and free about loving the nation in which they live and sharing equal status before the law regardless of faith tradition?
5. Is complete religious freedom a central part of faith and the practice of religion? In the Islamic school, how are children treated who refuse to participate in school faith practices?
6. Are the children taught Muslim exclusivism with regards to the attainment of paradise in the Hereafter? From that, are the children also taught that government and public institutions must thus be ‘Islamic’ in order for the community as a whole to be able to enter the gates of Heaven?
7. How are student discussions, debate, and intellectual discourses approached regarding American domestic and foreign policy? Do the teachers have a political agenda? Does that agenda demonstrate a dichotomy between Islamist interests and American interests?
8. Is the historical period of Muslim rule of Spain (Andalusia) taught in the context of the history of the world during the Middle Ages or is it looked upon as superior to current day American ideology even after the advances of the Enlightenment?
9. Is the pledge of allegiance administered every day at the beginning of the school day?
Mr. Jasser gets it. He is a true reformer, not one of those "moderates" we are told about who end up holding views antithetical to Western ideas about liberty.
I've blogged about Muslim reformers before, and how we need to support them. Mr Jasser and others like him should be invited to the White House and Congress should invite them to testify. While I can't prove neither has happened, I rather doubt it.
We are in a worldwide war against the forces of jihadism. While part of it will be fought on the battlefield by military forces, in the final analysis it is a War of Ideas. The way you win a War of Ideas is to prevent older believers from passing their ideas into the next generation. I'm going to post a lot more on this shortly, but an obvious first step is to scrutinize Islamic schools, and to do so boldly but fairly. Those that pass muster are more than welcome to particulate fully in our great nation, but those that don't must change or be sent packing.
Posted by Tom at November 27, 2007 7:58 PM
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Comments
It is about time people take the the Saudi's for the radical terrorist supporters they really are (not just bosom buddies of the Bush family). Mike Huckabee said it best:
"Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we're paying so that the Saudis get rich — filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas," schools "that train the terrorists," said Huckabee. "America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It's absurd. It's embarrassing."
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i-8OcJVXXBwCdbn1zWSO-zFqd7YwD8T4T9E80
I'm not a conservative by any stretch, but this is the only guy with any real sense of himself. Rudy and Mitt are flip-flopping poll panderers. Remember, while Bush and his fellow apologists refer to our 'strategic relationship' with the Saudi's, Saudi Arabia is THE textbook case of an Islamofacist state.
In regards to Huckabee, the article continues: "The former Arkansas governor made the comments following what he suggested was a muted response by the Bush administration to a Saudi court's sentence of six months in jail and 200 lashes for a woman who was gang raped."
So this story about the woman who was sentenced to 200 lashes for being gang-raped?
--"The Bush Administration has refused to condemn the sentence on the grounds that it was an internal Saudi judicial decision."---
http://www.connietalk.com/saudivictim123.html
However, it was also an 'internal decision' to fund OBL, and he is directly tied to the Wahhabi nuts who run the religious state of Saudi Arabia, and provide the Sha'ria law which the court system is based on. According to the long time Bush family friends, the al-Saud clan, when a woman is gang raped by seven men, she must be punished with 200 lashes. Bush, who likes to hold hands with the Saudi prince, has no will to stand up to these creeps, since his family has such deep ties to them. It makes me disgusted. For years we have coddled these people, while they flagrantly fund the terrorists who have attacked us and continue to attack us from their corrupt islamic state. And our Presidents response? Walking in a garden holding hands with their tyrant monarch like a fricking nancy-boy coward.
Just to prove my point, today Fox news stated the Saudi's released 1,500 al-queda terrorists because they 'have been reformed.'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313063,00.html
You may say liberals are appeasers, but our hand-holding, check-kissing President Bush is the biggest appeaser of his Saudi buddies. That is a reality that way too many conservatives have turned a blind eye to for way too long. Tom, I know well that you don't share this view, but I have be disgusted for so long on the right's failure to give a thorough examination of the Bush-Saud relationship. Blecchhh.
Posted by: jason at November 27, 2007 11:13 PM
No, Mr.Jasser does not get it.
If he 'got it', he'd bother learning the answers to his questions. Like the fact that the American History courses taught at the Saudi Academy are exactly those taught in other Fairfax Co. schools. American teachers, American text books.
If he's interested in learning what's in the textbooks, rather than asserting what's in them, he can view them online or even go to the school and ask to see them.
Whatever an 'Islamist school' might be, the Saudi Academy is not one.
Posted by: John Burgess at November 27, 2007 11:17 PM
snake hunters sez,
The United States fails to teach WWII History.
If you're a "baby-boomer", the parent & kids
would benefit from "History" Post, July 4th, '06.
>>
BUSH @ 30%
CHENEY @ 20%
U.S. CONGRESS @ 10%
One Yr To Go, Fasten Seat Belts!
_______________________________
wwwlazyonebenn.blogspot.com
Posted by: Ralph E. at November 27, 2007 11:42 PM
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 11/28/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Posted by: David M at November 28, 2007 11:21 AM
jason: It's good to see you again. Sadly I must concur with most of what you say. Thank you for acknowledging that I stand out from establishment conservatives on this issue. A few others do to, notably National Review, but it's not enough. If a Democrat is elected in 2009 let's see if he or she changes our policies toward Saudi Arabia. If they do, I'll be impressed.
John Burgess: I hope you're proud to be the defender of a totalitarian regime that has one of the worse human rights records on the planet. But hey, "Islamism" is just a myth, right?
Ralph E: You are right that history needs to be taught better in our schools, and without all of the PC nonsense.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at November 28, 2007 6:55 PM
So many, such as John, put their heads in the sand. How many times do we need to hear that this Islamic School or that Islamic School agreed to remove portions of this or that text? The fact that it was there in the first place proves their ideological extremism. No doubt they will agree to remove it again the next time they are caught. But the fact remains that they hold a pro-Islamist view point or they wouldn't have used texts that need to be modified in the first place.
Posted by: Chris at November 29, 2007 10:51 PM
