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Politics : The Truth About Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (10930)	11/26/2007 7:24:38 PM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Respond to of 20106

Begin the Debate: Nine-Point Guide to Discern Islamist from Non-Islamist Schools By M. Zuhdi Jasser familysecuritymatters.org Islamism is a veiled political insurgency Last month, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released specific concerns about the Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia. The USCIRF raised a number of issues of concern for American security in their October 19 release not least of which is the operation of a school for high school age children, The Islamic Saudi Academy, on American soil in northern Virginia administered and funded by a foreign embassy. The USCIRF also specifically brought attention to hate and violence against other faiths expressed in some of the texts used at the Academy. The Commission press release stated, “Several studies, including by Saudi experts themselves, have pointed to serious concerns that these texts encourage violence toward others, and misguide the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the “other.” This is only one example poignantly raised by the USCIRF on the heels of their recent trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a nation whose metastatic Wahabism is arguably the primary cancer cell in global militant Islamist ideology. It should, however, just be the first step in an American journey toward a public accountability for “Islamic” educational institutions in the United States. Islamic education or Islamist education? America’s public attention to the curricula and texts of Islamic parochial schools should not only be limited to this single foreign school on our soil, but also more comprehensively to the curricula of all Islamic schools in the United States. This is not about profiling much as Islamists may try to say in their protestations to this debate. But rather it is about understanding the penetration of an ideology which consciously and subconsciously teaches the superiority of a political system of governance at odds with the American political and justice system. This is also centrally relevant in the conflict against militant Islamism. At odds with the American way of life is not only the more obvious militant ‘jihadist’ fringe component of political Islam but also the less obvious, more pervasive and more insidiously dangerous movement of political Islam as a way of life. For the Islamic educational institutions in America founded only with the purpose of teaching our Muslim children the love of God, righteousness, Islamic theology, pluralism, humanitarianism, character, humility, charity, and other personal religious principles as it applies to God, I see no threat to our freedom in the U.S. However, the more relevant questions are how these institutions of Islamic education handle topics of American government and law. As an anti-Islamist Muslim, I am waiting anxiously to hear a public debate about what is taught in their U.S. history and government classes as compared to the Islamic jurisprudence classes of these “Islamic” schools. The 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. Most American Muslims are not products of Islamist education Having grown up in a small Midwestern town, I am a product of K-12 and undergraduate public education in northeastern Wisconsin. While I mostly learned the personal rules of my faith and theology from my family and weekend school at the mosque in my youth, I gained the foundations of my appreciation for the sanctity of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and American legal system through that Wisconsin public education system. For example, I recall participating in the American Legion Constitution contest- an annual competition of Wisconsin high school students best able to memorize the U.S. Constitution. Islamic schools will similarly have Koran memorization contests which are also admirable, but will they also have Constitution contests? More importantly will their government classes teach primary allegiance to it over the Koran in as far as guiding documents for governments? Permeating my own educational experience was the preeminence of America’s pluralism and Constitutional legal system based in individual liberty over all other systems from communism to fascism to theocracy. I was taught the value of criticizing authority and proving my ideas in the public arena of debate. Do Islamic schools teach their students to question the authority of their imams (teachers)? The Enlightenment was taught as a liberation of the human mind over the suffocation of the theocrats. How do Islamic schools teach Enlightenment compared to an Islamist theocratic society? It is time to discuss in a comprehensive public manner, the context in which Islamic parochial schools teach Islamic history. Is the Islamic state and its history with a caliphate, Islamic dynasties, and Islamic law taught to naïve Muslim children as the ‘glory days’ of Islamic dominance? Or was it simply a period of historical advancement in the context of mankind’s evolution toward the far more free and humanitarian western societies of today based in real religious liberty? This historical paralysis is manifested in two basic areas. First, Islamic law as it exists in our Muslim theological texts today is frozen in basically the 13th or 14th Century when ijtihad (modernization of Islamic law) ended. Additionally, do these Muslim youth learn in their formative years that access to government and political leadership should be open to every citizen equally regardless of faith or religious education (as it is in the west)? Or do they contrarily learn that government and rule-making is the domain of the self-appointed Islamist scholars (ulemaa) who seek to control societal law? Schooling which teaches the ‘preeminence’ of a sharia-based legal system (Islamic jurisprudence) over any other governmental system should raise profound concern in non-Muslim and Muslim Americans about the creation of an insidious political insurgency. Discerning Islamist from non-Islamist Schools - a guide to begin the debate The only way to counter such an insidious ideological insurgency is for us as a nation to undertake a far-reaching analysis and public discussion about what students at these Islamic schools are actually being taught about ‘sharia’ law and its role in the society. Here are a few questions American communities may want to pose to principals and curriculum coordinators of local Islamic schools in order to understand whether the school has a political agenda in its teachings or not. 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? 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? 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? 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? 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? 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? 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? 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? Is the pledge of allegiance administered every day at the beginning of the school day? Certainly, this analysis and exposure would not be in any way to limit the freedom of Muslims to establish and operate these private educational facilities. But rather, quite the contrary, with exposure of the political Islamist agenda of many of these schools, Islamist schools will be slowly marginalized or obligated to reform. Then the non-Islamist and anti-Islamist schools will flourish while teaching reasoned pluralistic Islamic thought wholly compatible with the foundational principles of America. It is not too much to expect schools operating on American soil to manifest an ideology which is not politically anathema to the founding ideals of our nation. To read the rest of this article, familysecuritymatters.org