Powell with Pakistan's Musharraf
Contradicting statements by Pakistani Information Minister Rashid Ahmed, Colin Powell has (again) identified Pakistan's Islamic schools as breeding grounds for jihadists. From the Press Trust of India, :
Pulling no punches, US Secretary of State Colin Powell has denounced madrassas or schools imparting religious education in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists."He said the US had held several discussions on the issue with the countries concerned and was in the process of introducing education programmes which would shift the focus of these madrassas to providing useful education.
"... We have talked to those countries that were the principal sources of funding for the madrassas such as Saudi Arabia and others and their support for these madrassa programmes that do nothing but prepare youngsters to be fundamentalists and to be terrorists, and are not preparing them with an education that would be useful," Powell said.
He was responding to Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur statement in the House Appropriations Subcommittee that unless education of the future is imparted in these madrassas, to which young people are drawn because of food aid, they would result in multiple clonings of militants throughout the region.
The US is working with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and other countries on the issue and trying to put in place programmes to shift the focus of these madrassas to providing an education that is useful, Powell said.
"But we also have to understand that a lot of these reflect the view of the community, the desire of the community to have such places. We can't substitute for all of the feeding programmes of all of these madrassas throughout the Muslim world. Nor would we know how to do it if we had the resources to do," Powell said.
Pervez realizes he is at the top of the Islamist hit list.
Yeah he is for being a tyrant. An unjust ruler.
my test for musharref is if he eventually allows for a "free election"
the guy did come to power through a military coup and he has backtracked on elections already once
while he might be a semi okay dictator he still
is one... (he really needs to drop the idi amin uniform.. wear the armani suit instead)
Joey,
Does it bother you to be in agreement with Mullah Umar all the time? Why don't you ask Umar what the jihadis have planned for your tolerant Europe. Trains that go boom in the night, Joey, and the outlaw of atheism.
A "SEMI OKAY DICTATOR" ???? WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT? THERE IS NO SUCH ITEM.
Umar,
Check this.... Your prophet Mohammed was the biggest tyrant ever to walk the earth.
We have our own madrassa "lites" here in the USA.
During the period widely surrounding the Civil War, our young men were sent in large numbers to Germany to complete their educations. There, they fell under the influence of Hegel and Kant, the statist/collectivist philosophers whose later descendents were socialism, communism, and fascism. When our young men returned, they had a view that was 180 degrees from that of Jefferson and Madison, the authors of our Constitution. They entered every field, from the media to education, slowly infesting the entire country with their destructive influences. Under these pressures, with the help of fellow traveler Horace Mann, our schools went from a largely private school system, answering virtually every kind of educational need, to a government controlled system whose uniform goal it became to instill compliance in the population instead of academic excellence and thinking skills.
PC is the most familiar result of Kantian philosophy we are trying to deal with today, and it is destroying us. In the 1980s, a well-known report on the problems of American education stated that if an enemy of this country wanted to conquer us, it would install the educational system we have today, and then just sit back and wait.
Well, we're the ones who are just sitting back and waiting. The confusion and polarization of how we view the problems facing us are a direct result of our failed educational system, and unless we recognize it and DO something about it, we will have to live a very different life from that we have all imagined, and with very little inkling of how to regain what we lost.