Apparently charmed by veiled Indonesian girls' familiarity with the masterpieces of Led Zeppelin, US Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce has landed a huge aid package for madrassas and more. But who will be monitoring what these schools teach about jihad? Who will make sure that radical Muslim leader Abu Bakar Bashir, who has escaped serious punishment from the government for his role in the Bali bombings, won't have a hand in guiding the curriculum? From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:
JAKARTA: The United States announced yesterday US$468mil (RM1.77bil) in aid to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, earmarking part of it to improve Islamic schools, which have been blamed for encouraging fundamentalism....The US will provide US$157mil (RM596mil) over five years to improve quality of education, US$236mil (RM896mil) for the same length for other basic human services, and US$75mil (RM285mil) in food assistance.
“Pesantrens, madrassas, public schools, private schools. It has been drafted with the advice and input of the ministry of education and religious affairs,” US ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce said when asked about the target of the school aid.
Boyce has been active in visiting Indonesia's thousands of pesantrens in recent years. He was once surprised when a drum band of veiled girls from a moderate Islamic school welcomed him with a rendition of rock anthem Stairway to Heaven.
From what I know music (as also dance and so many others of the simple joys of life) are haraam in islam and hence banned.
Its kinda surprising and hope-inspiring 2 know madrassastudents can know rock. They can't really be all that monstrous, maybe? But then again, who knows they learnt it for the specific purpose of deceiving the infidels?
It would be cheaper to just burn the Quran.....that would save billions upon billions, and save countless lives.
if this doesn't beat all
how is the usa supposed to win a war on
terrorism when it is supporting the growth
of islam?
the blindness of america's leaders is
astounding.
What happened to Separation of Church and State? Which I do not believe was our founding fathers intentions.
The goverment can do nothing to endorse anyone religion. (Based on our modern day interpretation) Where the heck is the ACLU?
If this money was spent on Christian schools they would be all over this.
How come American Taxpayer money cannot be spent on Christian schools but it can on Islamic schools? Once again the State Department carrying out their agenda that is anti-Christian.
This is the type of issue that someone should sue the Federal Goverment over.
Argh...my eyes!!
HOW STUPID CAN INFIDELS BE...!
This sounds like a bad idea. Somebody should help educate the State Department. We should have learned from our experience in helping Palestinian schools. The UN and EU still support Islamofascism in this manner.
There is an Establishment Clause problem here. The American government cannot give aid to religious schools anywhere. Aside from the sheer idiocy of the idea -- why not helpmake non-religious schools more attractive, obviously so, so that students will drop out of madrasas (there is no version of Islam that will be anodyne; all possible versions are dangerous). Is Boyce stupid? Is he a student of Islam? What exactly does he know about Islam? Has he been reading Snouck Hurgronje on how Islam can be tamed by the government -- the same expert, now memorialized at the University of Leiden's Snouck Hurgronje Center for Islamic Studies (or some such) -- who so cleverly adviced the government of the Dutch East Indies on how to handle and tame Islam.
But the main point is not the folly of this idea. It is to direct attention to what seems to be the State Department's policy of continuing to ignore the reality of Islam as best it can. Given that it has lost some of the respect its thoroughly discredited "Arabists" once thought they could command -- but as they turn out not to know a thing about Islam, far less than many of the amateur posters at this site, they are entitled to be mocked and ridiculed up and down the land -- but nonetheless someone in the State Department thought it could get away with announcing some supposed Muslim crewmemgers with Columbus, though not a single serious scholar of Columbus, not Samuel Eliot Morison, not Salvador de Madariaga, not Paolo Emilio Taviani (to take an American, a Spaniard, and an Italian by way of examples), has ever suggested anything of the kind. History is not to be toyed with in this fashion, not out of some silly attempt to placate Muslims in their rewriting of history, or their demands for Infidel collaboration in that sinister project. And who in the State Department pushed for the wholesale admittancde of 7,000 Meskhetian Turks -- has Congress yet heard about this? Does Congress wish to demand that such decisions should be left up to representatives of the people, and mostof the people would, if polled, at this point demand a halt to all Muslim immigration, period. Thje State Department, or rather certain people in that Department, are undercutting American security, twisting history (those with an interest in Columbus will be alerted as to this tampering with his history; one hopes they will protest in the appropriate fashion). Nor for reasons of state and of State, can one simply overlook the First Amendment.
One ought to be in a rage when one realizes that at this point, if this policy is not changed, one's tax money is going to fund madrasas (even "moderate" madrasas -- whatever that may mean -- and what does it mean, exactly? Will whole sections of the Qur'an simply be cut out? Will hundreds of hadith simply go unnoticed, unremarked, unquoted? And who will be monitoring these madrasas will truly keep out any reference to hostility toward Infidels?
Or are we, am I, are you, expected to pay for madrasas where people will, in a "non-fundamentalist" way, still be taught to hate us, and to "cut off our heads"? Spare us, please. There is only so much idiocy, even from the State Department, that one can stand.
This must not be. If there is only one staff member of one Congressman reading this, please communicate with others. Please get your Congressman to intervene. Please.
And you? that students
Kindly ignore the last four words of the above post.
But do call members of Congress and remind them of the Establishment Clause. And ask about that little State Department announcement about "Muslim" crewmen with Columbus. Evidence, please? Some scrap of paper overlooked in Los archivios de las Indias in Seville?
For some strange reason, Islam seems to have become fashionable. But what is in fashion, can very soon go out of fashion. When it does, Islam will be seen for the fascist ideology which it is.