Muslims in Britain

[scribblet]

Anyone who thinks that the Dem. UG represent America must not get out much, that's like saying rabble.ca represents Canada - I think not.

[jbg]

I'm a bit surprised that something like that got published in a mainstream paper. Not that it doesn't have a point. But it means distrust of Muslims is rising very quickly, quicker than I thought it would actually.

I'm not surpirised. If Europe had trouble tolerating relatively cerebral Jews pre-WW II, I think once a consensus develops on what's really going on the reaction could be quite bloody.

[jbg]

Anyone who thinks that the Dem. UG represent America must not get out much, that's like saying rabble.ca represents Canada - I think not.

I'm a typical poster on www.democraticunderground.com

[scribblet]

Nothing to do with "propaganda coming from the Bush admin.", its events and actions coming from Europe that are especially telling. Although there are events in New York that are worrying, such as this one.

The school is supposedly public with a regular curriculum which so far has not been presented to the board of ed, but the most worrying part is that the school has an advisory board of Imams. Do we really need a Madrassa in Brooklyn?

http://www.nysun.com/article/60314

Activists and a lawmaker are calling on the Department of Education to shut down the city's first Arabic-language school immediately after the school's principal resigned Friday morning following comments that seemed to support the violent Palestinian Arab uprising known as the intifada.

Speaking to The New York Post last week, the school's founder, Debbie Almontaser, said T-shirts that say "Intifada NYC" were not endorsements of violence but rather "an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society Â... and shaking off oppression."

Lawmakers and activists outraged by the remarks were planning a protest Sunday at the Department of Education headquarters to demand Ms. Almontaser's resignation, but after Mayor Bloomberg announced that Ms. Almontaser had resigned Friday morning in his weekly radio broadcast, the rally has been canceled, and some critics are now calling for the school to be shut down altogether.

"I hope that this is the beginning of the end for this entire project," a Democrat who represents Boro Park in New York's state Assembly, Dov Hikind, told The New York Sun Friday. "If this woman, who I hear is a nice woman, if she couldn't get this right, then I think the whole concept just doesn't work." cont.......

It is a good idea to have native born Arabic speakers, but the problem is often Arabic language instruction comes with Islamist baggage .

The Islamist dimension is also worrisomel. An organization that lobbies for Arabic instruction, the Arabic Language Institute Foundation, claims knowledge of Islam's holy language can help the West recover from what its leader, Akhtar Emon, calls its "moral decay." In other words, Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam, an expectation I encountered while studying Arabic in Cairo in the 1970s. one example from here: http://www.hadi.org/ALIF/proposal/arabic-to-highschools.htm