Submitted by Suzanne, Jul 16, 2007 10:41

It's a bit unclear from the story. At first, the issue is one of overcrowding, something about which parents can be justifiably concerned. But Pipes shifts rapidly from that to the backgrounds of the individuals involved in setting up the school. Which seems to indicate that his genuine concern is the latter, rather than the former -- and thus an objection in principle to the school's existence rather than to the specifics of how/where it should be established. It seems to me that someone objecting to the school should be straightforward & forthright about the nature of their objections, not try to dress those up in more acceptable garb.

"Islamic institutions ... do have a pattern of extremism and even violence." Could I note, initially, that this is not an Islamic institution? It is a New York City public school. It is based on providing Arabic-language education, not an Islamic education. I would imagine that most fundamentalist/Salafist Muslims would prefer to send their children to formal Madrassas or other actual Islamic institutions. Moreover, I think this is a rather sweeping statement. Just as there are mosques full of bigots, so there are Islamic congregations who are appalled by this kind of behavior & rhetoric. Making such a sweeping statement is akin to calling every Catholic priest a child molester because a significant minority of these individuals horribly abused children in their care. In fact, it's a bit odd that we rarely hear rhetoric urging the closure of Catholic schools, much less fundamentalist academies, many of whose teachings ill-equip children for the realities of the world that they will inhabit. Denying Darwin's theory of evolution or teaching that condoms can spread AIDS (!) is legitimate, but creating a school based on a language spoken by hundreds of millions worldwide is not?

Finally, I'd point out that the way young children are introduced to bilingual education (as the veteran of such a program myself) is not by using texts with highly-politicized content. Rather, the language is used as a means of instructing students in ordinary subjects, from science to geography. I would imagine that the curriculum of any public school would have to pass muster with city and state authorities.

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