The Bush Administration is funding madrasas!

[barbaraann]

"Accompanied by Zanzibar's First Lady, Shadya Karume, Mrs. Bush first visited the Al-Rahma Madrasa, where the two First Ladies met with school children and their teachers. The Madrasa is one of several pre-schools scattered around various villages in Zanzibar that have received over $200,000 this year through grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The funds are distributed through the Aga Khan Foundation to improve the quality of education by training teachers, especially in English, math and the sciences. The grants have also allowed more children to attend pre-school, who otherwise could not afford it. At the Al-Rahma Madrasa, the number of students this year increased from 55 to 67. The students greeted Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Karume with songs in English and Kiswahili."
http://tanzania.usembassy.gov/wwwhpr403.html

Here are some pictures from Laura Bush's trip to Africa that are just really freaking me out. It's like royalty using peasants for photo op propaganda, especially the one with Jenna and the girls with head coverings.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/firstlady/photoessays/africa2005/peindex.html

Here is what a madrasa is:
Both males and females attend traditional madrasahs: they sit in separate classes to learn in an Islamic context. A typical madrasah would offer two courses of study, specifically, a "hifz" course — memorisation of the holy Qur'an (the person who commits the entire Qur'an to memory is called a hafiz) — and an 'Alim course leading the candidate to become an accepted scholar or a mullah. A regular curriculum includes courses in Arabic, Tafsir (Qur'anic interpretation), shari'ah (Islamic law), Hadith (recorded sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad), Mantiq (logic), and the Islamic History. Depending on the educational demands, some madrasahs also offer additional advanced courses in Arabic literature, English and other foreign languages as well as science and world history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasa

When Republicans talk about "traditional values" they are really talking about "The Handmaid's Tale."

[newswolf56]

1. I'm not in the least bit surprised. Increasingly, I'm convinced...

Bush's alleged "blunders" in Afghanistan and Iraq -- letting bin Laden escape, fueling the Iraq insurgency by allowing the looting of armories and ammo dumps, assigning far too few troops to impose and maintain order etc. -- are not "blunders" but deliberate expressions of policy derived from the Grover Norquist plan to build an alliance of Muslims and Christofascists based on mutual hatreds of women, gays, lesbians, "abominations" and liberty in general. Here are three significant links:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010514&s=dreyfuss

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=11209

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1398055,00.html

The fact that one of these is an extreme-conservative link is significant because it indicates the extent to which the Bush/Norquist courtship of Jihadist Islam has alarmed even the far Right. Bush's overall purpose is obviously to bolster the global oligarchy via the concentration of wealth and the further contraction of workers' rights, ultimately dividing the world between Christofascist and Islamic theocracies to opiate and control the ever-more-oppressed proletariat. The Handmaid's Tale indeed.


Edit: clarity. (Haste makes waste!)

[MetaTrope]

2. "[Madrasas] do nothing but prepare youngsters to be fundamentalists and

to be terrorists" - Secretary of State Colin Powell, 3/11/04.

[barbaraann]

5. Interesting quote.

I think he's correct.

[PsychoDad]

3. Bush doing something right?

Good for them.

Often in countries like Zanzibar the madrasa is the only "public" school available to both girls and boys. Literacy is highly stressed in both their native tounge and in arabic, and in many cases also english, as in India and South Africa, IIRC.

Of course Islamic studies are important, as these schools are mostly funded by Muslim sources for Muslim communities.

I do take issue with the insinuation that madrasas are breeding Islamic Fundimentalism/Terrorists. I guess the desire to slaughter thousands and blow up a truck bomb, killing innocent children is a result of all American public schools. After all, we have GWB and Tim McVeigh as shining examples of the American education system.

I think not.

Now, if only Bush would start funding our schools here in america.

(As an aside, I don't know where Osamma BinLaden was educated, but I'm willing to bet he is more literate in english, much less his own native tounge of Arabic than Bush.. :Sarcasm:)

[barbaraann]

6. Would you like to see money spent on Bible studies?

n/t

[bridgit]

4. while it is only my opinion i can't stress it enough...

the bush admin & the particular illuminati hub they represent, believes in the adage: from chaos comes order. either way they are poised to profit from the distress of others not unlike 'death in the family' or 'forced sale by divorce' real estate; they are prepared to buy & sell all our asses for pennies on the dollar, they have done it before (bush's family having made early fortuine on the provision of materiel for exploration of the american frontier) & they will do it again.

madrasa' are a way to train they very people who will stress the blood & treasure of the rest of us. they will not feel those stresses, they live within gated & well guarded communities. irag is the testing ground for the other-they, sanctioned by the bush admin, who are to deliver the chaos they all seek.

rumsfled shaking hands with saddam on behalf of the reagan admin is seen as a mere precursor. madrasa' are the fruit of those sown seeds imo