Self-Inflicted Ignorance & Failure Of Arabs, Muslims

[JStone]

You've probably heard of Madrassas. The word, which means "schools" in Arabic, took on ominous overtones after 9/11, when Western pundits and politicians warned that extremist Saudi-financed religious schools were filling the education gap throughout the Muslim world but sending youngsters straight into the arms of Al Qaeda.

If anything, you'd think the problem would have gotten worse since then, thanks to the global financial crisis. But it turns out that the madrassa storyline was never so stark—and the real problem with education in the Muslim world is more complicated. The good news is that religious madrassas have never been for the masses; even the infamous ones in Pakistan educate less than 3 percent of the total student population in the country, and the numbers are equally negligible in the Arab world. Yet that's little cause for celebration. Government schools that do educate the masses are mind-numbing and anachronistic, utterly useless for helping graduates face global competition. And their failures are far more dangerous.

This wound is largely self-inflicted. "Generations have been raised not to question authority" or think critically, says a leading Arab reform advocate, who asked not to be named because of the political sensitivities involved. "This was on the premise that by doing so you raise a docile population—but the results have been just the opposite."

A major report issued by the World Bank last year documents the problem. Arab public schools, which educate roughly 80 percent of the population, are often designed to turn out minimally skilled bureaucrats who are not even guaranteed government jobs any longer. And good luck finding work in the private sector. The result, says Marwan Muasher, who was previously an architect of Jordan's long-term development strategy, "is a huge number of young people who are unemployed, frustrated, and may be subject to radical ideologies."

Muasher's warning is frightening; throughout modern history, revolutions have started among people whose aspirations were raised and then crushed. The total population of the Muslim Middle East and North Africa has almost quadrupled since 1950, and more than 65 percent of its people are under the age of 25. Mass media have given them a view of the wider world, but their schools haven't given them the tools to access it. While there have been recent improvements in some areas like literacy, the massive youth bulge is creating a huge burden for state education systems.

Continued: The Real Problem With Arab Education - The Daily Beast

 

[JStone]

Winston Churchill

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
Amazon.com: The River War (9781598184259): Sir Winston S. Churchill: Books