wolves in sheep's clothing
Reader comment on item: Teach Arabic or Recruit Extremists?

Submitted by Rebecca Moulds (United States), Sep 5, 2007 at 20:42

There seems to be a problem in this country with public schools teaching Arabic, the problem being the difficulty of separating learning a language and culture from deliberate inculcation of Islam. While living in Egypt, I attended an Arabic class in a Cairo suburb at an adult learning center (Community Services Association) and had a wonderful teacher. This teacher only taught us Egyptian Colloquial Arabic; she did not try to influence or brainwash her students into accepting Islam.

She was there to teach Arabic and she never wavered from this objective. However, we all know that children are quite different in many respects from adults, and being children, they are very impressionable. It is abhorrent to think of a public school--and I repeat public--- in this country allowing any type of religious teaching to be cleverly disguised as learning a foreign language, especially Arabic, because of the problems associated with Islamic fundamentalists and any link to possible terrorist groups worldwide. Why must anybody, particularly children, be obliged to be indoctrinated into Islam in order to learn Arabic? There must be a solution to this problem, but what that solution is, eludes me.

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