Education: Bane of Islamic Fundamentalism?

[Feenix566]

Taliban Behead Teacher for Educating Girls

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Taliban militants beheaded a teacher in a central Afghan town while his wife and eight children watched, officials said Wednesday, describing the latest in a string of attacks targeting educators at schools where girls study.

Four men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib eight times late Tuesday before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in Qalat, said Ali Khail, a spokesman for the provincial government of Zabul, where the attack took place.

...

Habib was the headmaster of Shaikh Mathi Baba high school, which is attended by 1,300 boys and girls.

Zabul, a remote and mountainous province populated mainly by Pashtuns and bordering Pakistan, is a hotbed of Taliban militancy. The former Taliban regime prohibited girls from attending school as part of its widely criticized drive to establish what it considered a "pure" Islamic state.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180554,00.html

The Taliban's War on Education: Schoolgirls are still under fire in Afghanistan

By Zama Coursen-Neff, Senior Researcher, Children's Rights Division, published in LA Times

Originally published July 31, 2006 in the LA Times

One morning late last year, Setareh's students found a landmine in their classroom. It was hidden under a bag in the mud-brick building of the first girls school in her rural Afghan village.
The landmine was not, of course, unexpected. The Taliban had posted a note in the village mosque a few weeks earlier, ordering all girls schools to close. And another "night letter" left at a nearby school had warned: "Respected Afghans: Leave the culture and traditions of the Christians and Jews. Do not send your girls to school." Otherwise, it said, the mujahedin of the Islamic Emirates, the name of the former Taliban government, "will conduct their robust military operations in the daylight."

The United States has trumpeted its role in putting Afghan girls back in school as one of the most positive developments since it toppled the Taliban in 2001. On International Women's Day, March 8, President Bush declared: "Today in Afghanistan, girls are attending school. That speaks well for Afghanistan's future." But Setareh, her students and most other Afghan girls are still fighting for that future.

Even before the recent upsurge in fighting in southern Afghanistan, fewer than half of primary-school-age girls were in school. Nearly a third of the country's districts had no girls schools at all. That's not to say that commendable gains haven't been made: 5.2 million students are enrolled in school. When the Taliban fell in 2001, only about 775,000 children were in school, the World Bank estimated.

That's an accomplishment. Still, 5.2 million is only a bit more than half of all Afghan children, and this modest progress is in danger of unraveling. The Taliban has been targeting boys schools and coeducational schools that offer the secular education promoted by the central government, and especially girls schools. They have killed teachers, threatened students and burned schools. Based on my research on the ground in Afghanistan, I believe that hundreds of thousands of students who were attending school are now shut out, especially in the south and southeast.

Over just four days in December, armed men shot and killed a teacher, a school gatekeeper and a male student in Helmand province. An instructor had been warned to stop teaching girls and boys in the same classroom. In January, armed men in Zabul province beheaded a high school headmaster in front of his children. By March, half of the schools in the province had closed. Afghan education officials say that attacks now average one school a day.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/...n14057_txt.htm

Afghan schools torched in war against education
Chicago Tribune, April 12, 2006

Up to 50 schools have been set on fire, according to the country's Education Ministry. Up to 300 have shut down at some point, largely out of fear.
By Kim Barker, Tribune foreign correspondent

MASHAKHAIL, Afghanistan -- The strangers came in the middle of the night. They tied up the school caretakers with turbans and shoved them into a classroom. Then they broke the school windows, poured fuel everywhere and set the principal's office on fire.

The results were much the same as in other schools recently burned in Afghanistan: damage and fear. The men, who hid their faces behind scarves, burned 16 carpets, 15 chairs, five desks, four caretakers' beds, three bookshelves, all school records back to 1988 and 1,300 books, including a Koran. The white concrete walls of two rooms and the ceilings were stained black by smoke after last month's attack.

"God may drown them in the water," said Nasrullah, the boys' headmaster, who uses one name like many Afghans. "Because they were not Muslim. If they were, they never would have burned the Holy Koran."

In the last six months, education has been under attack in southern and southeastern Afghanistan in an apparent attempt to erode what hope people still have in the weak central government and to panic them about their children's safety. Up to 50 schools have been set on fire, according to the country's Education Ministry. Up to 300 have shut down at some point, largely out of fear. Many parents are nervous about sending their children to school.

"The education system in some southern provinces has not completely collapsed, but it is push and pull," said Mohammad Sediq Patman, the deputy education minister. "One month, the enemy warns people not to go to school, and kids stay at home. The next month, school is back to normal. It is a way of fighting for the enemy."

No one has been arrested in any of the attacks, Education Ministry officials said. The attackers just fade away. Some blame the Taliban or other insurgents or tribal rivalries.

Reputed Taliban spokesman Mohammed Hanif said the Taliban burned only schools that preached against Islam and Islamic fighters.

http://www.rawa.org/schoolburnt.htm


You've gotta wonder, why would the Taliban target schools? I think we can learn a lot about our enemy from this fact. They fear any ideas that conflict with their ideology.

Islamic fundamentalism survives by being passed down from one generation to the next, and being brainwashed into people's heads. You can't solve the problem by shooting everyone who believes in it, because there are simply too many of them. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat that must be explained away, not shot away.

Education is the right tool for the job. All religious fundamentalism is based on a fundamental lack of understanding about the universe. If you don't know how the world works, it's a whole lot easier to blame it all on God or Allah than to figure it out for yourself. The more educated a person is in science, the less likely they are to be a religious extremist.

It's not politically correct to say it, because it's equally offensive to Christian fundamentalists. But it's true. And it's the only real solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism.

[Bear Stories]

Of course the Taliban has a vested interest in keeping people ignorant. A population that is uneducated is much easier to control. The less people who are aware of basic biological facts, or astronomical facts, or archeological facts, the less people who might jump up and say, "wow, your teachings are wrong and I don't agree with you."

It's easier to control Joe Q Goat Herder if he has no conception that there might be a life beyond what his village Iman tells him.

And, really, let's keep those pesky girls down, because they should just go home and cook something instead of trying to be all literate and shit.

[Freedom&Liberty]

Originally Posted by Feenix566

You've gotta wonder, why would the Taliban target schools? I think we can learn a lot about our enemy from this fact. They fear any ideas that conflict with their ideology.

Islamic fundamentalism survives by being passed down from one generation to the next, and being brainwashed into people's heads. You can't solve the problem by shooting everyone who believes in it, because there are simply too many of them. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat that must be explained away, not shot away.

Education is the right tool for the job. All religious fundamentalism is based on a fundamental lack of understanding about the universe. If you don't know how the world works, it's a whole lot easier to blame it all on God or Allah than to figure it out for yourself. The more educated a person is in science, the less likely they are to be a religious extremist.

It's not politically correct to say it, because it's equally offensive to Christian fundamentalists. But it's true. And it's the only real solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism.

The religion itself plays a major.role in the mindset. I've known three Muslim kids(two boys and a girl) for about ten years. They're college graduates in their twenties now. They grew up and were educated in the US. Like there parents, they are members of a mosque. They seem like normal, bright, young adults until we start talking about the separation of church and state. Islam teaches them that that separation is wrong and that governments primary function is to keep people from sin. The religious education they receive carries far more weight.

[Feenix566]

Well a key part of the strategy must be promotion of individual liberty. That's the basis for separation of church and state. A person should be free to worship whomever and however he or she wants to.

Individual liberty seems to be an alien concept to Muslims. Indeed, it seems to be an alien concept to many non-Muslims, as well.

[Freedom&Liberty]

Individuality is a hard concept to get across. People everywhere like the herd mentality.

[grimrebuke]

Originally Posted by Bear Stories

Of course the Taliban has a vested interest in keeping people ignorant. A population that is uneducated is much easier to control. The less people who are aware of basic biological facts, or astronomical facts, or archeological facts, the less people who might jump up and say, "wow, your teachings are wrong and I don't agree with you."

You hit the nail on the head. This is the reason that dangerous religious fanatics have tried to discount science and scientists since time immemorial. It is also the reason that certain people want creationism tought in school science classes, even though there is no science behind it. It is the reason for attacks on evolution. It might even be the reason for attacks on greenhouse gas discoveries. Any time someone tries to keep you from thinking, they have something to gain from your ignorance. Since knowing right from wrong requires thinking about right and wrong, it probably isn't because they want you to do the right thing.

[Feenix566]

Originally Posted by grimrebuke

Since knowing right from wrong requires thinking about right and wrong, it probably isn't because they want you to do the right thing.

They're not intentionally trying to get you to do the wrong thing; they think that what they're doing is the right thing. Their religious ideology teaches them that any deviation from the religious teachings is wrong. That's why they oppose science, because it deviates from their religion, so they think it's wrong.

Religious zealotry is very closely tied to the herd mentality. That's why every religious zealot in the world is zealous about the religion practiced by their own community. People don't follow a religion because it's the rational thing to do. They follow it because they want to be accepted into their community.