MADRASSA VOUCHERS: Second in a series. Some voucher opponents ask whether Christian voucher supporters would still favor vouchers if large numbers of parents began using them to send their children to radical Islamist madrassas. My response is basically, again, rich parents can already do this! If you’re OK with madrassas for the rich–if you think they’re wrong but you won’t outlaw them, say–then saying poor parents can’t use vouchers at madrassas is pretty weird. The basic claim here is that parents can direct their children’s education in almost all cases. (There are obvious exceptions for child abuse; there are also restrictions such as testing that all children must pass, or school-certification requirements; but there aren’t religious litmus tests.) If you deny that claim, you should oppose private schooling in general. If you accept that claim, you may have other reasons for opposing vouchers, but “some parents might make bad choices!” can’t be one of them.

Also, let’s look at the reasons parents might choose madrassas. Isn’t the larger problem, if lots of parents begin preferring madrassas, the fact that lots of adults buy into radical Islamism?

Finally, I think it might have been Eugene Volokh who pointed out that vouchers might make Islamic schools less dependent on rich (often Saudi) financial backers; and that added independence might make Islamic schools less radical. That’s pretty speculative; but, hello, the whole “fear of madrassas” anti-voucher argument is pretty speculative in itself.