MADRASSA VOUCHERS MAIL: Thomas Nephew writes: I read your item about madrassa vouchers, and disagree. First, a pragmatic disagreement: even if rich people already can send their kids to madrassas, if that is dangerous for our society, then there’s a pragmatic case for not enabling far more numerous poor people to do it as well. Second, a principled one: madrassas verge on the ‘child abuse’ you allow as an exception to parental autonomy. Madrassas – as I understand them – are simply places where students commit the Koran to memory, with no other education. The Koran is no doubt a glorious book, but merely memorizing it is not an education, and is not sufficient for bringing up a child in the United States.

Eve again: Hmm. First, I’m not convinced that within the pool of potential madrassa-choosers poor people are “far more numerous,” and I doubt either of us can know that. Second, if something is too dangerous for the poor I still don’t see why it’s not too dangerous for the rich–either ban the dratted things or treat them like other schools. Otherwise, Nephew’s point would lead us to, for example, forbid scholarship programs from putting poor kids through madrassas–while still letting rich kids attend them! Third, oh, absolutely, a school that only taught the memorization of the Koran would fail the basic “students have to pass regular tests” requirement that as far as I know all voucher programs include. And fourth, you can also shut down a school that teaches violent rebellion against the government of the infidels.

So the question only becomes interesting when you have a school that teaches radical Islam but also teaches other stuff, and does not explicitly call for treason or revolt. It was that case that I was discussing in my post. As I understand it such schools do exist–I’ve read profiles of schools in NYC and northern Virginia that seem pretty close to this model.

An anonyreader: With regard to the madrassa vouchers question, I assume the concern is that radical Islamicist schools would inculcate the hero-worship of and the desire to emulate terrorists–that, in other words, tax dollars shouldn’t go to train children to commit crimes. I’m sure there are a lot of other concerns, such as what would be taught about Jews or the status of women, but this seems to be the primary one. It occurs to me that there could be a provision in any voucher program that would disqualify schools that encourage illegal and treasonous acts–so funds also be withheld from a Christian school that was lauding abortion-clinic bombings or a white separatist school that was glorifying lynching, or whatever. Of course, such restrictions would set private schools on the slippery slope to government censorship, which is actually a pretty strong argument against vouchers in its own right. (It is, of course, always possible to say “I would prefer not” to the money and the censorship, but who knows whether such marginal schools would be able to successfully compete with those receiving government dollars.)

Ramesh Ponnuru: I assume that even poor parents who want their kids to go to Islamofascist schools are fairly highly motivated and have a good chance of having it happen. I suppose you could raise a question about Muslim parents who aren’t interested in this but want to send their kids to the school down the street that keeps churning out top-ranking students who (they don’t realize) are also Islamofascists. But if we’re not talking about boarding schools, the lack of full-time socialization in this would, I’d think, limit its influence.