Public schools and madrassas?

How different, really, might the public schools in Kansas be from some
extremist Islamic madrassas?


The difference will only be a matter of degree, if the state school
board is successful in getting the concept of "intelligent design"
taught alongside evolution in the state's public schools.


Madrassas have been around since the beginnings of Islam.
Historically, they were intended to provide judges and bureaucrats to
Muslim society. But during the decade-long war between Afghanistan and
the former Soviet Union, which wound down in 1989, madrassas became
centers for educating the very young in the concept of the jihad -
holy war - in the context of Wahhabism, a fundamentalist
interpretation of Islam.


Twelve years after the Afghan war with the Soviets wound down, Islamic
terrorists brought that brand of radical Islam to this country,
attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with jet aircraft on
a sunny September morning, leaving some few thousand Americans dead.


And this week in Kansas, a state science education standards committee
will continue to hear arguments pitting evolution against intelligent
design, a theory of origins that suggests some organisms are so
complex they could not have evolved, but must have been the result of
work by some sort of creative entity. At some point, state school
officials will decide whether intelligent design should be taught
along with evolution.
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