VOA标准英语2010年-Islamic Schools in US Raise Hopes, Fea

Muslim educators say Islam is a small part of curriculum but critics worry schools breed violent anti-Western Islamists

Mohamed Elshinnawi | Dearborn, Michigan 12 July 2010

Students at the Muslim American Youth Academy in Dearborn, Michigan follow the standard state curriculum. They also learn about Islam and take Arabic as a foreign language.

As the population of Muslims in the United States continues to grow, so too does the number of Islamic schools serving Muslim families across the nation.

American Muslims see these schools as a way to provide their children with a combination of good, mainstream¹ education and training in the essentials of their faith. But critics fear some of these schools might expose Muslim children to radical² Islamist views.

Religious education

Education has always been very important to the Muslim community in the United States. And like many other families, Muslim parents have educational options. They can send their children to secular³, county-administered public schools or private academies while providing religious training at home or on weekends.

Alternately, they can send their children to private religious schools. Yvonne Haddad, an Islamic history professor at Georgetown University, says Islamic schools serve the same role as the many other private, church-oriented schools in the United States.

VOA - M. Elshinnawi
Yvonne Haddad, an Islamic history professor at Georgetown University, says there are over 100 Islamic schools in North America that teach the state curriculum in addition to religion.

"The Islamic schools in North America, there are over 100 of them teaching the curriculum of the state," she says. "There is absolutely no difference in the content of social studies, history, geography, math and science. The only difference is they have one period a day where they study Islam."

According to Haddad, soon after Islamist terrorists carried out multiple attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, Americans began asking whether Islamic schools in America might be breeding grounds for homegrown terrorists that pose a threat to national security.

New reality

That public perception created a new challenge for Muslim parents. Their children began to encounter prejudice in public schools, while the news media often associated Islamic schools with extremist ideologies⁴.

"Some of the Muslim parents took their kids out of the Islamic schools and put them in public schools because they were afraid of backlash," says Haddad. "But in some other places they took their kids out of public schools and put them in Islamic schools to protect them."

Moral and religious values have also figured in many Muslim families' school choices. For some conservative Muslim parents, subjects that are standard in the curricula of many public schools, such as sex education, are problematic. And faced with the high tuition costs at private Islamic schools, many Muslim parents elect, in the end, to home school their children - a choice, Haddad notes, often made as well by families of other religious faiths.

"They sort of organize a group sometimes with Christian⁵ people who keep their children out of public schools and sometimes with Jewish people, and they have curriculums that you can actually study on the internet and the parents can supervise their children, that way they feel that they can protect them the best way."

Rising public concern

Haddad, who co-authored the book, "Educating the Muslims of America," acknowledges the rising public concern about precisely⁶ what children are being taught in the Islamic schools. 

Daniel Pipes, a conservative Mideast historian who runs the Middle East Forum⁷ and Campus Watch websites, believes a number of private Islamic schools in America offer their students a curriculum laced with extremist content.

"It is not very subtle. These are schools with teachers and textbooks that are overtly⁸ anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and [pro-]Islamic supremacy," says Pipes. "Talking about Islam as the only religion, leading to views that are clearly problematic, and in some cases led to terrorism. Notably⁹ in the Islamic Saudi Academy, one of the school's best students is now in jail for having tried to kill President Bush."

Pipes argues that many Islamic schools are spreading extremist ideas and that they work to instill in their students an unhealthy notion that the only thing that matters in their lives is their Islamic identity.

VOA - M. Elshinnawi
Albert Harb, director of the Muslim American Youth Academy in Dearborn, Michigan, hopes his students exemplify the positive aspects of Islam.

Standard subjects

But Albert Harb doesn't see it that way. He is the director of the Muslim American Youth Academy in Dearborn, Michigan.

"We follow the standards of the state of Michigan curriculum. In addition, we have an Islamic component¹⁰, and we teach Islam as well as Arabic as a foreign language," says Harb. "We want to ensure that we can develop an Islamic character with our youth and give the positive aspects of Islam here in the society of the U.S.A."

Muslim-American efforts to create and support Islamic schools mirror previous efforts by Roman Catholic and Jewish communities in America. Both communities faced the same kind of public resistance when they first established their religious schools. 

Experts suggest that while Muslim-Americans work to secure the best possible education for their children, they should also redouble their efforts to educate the American public about Islam  and about how they are passing their faith on to the next generation.

 

1 mainstream   

n.（思想或行为的）主流；adj.主流的

参考例句：

• Their views lie outside the mainstream of current medical opinion.他们的观点不属于当今医学界观点的主流。
• Polls are still largely reflects the mainstream sentiment.民调还在很大程度上反映了社会主流情绪。

2 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

3 secular   

n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的

参考例句：

• We live in an increasingly secular society.我们生活在一个日益非宗教的社会。
• Britain is a plural society in which the secular predominates.英国是个世俗主导的多元社会。

4 ideologies   

n.思想（体系）( ideology的名词复数 )；思想意识；意识形态；观念形态

参考例句：

• There is no fundamental diversity between the two ideologies. 这两种思想意识之间并没有根本的分歧。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Radical ideologies require to contrast to their own goodness the wickedness of some other system. 凡是过激的意识形态，都需要有另外一个丑恶的制度作对比，才能衬托出自己的善良。 来自辞典例句

5 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

6 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

7 forum   

n.论坛，讨论会

参考例句：

• They're holding a forum on new ways of teaching history.他们正在举行历史教学讨论会。
• The organisation would provide a forum where problems could be discussed.这个组织将提供一个可以讨论问题的平台。

8 overtly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• There were some overtly erotic scenes in the film. 影片中有一些公开色情场面。
• Nietzsche rejected God's law and wrote some overtly blasphemous things. 尼采拒绝上帝的律法，并且写了一些渎神的作品。

9 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。

10 component   

n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的

参考例句：

• Each component is carefully checked before assembly.每个零件在装配前都经过仔细检查。
• Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。