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Tuesday, 19 September 2006 16:30 |
 Amidst an increasingly tense standoff with the West over his countryës nuclear ambitions, Iranës President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week continued to push his theocratic agenda ÇƒÓ this time into the arena of education.
In remarks reminiscent of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad urged students to protest and push for the ousting of secular educators from Iranës universities.
His remarks follow actions earlier this year in which dozens of liberal educators were forced into retirement and a cleric was, for the first time, appointed to head Tehran University, the countryës oldest college.
We find this development disturbing and reflective of a greater trend within Islamic society ÇƒÓ and in the world at large.
In much of the
Muslim world, the only educational opportunities available to many
students are through madrasas ÇƒÓ Islamic schools that exclusively use
the Qurëan as a teaching text.
Such schools disavow all secular knowledge and consider the Qurëan to be the one true authority on all matters.
These schools are largely populated by underprivileged youth whose families cannot afford to send them to secular schools.
Furthermore,
within many of these schools, a militant interpretation of jihad (which
means "struggle" and can refer to any engagement against an opressive
force) is presented. Many suicide bombers and Al Quaeda members have
gotten their starts in such schools.
This is the inevitable conclusion when religious dogma is given credibility as absolute truth.
The influence of
such thinking in Islamic society is truly a tragedy. Iran, whose
culture predates Islam by thousands of years, was once a beacon of
intellectual activity and scientific discovery. Today, religious
fundamentalism threatens to destroy this heritage.
But before
rushing to judgment, we urge Americans to consider how these issuses
are playing out in our own educational system.When religious myths are
presented as equally valid theories alongside evolution, perhaps we
should ask ourselves whether America could someday become a theocratic
state.
We certainly hope it will not.
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