UK: British Schools Will be Paired up With Pakistani Madrassas to Fight Extremism. Wait, What?....
It's tough to find the words describing how insanely asinine this plan is.....
BRITISH schools are to be twinned with madrasahs in Pakistan to show pupils there how much they have in common with children in the West and to combat extreme Islamist ideology.
The British Council is to put £6m into linking British schools with classrooms in countries where children may be at risk of being groomed by Muslim extremists. The programme will operate in Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia and Pakistan, including the largely lawless North West Frontier Province, regarded as a stronghold for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The role of madrasahs in fostering extremism came under scrutiny after it emerged that one of the suicide bombers behind the explosions in London on July 7, 2005, had attended a religious school in Pakistan. Shehzad Tanweer spent two months at a madrasah in Lahore in 2004.
Most religious schools in Pakistan are moderate, serving poor rural families, but others have a reputation for preparing young men for jihad, or holy war. Pakistan has an estimated 14,000 madrasahs, compared with only 137 at the time of partition from India in 1947.
Schools in London, Bradford, Nottingham and Birmingham, where there are large Muslim populations, are expected to be the first to take part. They will be encouraged to exchange e-mails and letters with the twinned schools and to conduct teacher-and-pupil exchanges.
ZIP
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