Posted 10/24/2002 03:45:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Moderate Islam Watch

From MEMRI:

Extremism Begins in Schools

"Following 9/11, all Muslim youth who fought with the Taliban were branded as extremists, although it is a known fact that the majority of them left their countries with the knowledge of their families and their governments. Their plunge into extremism was gradual, but we have to admit that it started out with [their] education and [their] social environment..."

"What are the religious and cultural components that those 'Arab Afghans' learned from their educational curriculum and religious environment? [What are the components] that molded their opinions and feelings and led them to abandon their families, cities, and lives, which seemed boring to them because they did not measure up to the religious culture that brainwashed them...?"

"We must realize that our children, teenagers, men, and women, are always exposed to a [distorted] religious culture that permits hatred of others. [We must realize] that there is some connection between the Islamic culture as reflected in the educational curriculum, at home, and in the neighborhood, and the culture that breeds religious fanaticism... [This Islamic culture] offers partial information, full of unjustified hatred towards other peoples' religions and cultures, as if those peoples do not do anything but plan wars against Muslims."

"The Western cultures, the Eastern cultures and their peoples [are described as] enemies of Muslims, and some of the fundamentalist preachers emphasize every Friday the evil deeds of those cultures and peoples... but when one of those preachers falls ill, his life is saved by a physician from the enemy camp [i.e. the West], and he takes medication developed and manufactured by that camp."

"No doubt that adopting this brand of religious culture will produce, at best, confused thoughts and mixed-up behavior towards others, some times to the point of having a split personality."

"Furthermore, [adopting this religious culture] results in conflicts between the religious directives that the individual receives, and civil society and modern human culture."

"This is why the migration of our youth to the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan' did not seem to them extreme, but was an attempt to reconcile the religious culture that they absorbed and the ideal religious perception that was formed in their minds..."