Letters to the Editor
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‘A Madrassa Grows In Brooklyn’
In regard to “A Madrassa Grows In Brooklyn” by Daniel Pipes, it is foolish to fear the curriculum of a secondary school whose mandate “is to prepare students of diverse backgrounds for success in an increasingly global and interdependent society,” and to equip graduating students “with the skills they need to become empowered independent thinkers who are able to work with cultures beyond their own” [Foreign “A Madrassa Grows In Brooklyn,” April 24, 2007].
Yet fear of such a school is what Mr. Pipes advocates in his April 24 oped in the Sun Mr. Pipes’s statement that “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan Arabist and Islamist baggage” is at best exaggeration and at worst unfettered of factual accuracy.
For two decades, I have taught Arabic and Hebrew and courses on Islamic intellectual history. I run a program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., that instructs more than 1,000 students each year in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish.
The language in greatest demand is Arabic because our students want the language skills to engage in person-to-person interactions to better understand the world around them, not radicalize it.
SHUKRI ABED
Chairman
Middle East Institute Department of Languages and Regional Studies
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