11-11-2007, 04:57 AM
TO THE EDITOR: Another response to Ahmad
09:00 Mon 15 Oct 2007
"The Sophia Echo" newspaper
Sir
Iftikhar Ahmad (Letter to the Editor, The Sofia Echo, September 28) displays the typical tendencies that brought Muslim culture such a bad name: arrogant claims of superiority, segregation, discrimination of other faiths and non-believers, total blindness to the failings of the own culture (can he name one Nobel-prize winner for science from the Muslim world?).
If Muslim children are disadvantaged in education and work, it is because they come into secondary education and the workplace with a language deficit, caused by the segregation and the culture in which they have been brought up. In the workplace, many young Muslims show an arrogant attitude and intolerance of criticism. As Peter Knight writes, if you come to another country to live and work, you have to conform to the language and the majority values in that country. If you don’t want that, stay in, or go back to the wonderful country you came from (Pakistan?) If you want your children educated outside the public system, pay for yourself.
In the Netherlands, we do have single-faith schools. The Protestant and Catholic schools always had a good reputation, but many Muslim schools give a picture of plain bad education, corporal punishment (although strictly forbidden under Dutch law), indoctrination against Western values (equality of women and gay people) and an authoritarian climate that punishes curiosity and initiative. Recently, a Muslim school in Amsterdam was closed because it could not be made to conform to the minimum standards even after being given ample time to re-organise. In this system, Turkish and Moroccan children can grow up practically without contact with kids from other cultures.
When I read Mr Ahmad’s letter, and remember, for instance, that interreligious relationships are almost impossible (unless, of course, the non-Muslim party agrees to convert), a nasty Dutch word comes back from my dustbin: Apartheid.
Huib van den Doel
Sofia and The Netherlands