A recent article in the International Herald Tribune provides its readers with some not entirely reassuring details about how young British Muslim students attending their country's burgeoning madrassas are being taught citizenship in them.
With the help of a £100K government-grant, a model citizenship curriculum is being drawn up, it reports, that is currently being pilotted by ten Muslim clerics teaching at six Bradford madrassas. Students receiving citizenship education according to this curriculum are reportedly being asked to to debate such tricky questions in civics as the following:
A group of Islamic extremists want to buy fertiliser that could be used to make a bomb. Should the shopkeeper sell it to them, even if he suspects it will be used for “holy war”?
Ahmed, whose jihadi friends want to attack a local supermarket in retaliation for the war in Iraq. Is it right for Ahmad to harm innocent Britons just because their government invaded a Muslim country?'