substantive standards for home-school education are usually satisfied online. The standard bearers are anything but neutral, however. They are tax grubbing fanatics who oppose any incursion into their public trough.

Public schools have much lower standards–as do their largely incompetent and politicized teaching staff. (Politically correct twats, by and large.)

“If Muslims in Lodi are failing to teach their daughters the standard grade-level curriculum, then it is appropriate for the state to intervene on the children’s behalf.”

You betcha. I’ve been to madrassahs in muslim countries, and they all studiously ignore mathematics, science, and history in favor of memorizing koranic verses. The muslim “schools” in America are even worse, because they preach jihadism even more vehemently than most foreign “schools” do. Muslim home-schooling is an indoctrination in seventh century barbarism and despair, not an education grounded in reality.

Religious beliefs that practice child abuse and other atrocities are supposed illegal in America. The Branch Davidians and many other groups have been persecuted under false accusations of such crimes.

Decent parents have their children taken from them every day in this over legislated country. Taking abused children from muslim misogynists will not change any existing statute or practice.

Forcing girls to forgo education in favor of servitude and sexual slavery to muslim supremacists is child abuse. No emotionally loaded characterization can prove otherwise.

The Teacher’s Union in CA is trying to PROscribe the process by which they indoctrinate children, because they have a vested interest in doing so. Child advocates are already allowed to define what constitutes child abuse, and the courts enforce their sick definition vigorously. Just ask any divorced father.

I’m still waiting to hear what solutions to muslim child abuse impinge on liberty and are likely to impede legitimate governmental interest.

No offense, but you’re wrong about this.

The problem is figuring out how to craft a public intervention that respects religious liberty and freedom. The state may establish substantive standards for home-school and private-school education, and these are usually satisfied by testing conducted at a neutral location.

These substantive standards must be the same for public schools. So, if Muslims in Lodi are failing to teach their daughters the standard grade-level curriculum, then it is appropriate for the state to intervene on the children’s behalf. (Then comes the really difficult question: What are we willing to do if the parents refuse to submit to civil authority?)

In any case, whatever we do should be same thing irrespective of the religious beliefs and practices of the family in question. And we should refrain from characterizing the problem as child abuse, an emotionally loaded and subjectively defined term if ever there was one. To apply the law fairly, first it must be objectively defined.

What the teachers’ unions and others in California are trying to do is prescribe the process by which children are educated, not just the substance of what they learn. If child-welfare advocates are allowed to define child abuse, they will try to prescribe how children must be raised. This, I submit, is both a grave threat to liberty and one that need not be borne, because there are alternatives that do not impinge on liberty and are likely to be more effective in accomplishing the legitimate governmental interest.

I infer from your response that you agree that your original post was over the top. Great.

As for your entirely diversionary inquiry, I’ll bite. Yes, I prefer a much narrower definition of child abuse than the definitions used by “the authorities” in most (possibly all) states. In California, a parent’s refusal to provide a personal cell phone with unlimited text messaging probably qualifies.

I sympathize with your quandary, and I don’t have a better suggestion. I can guarantee you however that less than a week after the authorities bust into those Islamic homes, those very same authorities will be busting into the homes of other good, law-abiding Americans who simply don’t trust their children with the morals free zones called public schools.

All of those innocent people who will come to know fascism will invoke your name, sir.

Is that what you want to accomplish?

“The solution, it seems to me, is a much more restrictive stance on immigration, both illegal and legal–a five or ten-year moratorium, with a narrow exception for science Ph.D’s and refugees who are fleeing because of association with the U.S. (Iraqi interpreters, for example). A return to national-origin quotas is a political non-starter at least until the next Al Qaeda attack.”

Grumps, we finally agree on something. That should at least limit the damage caused by practices such as those described in the main post.

Lodi may not be an exurb of the Bay area, but most of the unusual ethnic minorities who live in the Valley arrived via San Fransisco. The Pakis, Afghans, Psuedostinians, Assyrians, Indians from Fiji, etc., who live there do so because the cost of living is much lower than in the Bay area.

Home schooling of girls by muslims is definitely child abuse, but as muslims they’ll probably get a free pass by the CA government. The so called education youths receive in muslim schools (”madrassahs,”) usually consists of memorizing passages from the koran and the “hadiths,” with no foundation in mathematics, English or science. Home schooling is even worse, whether the parents are educated or not.

Its a sick reflection of our society that kids are often taken from their parents for the most trivial and unjustified reasons, but girls being abused by muslim supremacists are not.

The last time I heard of a Valley muslim in the news, it was that Afghan terrorist from Ceres who ran down people with his car, winding up his little death race 2006 at the Jewish Community Center in San Fran.

I’m willing to let the government poke its head up my @$$ if it means having separatist muslims go through something similar. There must be some way they can be investigated.

You’d prefer a narrow definition of child abuse?

Abe Greenwald

Your revision is misleading at best. You did not propose “that the authorities make sure these girls aren’t being abused and that they are being properly educated.” You said “Lodi’s local councils need to … “get some child-advocacy groups involved and investigate the lives of these American girls.” It is hard to imagine a group more inclined to define “abuse” as widely as possible.

Perhaps your revision better reflects what you meant by what you said. If so, your original post was inartfully worded, at best. And I’m not sure your revision is that helpful. As of last week, it became presumptively illegal in California to homeschool one’s child without approval from the government in the form of holding a teaching credential, an early sign of brain damage.

Beware what authorities you cavalierly confer on “the authorities.”

RBB

nothing taken to extremes works.

education at home is fine. but i very much doubt that what girls learn at home by unintegrated muslims is education. in order to educate you gotta be educated first.

i dont particularly care for the amish, but they don’t think they ought to impose their setup on others and rule and oppress them. and in any case i would not call the amish integrated, would you?

Wrong. But don’t take my word for it. Go convince the Amish. And all the other groups of folks who educate their own children and who don’t want the state busting into their homes and their families.

Of all people who should understand the fundamental justice inherent in allowing people to have the freedom to educate their own children, it should be you folks.

What kind of comment does this make about you that you would abandon your most fundamental principles just because the folks living those principles happen to be Islamic.

“get some child-advocacy groups involved and investigate”? Wow. How quickly to jump to fascism.

Which contributes to the radicalization of muslim youth in europe.

One of the differences between US and EU with respect to integration is that immigrants MIX with natives and other immigrants. The earlier in life, the better, and that’s school. There are also minimal educational standards required to function in western society. When you allow for unregulated home “schooling” by parents who are NOT integrated and do not have the knowledge of how to educate for such functionality, which also prevents the mixing, you are more or less guaranteeing a generation susceptible to sharia law.

like the various collapses in unregulated markets have shows every decade or so, complete freedom ends up destructing the system based on it. intelligent regulation is necessary to preserve liberty without collapsing the system, and that is true in social as well as economic life.

The solution, it seems to me, is a much more restrictive stance on immigration, both illegal and legal–a five or ten-year moratorium, with a narrow exception for science Ph.D’s and refugees who are fleeing because of association with the U.S. (Iraqi interpreters, for example). A return to national-origin quotas is a political non-starter at least until the next Al Qaeda attack.

As an aside, I assume the ad, boasting a hjiab-clad young woman, for the “International Muslim Matrimonial Site” on the side of the comboxes is generated by an algorithm, not by that site’s owners’ desire to support Commentary or the magazine’s wish to encourage Islamic matchmaking.

My only proposal is that the authorities make sure these girls aren’t being abused and that they are being properly educated.

Abe

I’d rather find out the answer to a different question: Are these people legally present in the United States? For the groups I’ve listed above, the answer is “yes.” Maybe there is a legal basis for making a distinction, but a different one than Greenwald proposes.

Let’s ask the Monsey city council would send child-advocacy groups to liberate these American girls who slaving away in the kitchen on Friday baking challah and cooking chicken for their male relatives in the name of Hashem. They’re likely not home schooled, but that’s more a function of that fact that the Satmars number in the thousands by now and can afford to set up their own yeshivot and girl’s schools.

How, after all, do we justify drawing the line between Muslim sex-role distinctions in the family, and those we may find in a Christian homeschooling household, where girls do laundry and make beds and boys mow lawns and shovel snow; or those we may find in a Hasidic Jewish household?

While it’s quite true that these latter peoples don’t produce felonies like honor killings and female “circumcision” behind closed doors, what they DO do is demonstrate that observing sex-role distinctions does not inevitably lead to such felonies, or even to dangerous unassimilation.

We Americans don’t REQUIRE people to do most things that identify themselves to the tracking of the state, or expose them to its influence. We have no national identity card. Getting a driver’s license is optional. Parents can educate their children outside the public schools. It’s perfectly legal to have no Social Security number; you just won’t be able to legally do anything normal without it, like get a steady job, have a bank account, borrow money, rent or buy real estate. There are still people who live off the Social Security radar, and we don’t hunt them down. Social Security doesn’t require bio-form identification (facial recognition, hair/eye color, height/weight) anyway.

I am not sure Americans are really prepared to be, all of us, tracked as intrusively as we would have to track Muslims to ensure that they are conforming to our social standards. I know for a fact that quite a few Americans of a more libertarian bent are NOT so prepared. As always, Muslims are a problem for everyone ELSE’s liberties, in a liberal state.