While madrassas may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Koran in Arabic by rote, such schools do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist. Indeed, there is little or no evidence that madrassas produce terrorists capable of attacking the West. And as a matter of national security, the United States doesn't need to worry about Muslim fundamentalists with whom we may disagree, but about terrorists who want to attack us.
Let me also say that there is no evidence that getting a bachelor's degree produces people capable of practicing medicine. Nor does such a degree prepare you to be lawyer. So is a four-year degree irrelevant to these professions? I mean, undergraduates don't learn the technical or linguistic skills to do either work. So I ask again, is a BA irrelevant to the advanced degrees? Of course not. You'd feel foolish even uttering these things.
But Bergen and Pandey argue that madrassas have nothing to do with preparing terrorists. And they are serious. No embarassment at all is apparent. The fact that nobody has argued that madrassas have actual bomb-making classes should make it clear that these two guys are arguing against a non-existent claim.
Is there an outbreak of idiocy out there?
