This is a bit of good news, if Musharraf is serious, and if he can actually enforce it.

It raises an interesting question, though. Suppose we decided to do the same thing here. Would it be a violation of the first amendment?

Under what circumstances can the government ban certain teachings in schools, particularly religious schools? As an incitement to riot and murder?

And if we cut off the Saudi oil money, would such schools continue to thrive, or even survive here?

I would think the same laws which distinguish "advocacy" and "threats" and which apply to inciting a riot or shouting fire in a crowded theatre might apply, but I would think the threshold would, and should be very high. The question I've been waiting for, from the usual liberal suspects anyways, is how the prospect of private, religious, American "madrassas" might wind up being funded by educational vouchers, at least the type of voucher we voucher reform purists favor, which could for example be used at parochial schools. The voucher debate seems to have unfortunately been swept under the rug of late, perhaps not coincidentally with 9/11. Even for a free market education reformer like myself, the prospect of tax $ going to a Saudi backed American Madrassa is a lot to stomach, tho I imagine most American muslims would tend to take their voucher $ elsewhere and this in fact would not be much of a problem.

That's a good question for Reynolds and Volokh...

The government deals with the subject of what schools teach by the process of accreditation. In Georgia, in order to receive a high school diploma, a student must attend an accredited high school. (This is why many children are home-schooled through eighth grade and then go to public high school). In order for a school to be accredited it must meet certain standards. These tend to be such things as a library with a certain number of books, teachers with certain types of degrees, and I believe, a curriculum which bears some resemblence to the state's core curriculum. I'd have to check into the specifics to be more certain.

In Pakistan, in order to be accredited, a school must include religious instruction in the Islamic faith.

A local chiropractic school in Georgia, for instance, recently lost its accreditation because the school was insufficiently interested in teaching their students when they need to advise a patient to contact an MD. (when they are having a heart attack for instance...)

It is my understanding that most voucher programs only allow the money to be spent at accredited schools.

It raises an interesting question, though. Suppose we decided to do the same thing here. Would it be a violation of the first amendment?\

Until the Civil Rights movement came many people believed in bigotry and racisim as a way of life. Now that is thankfuly gone. Nonetheless, when was the last time you heard someone say that racisim was protected by the first amendment? For better or worse (and I think better) that was clensed out of our school systems, first amendment or not.

Under what circumstances can the government ban certain teachings in schools, particularly religious schools? As an incitement to riot and murder? The Supreme Court has answered these questions in great detail.

And if we cut off the Saudi oil money, would such schools continue to thrive, or even survive here?
If we "cut off Saudi oil money" then we cut off our OWN supply of oil, and gas goes to $5.00 a gallon, poor and middle class people in the NorthEast freeze this winter, airlines go bust, and EVERYTHING that is transported by truck goes up in price. At that point we would be lucky if WE survived.

>> If we "cut off Saudi oil money" then we cut off our OWN supply of oil, and gas goes to $5.00 a gallon, poor and middle class people in the NorthEast freeze this winter, airlines go bust, and EVERYTHING that is transported by truck goes up in price. At that point we would be lucky if WE survived.

Nope. The easiest thing is for the US to substitute oil from the USSR for oil from the Saudis. If we wanted to stop the Saudis from having money, we could do that too. (The EU-niks would approve if we promised them oil.)

Somewhere in between is stopping the Saudis from spending money in certain ways. That's possible too, but I'm not sure why it's worth the trouble.

What I meant by "cutting off the Saudi oil money" was not simply not buying from them.

It was stated under the assumption that we would continue to buy oil from Arabia (that is, from whoever was running the place...)

Gasoline is fungible; if we stop buying from the Saudis, we buy more from other people. The demand from other states then shifts to the Saudis. We'd be able to say WE aren't underwriting them as much but it wouldn't affect things substantially. The only things that would are a) reducing our demand, b) opening up new sources of supply. In the long run, Russian and Central Asia will help with b).