The March 14 editorial “Religious education hypocrisy in Texas” correctly criticized Texas leaders for denying Muslim private schools access to the state’s voucher program based on their religious identity or their association with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. However, the editorial lent undue credence to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s smears of CAIR as an extremist group.
CAIR opposes all forms of violent extremism. CAIR condemned ISIS so often that it called for the assassination of our director. CAIR has opposed U.S. support of the Israeli government’s horrific oppression of the Palestinian people, and has condemned Hamas suicide bombings as far back as the 1990s and its attacks on civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. CAIR has also consistently denounced antisemitism and welcomed Jewish Americans in key roles, including as the director of a CAIR chapter.
The editorial questioned why any Muslim school would associate with CAIR. The answer is simple. Founded in 1994, CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. With 25 offices across the country, CAIR is frequently called upon to provide legal or educational assistance to American Muslims.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Washington
The writer is deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Contrary to its description in the March 12 news article “Several Islamic schools excluded from Texas vouchers,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations is not a “civil rights group.”
After the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the current leader of CAIR said: “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.” He later walked back his statement, but what leader of a civil rights group could smile upon torture, rape and kidnapping?
Anastasia Glikshtern, San Francisco
The Editorial Board was right to condemn officials for excluding Muslim schools from the state’s voucher program based on vague and politicized associations. But the deeper lesson is not simply that Muslim schools should be treated the same as Christian schools. It is that public funding of religious education invites exactly this kind of government entanglement in religion.
Once taxpayer money is made available for sectarian schooling, the state inevitably starts deciding which religious institutions are acceptable enough to fund and which are too suspect, too controversial or too politically inconvenient. Today, Muslim schools are being targeted. Tomorrow, it could be another faith community. That is not religious liberty. It is state favoritism dressed up as freedom.
The answer to discriminatory exclusions from voucher programs is not to widen the subsidy. It is to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund religious education at all.
Molly Gaines, Dayton, Ohio
The writer is the executive director of the Secular Education Association.
Ask not what the TSA can do for you
Regarding the March 17 online Travel article “Don’t get stuck in those viral airport lines. Here’s what to do instead.”:
Here in North Dakota, we are standing up for our Transportation Security Administration workers as they labor without pay.
How? We found out from the Bismarck TSA office that ethics guidelines allow us to purchase $20 gas cards. So we the people are delivering them to airport authorities as a token of our appreciation for the TSA workers who are showing up every day. Last week, $3,500 worth of gas cards were delivered to Hector International Airport outside Fargo, and $250 in gas cards was sent to Jamestown.
Word is getting out that locals are part of the solution to the problems in D.C. Join us as we protect the freedom to travel.
Crystal Dueker, Fargo, North Dakota
Russ Roberts’s March 17 Tuesday Opinion essay, “Is flying today worse than in the 1950s? Define ‘worse.,’” focused on comfort, price and access but failed to draw the comparison that matters most: Air transportation today is far safer than it was throughout the 20th century.
Aaron A. Goerlich, Bethesda
The biblical pillars of governance
The March 16 front-page article “Trump ally proposes new White House makeover” reported that the chair of the Commission of Fine Arts wants to get rid of the “graceful Ionic columns” that have defined the White House’s main entrance for nearly 200 years. The fine arts chair proposes to “replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian … have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.”
This raises the question: Is this what Trump meant in 2016 when he uttered, “Two Corinthians … that’s the whole ballgame”?
Donald Goldsmith, Berkeley, California
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