Amid the shrieks and din of presidential candidates like Donald Trump calling for a moratorium on the immigration of Muslim to our shores, ISIS’ ranting about apocalyptic warfare between Islam and non-Muslims in the West, and President Obama assuring the American that ISIS—or ISIL—will be defeated, those versed in the rhetoric of religion find something missing.
 
Dire warnings of apocalyptic judgment, a quick and foolish posture of “us” versus “them,” and the sage voice of measured reason are all within the quiver of political arrows long used by the religions. There is, however, nothing new here. But, as is so often the case, the main point has been overlooked in our public discourse.
 
The “terrorist attack,” if it was really that, in San Bernardino last week was committed by a husband and wife who had been “radicalized” for some time. Okay, but what does that mean? 
 
Much more important, the wife, Tashfeen Malik, had attended Bahauddin Zakariya University in the central Pakistani city of Multan. Malik studied pharmacy from 2007 to 2012. Though the school was relatively moderate it seems that she was radicalized during the more than twenty years that she lived in Saudi Arabia, attending school and living with her family. Her father adopted Saudi Arabia’s strict form of Islam (Salafism) after he moved his family to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan.
 
On Bahauddin Zakariya University’s website, most of the women pictured are wearing headscarves and none have chosen the more conservatively religious option preferred by Malik. She is reported to have worn a niqab to school, that is, the full veil that covers the face, leaving only the eyes exposed.
 
Behind the blood and carnage, the threats and counter-threats, the prophecy of an apocalypse, are—imagine this—schools. Schools are engines of culture transmission, revision, and, sadly, indoctrination or radicalization. Often, education forces a confrontation with the meaning and validity of student’s beliefs, a confrontation that can take many forms: rejection of previous beliefs, adaptation of beliefs to new ideas, and, the denial of the ideas taught.
 
After Malik completed her studies in Multan, she visited relatives where she smashed her laptop, saying she no longer needed it (see the Dec. 6, 2015 Wall Street Journal civil article in the “Resources” section below).
 
Authorities investigating the deadly shootings by Malik and her husband, Syed Farook, initially believed that Malik might have radicalized the American-born Farook and been the driving force behind their attack on Farook’s work colleagues. More recent findings indicate that Farook embraced extremist views before he met Malik.
 
What the USA does not seem to understand, since local, state, and federal legislators are working daily to defund them, is that schools are the cutting edge of both terrorism and the possibility of democracy. Civilization is carried on the backs of our teachers and our schools.

As Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his Adventures in Ideas, “civilization is the victory of persuasion over force.”  Education at its best is the making of civilization.
 
Ignorant citizens destroy democracy and feed terrorism. Terrorism requires the shaping of minds and the indoctrination of young people into specific ideologies. What must be said—and said loudly—is that the failure of the American educational system from Kindergarten through College is due in no small measure to the lack of adequate funding, the politicization of basic standards of knowledge, and the distain of education throughout our culture. This failure of our educational system is one root cause of our inability to address the threat at our doorstep and in our own country.
 
Whatever else human beings are, we are learning beings, and if we deny a robust education to people, they will—they do—find it elsewhere.
 
In a democratic republic like ours education is also a matter of national defense. Democracy requires an informed citizenry committed to the idea that argument, not violence, is the proper means for addressing our differences and seeking the common good. This failure in educational policy is why we are losing as a democracy and why we are stymied by terrorism.
 
Our current political leaders either do not understand this point or they imagine that compliant citizens make good fodder on the battlefield. Meanwhile, and this is the point, terrorist organizations work to establish schools and other centers of “education” all around the world.  

In the history of the world, guns have won few wars when people are lacking beliefs and ideals worth fighting to defend. Present day American society gives “students” too little worth defending.
 
Democracy is the highest and most radical ideal of human equality and freedom ever to appear in history. The democratic ideal is now squandered in the belief that the choice to flaunt money on Black Friday or to stockpile guns of mass destruction somehow gives meaning to our common life. 
 
To be honest, in the media age, at issue is the clash of ideas. Wake up America. Let the politicians rant and rave. Civilization is won or lost in the daily work of the teachers of the humanities and the social and natural sciences. These are—let’s be very clear—the arts of democracy.
 
Defund education, and you, in essence, join ISIS.

Resources:

Haberman, Maggie. “Donald Trump’s Plan to Bar Muslims Meets Withering Fire.” New York Times, December 8, 2015, Politics.
 
Martin, Jonathan. “At Donald Trump Rally, some See Bias Where Others See Strength.” New York Times, December 8, 2015, Politics.
 
Ball, Molly. “‘I’m Against the Muslims’: Trump’s Supporters and the Republican Divide.” The Atlantic, December 8, 2015, 2016 Election.
 
Steinhauer, Jennifer and Michael D. Shear. “Obama’s Plans to Stop ISIS Leave Many Democrats Wanting More.” New York Times, December 8, 2015, Politics.
 
Seib, Gerald F. “Can Washington Unite on Fighting Islamic State?” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2015, Politics | Capital Journal.
 
Barrett, Devlin, Saeed Shah, and Tamara Audi. “San Bernardino Wife Believed to Be Driving Force to Radicalism.” Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2015, U.S.
 
“Investigators looking at whether Tashfeen Malik radicalized husband.” Al Jazeera, December 6, 2015, U.S.

Schmidt, Michael S. and Salman Masood. “San Bernardino Couple Spoke of Attacks in 2013, F.B.I. Says.” New York Times, December 9, 2015, U.S.
 
Botelho, Greg, Catherine E. Shoichet and Pamela Brown. “San Bernardino shooting investigation: Past plot and recent loan are latest clues.” CNN.com, December 9, 2015, U.S.

Image: Khadija Zadeh, left, and Noora Siddiqui stand next to signs while listening to a speech during an interfaith memorial service at the Islamic Community Center of Redlands, Sunday, Dec. 6, 2015, in Loma Linda, Calif. The memorial service was held to honor the victims of Wednesday's shooting rampage that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. Credit: Jae C. Hong / AP Photo.
 

Author, William Schweiker, (Ph.D. UChicago) is Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the Director of The Enhancing Life Project, supported by the John Templeton Foundation, which explores the basic but widely unexamined aspiration of human beings to enhance their lives and which seeks to increase knowledge in order to assist them. He is the 2015-2016 President of the Society of Christian Ethics. Books by Schweiker include: Religion and the Human Future: An Essay in Theological Humanism (2008, with David E. Klemm), and Dust That Breathes: Christian Faith and the New Humanisms (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

To subscribe: Sign up here. You will receive Sightings by email every Monday and Thursday. For updates about new issues of Sightings, follow us on Facebook or @DivSightings.

To comment: Email the Managing Editor, Myriam Renaud, at DivSightings@gmail.com. To request that your comment appear with this article, provide your full name in the body of your email and indicate in the subject line: POST COMMENT TO [title of Sightings piece]. For Sightings' comment policy, visit: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings-policies.