Muslim schools in the US: good, bad, or indifferent?

This story on msnbc caught my attention. I confess, I hadn't given any thought to the idea of Islamic schools in the U.S., but it makes sense that they exist.

I am leery of any school built around a religion, Muslim, Catholic, or otherwise. I don’t think approaching education from one particular religious world view jibes with true academic rigor. That's my own bias toward religious schools, just to be up front about it.

Now, on to the point. I'm dismayed by the poll results at the end of this story. Over 60% of respondents expressed concern about the rise of Islamic schools in the US because it could encourage Muslim separatism.

I have to wonder: did anyone ever express that concern about Catholic schools and Catholic separatism? I know there was concern about JFK as a presidential candidate, that he would defer to the Pope. But certainly now, there is no such objection to Catholic schools that I've heard. The likeliest response is, "Well, Catholics don't blow people up." That argument for why Catholic schools don't raise the same concerns as Muslim schools might not go very far in the UK, especially Northern Ireland.

I don't think it's all that reasonable to fear that Muslim schools in the US could lead to a rise in Muslim separatism. We aren't talking about the kind of madrassas we've heard about in Afghanistan. But if non-Muslim US citizens react to Muslim schools with hostility and fear, well that just might create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The surest way to make a group feel like they're not wanted and thus separate themselves from the whole is, well, to tell them they're not wanted.