On faith schools, blowing yourself up and dumb journalists

Wonderful thing faith schools - all reactionary journalists who've had the education system described to them agree about this. Great ethos, discipline, sense of belonging, uniforms, values, more ethos, then some press-ups, back into uniform. Splendid.

Via Tom Freeman I found this offering from the perfectly ghastly Christina Odone where she outlines another supposed benefit of faith schools: they, apparently, reduce the tendency to want to blow yourself up. Excellent. The evidence?

""Seeing their religion treated with respect," explains Dr Muhammed Mukadam, head of Madani High, a faith school in Leicester, "gives them a sense of respect for all religions. The self-esteem they gain here makes them feel confident in the wider community. And it is not the confident, but the insecure, who grows aggressive." Evidence bears this out: all but one of the 77 people convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a secular state school (the one was home-schooled) [emphasis added]."

Honestly! Could someone tell Ms Odone that not only does correlation not show causation - she hasn't even identified an example of the former? Slightly embarrassing since she herself provides the salient details: there are 1.8 million Muslims in Britain but only 7 state-funded Muslim schools. Therefore, not only are we not obliged to accept Ms Odone's evidence-free arguments, no explanation as to why the former pupils of said schools aren't represented amongst the 77 people convicted of terrorism is necessary at all.

Update: Here's someone who's put rather more effort into the whole fisking thang.