Bestsellers, new weapons of religious wars, Spiritual Meditations, NewAgeIslam.com

Spiritual Meditations

Bestsellers, new weapons of religious wars

By Nicholas D. Kristof

November 27th, 2009

Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Mr Richard Dawkins, Mr Christopher Hitchens and Mr Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts.

Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books. And in literary circles, these battles have usually been fought at the extremes.

Fundamentalists fired volleys of Left Behind novels, in which Jesus returns to earth to battle the Anti-Christ (whose day job was secretary-general of the United Nations). Meanwhile, devout atheists built mocking websites like www.whydoesGodhateamputees.com. The site notes that though believers periodically credit prayer with curing cancer, God never seems to regrow lost limbs. It demands an end to divine discrimination against amputees.

This year is different, with a crop of books that are less combative and more thoughtful. One of these is The Evolution of God, by Mr Robert Wright, who explores how religions have changed — improved. He notes that God, as perceived by humans, has mellowed from the capricious warlord sometimes depicted in the Old Testament who periodically orders genocides.

http://newageislam.com/bestsellers,-new-weapons-of-religious-wars/spiritual-meditations/d/2150

Afghanistan: A case for more schools, not troops, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Afghanistan: A case for more schools, not troops

By Nicholas D. Kristof

October 30th, 2009

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naive to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organisation CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons). In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilising societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.

http://newageislam.com/afghanistan--a-case-for-more-schools,-not-troops/war-on-terror/d/2093

Pakistan’s Assiya Rafiq: Not a Victim, but a Hero, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

Pakistan’s Assiya Rafiq: Not a Victim, but a Hero

By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times

Posted July 26, 2009

MEERWALA, Pakistan: After being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a group of thugs and enduring a year of rapes and beatings, Assiya Rafiq was delivered to the police and thought her problems were over. Then, she said, four police officers took turns raping her.

The next step for Assiya was obvious: She should commit suicide. That’s the customary escape in rural Pakistan for a raped woman, as the only way to cleanse the disgrace to her entire family.

Instead, Assiya summoned the unimaginable courage to go public and fight back. She is seeking to prosecute both her kidnappers and the police, despite threats against her and her younger sisters. This is a kid who left me awed and biting my lip; this isn’t a tale of victimization but of valor, empowerment and uncommon heroism.

“I decided to prosecute because I don’t want the same thing to happen to anybody else,” she said firmly.

Assiya’s case offers a window into the quotidian corruption and injustice endured by impoverished Pakistanis — leading some to turn to militant Islam.

“When I treat a rape victim, I always advise her not to go to the police,” said Dr. Shershah Syed, the president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Pakistan. “Because if she does, the police might just rape her again.”

Yet Assiya is also a sign that change is coming. She says she was inspired by Mukhtar Mai, a young woman from this remote village of Meerwala who was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council. Mukhtar prosecuted her attackers and used the compensation money to start a school.

http://newageislam.com/pakistans-assiya-rafiq--not-a-victim,-but-a-hero/islam,-women-and-feminism/d/1586

America, Give Pakistanis Books, not Guns, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

America, Give Pakistanis Books, not Guns

Terror Creeps Into the Heartland

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times

It was the home of a Muslim religious teacher, but he was stockpiling more than copies of the Koran. His house blew up this month in a thunderous explosion that levelled much of his village and could be heard six miles away. Police reported that he was storing explosives, rockets, grenades and suicide vests.

But perhaps what was most dispiriting was that this arsenal, apparently intended for terror attacks, was not in the tribal areas in the northwest of Pakistan where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have long conducted operations. Rather this was in the southern part of Punjab, the Pakistani heartland.

The explosion was a reminder of what some call the “creeping Talibanization,” even of parts of Pakistan far from the formal fighting. Militants seem to be putting the entire country in play, and that’s one reason Pakistan should be President Obama’s top foreign policy challenge.

Think of it this way: It would be terrible if Afghanistan or Iraq collapsed, but it would be unthinkably catastrophic if Pakistan — with perhaps 80 to 100 nuclear weapons — were to fall into chaos.

Even here in Karachi, the pragmatic commercial hub of the country, extremists have taken over some neighbourhoods. A Pakistani police document marked “top secret,” given to me by a Pakistani concerned by the spreading tentacles of jihadis, states that Taliban agents sometimes set up armed checkpoints in one such neighbourhood here.

http://newageislam.com/america,-give-pakistanis-books,-not-guns/war-on-terror/d/1567

In Islam, Scholars are building an intellectual fire, Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam

In Islam, Scholars are building an intellectual fire

Islam, Virgins and Grapes

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

April 22, 2009

In Afghanistan, 300 brave women marched to demand a measure of equal rights, defying a furious mob of about 1,000 people who spat, threw stones and called the women “whores.” The marchers asserted that a woman should not need her husband’s consent to go to school or work outside the home.

In Pakistan, the Taliban flogged a teenage girl in front of a crowd, as two men held her face down in the dirt. A video shows the girl, whose “crime” may have been to go out of her house alone, crying piteously that she will never break the rules again.

Muslim fundamentalists damage Islam far more than any number of Danish cartoonists ever could, for it’s inevitably the extremists who capture the world’s attention. But there is the beginning of an intellectual reform movement in the Islamic world, and one window into this awakening was an international conference this week at the University of Notre Dame on the latest scholarship about the Koran.

“We’re experiencing right now in Koranic studies a rise of interest analogous to the rise of critical Bible studies in the 19th century,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, a Notre Dame professor and organizer of the conference.

http://newageislam.com/in-islam,-scholars-are-building-an-intellectual-fire--/ijtihad,-rethinking-islam/d/1351

In Iran, They Want Fun, Fun, Fun, Islamic Society, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Society

In Iran, They Want Fun, Fun, Fun

By Nicholas D. Kristof

June 20, 2012

One of the most pernicious misunderstandings in the West about Iranians is that they are dour religious fanatics.

About half of Iranians are under the age of 25, and Iran has done a solid job of raising their education levels. I was struck on my 1,700-mile road trip across Iran by how many of them share American values, seeking fun rather than fanaticism. They seem less interested in the mosques than in amusement parks (which are ubiquitous in Iran).

“Young people don’t really go to the mosques,” said a 23-year-old man in eastern Iran, cheerfully exaggerating. “We want more ways to have fun.” He said he drinks — alcohol is illegal but everywhere — and, until recently, used drugs. Iranian officials have suggested that perhaps 10 percent of the population uses illegal drugs, traditionally opium and heroin but increasingly methamphetamines as well.

This man had joined the 2009 democracy protests, but then, he said, he was detained and beaten for several days, losing a tooth in the process. That soured him on political activism, and, like many others, he now just wants to go abroad.

In the northwest, that sense of hopelessness has led some young Iranians of ethnic Turkish origin to favour seceding and joining Azerbaijan. In soccer games in Tabriz, fans sometimes outrage the authorities by roaring secessionist slogans.

You wouldn’t think a New Yorker could be made to blush in Tehran, but I was taken aback by the hook-up scene of one-night stands: young men with flashy cars troll for women chat them up and then drive off with them. There is also prostitution, and Tehran’s former police chief was arrested in 2008 in a brothel together with six prostitutes.

http://newageislam.com/islamic-society/nicholas-d.-kristof/in-iran,-they-want-fun,-fun,-fun/d/7685