This is an interesting video from left of center ABC News. I had not heard of Mr. Mortenson until I saw this video, and then checked out his web site, as well as the Central Asia Institute.
Video Report: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7194346 Written Report: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/PersonOfWeek/story?id=7188954&page=1 I encourage all members to check out Mortenson's web site, located here: http://www.threecupsoftea.com/how-to-help/ As well as the Central Asia Institute, where one can donate to the cause of trying to make a change in that region of the world. Mortenson has undergone a personal kidnapping, fatwas issued against him, and numerous death threats against he and his family, because of his dedication to building schools and of teaching young girls, which I strongly support. Donations can be made here, I just did: https://www.ikat.org/ https://www.ikat.org/make-a-donation/ ================== I also encourage everyone to take a look at what the school system is like in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I posted this previously to the group on August 8, 2008: http://groups.google.com/group/Coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/browse_thread/thread/b6d617142c9f020c/705ffc4f5b1d0f89?lnk=gst&q=Inside+Jihad+U#705ffc4f5b1d0f89 If we do not support people like Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute, this is what we can look forward to: Published in the New York Times Magazine, August 7, 2008 Originally published: By JEFFREY GOLDBERG Published: June 25, 2000 *Inside Jihad U.; The Education of a Holy Warrior* http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E0DA1531F936A15755C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&&scp=15&sq=2000%20nyt%20magazine&20-%20jeffrey%20goldberg&st=cst# About two hours east of the Khyber Pass, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, alongside the Grand Trunk Road, sits a school called the Haqqania madrasa. A madrasa is a Muslim religious seminary, and Haqqania is one of the bigger madrasas in Pakistan: its mosques and classrooms and dormitories are spread over eight weed-covered acres, and the school currently enrolls more than 2,800 students. Tuition, room and board are free; the students are, in the main, drawn from the dire poor, and the madrasa raises its funds from wealthy Pakistanis, as well as from devout, and politically minded, Muslims in the countries of the Persian Gulf. The students range in age from 8 and 9 to 30, sometimes to 35. The youngest boys spend much of their days seated cross-legged on the floors of airless classrooms, memorizing the Koran. This is a process that takes between six months and three years, and it is made even more difficult than it sounds by the fact that the Koran they study is in the original Arabic. These boys tend to know only Pashto, the language of the Pathan ethnic group that dominates this region of Pakistan, as well as much of nearby Afghanistan. In a typical class, the teachers sit on the floor with the boys, reading to them in Arabic, and the boys repeat what the teachers say. This can go on between four and eight hours each day. What Westerners would think of as high-school-age and college-age students are enrolled in an eight-year course of study that focuses on interpretation of the Koran and of the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. These students also study Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic history. The oldest of those attending Haqqania -- the postgraduates, if you will -- are enrolled in the ''mufti course.'' A mufti, in Islam, is a cleric who is allowed to issue fatwas, or religious rulings, on matters ranging from family law to the rules governing the waging of jihad, or ''holy war.'' (One room in the school's administration building houses upward of 100,000 fatwas issued by the madrasa over the years.) There are about 600 students in the mufti course. Very few of the students at the Haqqania madrasa study anything but Islamic subjects. There are no world history courses, or math courses, or computer rooms or science labs at the madrasa. The Haqqania madrasa is, in fact, a jihad factory. This does not make it unique in Pakistan. There are one million students studying in the country's 10,000 or so madrasas, and militant Islam is at the core of most of these schools. Many madrasas are village affairs, with student bodies of 25 or 50. Some of the madrasas are sponsored by Pakistan's religious parties, and some are affiliated with the mujahedeen groups waging jihad against India in the disputed province of Kashmir. Haqqania is notable not only because of its size, but also because it has graduated more leaders of the Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling faction, than any other school in the world, including any school in Afghanistan. The Taliban is today known the world over for its harsh interpretation of Islamic law, its cruelty to women and its kindness to terrorists -- the most notable one being Osama bin Laden, the 42-year-old Saudi exile who the American government believes was behind the bombings two years ago of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Taliban also seems to harbor a deep belief in the notion of a never-ending jihad, which makes the Haqqania madrasa a focus of intense interest in such capitals as Washington and Moscow and New Delhi and Jerusalem, where the experts are trying to understand just what it is the Taliban and its sympathizers want. At any given time, there are several hundred Afghan students at the madrasa, along with dozens from such former Soviet republics as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and a handful from Chechnya too. To those who see wars like the one in Chechnya as expressions not only of nationalist aspirations but of pan-Islamic ones as well -- to those who see a new Islamic revolution on the horizon, a Sunni revolution a generation after the Shia revolution that shook the world -- the foreign presence at Haqqania is not comforting. The majority of Haqqania students come from Pakistan itself, a fact that also worries officials in Washington and Moscow and New Delhi and Jerusalem. Pakistan's Islamists are becoming more and more radicalized -- Talibanized,'' some call it -- thanks in part to madrasas like Haqqania, and Pakistan is showing early signs of coming apart at the seams. Pakistan also happens to be in possession of nuclear weapons. Many Muslim radicals say they believe these weapons should become part of the arsenal of jihad. It turns out that many of the Haqqania students, under careful tutelage, now believe it, too. It is for all these reasons that on a hazy morning in March, I presented myself at the office of the chancellor of the madrasa, a mullah named Samiul Haq, in order to enroll myself in his school. My goal was simple: I wanted to see from the inside just what this jihad factory was producing. Maulana Haq -- maulana means ''our master'' -- is a well-known Islamist with pronounced anti-American views. He is a Deobandist, a follower of an Islamic movement born in India in the days of the British Raj; it was a movement devoted to anticolonialism, and its outlook is not dissimilar to that of Wahhabism, the austere, antimodernist Saudi variant of Islamic fundamentalism embraced by Osama bin Laden. The chancellor is a friend and supporter of bin Laden, and he has granted an honorary degree -- the first and only in his school's history -- to Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Samiul Haq is also a politician, a former senator who today leads a faction of the Jamiat-Ulema-Islami, the J.U.I., a radical Islamic party seeking to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, in Pakistan. The maulana, it is said, would like to see Pakistan become more like the Afghanistan of his Taliban disciples. Because of his views -- and because he is said to have endorsed a 1998 fatwa issued by bin Laden that called on Muslims to kill Americans wherever they may be found -- I was not sure how well we would get along. I was made to wait outside his office for 20 minutes. Students would pass by, shooting me looks ranging from the quizzical to the hostile. Eventually, I was invited in by two of the maulana's sons, Hamed, who is 31, and Rashid, who is 27 and in charge of designing the madrasa's Web page. We were joined by several of the madrasa's teachers and students, and we made small talk while we waited. One student, surprisingly, mentioned that my last name is the same as that of a star of World Championship Wrestling. The maulana came into the room in a rush, and sat down right beside me. He is a man of 65. He was barefoot, and his toenails looked as if they were covered with rust. He had a long beard dyed a kind of fluorescent brown, and a loosely wrapped turban sat on his head. He has two wives and eight children, he told me, and he seemed, right from the start, a very happy man. He dispensed with small talk almost immediately, in order to let me know that I should feel at home. ''The problem,'' he told me, through an interpreter, ''is not between us Muslims and Christians.'' I knew where this was going, but stayed silent. ''The only enemy Islam and Christianity have is the Jews,'' he said. ''It was the Jews who crucified Christ, you know. The Jews are using America to fight Islam. Clinton is a good man, but he's surrounded by Jews. Madeleine Albright's father was the founder of Zionism.'' ''I'm Jewish,'' I told him. There was a moment's pause. ''Well, you are most welcome here,'' he said. And so I was. The maulana made me an offer: I could spend as much time as I wanted at the madrasa, go wherever I wanted, talk to anybody I chose, even study the Koran with him. He had a point he wanted to make, of course: his madrasa might be Taliban U., but it was not a training camp for terrorists. Strictly speaking, Haq was right: I never saw a weapon at the Haqqania madrasa. The closest guns could be found across the Grand Trunk Road, at the Khyber Pass Armaments Company, a gun store that sells shotguns for $40 and AK-47's for $70. And I never heard a lecture about bomb making or marksmanship. Continued: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E0DA1531F936A15755C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2 ** On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:01 PM, James <[email protected]> wrote: > Targeted by the Taliban, the 'Three Cups of Tea' Author Never Gave Up on > His Peacebuilding EffortsVideo Report: > http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7194346 > > Written Report: > http://abcnews.go.com/WN/PersonOfWeek/story?id=7188954&page=1 > > His Book: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One > School at a Time (Paperback) > > http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143038257?tag=imaginaworldo-20&camp=15041&creative=373501&link_code=as3 > > > > > > > How Peace Is Won!! The Hearts and Minds Understand, That's Universal!!! > > > > > > > 'Hearts and Minds', "The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and > minds of the people who actually live there." -- President Lyndon Johnson > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
