Afghanistan: More Women Seeking Treatment for Drug Addiction

Drug treatment for women in Afghanistan has the additional challenge of having to be home or community-based. Most women seeking treatment are not able to stay in a residential treatment center (assuming there’s one available) due to cultural mores and family dynamics.

Offering hope to Afghan addicts

Bilal Sarwary (BBC News)

Bratz Nation: Hyper-Sexualized Clothing Marketed to Tweens and Teens

Lolita’s Closet
Unbearably trampy back-to-school clothes.

Emily Yoffe (Slate)

My 11-year-old daughter and I just did her back-to-school shopping. Shopping for a ‘tween is a little like being a presidential candidate—you try to find some middle ground in a world of clamorous extremes. I want her clothes to reflect the fact that she’s still a girl, but I’m willing to let her hint at the young woman she is about to become. What I don’t want her to bring home from the mall are clothes—and there are plenty of them—that inspire this sort of paroxysm: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

Pakistan: In Defense of Learned Muslim Women

Taking girls out of school

Anwar Syed (Dawn)

A REPORT in this newspaper last month tells us that a cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, has issued an edict (fatwa), holding that education of girls is un-Islamic, and urging people in the villages of Swat to withdraw their daughters from public schools. Several thousand parents have acted on his advice, and young girls are now playing on the street instead of attending their classes.

Apparently, there is nothing to stop a man from appropriating the prefix, “maulana,” regardless of his educational attainments.

Fazlullah is evidently ignorant of Islamic history and the scholarly achievements of Muslim women. It may not be his fault that he is essentially uneducated. But it is surely a fault on the part of Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and their colleagues in the MMA not to go out and remind this man of the Prophet’s (PBUH) saying that the acquisition of knowledge is required of all Muslims, men and women…

Saudi Arabia: I want to go home as I don’t want to die here

The poor treatment meted out to foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, especially those from “Third World” countries, is well-publicized.

Well, here is another article about the crummy treatment of a Filipino woman who came to work in Saudia Arabia as a maid in the late eighties, and ended up living as a shepherdess in a remote area while her employer stayed in the city of Jeddah withholding both her salary and her passport. Although she has given up trying to obtain the back wages owed to her, she still cannot leave the country without permission of a court.

Stranded Filipino Shepherdess Gives Up SR63,000, Wants to Go Home

Rasheed Abou-Alsamh (Arab News)

It may sound incredible, but a Filipino woman who was hired by a Saudi family in 1987 as a domestic helper is now stranded at the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah after working as a shepherdess for 18 years in Al-Baha and weathering unpaid salaries, ice storms and being arrested several times by the police.

“I want to go home as I don’t want to die here,” said Leonora Somera, aged 65, in an interview with Arab News yesterday. “My employer still owes me SR63,000 in back wages, but since it seems he cannot afford to pay me that amount, I’m ready to just go home.”

USA: High Tech Lynching of Debbie Almontaser

Thanks to Steve Quester the link to Jewish Week’s commentary on Debbie Almontaser’s forced exit as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York City.

He also notes Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media has information on what can be done to support the

Jewish Shootout Over Arab School
Fall of Jewish-supported principal exposes bitter fault line on approach to Muslims.

Larry Cohler-Esses (Jewish Week)

It was, exulted Middle East Forum executive director Daniel Pipes, a “clarion call” that had gotten “national attention.”

No, protested Rabbi Michael Paley: “This was a high-tech lynching.”

When Debbie Almontaser resigned under duress last week as principal of a new middle school in Brooklyn emphasizing Arabic language and culture, her departure was, among many things, a victory for a faction of the Jewish community that had waged a months-long battle against the school, its purpose and Almontaser herself…

Florida: Hebrew Charter School Facing Challenges

This story out of Florida bears some interesting parallels – and differences – with the recent controversy over the Arab language-centered Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York City. The Khalil Gibran International Academy, unlike the Ben Gamla in Florida, is not a charter school. The New York City Board of Education has direct control over the Khalil Gibran school, whereas the Ben Gamla Charter School has much more control over its curriculum and teaching materials. And that, supposedly, is the problem.

The school is being challenged because of allegations that Hebrew cannot be separated from religion. Some examples from text books are given in the article, but the issue seems to be getting blown out of proportion. Some proponents of the school accuse rival private Hebrew religious day schools of trying to block the Ben Gamla Charter School because it is attracting students away from their schools and back into the public school system. And now Jews in other parts of the state have become interested in founding similar charter schools.

In other words, this may have more to do with money than with separation of church and state or with academics.

Hebrew Charter School Spurs Dispute in Florida

Abby Goodnough (NY Times)

The new public school at 2620 Hollywood Boulevard stands out despite its plain gray facade. Called the Ben Gamla Charter School, it is run by an Orthodox rabbi, serves kosher lunches and concentrates on teaching Hebrew.

About 400 students started classes at Ben Gamla this week amid caustic debate over whether a public school can teach Hebrew without touching Judaism and the unconstitutional side of the church-state divide. The conflict intensified Wednesday, when the Broward County School Board ordered Ben Gamla to suspend Hebrew lessons because its curriculum — the third proposed by the school — referred to a Web site that mentioned religion.

Opponents say that it is impossible to teach Hebrew — and aspects of Jewish culture — outside a religious context, and that Ben Gamla, billed as the nation’s first Hebrew-English charter school, violates one of its paramount legal and political boundaries…

Iraq: Sectarian Rifts Tear Families Apart

Iraq’s cultural and societal collapse continues, with mixed Sunni-Shia couples divorcing out of fear for their lives.

For Baghdad couples, love often lost amid sectarian struggle

Leila Fadel and Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers)

Najlaa Abdul Razaq , 32, a Sunni Muslim, remembers the happy mornings when she awoke early to hear her daughters giggling and to make sweet tea and breakfast for her Shiite taxi-driver husband.
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Wissam Abdul Kadhim , 31, a Shiite, remembers when she and her Sunni husband could visit her parents without anyone asking what her religious sect was.

All that is gone now…

USA Today: Interview with Ingrid Mattson, President ISNA

An interview with Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

The Face of Islam in America

Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Notes Mattson:

Topics at this year’s [ISNA] conference include sessions on faith and social justice and community service, and one called “U.S. Sponsored Torture: A Concern for Muslims and All People of Faith.”

“If religion is not about expanding the borders of your empathy, you might as well write it off,” she says. “Religion is all about extending mercy and caring. If not, it’s just tribalism: Muhammad himself said religion should be the opposite.”

Mattson says she takes on the controversies, too, confronting in her own way the atheists, ideologues and “Islama-phobes” who say religion is outmoded or Islam is anti-Zionist or, simply, irrationally, fear any Muslims among them.

“These days, if you say anything nice to or about Muslims, it’s seen as being soft on terrorism, as if all Muslims were terrorists.

“Anti-Muslim sentiments are used as a way to score points” in politics, she says…

Nigeria: 18 Transvestites Go On Trial

The 18 were initially to be tried for sodomy, which would have resulted in more serious charges.

Court tries 18 for cross-dressing

Estelle Shirbon (Reuters)

Eighteen Nigerian men accused of dressing up as women during a party at a hotel went on trial Tuesday before an Islamic sharia court in the northern state of Bauchi.

Dozens of residents shouted abuse and hurled stones at the men as they were escorted into an armored prison vehicle after the hearing, prompting police to fire tear-gas at the crowd.

The men, mostly in their 20s, were arrested in a Bauchi hotel on August 4. Police say they were dressed as women, which is illegal under the state’s sharia penal code.

The offence is punishable by up to a year in prison and 20 lashes by cane…

UK: Civics Programs Rolled out to Mosques

British Mosques Teach Civics to Combat Extremism

Jane Perlez (NY Times)

At the Jamia Mosque on Victor Street in this racially and religiously tense town, Idris Watts, a teacher and convert to Islam, tackled a seemingly mundane subject with a dozen teenage boys: Why it is better to have a job than to be unemployed.

“The prophet said you should learn a trade,” Mr. Watts told the students arrayed in a semicircle before him. “What do you think he means by that?”

“If you get a trade, it’s good, because then you can pass it on,” said Safraan Mahmood, 15.

“You feel better when you’re standing on your own feet,” offered Ossama Hussain, 14.

The back and forth represented something new in Britain’s mosques: a government-financed effort to teach basic citizenship issues, in a special curriculum intended to reach students who might be vulnerable to Islamic extremism…

UAE: Father of 78 Children Wants to Make it an Even 100 by 2015

UAE father of 78 eyes new brides for century target

(Reuters)

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time…

Reuters duly notes that:

Islam allows men to marry up to four women at a time, though most marry only one.

What they do not mention is that is that Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman is abusing the institution of marriage, using women as objects, depriving his children of their mothers (who he routinely divorces in pursuit of his “record”) and depriving his children of a father too. (What man can be an adequate father to 78 children?)

Not surprisingly, he subsists on government aid.

I shudder to think what sort of woman would be so desperate or misinformed as to marry this character.

Science, Religion and Censorship

A way forward for Islamic science

(Physics World)

Muslim countries once led the world in scientific research. Iranian physicist Reza Mansouri tells Edwin Cartlidge why they now lag so far behind and what they can do about it…

In a related matter, WordPress.com has been blocked in Turkey over accusations that some blogs hosted by WordPress defame the character of Harun Yahya (recently in the news for mass mailing unsolicited copies of his glossy book The Atlas of Creation to American and European libraries and universities.

Why We’re Blocked in Turkey: Adnan Oktar

(Matt Mullenweg)

There’s been quite a discussion going on in my personal blog about the fact that all of WordPress.com has been blocked by Turkey.

Lots of people, including us, are confused and indignant about this wholesale censorship. Last night we received a letter from the person claiming to be responsible for the block, which in the interest of the community I’m going to publish in its entirety here: [letter follows...]

Ali Eteraz notes in Shooting the Messenger that the legal case launched in Turkey on behalf of Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya) is actually about the clash between two odd, competing cult leaders — and about government censorship:

His [Harun Yahya's] books cover topics including refutations of atheism and Darwinism, romanticism as a weapon of Satan, anti-evolution pseudo-science, affirmation of miracles, and attacks on Freemasonry, Zionists, Buddhists, and terrorism (Darwin’s fault). In 1996, Harun Yahya published a book called Holocaust Lies (also called Holocaust Deception), which claimed that “what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the German.” Oddly, a few years later, he pinned anti-semitism on “neo-paganism” and “Darwinism” while putting himself forward as a denouncer of anti-semitism. Additionally, Yahya denies writing Holocaust Lies, but that is hard to believe…

… Apparently WordPress has been hosting many blogs Harun Yayha attributes to his political enemy, Edsip Yuksel – whom the letter from Yahya’s attorneys to WordPress describes as the head of a “crime organization.” Interestingly, Edsip Yuksel is Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar’s former mentor (he relates the history of their tumultuous relationship here). Yuksel is another odd fellow, connected with 19.org, which on the basis of a mathematical Biblical Code, and a Quranic code connected with the number 19, seeks a “Copernican revolution” in religion. He recently released a “reformist” translation of the Quran, which a prominent American publisher had picked up initially, but dropped once its eccentricities were discovered…

India: Why pay 50,000 rupees to your new in-laws when you can pay 500 rupees for an abortion?

As more Indians prosper, the use of pre-natal ultra-sounds to identify unwanted baby girls for abortion becomes more financially accessible (although still illegal). For many in India, the birth of a female child is not a source of joy or a reason for celebration.

Girls at risk amid India’s prosperity

Nick Bryant (BBC News)

…[T]here is one problem that prosperity is actually aggravating.

I saw this for myself in a hospital in Punjab, where we filmed a young mother giving birth, with the help of a surgeon’s scalpel, to her second daughter.

The Caesarean section was a complete success, and the safe arrival of such a beautiful ball of life should have been greeted with uncomplicated delight.

But the mother had failed once again to provide her husband with a son and heir, so it was a singularly joyless occasion…

Egypt: Danger for Darfur Refugees Seeking to Cross into Israel

Flight From Darfur Ends Violently in Egypt
Young Mother Killed by Border Guards While Waiting to Cross to Sanctuary in Israel

Ellen Knickmeyer (Washington Post)

For Hagga Abbas Haroun, a 28-year-old refugee from Sudan’s Darfur region, four years of struggle to bring herself and her family to safety ended violently last month on Egypt’s border with Israel.

In her last moments, sketched by fellow refugees, their lawyers, Bedouin desert guides and Egyptian border officials, Haroun hugged the cold rocks and sand of the desert floor at night for cover, her 2-year-old daughter at her side. She was waiting, along with other families fleeing Darfur and other troubled areas of Sudan, to sprint across the border into Israel…

Pakistan: Brewery to Prepares to Sell Their 20-Year Old Single Malt Whiskey

Business seems to be brisk at the Murree Brewery, famous mostly for their beer. Operating in a country that is 97% Muslim does does not seem to be a hindrance.

Distilling the Muslim World’s First 20-Year-Old Whisky

Padma Rao (International Spiegel)

An almost 150-year-old brewery in Pakistan is preparing to bring the Muslim world’s first 20-year-old single malt whisky to the market. Murree Brewery, however, can only sell to non-Muslims, who comprise 3 percent of Pakistan’s population…