The Moderate Observer

By Dan WilliamsSun Feb 12, 3:03 PM ET

Once they sent suicide bombers to Israel; now they bring discipline and a sense of realpolitik

Aluf Benn
Thursday February 9, 2006
The Guardian

A year ago I joined a planeload of Israeli journalists flying to the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. We accompanied Ariel Sharon to a summit with Mahmoud Abbas, the recently elected president of the Palestinian Authority. They met to celebrate a new era in Palestinian-Israeli relations after the demise of Yasser Arafat.

Looking back, it appears that, while reporting scrupulously on exchanges between Sharon and Abbas, I missed the broader picture. Abbas was a figurehead, carrying messages between Israel's authorities and the Palestinian power-brokers, the leaders of Hamas. Abbas came to the summit only after Hamas agreed to hold fire in return for integration into the political process.

Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement - has born the torch of Palestinian armed struggle against Israel since the late 80s. Its suicide bombers murdered hundreds of Israelis, leading the second intifada. Two years ago Israel hit back, killing Hamas's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Israelis expected deadly retaliation, but it never came. Instead, Hamas decided to regroup and turn to politics. Sharon had already pledged to withdraw from Gaza. This was a major victory for Hamas, who did not want to spoil it.

Since then, both Israel and Hamas have abided by the ceasefire, as fighting went on between Israel and smaller Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad. The relative calm and the evacuation of Gaza facilitated Israel's economic boom.

Hamas also used the ceasefire to consolidate power. When it beat Fatah in last month's legislative elections, Israel was taken by surprise. In response, one camp argues Hamas will never rest until Israel's obliteration, and compromising will merely help the enemy. The counter argument is that responsibility will tame Hamas, and its record in social and municipal affairs suggests that a working "Hamastan" may be a lesser evil than a chaotic authority under Fatah.

Ehud Olmert, Israel's acting prime minister, with an eye on the coming election, is squeezed between domestic and international concerns. His rightwing rival, Binyamin Netanyahu, portrays Olmert as a Hamas patsy. The international community fears the collapse of the PA if Israel reacts to the Hamas victory with a boycott. Olmert's solution has been to buy time, using tough talk to fend off Netanyahu and offer Hamas a deal: a pardon for its murderous past in return for good behaviour. Jerusalem and Washington agree on the benchmarks for a Palestinian government: disarming the militias, renouncing violence and recognising Israel's right to exist.

Hamas and the new Israeli political mainstream share similar aims, believing a "final status" peace deal is a delusion. Olmert instead seeks to delineate the country's borders and end the occupation, without resolving the core issues of the conflict. Here lies the basis for a tacit understanding. Israeli Jews view Hamas's ideology - portraying Jews as aliens desecrating holy Muslim land - as encouraging their annihilation. At the same time, however, most Israelis care more about their day-to-day security. They want to board a bus knowing they will arrive in one piece, rather than be blown to bits by suicide bombers.

The exiled Hamas leader, Khalid Mesh'al, appears to understand this. In his article on these pages last week, he clung to his destruction rhetoric while offering a long-term truce. Would he and his colleagues shelve their unacceptable ideology in return for political legitimacy? The past year has shown that Hamas is highly disciplined and adept at realpolitik. If pursued earnestly, this policy could be the kernel of the next stage of Middle East diplomacy.

· Aluf Benn is diplomatic editor of the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aret, aluf@haaretz.co.il

Source: Guardian Unlimited

CAIRO - Here in the sunny corridors of King Fahd Modern Language School, primary school students sit in rows reviewing the science midterms they just took.

The finale to nine days of test-taking that covered 13 subjects, these tests will account for half their yearly grade. The year-end exams will count for the other half.

But such ordeals may soon be a thing of the past as Egypt begins reforming a pedagogy based on rote memorization and test-based grading systems. Starting this school year, exams will together make up only half of the youngest primary students' yearly grades - the other half will come from activities like drawing, music, and acting.

"The door for human development and improving competitiveness is education," says Hossam Badrawy, the education committee chair of Egypt's ruling party. "The core of tolerance and democracy is education. This is the most important way to change the life of this country."

The reform program, which began in 2001, allows boards of trustees made up of parents, teachers, and at-large community members to share in decisionmaking. It also seeks to build more schools and improve curricula, testing methods, and teacher performance. The new methods also incorporate critical-thinking skills.

The changes are intended to address the needs of a rapidly growing population of 70 million people. Due to a lack of teachers, there are as many as 70 students to a class in some public schools.

A major component of Egypt's educational reform is a pilot school program also begun in 2001 with funding and technical assistance from the United States Agency for International Development. The program has become so successful that it expanded last year to 245 schools from 30.

The idea behind the initiative is to createmodel schools for the Egyptian government to imitate. Teaching regimens in the model schools encourage debate and problem-solving, and train teachers to engage students.

Some experts say a modern education that promotes critical thinking may support democracy initiatives in the region. The UN's 2003 Arab Human Development Report argues that schools in the region breed submission rather than critical thought.

Young people who learn by rote, say some education experts, are more easily manipulated and indoctrinated. Under an improved education system, students will learn tolerance and open-mindedness, some say. But others argue that tempering religious extremism is more complicated.

"So much is involved in the problem of preventing extremism," says one foreign development agency expert, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "It's not just a question of stopping rote memorization in schools."

But regardless of the ideological gains, improving the Arab world's educational systems is likely to play a major role in the region's long-term economic development by better preparing students for the globalized marketplace.

A number of other Arab countries have also begun reforming their troubled education systems. In Qatar, more than two dozen recently opened schools will follow a more modern curriculum that encourages active learning, asking questions, and problem solving. Tunisia and Jordan are also slowly instituting reforms with an aim toward increasing enrollment and offering more information technology training.

But effecting change can be a cumbersome process. Despite the increasing involvement of boards of trustees, Egypt's highly centralized educational system is still largely run by the Ministry of Education, many experts say.

Dr. Badrawy, who helped to create the blueprint for the government's present program, urges education authorities to move faster with reform.

He is calling for 1,000 new model schools, rather than the current 245. Badrawy says Egypt will need more than 10,000 new schools in the next decade to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, Egyptian officials ask for patience.

"Education reform won't become apparent immediately," says Ibrahim Saad, technical adviser to the Ministry of Education. "We have a very ambitious plan, but it will take one to two years for it to really show."

Source: Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News

Thursday 09 February 2006, 20:12 Makka Time, 17:12 GMT

The Russian president has said that he intends to invite the leaders of Hamas to Moscow.

Hamas defeated the mainstream Fatah movement in a surprise landslide victory in Palestinian polls on 25 January. It is expected to form a new government soon.

Vladimir Putin made the invitation while in the Spanish capital, Madrid.

"We are maintaining our contacts with Hamas and intend, in the near future, to invite the leadership of this organisation to Moscow," he said.

The United States and the European Union have called on the resistance group to renounce violence and disarm its fighters. Hamas, considered a terrorist organisation by the US, does not recognise Israel.

Political relations

Putin went on to say that he did not believe in burning bridges. "We have never called Hamas a terrorist organisation," he said.

"We have never called Hamas a terrorist organisation"

Vladimir Putin,
Russian president
"It has to be recognised that Hamas came to power in the Palestine autonomy through a democratic and legitimate election and one should respect the choice of the Palestinian people.

"But ... we must also seek steps that would be acceptable both for the political forces leading the Palestinian autonomy, for the international community and for Israel.

"We are deeply convinced that burning bridges, especially in politics, is the easiest thing to do but it has little future."

Response

Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas official, told reporters after Putin made his comments: "If we receive an official invitation to visit Russia, we will visit Russia."

Mark Regev, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said Israel would not negotiate with Hamas until it "recognises Israel's right to exist, renounces terror and accepts the Middle East peace process".

An Israeli government source said: "People in Jerusalem are raising an eyebrow - what's going on here?"

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of stat

Source: al Jazeera

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Related:Cutting funds 'will hurt ordinary people'

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The Danish newspaper that first published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad infuriating Muslims worldwide previously turned down cartoons of Jesus as too offensive, a cartoonist said on Wednesday.

Twelve cartoons of the Prophet published last September by Jyllands-Posten newspaper have outraged Muslims, provoking violent protests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

"My cartoon, which certainly did not offend any Christians I showed it to, was rejected because the editor felt it would be considered offensive to readers -- readers in general, not necessarily Christians," cartoonist Christoffer Zieler said in an email he sent to Reuters on Wednesday.

Jens Kaiser, the former editor of Jyllands-Posten's Sunday edition who turned down the cartoons three years ago, said he had done so because they were no good.

"Having seen the cartoons, I found that they were not very good. I failed to see the purportedly provocative nature," he said in a statement.

"My fault is that I didn't tell him what I really meant: The cartoons were bad." Kaiser said he told Zieler he had not used the cartoons because they were offensive to some readers.

Zieler's five colored cartoons portrayed Jesus jumping out of holes in floors and walls during his resurrection. In one, gnomes rated Jesus for style, another entitled "Saviour-cam" showed Jesus with a camera on his head staring at his feet.

"I do think the cartoons would offend some readers, but only because they were silly," Kaiser said.

Unlike Muslims, who consider depictions of the Prophet to be deeply offensive, many Christians adorn churches with images and sculptures of Jesus. However, some Christian congregations have protested at portrayals they perceive as blasphemous, especially in the cinema.

The editor of Jyllands-Posten has apologized for offending Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, including one of the founder of Islam holding a bomb in his turban, but defended his right to do so in the interests of free speech.

Dozens of newspapers in Europe and elsewhere have reproduced them with the same justification.

"Perhaps explaining my story of three years ago in its proper context at least won't make matters any worse," Zieler said.

Source: Reuters via Yahoo! News

Friday, February 03, 2006
VIEW: Pakistan, Islam and Indian media stereotypes —Yoginder Sikand

“[T]he limited support that radical Islamist groups enjoy in Pakistan reflects less a fierce commitment to their ultimate agenda of strict Islamist rule than a protest against the system which, ironically, has abetted such groups for its own purposes”

Contrary to Indian media representations, the average Pakistani is just about as religious or otherwise as the average Indian. The average Pakistani is certainly not the wild-eyed fanatic baying for non-Muslim blood or waging violent jihad to establish global Islamic hegemony that our media would have us believe. Like the average Indian, he is emotionally attached to and culturally rooted in his religion, but he does not wear it on his sleeve; nor does it dictate every thought or act of his. In fact, the thing that first strikes the Indian visitor to Pakistan is how almost identical the average Pakistani is, looks and behaves to the average north Indian.

Almost all the many people I met in the course of a recent month-long visit to Pakistan that took me to several places in Punjab and Sindh do not even remotely fit the description of the average Pakistani peddled by our media. Islamist radical groups undeniably do have an important presence in parts of Pakistan, but they certainly do not command widespread popular support all over the country. This explains the continual dismal performance of religious parties in every Pakistani election. Despite concerted efforts by Islamist and mullah-based parties to establish a theocracy in the country, Pakistani politics are not dominated by religion as much as by economic, ethnic and regional concerns. It is, therefore, crucial not to exaggerate the influence of radical religious outfits in Pakistan, as the Indian media generally does.

Indian media descriptions of Pakistan tend to portray Islam in the country as a seamless monolith. The variety of local expressions of Islam are consistently overlooked so as to reinforce the image of a single version of Islam that is defined by the most radical of Islamist groups. The fact, however, is, that most Punjabis and Sindhis, that is to say a majority of Pakistanis, ascribe to or are associated with the sufi traditions which are anathema for such Islamists. Popular sufism is deeply-rooted in Pakistani soil and provides a strong counter to radical Islamist groups and their exclusivist agenda. Many sufis were folk heroes, radicals in their own right, bitterly critiquing tyrannical rulers as well as Muslim and Hindu priests. This is why they exercised a powerful influence on the masses, irrespective of religion. This explains, in part, why Islamist radicals are so fiercely opposed to the traditions that have developed over the centuries around such figures.

The popular sufi tradition in large parts of Pakistan thus limits the appeal of radical Islamists, making the chances of an Islamist takeover of the country a remote possibility. In recent years, it is true, these groups have gained particular salience and strength, but this is said to be less a reflection of a growing popular commitment to the Islamist cause than to other factors. One of these is the role of the state. Although the ideological founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, envisaged Pakistan as a secular Muslim state, successive Pakistani governments have used Islam to bolster their own frail support base, exactly in the same manner as the Congress and the BJP have done with Hinduism in the Indian case. Islam has also been used to weld together a number of the country’s ethnic groups that have little in common other than their profession of Islam, in the same way in which advocates of both ‘soft’ Hindutva, such as the Congress, and ‘hard’ Hindutva, such as the BJP, have sought to invoke Brahminical Hinduism to define the Indian nation state. Hindutva ideologues propagate a form of Hindu ‘nationalism’ that has no space for Indians of other faiths, and is, in fact, based on an unrelenting hatred of non-Hindu ‘others’. Creating a Hindu identity in this fashion is predicated on excising all elements of culture and tradition that Hindus are seen to share with others. The same has happened in the case of official and radical versions of Islam in Pakistan. Yet, it is important to remember that this is not the only, and certainly not the dominant, form of Islam in Pakistan, as my interaction with numerous Pakistanis from different walks of life revealed to me.

“Radical Islamist groups are not a true reflection or representative of Pakistani Islam”, a social activist friend of mine from Sindh explains. “State manipulation of religion”, he argues, “has had a major role to play in promoting radical Islamism in Pakistan”, which, he says, “is largely an expression of elite politics and Western imperialist manipulation”. “To add to state patronage of such groups”, he points out, “there is the fact of mounting economic and social inequalities, sustained military rule, the continued stranglehold of feudal lords and the absence of mechanisms for expressing democratic dissent, all of which have enabled radical Islamist groups to assert the claim of representing normative Islam against other competing versions and visions of the faith.”

In some parts of Pakistan, such as Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province, he says, electoral support for Islamists “reflects anti-American sentiments rather than popular demands for theocratic rule”. Such groups, he says, have gained added strength from the ongoing conflict in Kashmir by “tapping into Pakistani nationalist sentiments on this issue in the same way as Hindutva groups used the Kashmir conflict in India, both seeking to present the issue in religious terms”. “In short”, he claims, “the limited support that radical Islamist groups enjoy in Pakistan reflects less a fierce commitment to their ultimate agenda of strict Islamist rule than a protest against the system which, ironically, has abetted such groups for its own purposes”.

“The task before Indians and Pakistanis seriously concerned about the future of our common subcontinent”, says another friend of mine, a journalist from Lahore, “is to rescue our religious traditions from the monopolistic claims of the radicals. Islamism in Pakistan and Hindutva in India feed on each other while claiming to be vociferous foes. We need to revive popular forms of religion, such as sufism and bhakti, that are accepting of other faiths and that at the same time are socially engaged and critique the system of domination that produces radicalism as a reaction while at the same time using it as a means of stifling challenges to it.”

The writer is post-doctoral fellow at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden. He also edits a web-magazine called Qalandar, which can be accessed at www.islaminterfaith.org.

Source: Daily Times

By STEVE QUINN, AP Business Writer 50 minutes ago

DALLAS - Exxon Mobil Corp. posted record profits for any U.S. company on Monday — $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter and $36.13 billion for the year — as the world's biggest publicly traded oil company benefited from high oil and gas prices and demand for refined products. The results exceeded Wall Street expectations and Exxon shares rose nearly 3 percent in morning trading.

The company's earnings amounted to $1.71 per share for the October-December quarter, up 27 percent from $8.42 billion, or $1.30 per share, in the year ago quarter. The result topped the then-record quarterly profit of $9.92 billion Exxon posted in the third quarter of 2005.

Exxon's profit for the year was also the largest annual reported net income in U.S. history, according to Howard Silverblatt, a stock market analyst for Standard & Poor's. He said the previous high was Exxon's $25.3 billion profit in 2004.

Exxon's results lifted the combined 2005 profits for the country's three largest integrated oil companies to more than $63 billion.

ConocoPhillips said last Wednesday that its fourth-quarter earnings rose 51 percent to $3.68 billion, while annual income climbed 66 percent to $13.53 billion. Two days later, Chevron Corp. said its fourth-quarter earnings rose 20 percent to $4.14 billion, while annual income jumped 6 percent to $14.1 billion.

The oil industry's stellar results renewed talk among some politicians for a windfall profit tax that would push companies to invest more in new production and refining capacity.

Sen. Babara Boxer, a California Democrat who sharply criticized oil executives appearing before Congress in November, struck again on Friday. She called on the Bush Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to "put an end to gouging," then suggested that FTC stood for "Friend to Chevron."

But John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington-based trade group, said Monday that the political rhetoric was "not a case based on fact."

"We invested somewhere in the order of $86 billion last year," Felmy said. "Then we have to treat investors appropriately otherwise we'd have the Eliott Spitzers of the world coming after us."

The results for Exxon's latest quarter included a $390 million gain related to a litigation settlement. Excluding special items, earnings were $10.32 billion, or $1.65 per share. The result topped Wall Street's expectations. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial predicted earnings of $1.44 per share.

Exxon shares rose $1.87 to $63.16 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Quarterly revenue ballooned to $99.66 billion from $83.37 billion a year ago but came in shy of the $100.72 billion Exxon posted in the third quarter, which was the first time a U.S. public company generated more than $100 billion in sales in a single quarter.

By segment, exploration and production earnings rose sharply to $7.04 billion, up $2.15 billion from the 2004 quarter, reflecting higher crude oil and natural gas prices. Production decreased by 1 percent due to the lingering effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which battered the Gulf Coast in August and September.

The company's refining and marketing segment reported $2.39 billion in earnings, as higher refining and marketing margins helped offset the residual effects of the hurricanes.

Exxon's chemicals business saw earnings, excluding special items, decline by $413 million to $835 million, as higher materials costs squeezed margins.

For the full year, net income surged to $5.71 per share from $3.89 per share in 2004. Annual revenue grew to $371 billion from $298.04 billion.

To put that into perspective, Exxon's revenue for the year exceeded Saudi Arabia's estimated 2005 gross domestic product of $340.5 billion, according to statistics maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Source: AP via Yahoo! News

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 34 minutes ago

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detainees are freed.

The U.S. military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women among the 14,000 detainees currently held in the 2 1/2-year-old insurgency. All were accused of "aiding terrorists or planting explosives," but an Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that U.S. anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects' houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and "we are not Saddam." A U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an "imperative threat" are held in long-term U.S.-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far as short-term detentions by local U.S. units. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under U.S. court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices.

In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

"During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

"The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing," the intelligence officer wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained, he said.

Like most names in the released documents, the officer's signature is blacked out on this for-the-record memorandum about his complaint.

Of this case, command spokesman Johnson said he could not judge, months later, the factors that led to the woman's detention.

The second episode, in June 2004, is found in sketchy detail in e-mail exchanges among six U.S. Army colonels, discussing an undisclosed number of female detainees held in northern Iraq by the Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

The first message, from a military police colonel, advised staff officers of the U.S. northern command that the Iraqi police would not take control of the jailed women without charges being brought against them.

In a second e-mail, a command staff officer asked an officer of the unit holding the women, "What are you guys doing to try to get the husband — have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?"

Two days later, the brigade's deputy commander advised the higher command, "As each day goes by, I get more input that these gals have some info and/or will result in getting the husband."

He went on, "These ladies fought back extremely hard during the original detention. They have shown indications of deceit and misinformation."

The command staff colonel wrote in reply, referring to a commanding general, "CG wants the husband."

The released e-mails stop there, and the women's eventual status could not be immediately determined.

Of this episode, Johnson said, "It is clear the unit believed the females detained had substantial knowledge of insurgent activity and warranted being held."

___

On the Net:

First document: http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/t2614_2616.pdf

E-mail exchange: http://www.aclu.org/projects/foiasearch/pdf/DOD044843.pdf

Source: AP via Yahoo! News

By Abraham McLaughlin, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Thu Jan 26, 3:00 AM ET

LAGOS, NIGERIA - At first, it seems a surprising sight: inside a two-story mosque in sub-Saharan Africa's largest metropolis hangs a life-size portrait of Jesus Christ.

Yet worshipers at "The True Message of God Mission" say it's entirely natural for Christianity and Islam to cexist, even overlap. They begin their worship by praying at the Jesus alcove and then "running their deliverance" - sprinting laps around the mosque's mosaic-tiled courtyard, praying to the one God for forgiveness and help. They say it's akin to Israelites circling the walls of Jericho - and Muslims swirling around the Ka'ba shrine in Mecca.

This group - originally called "Chris-lam-herb" for its mix-and-match approach to Christianity, Islam, and traditional medicine - is a window on an ongoing religious ferment in Africa. It's still up for debate whether this group, and others like it, could become models for Muslim-Christian unity worldwide or whether they're uniquely African. But either way, they are "part of a trend," says Dana Robert, a Boston University religion professor.

Amid intense sectarian violence in this half- Muslim, half-Christian country, these groups serve as tolerant peacemakers. Also, with widespread poverty and health concerns here, people are seeking practical, profitable religion more than rigid doctrine.

Before Islam and Christianity arrived in Africa, people here "believed in deities being close" - in gods who resided in trees or rivers and helped or hurt locals daily, explains Kamaldeen Balogun, an Islamic studies professor at Olabisi Onabanjo University in southeastern Nigeria.

"You in the West are satisfied with one hour of church on Sunday," says Mr. Balogun. But for people in Africa, who he says need so many solutions, "This is about a practical way of life," about a willingness to combine Christianity or Islam with their own traditions to "see if they can make something new" - something that will help.

Worshipers at the "True Message" mission say unifying the two theologies has made a major difference in their lives.

A slight woman with a quick smile, Kuburat Hamzat says she came here in 1998 with a severe menstruation problem. She was embraced by the mission's "man of God," a soft-spoken, bald man named Samusideen Saka. He told her, "Dancing will not kill you" and prescribed 91 laps of "running deliverance" each day. He also explained the commonalities of the great faiths to Ms. Hamzat who had grown up in Islam. That understanding, she says, changed her. "Because I understood that in my mind, I got healed," she says. Her problem hasn't recurred, she says. Others say they've been cured of barrenness, mental illness, and other troubles.

Pastor Saka explains that his father was an herbalist and that both Muslims and Christians would come to him for healing. Although he grew up Muslim, and has been to Mecca on pilgrimage several times, he couldn't comprehend Nigeria's sectarian strife. He now considers himself a Christian, "but that doesn't mean Islam is bad."

Quite the opposite. Next to his mosque is a televangelist's dream - an auditorium with 1,500 seats, banks of speakers, a live band, and klieg lights. On Sundays the choir switches easily between Muslim and Christian songs, and Pastor Saka preaches from both the Bible and the Koran. His sermons are often broadcast on local TV.

The broader context here is Africa's dramatic shift in recent decades to Christianity and Islam. During the 20th century, fully 40 percent of Africa's population moved from traditional religions to "different shades of Christianity," says Philip Jenkins, a history and religion professor at the University of Pennsylvania. It is, he adds, "the largest religious change that has ever occurred in history." There are debates about whether Christianity or Islam is spreading faster in Africa, but clearly they're both on the rise - and sometimes are the source of tension.

In Nigeria's religious city of Jos (short for "Jesus Our Savior") the government says 50,000 people died between 1999 and 2004 in sectarian clashes. Until a peace deal last year, Sudan's northern Muslims and southern Christians were at war for two decades.

Clearly, the religious revolution is still shaking out. "People are converting rapidly, but they don't necessarily have instruction" in the details of their faiths, says Boston University's Professor Robert. Nor have they had "time for their belief system to solidify." It is, she says, "still shifting." She argues that eventually the faithful will choose one religion or another, and the hybrids will fade away.

But the ferment is quite evident on the chaotic streets of Lagos, which is home to some 10 million people. Hundreds of church-sponsored banners scream out, "It's your day of RECOVERY @ LAST where life's pains are healed" or "Jesus Christ: A friend indeed! Even in times of need!!"

Healing is a regularly promised feature of churches across Africa. It's symbolic of a key element of the continent's religious explorations - fusing faith and rationality, Professor Balogun says. According to Western thought, with its emphasis on rationality, "Everything that goes up must come down," he says. But a more African approach is that, "By divine intervention it may not come down." In fact, his university is initiating a degree focusing on the religion-science nexus.

Meanwhile, it's not just Saka who's exploring the common ground between Christianity and Islam. Sitting in a wrought-iron throne, swathed in silky white fabric, the founder of "Chrislam" has these words for followers of the two great faiths: "The same sun that dries the clothes of Muslims also dries the clothes of Christians." Stroking his beard, the man named Tela Tella says, "I don't believe God loves Christians any more than Muslims."

His followers calls him His Royal Holiness, The Messenger, Ifeoluwa or "The Will of God." Since the religion's founding two decades ago, this small band has been gathering almost daily to hear his message of inclusiveness - that Christians and Muslims, "who are sons of Abraham, can be one."

Source: CS Monitor via Yahoo! News

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Tue Jan 24, 3:00 AM ET

NEW DELHI - In the halls of Sacramento, a special commission is rewriting Indian history: debating whether Aryan invaders conquered the subcontinent, whether Brahman priests had more rights than untouchables, and even whether ancient Indians ate beef.

That this seemingly arcane Indian debate has spilled over into California's board of education is a sign of the growing political muscle of Indian immigrants and the rising American interest in Asia.

The foes - who include established historians and Hindu nationalist revisionists - are familiar to each other in India. But America may increasingly become their new battlefield as other US states follow California in rewriting their own textbooks to bone up on Asian history.

At stake, say scholars who include some of the most elite historians on India, may be a truthful picture of one of the world's emerging powers - one arrived at by academic standards of proof rather than assertions of national or religious pride.

"Some of the groups involved here are not qualified to write textbooks, they do not draw lines between myth and history," says Anu Mandavilli, an Indian doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, and activist against the Hindu right. Speaking of one of the groups, the Vedic Foundation in Austin, Texas, she adds, "On their website, they claim that Hindu civilization started 111.5 trillion years ago. That makes Hinduism billions of years older than the Big Bang." (The assertion has since been pulled from the site.)

"It would be ridiculous if it weren't so dangerous."

Communities use history to define themselves - their core ideals, achievements, and grudges. Small wonder, then, that history is frequently reevaluated as political pendulums shift, or as long-oppressed minority groups finally get their say. History, and efforts to revise it, have touched off recent controversies between Japan and its neighbors over its World War II past, as well as between France and its former colonies over the portrayal of imperialism.

Here in India, Hindu nationalists have pushed forcefully for revisionism after what they see as centuries of cultural domination by the British Raj and Muslim Mogul Empire.

Instigating the California debate were two US-based Hindu groups with long ties to Hindu nationalist parties in India. One, the Vedic Foundation, is a small Hindu sect that aims at simplifying Hinduism to the worship of one god, Vishnu. The other, the Hindu Education Foundation (HEF), was founded in 2004 by a branch of the right-wing Indian group the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

This year, as California's Board of Education commissioned and put up for review textbooks to be used in its 6th-grade classrooms, these two groups came forward with demands for substantial changes.

Textbooks did have glaring mistakes

Some of the changes were no-brainers. One section said, incorrectly, that the Hindi language is written in Arabic script. One photo caption misidentified a Muslim as a Brahman priest.

But instead of focusing on such errors, the groups took steps to add their own nationalist imprint to Indian history.

In one edit, the HEF asked the textbook publisher to change a sentence describing discrimination against women in ancient society to the following: "Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women."

In another edit, the HEF objected to a sentence that said that Aryan rulers had "created a caste system" in India that kept groups separated according to their jobs. The HEF asked this to be changed to the following: "During Vedic times, people were divided into different social groups (varnas) based on their capacity to undertake a particular profession."

The hottest debate centered on when Indian civilization began, and by whom. For the past 150 years, most historical, linguistic, and archaeological research has dated India's earliest settlements to around 2600 BC. And most established historical research contends that the cornerstone of Indian civilization - the practice of Hindu religion - was codified by people who came from outside India, specifically Aryan language speakers from the steppes of Central Asia.

Many Hindu nationalists are upset by the notion that Hinduism could be yet another religion, like Islam and Christianity, with foreign roots. The HEF and Vedic Foundation both lobbied hard to change the wording of California's textbooks so that Hinduism would be described as purely home grown.

"Textbooks must mention that none of the [ancient] texts, nor any Indian tradition, has a recollection of any Aryan invasion or migration," writes S. Kalyanaraman, an engineer and prominent pro-Hindu activist, in an e-mail to this reporter. He and other revisionists refer to recent studies that don't support an Aryan migration, including skeletal anthropology research that claims to show a continuity of record from Neolithic times. Such research has not convinced top Indologists to abandon the Aryan theory, however.

The final changes in California's textbooks are expected in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, mainstream academics, both in America and abroad, are setting off alarm bells.

"It was a whitewash," says Michael Witzel, a Harvard University Sanskrit scholar and Indologist, who testified before the commission in Sacramento. "The textbooks before were not very good, but at least they were more or less presentable. Now, it is completely incorrect."

Aryan invasion a British-era theory

Early proponents of the "Aryan Invasion Theory" proposed in 1850 by philologist Max Mueller may have had political agendas to justify the subjugation of the subcontinent, Mr. Witzel says, but the preponderance of evidence shows that Aryans came to India, with their horses, their chariots, and their religious beliefs, from outside.

"Unquestionably, all sides of Indian history must be repeatedly re-examined," wrote Witzel and comparative historian Steve Farmer, in an influential article in the Indian magazine Frontline in 2000. "But any massive revisions must arise from the discovery of new evidence, not from desires to boost national or sectarian pride at any cost."

On the other side of the debate, the historian Meenakshi Jain, a self-described nationalist, says that history is meant to be rewritten, depending on the perspective and needs of the present time.

"Indic civilization has been a big victim of misrepresentation and belittling of our culture," says Ms. Jain, a historian at Delhi University and author of a high school history textbook accepted by India's previous government, led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.

Pride has its place in history?

Like many Hindus, Jain is proud of the accomplishments of Indian history, such as the fact that three small Hindu kingdoms - Kabul, Zabul, and Sindh - were able to hold off invading Muslim armies for 400 years. She also thinks that students should learn that some of India's most famous temples were commissioned not by upper caste Hindu kings but by aboriginal tribes, who in modern times have been relegated to "backward status."

"There is no such thing as an objective history," Jain says. "So when we write a textbook, we should make students aware of the status of current research of leading scholars in the field. It should not shut out a love for motherland, a pride in your past. If you teach that your country is backward, that it has no redeeming features in our civilization, it can damage a young perspective."

But no matter which version of Indian history California adopts for its 6th graders, it is bound to aggravate someone. The Board of Education has already heard from South Indians who argued that the HEF and Vedic Foundation represent a North Indian upper-caste perspective.

"We were saying, 'These groups don't speak for us,' " says Anu Mandavilli, herself a South Indian. When groups like the Vedic Foundation try to simplify Hinduism as the worship of a single god, "they have their own agendas."

Source: CS Monitor via Yahoo! News

By David Rennie, in Strasbourg
(Filed: 25/01/2006)

An investigator for Europe's leading human rights watchdog accused America yesterday of "gangster tactics" in its war on terrorism, notably the illegal transfer of terrorist suspects to countries likely to torture them.

Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, told the Council of Europe that the US, with European complicity, had shipped possibly more than 100 suspects to countries where they faced torture.

"The entire continent is involved," Mr Marty told its parliamentary assembly.

He presented colleagues with an interim report dominated by newspaper cuttings and buttressed with evidence from an Italian inquiry into the alleged 2003 kidnapping by the CIA of a radical Egyptian cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, in Milan.

Mr Marty said it was "highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware" of such abductions.

He accused Britain of particular complicity on the basis of a leaked secret memo from Sir Michael Wood, the chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office. In the 2003 memo Sir Michael asserted that there was no legal barrier to using foreign intelligence obtained under torture.

The document was handed to Mr Marty and the Council of Europe by Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who has become a fierce critic of British foreign policy. Giving evidence to the Strasbourg assembly, he said that, as envoy in Tashkent after September 11, 2001, he read CIA intelligence, shared with MI6, derived from torture sessions.

Later he said Britain was "much more deeply implicated" than other European nations in CIA extraordinary renditions, or the transfer of detainees outside normal judicial channels.

Several British members of the assembly, which gathers MPs from 46 countries, criticised Mr Marty's report.

Michael Hancock, a Liberal Democrat, said it needed to have "more substance. . . many of the issues are clouded in myth and a desire to kick America."

Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, said the report had "more holes than a Swiss cheese".

The Council of Europe, which is independent of the European Union, was set up in 1949 as a guardian of human rights in Europe.

Source: Telegraph | News

Randeep Ramesh, south Asia correspondent
Monday January 23, 2006
The Guardian

Bollywood movies, the subcontinent's most visible cultural export, are to be allowed to be screened in Pakistan, which has decided to lift the decades-old ban on Indian films as part of the peace process between the two neighbours.

Pakistan has outlawed public screenings of Indian films since a 1965 war, but has now removed from censorship guidelines the all-important words "Indian artiste" and "Indian director", according to the Times of India.

The paper quoted Saeed Rizvi, president of the Pakistan Film Producers Association, as saying prohibitions on these two had "had earlier prevented release of films of Indian actors and directors in Pakistan".

The first Indian film to be shown in Pakistan with formal permission will be the 1984 romance Sohni Mahiwal, a Russian-Indian venture. Mr Rizvi said the decision could lead to joint Pakistan-India projects. "We have wanted this to happen for a long time. With this notification things definitely look bright for our industry," he was quoted as saying.

India's Hindi-language film industry, centred in Mumbai and known as Bollywood, is the world's largest in terms of viewers and number of films it produces. Pakistanis, whose language Urdu is closely related to Hindi, lap up Indian films - usually by watching them on illegally recorded videos and DVDs. Illicit copies are easy to find in every Pakistani city.

Mutual admiration has toned down the jingoism in Bollywood, letting in storylines that reflect the current mood of reconciliation between the countries.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is a Bollywood fan. Last year, invited to a state dinner with the Pakistani leader was Mukherjee, an actress whose role as a Pakistani woman who falls in love with an Indian jet fighter ace in Veer Zaara won hearts across the border. Despite 50 years of antagonism, cinema-goers in both countries have made Bollywood actors superstars.

Source: Guardian Unlimited