Quote:
Well Peter,

You know this is not so surprising as you and I have been talking about the book, I am currently reading "State of Denial" by Bob Woodward. It appears the entire intelligence community has been duped by the Radical Islamists. They had Saudi princes giving them pointers on how to address this situation and it has only fanned the flames.

You can actually blame the lack of real "boots on the ground intelligence" on the Clinton Administration that cut the funding of the intelligence gathering agencies. shortly before he left office and no one asked to increase funding. Another Bush , blunder? I do not think so, I believe much of this as in the financial fiasco has been, orchestrated from the inside out. By Who? "The Progressive Movement" these wonks have been destroying the USA for decades from the inside out. It is time for a thorough house cleaning.

Jim Allen III

Jim Allen III

Quote:
Hello Friends,

Anne Coulter hits the nail on the head with her article on nuclear Iran and a short recap of recent history.

With the eager assistance of the lunatic left wing mainstream media Iran and Ahmadinejad laughed their way to nuclear capabilities or at least border line capabilities in 2010. Of course with the help of the security agencies declaration in 2007 that Iran ceased nuclear development in 2003. A spurious report that was denied by most major intelligence agencies in the world but was accepted by the US public and administration and pounced on by the MSM that simply wanted to bash Bush even more then they already were. That report is the laughingstock of recent times and shows either a desire to mislead the president or simply that they aren't worth much as intelligence gatherers.

MSM has a problem but lucky for them they have a very short memories and forgot their glee a few short years ago. Today they can blame B Hussein Obowma for his lack of action and outright stupidity in all aspects of his International policies and especially in regard to Iran. BUT, they won't.........at least not yet. There are signs of a few cracks and B Hussein is getting some criticism lately but far from what he deserves. In the meantime Ahmadinejad keeps on b*itch slapping B Hussein and laughing all the way to a nuclear Iran.

Thank God for alternative news sources!

Shalom,

Peter

Home | Ann Coulter | Ann Coulter

Ahmadinejad: 'Yep, I'm Nuclear'

by Ann Coulter

02/17/2010

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The only man causing President Obama more headaches than Joe Biden these days is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, coincidentally, was right after Biden on Obama's short-list for V.P.).

Despite Obama's personal magnetism, the Iranian president persists in moving like gangbusters to build nuclear weapons, leading to Ahmadinejad's announcement last week that Iran is now a "nuclear state."

Gee, that's weird -- because I remember being told in December 2007 that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran had ceased nuclear weapons development as of 2003.

t the time of that leak, many of us recalled that the U.S. has the worst intelligence-gathering operations in the world. The Czechs, the French, the Italians -- even the Iraqis (who were trained by the Soviets) -- all have better intelligence.

Burkina Faso has better intelligence -- and their director of intelligence is a witch doctor. The marketing division of Wal-Mart has more reliable intel than the U.S. government does.

After Watergate, the off-the-charts left-wing Congress gleefully set about dismantling this nation's intelligence operations on the theory that Watergate never would have happened if only there had been no CIA.

Ron Dellums, a typical Democrat of the time, who -- amazingly -- was a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, famously declared in 1975: "We should totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, brick by brick, nail by nail."

And so they did.

So now, our "spies" are prohibited from spying. The only job of a CIA officer these days is to read foreign newspapers and leak classified information to The New York Times. It's like a secret society of newspaper readers. The reason no one at the CIA saw 9/11 coming was that there wasn't anything about it in the Islamabad Post.

(On the plus side, at least we haven't had another break-in at the Watergate.)

CIA agents can't spy because that might require them to break laws in foreign countries. They are perfectly willing to break U.S. laws to leak to The New York Times, but not in order to acquire valuable intelligence.

So it was curious that after months of warnings from the Bush administration in 2007 that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was leaked, concluding that Iran had ceased its nuclear weapons program years earlier.

Republicans outside of the administration went ballistic over the suspicious timing and content of the Iran-Is-Peachy report. Even The New York Times, of all places, ran a column by two outside experts on Iran's nuclear programs that ridiculed the NIE's conclusion.

Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and Valerie Lincy of Iranwatch.org cited Iran's operation of 3,000 gas centrifuges at its plant at Natanz, as well as a heavy-water reactor being built at Arak, neither of which had any peaceful energy purpose. (If only there were something plentiful in Iran that could be used for energy!)

Weirdly, our intelligence agencies missed those nuclear operations. They were too busy reading an article in the Tehran Tattler, "Iran Now Loves Israel."

Ahmadinejad was ecstatic, calling the NIE report "a declaration of the Iranian people's victory against the great powers."

The only people more triumphant than Ahmadinejad about the absurd conclusion of our vaunted "intelligence" agencies were liberals.

In Time magazine, Joe Klein gloated that the Iran report "appeared to shatter the last shreds of credibility of the White House's bomb-Iran brigade -- and especially that of Vice President Dick Cheney."

Liberal columnist Bill Press said, "No matter how badly Bush and Cheney wanted to carpet-bomb Iran, it's clear now that doing so would have been a tragic mistake."

Naturally, the most hysterical response came from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. After donning his mother's housecoat, undergarments and fuzzy slippers, Keith brandished the NIE report, night after night, demanding that Bush apologize to the Iranians.

"Having accused Iran of doing something it had stopped doing more than four years ago," Olbermann thundered, "instead of apologizing or giving a diplomatic response of any kind, this president of the United States chuckled."

Olbermann ferociously defended innocent-as-a-lamb Mahmoud from aspersions cast by the Bush administration, asking: "Could Mr. Bush make it any more of a mess ... in response to Iran's anger at being in some respects, at least, either overrated or smeared, his response officially chuckling, how is that going to help anything?"

Bush had "smeared" Iran!

Olbermann's Ed McMahon, the ever-obliging Howard Fineman of Newsweek, agreed, saying that the leaked intelligence showed that Bush "has zero credibility."

Olbermann's even creepier sidekick, androgynous Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe, also agreed, saying American credibility "has suffered another serious blow."

Poor Iran!

Olbermann's most macho guest, Rachel Maddow, demanded to know -- with delightful originality -- "what the president knew and when he knew it." This was on account of Bush's having disparaged the good name of a messianic, Holocaust-denying nutcase, despite the existence of a cheery report on Iran produced by our useless intelligence agencies.

Olbermann, who knows everything that's on the Daily Kos and nothing else, called those who doubted the NIE report "liars" and repeatedly demanded an investigation into when Bush knew about the NIE's laughable report.

Even if you weren't aware that the U.S. has the worst intelligence in the world, and even if you didn't notice that the leak was timed perfectly to embarrass Bush, wouldn't any normal person be suspicious of a report concluding Ahmadinejad was behaving like a prince?

Not liberals. Our intelligence agencies concluded Iran had suspended its nuclear program in 2003, so Bush owed Ahmadinejad an apology.

Feb. 11, 2010: Ahmadinejad announces that Iran is now a nuclear power.

Thanks, liberals!

Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans" and most recently, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America.

Hello Friends,

I don't know how many times I've written about Radical Islamic Jihad being in your backyards. We've been aware how Radical Muslims are teaching their form of hatred and violence to our children in our schools, in the workplace, through MSM collaborators on TV and the written media and the list goes on and on. Well, you can't get more backyard then that.

In the following article you'll see how it's happening in a school near you. Under your noses and in most cases you aren't even aware of it happening unless you have a child that comes home and tells his parents as one did in the article below.

You've gotta be on guard and if you aren't the onus of the blame will be on your shoulders but by then it might be to late and a case of crying over spilled milk.

Shalom,

Peter

Islamic Indoctrination vs. Education

Remember the Muslim Television executive, Muzzammil Hassan, who decapitated his wife near Buffalo, New York? His TV station, Bridges TV, was created to promote the idea that Islam is a religion of peace and friendship. This station’s goals perfectly fit with the intense Saudi PR machine, which is spending tons of money to change the image of Islam in the West — even if it takes denials, fabrications and outright lies.

Several years ago, I debated Othman Shibly, a U.S. citizen of Syrian origin and a Sharia expert, on a Bridges TV program directed by his son, Hassan Shibly. Both bearded men are fierce apologists for Radical Islam and defend Sharia. Dr. Shibly holds a Sufi/Radical Islamist ideology and hides behind a thin veneer of “moderate” Islam, but that façade does not fool someone like myself from the same background. The Shiblys make no attempt to repudiate the claims of men like Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, or other radical Islamists like Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, the Mufti of the Syrian Ministry of Religion under the regimes of both Hafiz and Bashar Assad and Kuftaro’s protégé, Sheikh Rajab Deeb. My interview with the two men was never aired and the Shiblys never sent me a copy of the taped interview as they promised.

That brings me to an email I recently received from a concerned American mother, who said that she was horrified at what her child is being taught by Islamic guest speakers at her child’s high school, Clarence High School in Clarence, New York. The speakers are none other than Hassan and Othman Shibly, who are now lecturing our kids on Islam at New York state public schools. That is done with the help of politically correct apologist educators.

Under their curriculum on the Ancient World, the New York State public schools as well as many other states around the country, require students to be taught about Islam, the spread of Islam, the Golden Age of Islam and the conflict between Muslims and Christians as part of the Crusades. That topic almost always turns political and accusatory when Muslims get very emotional about their history, jihad and religion. Islam by nature is extremely political and promotes a very elaborate legal system that Muslims must live under. To accommodate Islamic education with Western principals of freedom and the Bill of Rights is an impossible task. The two ideologies are at opposite poles in terms of the role of government, human rights, as well as women and minority rights.

Thus, the two systems must eventually become villains. To avoid being politically incorrect, public schools prefer to use Muslims experts or clerics rather than public school teachers to teach the topic of Islam. Our educational hierarchy refuses to see that many devout Muslim experts have a political agenda and are themselves indoctrinated and thus always on the defensive or offensive. I can only imagine what the poor American kids are subjected to. I was on the receiving end of such indoctrination when I was a young Muslim girl.

This is what the mother wrote to me:

“Hello Mrs. Darwish:

I need your help addressing a serious problem I’m currently trying to handle. Recently, my child came home from school and told me about a presentation his Global Studies 9 class had that was given by a man by the name of Hassan Shibly. My child was shocked and visibly shaken at home and told me about the things this man said to the class. The pretext for the presentation was for Mr. Shibly to talk to the class about Islam and dispel some of the ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘Islamophobia.’ Here are some of the things he said to these boys and girls:

‘ The September 11^th attacks occurred because of America’s blind support of Israel and the men who carried out the attack were not Muslims, but atheists.’

‘Terrorism is an example of people reacting with their hearts and not their minds…if someone insulted your mother, wouldn’t you retaliate against them? Allah is more important than anything to a Muslim, and if you insult Allah, a Muslim can do anything to defend his belief.’

‘The news media lie…when a Muslim does something, they’re labeled as a Muslim while people of other religions who commit crimes are never identified by their religion.’”

She added that Hassan Shibly’s father, Othman, also came to speak at the school but to a different class. She expressed her outrage that these men were invited into a school to indoctrinate underage, impressionable minds with hate a filled ideology and a hidden agenda. She stated that she alerted the principal to a few links that show Shibly’s affiliations and added that she doesn’t think the principal is convinced. She concluded by saying that so far a decision has not been made whether to bring the Shilbys back to teach or not.

I was speechless after reading this woman’s e-mail. That is outrageous and what is worse is that I have heard similar claims from mothers in California where I live. I wanted to tell all the concerned mothers of America to stand up against this kind of “education” and never feel helpless. We must all speak out before the indoctrination strikes America at the heart. Perhaps this can be one of the causes of the Tea Party Movement. There are powerful forces trying to indoctrinate American children when it comes to Islam. Like I was as a Muslim kid, our kids are being discouraged and shamed from thinking for themselves when it comes to 9/11 or finding out the truth about Islamic terrorism. Their minds must never wander or, Allah forbid, blame Muslim culture or Islam for producing a never ending flow of terrorists.

Muslim propaganda is relentless in trying to misportray Islam in the eyes of the West. While mainstream mosques and Muslim leaders across the globe are shouting jihad, death to America, death to the Jews, and encouraging Muslims to take over the West, our children are told if you fear such threats you are an Islamophobe. When mainstream Muslim schools and universities teach that apostates must be killed and that jihad means “to war with non-Muslims to establish the religion” and that jihad is a permanent war institution against Jews Christians and pagans, we are told to never dare misinterpret this as encouraging violence. Islamic education, like communism and Fascism, must control children’s minds, which is the best system to produce adults who will submit.

I am not the one who compared Islam to communism and fascism; this comparison was made by none other than the most prominent Muslim scholar of the 20th century, Sheikh Abu Ala Maududi, who stated in his book, “Islamic Law and Constitution,” on p. 262, that the Islamic State:

“seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity…. In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.” Maududi added “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam.”

I wonder if the Shiblys will condemn this popular Muslim scholar to their students or perhaps call him an atheist.

Muslim petro-dollar powers have penetrated our educational system with permission and support from the highest levels of our governments. I cannot blame many teachers and school principles forced to teach this garbage and who are themselves subjected to demeaning sensitivity training on Islam. I blame the people on the top who are hell-bent on promoting Muslim propaganda with the blessings of Saudi Arabia.

If such propaganda continues, future generations in America will gradually become confused. They will doubt their instincts and their sense of good judgment will be weakened. Like the restless and confused populations of the Middle East, they will build tolerance to violence, extremism, hatred, discrimination, anti-Semitism and oppression of women and minorities.

Because of my background, I can smell and taste Muslim propaganda. It is coming to a school near you. The danger is, believe it or not, if you grow up with such propaganda, it can feel and sound normal and even holy. Intentionally or unintentionally, in the name of tolerance, we are bringing up a generation of Americans who will tolerate Islamic Jihad, in the name of cultural relativism and compassion.

Islamic tyranny, like all tyrannies, must use lies, propaganda and fabrications to justify the Muslim duty of jihadist violence to expand and conquer the world for Islam and Sharia. That is why the Arab world is having great difficulty in modifying its hate-filled educational system. Instead of changing, it is trying to change us and desensitize us to its violence.

If this is not immediately corrected, it will be one of the biggest mistakes in American history. What Mr. Shibly was teaching our kids is outright Arab propaganda justifying jihad, 9/11, retaliation as self-defense, and conspiracy theories against Israel. How monumentally foolish and dangerous it is to allow the likes of the Shiblys to have access to American high school kids.

Nonie Darwish is the co-founder of FormerMuslimsUnited.com and the author of Cruel and Usual Punishment.

Hello Friends,

The below article written by a Pakistani Muslim scientist is quite an eye opener and a very interesting read.

Shalom,

Peter

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy: "Islam and Science Have Parted Ways"

Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2010, pp. 69-74

http://www.meforum.org/2593/pervez-amirali-hoodbhoy-islam-science

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (b. 1950) is one of South Asia's leading nuclear physicists and perhaps Pakistan's preeminent intellectual. Bearer of a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad where, as a high-energy physicist, he carries out research into quantum field theory and particle phenomenology. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and was visiting professor at MIT and Stanford. For some time, he has been a frequent contributor to Britain's leading intellectual journal, Prospect. His extracurricular activities include a vocal opposition to the political philosophy of Islamism. He also writes about the self-enforced backwardness of the Muslim world in science, technology, trade, and education. His many articles and television documentaries have made a lasting impact on debate about education, Islam, and secularism in Pakistan. Denis MacEoin interviewed him by e-mail in October 2009.

Muslim Disengagement from Science

Middle East Quarterly: In 2007, you asked, "With well over a billion Muslims and extensive material resources, why is the Islamic world disengaged from science and the process of creating new knowledge?"[1] How would you answer that question today? Has anything changed?

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy: Sadly, little has changed. About seven centuries ago, after a spectacular Golden Age that lasted nearly four hundred years, Islam and science parted ways. Since then, they have never come together again. Muslim contributions to pure and applied sciences—measured in terms of discoveries, publications, patents, and processes—have been marginal for more than 700 years. A modest rebirth in the nineteenth century has been eclipsed by the current, startling flight from science and modernity. This retreat began in the last decades of the twentieth century and appears to be gaining speed across the Muslim world.

MEQ: What role do you think is played by the ulema in blocking new knowledge by imposing the rulings against innovation?

Hoodbhoy: The traditional ulema are indeed a problem, but they are not the biggest one; the biggest problem is Islamism, a radical and often militant interpretation of Islam that spills over from the theological domain into national and international politics. Whenever and wherever religious fundamentalism dominates, blind faith clouds objective and rational thinking. If such forces take hold in a society, they create a mindset unfavorable for critical inquiry, including scientific inquiry, with its need to question received wisdom.

MEQ: Have religious conservatism and anti-science attitudes among Muslims always been as strong as today? Or were Muslims more pro-science, say, a hundred years ago?

Hoodbhoy: In my childhood, the traditional ulema—who are so powerful today—were regarded as rather quaint objects and often ridiculed in private. Centuries ago the greatest poets of Persia, like Hafiz and Rumi, stripped away the mullahs' religious pretensions and exposed their stupidity. Today, however, those same mullahs have taken control of the Iranian republic. The answer lies just as much in the domain of world politics as in theology. Khomeini developed the doctrine known as "guardianship of the clergy," which gives the mullahs much wider powers than they generally exercised in the past. Instead of being simple religious leaders, they now became political leaders as well. This echoes the broader Islamic fusion of the spiritual and the temporal.

Scientists, Technologists, and Islamists

MEQ: Explaining the emergence of so many Muslim doctors, scientists, engineers, and other technologists as Islamists and, sometimes, as terrorists, Malise Ruthven suggests that a superficial understanding of science leads to a belief in authoritative texts and this slots in with a belief in the infallibility of the Qur'an.[2] What is your explanation?

Hoodbhoy: This question must be disaggregated and examined at many levels. It cannot be answered simply in terms of mere theology—the Bible contains elements of extreme violence and yet the vast majority of scientists who are believing Christians are also peaceful people. What brought about the global Islamist wave is a much more relevant question. It is, in some ways, the Muslim version of anti-colonialism and a reaction to the excesses of the West, combined with an excessive traditionalism.

But let me concentrate on the sociological aspects. To begin with, we need to separate the scientists from the technologists, meaning those who use science in a narrowly functional sense rather than as a means for understanding the natural world. I have never seen a first-rate Muslim scientist become an Islamist or a terrorist even when he or she is a strong believer. But second- and third-rate technologists are more susceptible. These are people who use science in some capacity but without any need to understand it very much—engineers, doctors, technicians, etc.—all of whom are more inclined towards radicalism. They have been trained to absorb facts without thinking, and this makes them more susceptible to the inducements of holy books and preachers.

MEQ: Has this been happening with Pakistan's home-trained scientists?

Hoodbhoy: Our best physics students in Islamabad are often the most open-minded and the least religious. They have enough social strength to keep themselves at a certain distance from the crowd. Among my colleagues, something similar takes place; the weakest ones professionally are the ones who demonstrate the greatest outward religiosity. I see a strong correlation between levels of professional competence and susceptibility to extremist philosophies.

MEQ: Is the situation the same in India?

Hoodbhoy: Yes, there, too, I find anti-science attitudes rare among scientists but rather common within the technological and professional classes, both Hindu and Muslim. The latter type of people pray for rain, attribute earthquakes to the wrath of God, think supplications to heaven will cure the sick, seek holy waters that will absolve sin, look to the stars for a propitious time to marry, sacrifice black goats in the hope that the life of a loved one will be spared, recite certain religious verses as a cure for insanity, think airliners can be prevented from crashing by a special prayer, and believe that mysterious supernatural beings stalk the earth. Their illogic boggles the mind.

MEQ: Does the fact that Indians and Pakistanis have both constructed nuclear weapons indicate that science now is firmly implanted on South Asian soil?

Hoodbhoy: To an extent, yes, but the battle against irrationality has a long way to go. For example, India's 1998 nuclear tests were preceded by serious concern over the safety of cattle at the Pokharan test site for religious reasons. Former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh wrote, "For the team at the test site—which included President Kalam, then the head of the Defence Research and Development Organization—possible death or injury to cattle was just not acceptable."

The Prohibition of Debate

MEQ: It seems that Muslims today are hampered by a culture that refuses to take on board the prerequisites for scientific and other intellectual progress—the Enlightenment insistence on freedom of speech and thought to enable open discourse and free debate. Even in the West since the Rushdie affair, Islamists seek to use the law to prohibit debate about Islam. Do you see a way to put an end to this pattern?

Hoodbhoy: On the scale of human history, the Enlightenment is a very recent phenomenon, barely four hundred years old. One must be hopeful that Muslims will catch up. The real question is how to shake off the dead hand of tradition. The answer lies in doing away with an educational system that discourages questioning and stresses obedience. Reform in the Muslim world will have to begin here. At the core of this problem, lies the tyranny that teachers exert over their students. In Urdu, we say that the teacher is not just a teacher—he is also your father. But in our culture, fathers are considered all-wise, which means that teachers cannot be questioned.

MEQ: Is this kind of education a source of authoritarianism?

Hoodbhoy: It is both a source and an inevitable consequence of authoritarianism. Instead of experiencing science as a process of questioning to achieve understanding, students sit under the watchful eyes of despots while they memorize arbitrary sets of rules and an endless number of facts. X is true and Y is false because that's what the textbook says. I grind my teeth whenever a student in my university class gives me this argument.

MEQ: How can countries like Pakistan develop a scientific mindset?

Hoodbhoy: College and university come much too late; change must begin at the primary and secondary school level. Good scientific pedagogy requires the deliberate inculcation of a spirit of healthy questioning in the classroom. Correct attitudes start developing naturally when students encounter questions that engage their mind rather than their memory. For this, it is important to begin with tangible things. One does not need a Ph.D. in cognitive studies to know that young people learn best when they deal with objects that can be understood by visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic means. As their experience grows, students learn to understand abstract concepts, to manipulate symbols, to reason logically, to solve theorems, and to generalize. These abilities are destroyed, or left woefully undeveloped, by teaching through rote memorization.

MEQ: What, then, should normal practice consist of?

Hoodbhoy: Teachers posing such questions as: How do we know? What is important to measure? How can we check the correctness of our measurements? What is the evidence? How are we to make sense out of our results? Is there a counter explanation, or perhaps a simpler one? The aim should be to get students into the habit of posing such questions and framing answers.

Religion Trumps Science

MEQ: You have said, "No Muslim leader has publicly called for separating science from religion."[3] Do you detect any real movement by Muslim secularists and scientists to reverse this trend?

Hoodbhoy: Nothing of this kind is visible in Pakistan, but I see this happening in Iran, the most intellectually advanced country of the Muslim world, a country that boasts an educational system that actually works. Ayatollah Khomeini was quite content to keep science and Islam separate—unlike Pakistan's leaders who have made numerous absurd attempts to marry the two. Khomeini once remarked that there is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. Nor did he take a position against Darwinism. In fact, Iran is one of the rare Muslim countries where the theory of evolution is taught. This may be because Shi'ites, as in Iran, have a different take on evolution than Sunnis and are generally less socially conservative as well. Shi'i women may wear the chador or hijab [head covering] but never a burqa [full body covering]. I've seen women taxi drivers in Tehran but never in New York City. Moreover, Iran is a front-runner in stem-cell research—something which George W. Bush and his administration had sought to ban from the United States.

MEQ: How far have madrasas in Pakistan, especially the Deobandi schools, made intellectual progress hard or impossible for society as a whole?

Hoodbhoy: The Deobandi-Salafi-Wahhabi axis of unreason does not seem capable of accommodating the premises of science—causality, an absence of divine intervention, and scientific method. Ever since Khwaja Nizam-ul-Mulk of Persia established madrasas in the eleventh century, these schools have stuck to their pre-scientific curriculum. However, they became dangerous when the Saudis used their petro-dollars in the 1970s to export Wahhabism across the world. Thousands of new madrasas were established in Pakistan by the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to provide fodder for the great joint, global jihad against the Soviets. The CIA provided madrasas with millions of Qur'ans, as well as tens of millions of textbooks published in America designed to create a jihadist mindset among young Afghans resident in Pakistan.[4] These madrasas eventually became nurseries for the Taliban.

MEQ: Have no attempts been made to reform the madrasas?

Hoodbhoy: Following the 9/11 attacks, General Pervez Musharraf was prodded by the Americans to initiate a madrasa reform project aimed at broadening the madrasa curriculum to include the teaching of English, science, mathematics, and computers. Huge sums were spent but to no avail. These misogynist bastions of anti-modernism and militancy cannot be reformed. The Pakistani state literally cowers before them. They have the power to bring every Pakistani city to a halt. On the other hand, in East Africa, India, or Bangladesh, one sees that madrasas can be quite different. While conservative, they do permit teaching of secular subjects. Some even have small minorities of non-Muslims, which would be unheard of in a Pakistani madrasa.

MEQ: You point out the emergence of low-quality scientific periodicals in Iran and elsewhere, in which scientists publish articles of a poor standard. Also, most Muslim countries tolerate outright plagiarism in Ph.D. theses and published books.[5] What do you suppose is responsible for such self-defeating behavior that clearly acknowledges the superiority of properly assessed articles and dissertations yet accepts the second- and third-rate?

Hoodbhoy: I call this "paper pollution." The rapid increase in substandard publications and plagiarism is the consequence of giving large incentives for publishing research papers. Some contain worthwhile research but most do not. I consider certain ambitious individuals in government to be at fault for allowing, and even deliberately encouraging, poor quality theses and books fit for nothing but the waste basket. This problem can be handled using the current administrative machinery; just remove these incentives and punish plagiarism with sufficient severity.

Open War between Muslims

MEQ: You have said, "Here [at Quaid-i-Azam University], as in other Pakistani public universities, films, drama, and music are frowned on."[6] This is also seen in numerous Muslim schools in the United Kingdom, where even chess was banned and compared to "dipping one's hand in the blood of swine."[7] These attitudes prevent talented young Muslims from achieving success as actors, directors, dancers, musicians, composers, artists, and writers. Your thoughts on changing this situation?

Hoodbhoy: There is open war between those Muslims who stand for a liberal, moderate version of the faith and those who insist on literalism. The unresolved tension between traditional and modern modes of thought and social behavior is now playing itself out in ever more violent ways. Most Pakistanis, while Muslims, want their daughters to be properly educated; Islamic extremists, however, are determined to stop them. On most campuses, religious vigilantes enforce their version of Islam on the university community by forcing girls into the veil, destroying musical instruments, forbidding men and women from being together, and putting a damper on cultural expression.

MEQ: Do the Taliban play a role in this arena?

Hoodbhoy: Yes, as of early 2009, they had already blown up 354 schools[8] and they issued a decree that no girls in Pakistan may be educated after February 15, 2009. In their view, all females must stay at home. In October, educational institutions across Pakistan shut down after a suicide bomber blew himself up after walking into the girls' cafeteria of the International Islamic University [in Islamabad] while, simultaneously, another bomber targeted male students.[9]

MEQ: Islamists bombed an Islamic university?

Hoodbhoy: Indeed, this episode sent shock waves across the country because the International Islamic University is a conservative institution where most women dress in burqas and very few wear normal clothes. But even this does not placate the extremists.

Muslims are at war with other Muslims. If the radicals win, or can at least terrify the moderates into following their restrictions, then there will be no personal and intellectual freedom and hence no thinking, ideas, innovations, discoveries, or progress. Our real challenge is not better equipment or faster Internet connectivity but our need to break with mental enslavement, to change attitudes, and to win our precious freedom.

[1] Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, "Science and the Islamic World—The Quest for Rapprochement," Physics Today, Aug. 2007, p. 1.
[2] Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America (London: Granta Books, 2002), pp. 117-21.
[3] Hoodbhoy, "Science and the Islamic World," p. 2.
[4] Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, "The ABCs of Jihad in Afghanistan—Courtesy, USA," The Washington Post, Mar. 23, 2002.
[5] Hazem Zohny, "Iran urged to stamp out plagiarism," SciDevNet (London), Oct. 26, 2009; "Iran's Science Minister Accused of Plagiarism," Payvand Iran News (Mountain View, Calif.), Sept. 24, 2009.
[6] Hoodbhoy, "Science and the Islamic World," p. 6.
[7] Denis MacEoin, Music, Chess and Other Sins (London: Civitas, 2009), p. 101.
[8] The Guardian (London), Jan. 20, 2009.
[9] Dawn (Karachi), Oct. 21, 2009.