Hillary's Stunner in New Hampshire

How did Hillary Clinton pull the stunner in New Hampshire last night? Even though pundits and pollsters were busy eating crow, they took turns to "explain" Clinton's victory. Two words summed up their analysis: "race" and "gender."

Nonsense. Race, gender (and ethnicity) played no role in this primary.

There are four reasons why Hillary won.

First, it is in the American character to root for the underdog. With polls predicting a thumping victory for Obama, voters felt inclined to vote for Hillary. If Hillary swept the senator from Illinois in Ohio and polls were predicting a repeat for her in New Hampshire, it is most likely that Obama would have won in the Granite State.

Second, for the first time since she began her campaign, Hillary came across as a vulnerable human being instead of a micro-managed robot. Count on seeing the video in which she tears up many more times before this race is over. People like that. Yes, they admire guts and determination and straight talk, but they admire genuine emotions even more.

Third, Hillary spoke more substance on issues that mattered to voters in New Hampshire than Obama. There was no block voting; more women flocked to her because she addressed their concerns.

Finally, voters were fed up with the certainty of pompous pundits and pollsters. Let's teach these buffoons a lesson or two, many of them said to themselves as they stepped into the booth to register their feelings.

A hard-fought campaign is the fire through which presidential mettle is forged. No one can predict at this point who will win the democratic nomination but one thing is certain: the democratic nominee will be the next president of the United States.

Don’t Let a Teddy Bear Mask the Horrors of Darfur

So the Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir has “pardoned” Gillian Gibbons after meeting with two Muslim members of the British House of Lords. Hold the applause, please.

Gibbons was the British teacher jailed in Sudan for allowing her 6- and 7-year-old students in Khartoum’s Unity High School to name a teddy bear “Muhammad”, a name chosen by the young learners themselves. While in custody for eight days, cruel clerics and assorted Sudanese “defenders of the faith” chanted for Gibbons’s execution.

That they were doing so under the patronage of a government desperate to deflect the world’s attention away from Darfur was plain for all to see.

But we must not allow Darfur to be eclipsed by the zany tale of a teddy bear.

The Janjaweed Arab militia, armed and recruited by the Sudanese government, has massacred over 200,000 tribal people in the Darfur region, and 2.5 million were forced to flee their homes, in four years of fighting.

Conspiracy theories cannot be admitted here: it is a case of Muslims killing mostly Muslims.

No private citizen has been more vocal, daring and persistent in opening our eyes to the genocide in Darfur than the actress Mia Farrow.

Farrow put the Gibbons episode in perspective: “One white woman in peril with a teddy bear has captured more media attention than the past three years of our brothers and sisters in the Darfur region. I look back at what we were doing during the Rwanda situation and in America we were watching the O. J. Simpson trial.”

A goodwill ambassador for UNICEF who visited Darfur seven times since 2004 and witnessed the effects of the carnage firsthand, Farrow launched a fund for the region and said: “This is the first genocide of the 21st century and the one genocide that is ongoing as we speak. We have a regime that launched a military campaign on an unarmed population for no other reason than that they are not Arab.”

Actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon have also worked tirelessly to raise our awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Their Not On Our Watch project seeks to "focus international attention on the continuing carnage in Darfur, encouraging governments and international organizations to take meaningful action to protect the vulnerable, marginalized, and displaced. Where governments have remained silent, we are committed to working to render otherwise invisible atrocities, visible."

Zealotry and illiteracy can be a potent mix. Spectacles like the Sudanese clerics making a mountain out of nothing, not even a molehill, can both enrage and demoralize Muslims.

Consider: In the six years since 9/11, public opinion in America has shifted significantly against Muslims. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 35 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Muslims, up from 29 percent in 2002. Whereas 27 percent of Americans in 2002 thought that Islam was more likely to encourage violence than any other religion, the figure in 2007 stands at a whopping 45 percent.

For Muslims fighting bigotry and distrust and striving to earn their rightful place in Western societies, incidents like the one in Khartoum can sap the energy and make us wonder if we will ever make any progress.

Yet, as grim as the situation looks, we must not forget Darfur. If we are to remain true to our faith, we must join hands with people of conscience around the world in forcing the Sudanese government to stop the genocide.

A group of retired statesmen, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former president Jimmy Carter, have issued a report this week for the Sudanese government to honor past peace treaties, for rebel groups to participate in peace talks and for the international community to support a peacekeeping force with money and manpower.

Muslims can be a catalyst for such efforts, at least at the grassroots level. We can be the largest donors to Farrow’s Darfur fund. And we can demand that our imams and leaders address the Darfur situation forthrightly and unsparingly in their sermons and lectures.

In the four years since the Darfur genocide began, I did not hear a single sermon on it in the mosques that I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area, nor come across a single conference organized around the atrocities of the Sudanese regime.

It may be that as a minority, we feel overwhelmed by a few hate-mongers in the media. It may be that we are frustrated by our inability to reach out to many of our fellow-Americans despite the open houses and the interfaith dialogues. It may be that some of us experience discrimination at work because of our faith. And it is a fact that more than any other group, we are singled out for scrutiny at airports.

But none of these indignities can ever justify our silence when Muslims kill and commit injustice. We must speak out unequivocally against the world’s current “heart of darkness” in Darfur.

Wanted: Teachers Who Can Make a Difference

Educational reports vary widely in the steps they recommend to improve or overhaul a nation’s school system. One common thread that runs through them, however, is the need for quality teachers in classrooms. While everyone recognizes the central role of teachers in raising the level of K-12 education in America, how to train, attract and retain teachers who can teach, motivate and inspire remain elusive.

A recent report by McKinsey & Co offers evidence that simply by increasing teacher salary and reducing class sizes will not improve student performance. Yet in the United States, Britain and several other Western countries, these are often the only “remedies” applied, with predictably depressing results year after year.

The McKinsey report was based on a study of twenty-five of the world’s school systems, including ten of the top performers. The data came from Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) directed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an organization of thirty countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free market economy.

“We examined what these high-performing school systems have in common and what tools they use to improve student outcome,” states the report. “The experience of the top schools suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.”

These are not exactly breakthrough insights but where the report turns conventional wisdom on its head is the “how” part. How do you get the best teachers? How do you get the best out of teachers? And how do you take corrective actions when students fall behind?

As the Economist pointed out in a commentary on the report, you get the best teachers by hiring the best. In Finland (one of the top performing countries), teachers must have a master’s degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, and Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30% (also top performing countries). Do they do it with more money? No, these countries do not pay teachers more than average salaries. What’s the secret, then? Toughen the selection process for teacher training and only hire numbers to match vacancies. Once employed, as in Singapore and Finland where teaching is regarded as a high-status profession, teachers are more or less guaranteed a job for life if they continue to perform well.

Teaching is a high-status profession in these countries because it is competitive and training is well-funded because there are relatively few qualified candidates. In Singapore, new teachers get 100 hours of training a year. Seniors teachers monitor their progress and help them with their professional development. In Finland and Japan, groups of teachers visit each others’ classrooms to offer constructive criticism and plan lessons together. Every week, Finnish teachers get an afternoon off for this purpose.

The result is that there is a continuity of best practices and enlightened, self-correcting teaching methodologies that nourish the school systems in countries like Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. As one educator put it, “when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy.”

Yet all the best practices and institutional support cannot guarantee that things will not go wrong. Inevitably they do, and this is again where top performers differentiate themselves from the bottom dwellers. When students and schools show symptoms of failing (defined not by results of standardized tests but deeper and more meaningful educational needs and aspirations), these countries intervene early and often. They have more special-education teachers per student than in lagging countries. In any given year in Finland, for instance, 30% of students get one-on-one remedial lessons. In Singapore, there are extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay after hours to help them come up to speed and excel.

“The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers,” states the McKinsey report. Educators and concerned Americans have echoed the sentiment again and again. Educational spending in America, by way of school funding, school administration, teacher salary, standardized testing, federal policies such as the No Child Left Behind, and an endless array of other panaceas, has almost doubled since 1980. Class sizes have never been smaller. Everything has been tried and retried, yet the only constant in the equation, as the Economist wryly notes, is the poor outcome.

That is not to say there aren’t success stories. Some private organizations in the United States are flourishing and point the way toward progress. One such is Teach for America (TFA). Founded in 1990, TFA has stringent requirements for recruiting young teachers (the rejection rate of applicants is over 80 percent!) from the nation’s top schools to teach in inner-city schools and low income areas. Applicants are driven by a fierce sense of service and a desire to end the nation’s educational inequity. It is telling that for rejected TFA applicants, second career choices include top law and business schools and high-paying Wall Street jobs. Currently TFA has over 4,400 teachers working with almost 400,000 students. By any definition, TFA’s success continues to be astounding.

Another is the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Brainchild of two TFA alumni, KIPP began in 1994 and now has about 60 charter schools nationwide serving 14,000 kids. More than 80% of KIPP students are low income and 95% are black or Latino, yet they regularly outperform their public school counterparts in math and reading tests. Like TFA, KIPP selects its teachers carefully and trains them rigorously before allowing them to practice their profession.

Both TFA and KIPP are transforming not just students but entire communities by promoting the values of hard work, good behavior, discipline, transparency and accountability. The McKinsey report states that “Across the globe – whether it is Canada in North America, Finland in Europe or Japan and Korea in Asia – some education systems demonstrate that excellence in education is an attainable goal and at reasonable cost. They also show that the challenge of achieving a high and socially equitable distribution of learning outcomes can be successfully addressed and that excellence can be achieved throughout the education systems, with very few students and schools left behind.”

If TFA and KIPP can achieve the kind of excellence that the report lauds, there is no reason why such schools cannot be replicated on a mass scale and why America’s public school system cannot also be among the top-performing school systems in the world.

Reviving Science in Muslim Countries

I have been an admirer of Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s writings on bringing about a scientific renaissance among modern-day Muslims. His 1991 book, Islam and Science – Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, was an eye-opener for me. The Quran is a book of moral guidance and not a book of science, he wrote. In one clear sentence, he exposed the inadequacy of Muslims who would do away with the scientific method and install revelation (as they understood it) as the source of scientific progress and discovery. His subsequent writings on the topic only deepened my admiration.

Which was why, in an otherwise incisive article in Physics Today, I was disappointed by a solution he proposed for Muslim renaissance in science. Dr. Hoodbhoy recommends behavioral changes among Muslims to excel in a ruthlessly global marketplace dominated by science and technology. Such changes would allow Muslims to develop intense “social work habits” that “are not easily reconcilable with religious demands made on a fully observant Muslim’s time, energy, and mental concentrations. The faithful must participate in five daily congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite daily from the Quran, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably well toward success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A more balanced approach will be needed.”

Is Dr. Hoodbhoy suggesting that daily prayers, recitation of the Quran and month-long Ramadan fasting are hindrances to a Muslim’s attaining scientific excellence, since they disrupt sustained concentration? Although he does not spell out the details of “a more balanced approach,” the implication is clear: Do away with these religious demands, or, at the very least, reduce their frequency.

I am surprised by the obvious errors Dr. Hoodbhoy has made in his argument. While it is commendable for Muslims to offer the five daily prayers in congregations, it is not a must. The prayers (with the exception of the Friday noon prayer) can be offered in private, taking no more than a few minutes and very little space. In fact, that is how most observant Muslims meet the requirements of their faith during workdays in their professional lives. If, for some reason, they cannot offer the daily prayers on time, they can make them up later.

His use of the word “endure” for the month of fasting is also perplexing. Most Muslims do not “endure” fasting but look forward to it as a time of physical cleansing and heightened spirituality.

The major flaw in Dr. Hoodbhoy’s suggestion is that religious practices prevent observant Muslims from focusing and maintaining the continuity of their thoughts, particularly in science. In fact, the opposite is true. Properly practiced (a challenge for many Muslims for whom religious observances have become rituals without meaning), prayers and fasting instill discipline, a prerequisite for concentration. His mentor, Nobel physicist Abdus Salam, was an obvious example. Salam was one of the great theoretical physicists of the twentieth century but he was also a devout Muslim, punctilious about the demands of his faith. In numerous essays and articles, Salam explained how his faith inspired his science and vice-versa. While most Muslim scientists of our times can hardly match Salam’s achievement, the science of many of them is also informed by the awe and wonder inspired by their faith.

So why are Muslim nations so far behind in science compared to the West? Why does the observation of Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis that “if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice” ring so true? Why is creationist literature unleashed by a Turkish clergy named Harun Yahya sweeping the Muslim world?

One reason is the lack of separation of mosque and state, and consequently, separation of mosque and science, in many Muslim countries. Science thrives on unfettered inquiry. If the clergy can impose religious limits on free inquiry and threaten dire consequences if the limits are transgressed, science can never advance.

Another related reason is the lack of quality education. Take the case of Dr. Hoodbhoy’s own country, Pakistan. As William Dalrymple observed (The 'poor neighbor, The Guardian UK, August 14, 2007) on the occasion of Pakistan’s 60th independence anniversary, only 1.8% of Pakistan's GDP is spent on government schools. 15% of these government schools are without a proper building; 52% without a boundary wall; 71% without electricity. Many of the barely functioning schools cram children of all grades into a single room, often sitting on the floor because of lack of desks. While 65% of India’s population is literate and rising, the figure for Pakistan is 49% and falling. Out of a population of 162 million, 83 million adults of 15 years and above are illiterate. It is worse for women: 65% of all female adults are illiterate. The absence of quality government schooling has compelled the poorest Pakistanis to place their vulnerable children in the madrasa system. Madrasas offer free education but can turn their young wards into ideologues under the tutelage of fiery preachers, as the recent red mosque showdown in Islamabad demonstrated.

When one adds to this grim status quo the general lack of accountability and respect for law by the leaders of many Muslim countries, it is easy to see why engaging in genuine scientific research can become hazardous to one’s health.

Yet there is hope. Even diehard conservative Muslims are becoming aware of the central role of science in defining the destiny of modern nations. Slowly but surely, they are beginning to see that science does not undermine religion but enriches it. The wind of change is blowing and it can be stopped or reversed.

Dark and Mighty Hearts

The recent release of the movie, “A Mighty Heart,” based on the book of the same name by Mariane Pearl, widow of journalist Daniel Pearl who was slain in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002, has revived memories of this harrowing event and its implications in a post-9/11 world that seems to be spinning out of control.

Pearl was the Mumbai-based India correspondent of The Wall Street Journal who arrived in Karachi in January, 2002 with his five-month pregnant wife to pursue the investigation of “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and his possible al-Qaida links in Pakistan.

Trusting, curious and driven by a passion for truth, Pearl agreed to meet a mysterious, elusive imam named Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani whose followers, it was believed, included Reid. A man named Muhammad Bashir arranged the meeting.

It was a trap, and on January 23, 2002, Daniel Pearl walked straight into it.

A frantic search begins when Mariane suspects that her husband has been kidnapped. Pakistan’s intelligence agency (inter-services intelligence, the ISI), US consulate in Karachi and the FBI pool their resources to rescue Pearl.

The movie is faithful to these well-known facts but what is remarkable is the skill with which director Michael Winterbottom conveys them. Although we know at the outset what happens to Pearl, the movie plays like a thriller. Ordinary scenes pulsate with foreboding. Here is Pearl waving goodbye to Mariane as he is driven away in a yellow taxi for his rendezvous with Gilani from the Karachi villa rented by the writer Asra Nomani. Later in the evening, an anxious Pearl riding a different car asks the driver how much longer it will take to reach his destination, and the driver remains silent. Meanwhile, Mariane fights fear, fatigue, bureaucracy and pains of pregnancy to cling to her sanity as the clock ticks away and her husband fails to return.

After five weeks of false leads and midnight raids into the dens of terror suspects in the labyrinthine alleys of Karachi, an FBI agent posing as a journalist receives a grisly video in a hotel lobby. In graphic detail, it shows Pearl being beheaded by his captors weeks earlier, after he is coerced into confessing his “Jewishness.”

Angelina Jolie is brilliant as Mariane Pearl, at once restrained and explosive, worldly and transcendent. When informed that her husband has been murdered, Jolie retreats to her room in a trance and collapses into what has to be among the most heartrending wail in movie history.

Also impressive is an officer whom Mariane calls “Captain.” Played by Irrfan Khan, whom many Americans recently saw as the father in 'Namesake', the "Captain" is the head of Pakistan’s counter-terrorism unit. He vows to Marianne that “I will bring your Danny home” and afterwards, that he will bring Pearl’s killers to justice “even if it is going to take a lifetime, my lifetime.” He speaks softly, but there is no mistaking the steel beneath the velvet.

It was the "Captain" who found that “Bashir,” who lured Daniel into the fatal trap, was in reality Omar Saeed Sheikh, the London School of Economics dropout arrested in 1994 in New Delhi for kidnapping American and British tourists. He was released by the Indian government in exchange for the hostages of an Indian airliner hijacked to Afghanistan in December 1999.

Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death in July 2002 by a Pakistani court for the murder of Daniel Pearl but with several appeals pending, he remains in jail.

In the tangled world of terror, however, the truth behind the killing of Daniel Pearl remains as elusive as ever.

On March 15, 2007, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks who was captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003, told a U.S. military tribunal that he personally beheaded Daniel Pearl. “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”

Mohammed claimed that he was tortured while in CIA custody, but told the judge at his hearing that he was speaking freely and was telling the truth.

How will Mohammed’s confession affect the fate of Omar Saeed Sheikh? No one seems to know, a source of anger and frustration for Mariane and all those who wish to see justice done.

Mariane, whose mother is Cuban and father Dutch, gave birth to Daniel’s posthumous son, Adam D. Pearl, on May 26, 2002 in Paris. (We learn from the book that as she is getting ready to give birth in the delivery room, she is wearing a long white shirt she and Danny bought in Dhaka, Bangladesh.) Through Adam, she hopes to continue the legacy of her husband.

What is this legacy? As Mariane explains, it is to remain true to your purpose in life and to never let hate consume you. It is to reject a Manichean worldview where subjective versions of good vs. evil is locked in an eternal battle, a world without hope, a world where violence is the only solution.

“Part of my ‘revenge’ (against the fanatics) was that my purpose wouldn’t change – not how I live, the work that I do or my approach to the world,” she recently said in TIME magazine. In response to “Has your view of Islam changed?”, Mariane replied, “No, it hasn’t changed at all. I grew up with Muslim people, so I was very acquainted with Islam. So it is not like the people who killed Danny taught me what Islam was about. They are hijackers of their own faith.”

And when asked, “You have a great love for the Pakistani people. Has that love changed?”, Mariane said, “Not at all … For me the nationality and the religion is really a secondary matter. For me, it is all a matter of human behavior … The people who I truly love in Pakistan are the most noble, powerful and deep people that I have ever met in my life. At times like that you encounter the worst human behavior possible, so you are also going to be very sensitive to the best human behavior possible ...”

In the context of the war on terror waged by the U.S. government since 9/11, in which the certitude of zealots is matched by the certitude of the movers and shakers in Washington, Mariane Pearl is a beacon.

While she is more eager than anyone to see the killers of her husband, and the killers of innocent people anywhere, brought to justice, she has achieved the ultimate victory against the extremists by remaining true to her goal, and her husband’s, of bridging races, religions and cultures through compassion and understanding. She has done this without in any way compromising with the fanatics and their nihilistic ideologies.

Like her husband, Mariane gives substance to Hemingway’s observation about the fearless fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Against the mighty hearts of the likes of the Captain and the Pearls, the heart of darkness symbolized by the likes of Omar Saeed Sheikh and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad stand no chance. There is a lesson here: Never succumb to despair, and never allow fear to overcome courage and hope.

Inventing Suicidal Jihadists

I turned on the radio the other day and Michael Savage, the right-wing radio host, was thundering about the "Trojan Horse" of Islamic radicalism in America. We are fast approaching the tipping point by allowing Muslim hordes to immigrate to this country, he said. Before you know it, homegrown jihadists will run us over and Islam will become America’s state religion.

What triggered Savage’s outburst was a poll released on May 22 by the Pew Research Center. Any objective reader would be heartened by the findings: a majority of American Muslims are assimilated into the larger society, are law-abiding and moderate in their views, value hard work and love America. This, despite the fact that since the 9/11 attacks, many Muslims (54%) feel that life in America has become more difficult for them and that they are singled out by the government for extra scrutiny.

But the poll also found that 15% young Muslims, between the ages of 18 and 29, consider suicide bombing justified “often” (2%) or “sometimes” (13%). If you add the young Muslims who “rarely” (11%) approve (but approve nonetheless) such bombings, that would be about one-in-four Muslim youth who think that blowing oneself up to kill others can in some ways be rationalized.

It is this single cherry-picked statistic from the 108-page Pew document titled “Muslim Americans, Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream” (PDF) that has caused the hate-mongers to hyperventilate about the supposedly existential threat Muslims pose to America.

Will right-wing zealots like Michelle Malkin, Robert Spencer and Michael Savage, who have made careers out of the Muslim bogeyman, ever change their thinking?

For perspective, I talked with Tahir Anwar, Imam of the South Bay Islamic Center of San Jose.

“No, I don’t think we Muslims can do anything to change their minds,” said Tahir. “They have an agenda and they are sticking with it. They see us as fanatics out to destroy America. We should be happy that the Pew poll has affirmed that we are normal people, with dreams and aspirations like other Americans. I hope most of our fellow Americans will understand that and not be swayed by such people.”

“What about one-in-four Muslim youth voicing varying degrees of support for suicide bombings?" I asked. "How do you explain that?”

“I am not sure how so many young people can be so misguided, if the poll, in fact, reflects reality," he said. "It may have something to do with our Middle East policy, the cruel war in Iraq, the plight of the Palestinians. It may be that they were harassed and intimidated in schools and workplaces. But nothing can justify this mindset. We have an obligation to find the root cause of such thinking and do something about it. I would be concerned if even a single Muslim in America, or, for that matter, anywhere else, thought that suicide bombing could be justified in any way. It is wrong, period.”

“What will you personally do about it?” I asked.

“My next few Friday sermons will be on this topic. I will make it clear to my congregation – and I hope they will spread the message – that suicide bombing has no sanctity whatsoever in Islam. I will also engage the youth of our community in frank discussions.”

Poll results become more meaningful in context. One finding that also got publicity was that while 49% Muslim Americans believed in the separation of mosque and state, 43% believed that mosques should express their views on social and political questions. Yet a Pew survey in 2006 found that while 43% Christians believed in the separation of church and state, a majority of Christians (54%) felt that church and other houses of worship should be open and forceful about their political and social views.

Likewise, while 80% American Muslims oppose attacks on civilians according to the Pew poll, 13% said some circumstances may justify such attacks. Yet, in a poll conducted by the University of Maryland in December 2006, 24% of Americans thought that such attacks were justified “often” or “sometimes,” while another 27% thought they were justified in rare cases.

While many online media commentators focused on the predominantly positive aspects of the Pew poll, virulent talking heads continue to fan the flames of anti-Muslim hysteria. Listening to them uncritically can suggest that young Muslims are lurking on the street corners of America to kill themselves and passers-by with crude contraptions.

For edification, I made a final enquiry. Without informing him of the Pew poll, I asked my 18-year old son about possible justifications for suicide bombings.

“No way,” he said. “Those who do it are brainwashed. I hate what our country is doing in Iraq but I will never support suicide bombing. Never.”

Faith, Reason and the Templeton Prize

The 2007 Templeton Prize “For Progress toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities” was recently awarded to the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor for his insights into the nature of the secular and the sacred and how one without the other can be perilous for mankind. “The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both,” he said, “but it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual.” The 75-year old McGill University emeritus professor has called for new insights into the human propensity for violence, one that also takes “full account of the human striving for meaning and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion.”

The American philanthropist John Templeton created the annual prize in 1973 to recognize research in spirituality and its possible confluence with science. He made it the most lucrative prize in the world – at more than $1.5 million, it is larger than the Nobel Prize – to emphasize that we are shaped more by our spiritual longings than by any other factor, and therefore advances in the understanding of spirituality should also begat more attention and recognition. (Given the 72 years headstart the Nobel had over the Templeton, this may take a while!)

Of late, religion, spirituality and God have been under assault by militant secularists whose ranks include prominent scientists. Leading the charge is Richard Dawkins, professor of public understanding of science at Oxford University. His book, The God Delusion, has been on the best-seller list for several months now. Dawkins suffers from no shades of gray. God is unnecessary, he says, because science - evolution, randomness, physical laws and such - can explain everything. If anything does lie beyond the scope of science, it has no meaning and is therefore irrelevant. His fellow-travelers include the neuroscientist Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason) and Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) among others.

For every atheist or agnostic scientist or philosopher, however, there are at least a hundred who are passionate about their faith or at least open to the possibility of a Supreme Being. One such is the geneticist Francis Collins who led the successful effort to complete the Human Genome Project, a multidisciplinary enterprise to map and sequence the human DNA. Collins refutes Dawkins by asserting that God lies beyond the reach of science, beyond space and time, and so cannot be explained by science. God used His creative power to bring all creation into being. If we keep an open mind, we can detect God’s handiwork in the signs He has strewn about us, from the large-scale drama of the universe to the intricate world of sub-atomic particles. Author of The Language of God, he bemoans the fact that many of the current battles between atheists and fundamentalists have really been started by the scientific community, which he feels is an enormous tragedy.

Collins summarizes the beliefs of many scientists such as that of the astronomer Owen Gingerich who makes the point in God’s Universe of the existence of a Creator. The Muslim astrophysicist Bruno Guiderdoni draws inspiration from his faith in his research on galaxy formation. The fundamental mystery that animates physics and cosmology, he believes, is that the world is intelligible. The Nobel physicist Abdus Salam (1979) found in his faith the inspiration to delve into the mysteries and symmetries of fundamental particles. A list of recent Templeton Prize winners also illustrates the point: physicist Freeman Dyson (2000), chemist Arthur Peacocke (2001), mathematical physicist John Polkinghorne (2002), applied mathematician George Ellis (2004), Nobel physicist Charles Townes (2005) and mathematician John Barrow (2006). They were cited not for their scientific or mathematical discoveries but for their efforts to show in their distinctive ways that science and religion are two windows looking out on the same universe.

If scientists can be inspired by their faiths, can theologians and religious leaders be inspired by science? Certainly, and one example will suffice. In his book The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, the Dalai Lama writes eloquently about his fascination with science from an early age “It was not very long before the colossal significance of science for humanity dawned on me - especially after I came into exile in 1959. There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology.” Yet he warns of the danger of trying to find within a purely scientific context answers to questions such as the meaning of life or good and evil. “The problem is not with the empirical data of science but with the contention that these data alone constitute the legitimate ground for developing a comprehensive worldview or an adequate means for responding to the world’s problems … By the same token, spirituality must be tempered by the insights and discoveries of science. If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished, as this mindset can lead to fundamentalism.”

The Templeton prize celebrates those who seek to reconcile the ancient adversaries of science and religion by confronting difficult questions head-on, such as those raised by Darwinian atheists and religious fundamentalists. It celebrates the middle ground between the dispassionate observer and the devout believer, suggesting that the two can be fused into one for a full and creative life.

"The Lives of Others," a haunting movie

Once in a while a movie comes along that mesmerizes you with its power and brilliance. Such a movie is “The Lives of Others.” Typically, when you rave about a movie to friends, the first question they ask is: Who is in it? That will not work in this case because the movie was made in Germany and the actors and director are unknown to me and, I suspect, to most moviegoers in the U.S. But what performances and what a story! Set in 1984 in bleak, soulless East Germany, five years before the Berlin Wall fell, it’s a chilling political thriller that grapples with bigger questions of Faustian bargains, metamorphosis, redemption and perhaps most poignantly of all, love. The strands all come together in a shattering climax that left me drained and thirsting for more. The very last sentence in the movie, spoken by one of the protagonists in a seemingly casual way, breaks the heart. However you may define it, this is what I think art is meant to be.

Filtering out the Arsenic of Corruption

As Bangladeshis watch enthralled the reeling in of the corrupt 'big fish' by the military-backed caretaker government, and let out a collective exultation of “finally!”, an event in the United States has added to this exultation.

Dr. Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, won the 2007 “Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability” for developing an inexpensive, easy-to-make system for filtering arsenic from well water. Of Bangladeshi origin, the chemist plans to donate the $1 million prize money for distributing these filters to needy communities around the world.

Dr. Hussam was moved by the plight of millions of Bangladeshis poisoned by tube-well water laced with arsenic - leading to serious skin conditions, tumors, breathing difficulties, cancer, and ultimately to agonizing death - and made it his quest to find a solution.

After experimenting with hundreds of prototypes, he finally found the right combination of sand, charcoal, brick and cast iron to filter out almost any trace of arsenic from well water. In the northern district of Kushtia now, these systems are being produced at the rate of about 200 per week, at a cost of about $40 each. Over 30,000 filtration systems have already been distributed throughout the country.

Coming in the wake of Dr. Yunus’s Nobel Peace Prize last year, Dr. Abul Hussam’s achievement should lift the heart of even the most stubborn pessimist.

In light of Bangladesh’s current attempt to make corrupt kingpins accountable for their past misdeeds, the success of Dr. Hussam’s discovery suggests a compelling question: Will Bangladesh be able to filter out the arsenic of corruption, greed, nepotism and misrule once and for all from the roots of its government, no matter who may be in power?

Conscientious Bangladeshis hung their heads in shame when the Berlin-based Transparency International ranked the country as the most corrupt in the world five years in a row, beginning with 2000. They witnessed with horror the powerful and the unscrupulous looting the country’s treasury, the Faustian bargains political parties made with one another and the terribly widening gap between the rich and the poor. (What a contrast, for instance, to a Bangladeshi taxi driver in New York named Osman chowdhury who returned a lost bag of diamond rings worth $500,000 to the owner after she had left it in the trunk of his cab. If only Bangladeshi politicians and their sycophants could learn honesty and integrity from this humble man!)

Both the Awami League and the Bangladesh National Party indulged in thievery and gangsterism with impunity, and functionaries of both parties – mercenaries, really - created a twilight zone in which their words were the law. Only the ‘fittest’ thrived in this twilight zone, the fittest being those in or close to power, and their henchmen down the food chain.

Now there is hope that the darkness may be lifting, that those who abused power and amassed fortunes at the expense of the nation and its citizens will be brought to justice.

Because it is the army, backed by the interim government, that is spearheading the crackdown and the cleansing mission, some Bangladeshis are already protesting that democracy is in danger.

What planet are they on? Democracy cannot flourish in a vacuum. It can thrive only in the fertile soil of accountability, responsibility, and good governance. When the soil is saturated with the arsenic of greed, nepotism and solipsism, what thrives is “thugocracy,” not democracy. This has been the sad lot of Bangladeshis since 1991, following the overthrow of the military dictatorship of General Ershad.

The country has been kept afloat not by any government in power, but by the innate genius of common Bangladeshis – the human capital - and their entrepreneurship and creativity against all odds.

What is critical is for the interim government to proceed with prudence, and not try to bite off more than it can chew. One measure of this prudence can be seen in the systematic way in which the army is being used to snag progressively ‘bigger fish’ with each passing day. Ultimately the biggest fish – an unholy group of crooks and criminal masterminds across party lines – will have to be hauled in for justice to prevail.

Visiting Bangladesh last November, friends and relatives repeatedly told me that if only the government got off the back of the people and the powerful were held accountable for their actions, the country could achieve wonders. While neighboring India was earning billions of dollars in foreign exchange through the Internet-driven boom in IT services and products, Bangladesh was moving backward through debilitating strikes and plundering of the nation’s assets by the privileged.

Will decades of national nightmare be soon over, and will a new and responsible government usher in an era of enlightened democracy, of accountability, of law and order, of economic and educational opportunity for all? Let’s hope the groundwork is now being laid for such an outcome, so that future generations can look to this interim government as one that, after fits and starts, found its calling and made good on its promise.

Of Congressmen and Cabbies

When Keith Ellison, the Minnesota democrat and the first Muslim elected to Congress, took his oath of office in January on a Quran that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, I experienced a sense of continuity with the past. It enabled me to glimpse, even if fleetingly, the dreams and aspirations of America’s founders and their stubborn influence in steering the nation toward worthy goals.

Irony, of course, complicates the picture. Consider the statements of Congressman Virgil Goode representing Albemarle County of Virginia, the birthplace of Jefferson.

In denouncing Ellison’s decision, Mr. Goode declared that Americans needed to “wake up” or else there would “likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran.”

Was the Congressman worried about more elected Muslim officials, or was he disturbed that the Quran could become the norm for Muslim officials taking their oaths?

Both, as it turns out. Goode’s fundamental concern was Muslim immigration to America. “I believe that … we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.”

For the records, Ellison is not an immigrant. An African-American who traces his U.S. ancestry to 1741, the 42-year-old Congressman converted to Islam at 19 when he was a student at Wayne State University in Detroit.

The irony has now come full circle.

It appears that cabbies at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in Ellison’s home state, one of the nation’s busiest, have been refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol. Mostly of Somali descent, these Muslim cab drivers claim that transporting alcohol violates Islamic law.

What nonsense! Refusing tired travelers a service because they may be carrying alcohol violates only the laws of courtesy and reason. Islam bans drinking alcohol, as Mahmoud Ayoub, an Islamic scholar at Temple University said, not carrying it.

“What it comes down to,” explained Dr. Khalid Siddiqi, an Islamic scholar from San Jose, California, when I asked him about the issue, “is that many Muslims are unfortunately lacking in knowledge and are prone to anger and emotion that cloud their judgment. We saw an example of this during the Danish cartoon controversy. In this particular case, the Quranic verse that comes to mind is: O you who believe! Ask not questions about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble. (5:101) The cabbies have a responsibility to take their passengers from point A to point B. This is the agreement they have signed with the airport authority and they must fulfill it. That’s all.”

As an American-Muslim, I took pride in the support Congressman Keith Ellison received from many of his fellow-representatives and the dignity with which he confronted the bigotry directed against him. This pride was being undermined by the ‘holier-than-thou’, sanctimonious attitude of some Muslim cab drivers. Fortunately the attitude has significantly waned, which is a good thing. As the syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote: “It is foolish to needlessly invite negative attention. Why write Rush Limbaugh’s script for him?”

The Disgrace of Holocaust Denial

While studying at Temple University in Philadelphia in the ‘70s, I became good friends with a fellow-student named Bob Morraine. Bob had a terrific sense of humor who could tease out laughter from the bleakest of situations. I found hipany delightful.

One day I learned that Bob’s father was a dentist with a thriving practice in a suburb of Philadelphia. When I told him that I had never had a dental checkup in Bangladesh, Bob was aghast. Ignoring my protestations, he made an appointment for me to see his father.

When Dr. Morraine took a look at my teeth the following week, it would be an understatement to say that he was shocked. I was overdue for extensive dental surgery. The treatment had to be spread out over several weeks and would have cost a few thousand dollars even then, but knowing my student status and still wanting to honor me as a paying patient, he charged me a grand total of … fifty dollars.

Bob was Jewish and we rarely saw eye-to-eye on the Palestinian issue, having animated give-and-take whenever the opportunity arose. There was one topic, though, that cast a shadow on Bob’s ever-smiling face, and that was the topic of the Holocaust. Although I was aware of the general nature of this crime against humanity (my most vivid exposure to it until then was the 1961 movie, Judgment at Nuremberg), I would never have fathomed its affect on the Jewish psyche had I not known Bob. Even though removed from the event by a generation or two, the Holocaust seemed as real to Bob as it was to its victims. I learned to respect that and developed an understanding of the enormity of the genocide.

Bob and I lost contact after graduation. I came west to California (“Go west, young man!” as Horace Greely, a newspaperman from Lincoln’s time, exhorted.) As far as I know, Bob stayed East.

The memory of my friend came flooding to my mind when I learned that the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had sponsored a 2-day “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust” in Tehran, beginning December 11. I could almost see the sorrow on Bob’s face as he lapsed into uncharacteristic silence on hearing the news. Nothing could make the atrocity of this conference more painful for me than imagining the effect it must have had on a friend I had known decades ago. I felt ashamed and angry.

The question remains: why? Why hold a conference like this? Surely it cannot be to prove that the Holocaust never happened. There is far too much evidence for even the most diehard denier to seriously consider such a notion. Is it to prove then that, while it may have taken place, it wasn’t as “bad” as it has been made out to be, that maybe, instead of 6 million Jews, only a million or two perished? Would that somehow make the Holocaust a lesser crime against humanity? What lunacy is this, trying to open a hidden wound with such cruelty?

I was heartened to see the major American Muslim organizations unequivocally condemning the Iran conference. I was most inspired by Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society who organized a visit by several Muslim leaders to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to acknowledge and commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis. As reported by Mary Beth Sheridan in Washington Post on December 21, the museum’s director, Sara J. Bloomfield, said: “We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran.” Johanna Neumann recalled how Albanian Muslims saved her Jewish family when they fled to Albania from Germany. “Everybody knew who we were. Nobody would even have thought of denouncing us to the Nazis,” said Neumann. “These people deserve every respect anybody can give them.”

Equally compelling was the letter written by a Palestinian militant to the president of Iran (reported by Rabbi Michael Lerner in a message to the Tikkun community) who had spent 18 years in an Israeli prison.

Mahmoud Al-Safadi wrote: “I am furious about your insistence on claiming that the Holocaust never took place and about your doubts about the number of Jews who were murdered in the extermination and concentration camps, organized massacres, and gas chambers, consequently denying the universal historical significance of the Nazi period … Whatever the number of victims – Jewish and non-Jewish – the crime is monumental … Ask yourself, I beg you, the following question: were hundreds of thousands of testimonies written about death camps, gas chambers, ghettos, and mass murders committed by the German army, tens of thousands of works of research based on German documents, numerous filmed sequences, some of which were shot by German soldiers – were all these masses of evidence completely fabricated?”

While the Tehran conference reflects the opinion of Ahmadinejad and his cohorts, it is a mistake to think that it also reflects the opinion of ordinary Iranians. During the week of the Holocaust conference and afterwards, students at several leading Iranian universities staged massive demonstrations against the president for his crackdown on academic and personal freedom. “Forget the Holocaust – do something for us,” they chanted, and even “Death to the dictator!” (reported in New York Times by Nazila Fathi, December 21).

Denying the Holocaust only diminishes the denier. In this regard, one irony that must have escaped the president of Iran is that Jews, Christians and Muslims are celebrating Hanukkah, Christmas and Eid-ul-Adha, respectively, in the same month in which he held his infamous conference. I find the symbolism deeply persuasive, in that enmity, despair and hate will be trumped by peace, hope and goodwill.

PS: More than a hundred Iranian intellectuals recently signed a statement condemning the Holocaust conference sponsored by the government of Iran.

Gender Equality, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

Gender equality in the heterogeneous Muslim world is a work in progress. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize gave a boost to this work when it was awarded to Bangladeshi economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded in 1976.

Mainstream media have been abuzz with inspiring stories of millions of poor Bangladeshi women lifting themselves out of poverty by borrowing little sums of money from Grameen (a Bengali word meaning ‘village-based’) Bank and starting their own businesses, a model now emulated in over 100 countries. (97% of Grameen clients are women.)

What has received little attention is the contribution Dr. Yunus has made in helping disenfranchised women challenging a patriarchal society that often practices misogyny against them in the name of Islam.

Whereas the husband’s (or the father’s) word was the de facto law before, particularly in villages where illiteracy is high and sacred text is manipulated to suit the male viewpoint, economic freedom gave women entrepreneurs the courage to question religious chauvinism and resist attempts to undermine their dignity.

Speaking to a reporter a few years ago, Dr. Yunus explained the psychological barriers to his bank this way: “The first hostile person to our program is the husband. We challenge his authority. In the family, he is a macho tyrant. He starts to see that she is not as stupid as he thought. He says, ‘Now she cannot nag me about money, because she understands how hard it is to make.’ The tension eases and they become a team.”

A team can function only when there is mutual respect. A husband accustomed to obedience from his wife begins to respect her opinion on religious matters, too, since she has shown her worth by financially supporting the family.

This has been the noteworthy byproduct of the microcredit revolution that Muhammad Yunus launched three decades ago. Unwittingly, he forced a predominantly conservative Muslim society to confront its ingrained habits and customs, inspiring countless women to question dogma and realizing their God-given rights.

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer-activist and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, evoked the gender issue in her Nobel Lecture: “The discriminatory plight of women in Islamic states, whether in the spheres of civil law or in the realm of social, political and cultural justice, has its roots in the patriarchal and male-dominated culture prevailing in these societies, not in Islam. This culture does not tolerate freedom and democracy, just as it does not believe in the equal rights of men and women, and the liberation of women from male domination (fathers, husbands, brothers …), because it would threaten the historical and traditional position of the rulers and guardians of that culture … The patriarchal culture and the discrimination against women, particularly in the Islamic countries, cannot continue for ever.”

It certainly cannot, and the work of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the “banker to the poor” who proved that poverty was not destiny, that, in fact, destiny was what one made of it, vindicates Ebadi’s hope and assertion.

In the post-9/11 world, Muslim women in affluent western countries are engaged in the battle of ideas to shape their faith and reclaim it from traditionalists and extremists.

In March of last year, for instance, Dr. Amina Wadud, professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Quran and Women: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective, delivered a sermon and led a public, mixed-gender Friday congregational prayer in New York City.

This symbolic but seminal act received widespread support, and criticism, from Muslims around the world, stirring vigorous debate and soul-searching.

Asra Nomani, a journalist and author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam, is on a mission to reclaim the rightful role of woman in Islam defined by the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad but denied by centuries of cultural accretions.

“We joke that we want to take the “slam” out of Islam – that’s our American generation’s way of understanding it,” she says. “But it’s really that simple: we’re just so tired of going to our mosques and feeling unworthy or worthless or less than faithful. It says in the Quran, “There is no compulsion in religion,” and yet the fanatics in all religions want to make it compulsory that you follow their path of faith.”

Theological debates and reclaiming interpretive rights to sacred text by educated Muslim women activists constitute one path toward gender equality. The other is by empowering poor women engaged in daily existential battles to achieve financial freedom so that they too can challenge the myth of patriarchy in traditional societies and experience the egalitarianism that permeates Islam.

Only when the two paths converge – intellectual and existential, selective and grassroots - will true gender equality flourish in the heterogeneous Muslim world. Only then can we expect the sequence of events such as the following becoming a reality.

A seamstress in a village in Chittagong, Bangladesh, delivers garments to a demanding but honest merchant, and makes a tidy profit. The ripple from this transaction reaches Kandahar, Afghanistan, where a twenty-something teacher briskly walks along an earthen road to her one-room school, smiling to herself as she anticipates the fresh, eager faces of girls and boys waiting to learn arithmetic from her. A local cleric approaching from the opposite direction alights from his bicycle and respectfully acknowledges her.

The ripple from this gesture spreads to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where a middle-aged housewife patiently maneuvers her car heavy traffic and heads for the English-medium school in the center of town to pick up her two children. She has an appointment to see the principal about introducing more challenging curricula in the school and mentally rehearses her presentation.

The ripple from the rehearsal propagates to Katsina, Nigeria, where a judge raises her gavel to bring order to her courtroom in a complex inheritance case as she prepares to dispense justice tempered by mercy.

Perspective on Ramadan Crescent and the Pope's Speech

Religious passions have a direct bearing on our spirituality, so it is important that we evaluate these passions from time to time to steer ourselves in the right direction.

One particular issue that ignites Muslim passion is marking the beginning of Ramadan. It determines not only the day we begin fasting, but also the days we celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr, the feast of fasting, and Eid-ul-Adha, the feast of sacrifice.

Most Muslims have traditionally split between two schools of thought, one going with moon-sighting announcements from the Middle East, typically Saudi Arabia, and the other with local moon-sighting. In most cases, the former begins Ramadan a day earlier, and celebrates the two Eids also a day earlier, than the latter.

About a month ago, the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) announced that it would use astronomical calculations to determine the beginning of the Islamic lunar months “with the consideration of the sightability of the crescent anywhere on the globe.” The sightability criterion was for the new moon to be born before 12:00 noon GMT somewhere on the globe before the end of the night in North America.

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) endorsed FCNA and referred interested Muslims to its Website for a “50+ page analysis and a PowerPoint presentation” for details.

The response was swift. The Islamic Shariah Council of Northern California, along with other organizations, issued a statement refuting the decision of FCNA to pre-fix the beginning of the lunar months on the basis of the said criterion, and forcefully reiterated its decision to continue with local moon-sighting.

A close reading of FCNA and the Sharia Council declarations, however, reveals a startling fact: The two groups have used the same set of core Quranic verses and sayings of the prophet to justify their respective conclusions and refute the other!

So what’s new, a cynic might ask.

What is new is that for the first time, FCNA has defined a specific astronomical calculation to mark the beginnings of lunar months, particularly the month of Ramadan. This has had the unfortunate effect of revealing more sharply than ever the latent acrimony between the two schools of thought and polarizing Muslim communities further.

Why does this particular issue arouse such passion? More importantly, can we do something about it?

I believe the heightened passion is due to a myth that has gone unchallenged for too long, which is that to begin fasting on the same day and to celebrate the two Eids together reflect Muslim unity at it best. Conversely, not doing so implies that Muslims are fragmented and disunited.

It is time we exploded this myth once and for all. Muslim unity has nothing to do with the same-day commencement of Ramadan or its same-day ending. It is a false criterion, a red herring that leads to bitter finger-pointing such as “You have sold your soul to the Saudis,” “No, you have sacrificed independent thinking on the altar of your ignorance,” and so on.

Once the myth is gone, the invectives can disappear and the stress that accompanies the start of the sacred month can be a thing of the past.

But we can also look at the issue in a more positive way. Consider this saying of the Prophet: “The differences of opinion among the learned within my community are a sign of God’s grace.” In this light, we see the two schools of thought not as a cause for anger or sorrow but as a blessing. After all, both schools consist of Muslim scholars, imams, astronomers and professionals drawn from different fields. Why not celebrate their good intentions, even if their conclusions differ?

This points to two larger problems, however: first, the inability of many Muslims to articulate their position without indulging in overheated rhetoric and second, responding to religious provocations with violence. The reaction to Pope Benedict’s “evil and inhuman” speech is only the latest of such examples.

Muslims had a right to be offended by Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor’s insult of Prophet Muhammad and “his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Many Muslim leaders and organizations responded to the Pope’s speech at the University of Regensberg in Germany on September 12 with calm dignity and accepted his subsequent expression of regret, but there were also many shrill and incendiary denunciations that were disgraceful. And there could certainly be no excuse whatsoever for the firebombing of churches in the West Bank and Gaza and the killing of the Italian nun Leonella Sgorbati in Mogadishu.

Even though we cannot control the behavior of a minority of deviants and extremists among the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, it must never keep us from unequivocally condemning their acts of terror and bring them to justice whenever possible. Many Muslims, in fact, were quick to condemn these acts and demanded the apprehension of the perpetrators. Surely the Quranic warning that “if anyone kills an innocent human being it is as if he has killed all mankind” applies to the killers of the 65-year-old nun in Somalia.

As we transcend our polarizing passions in the month of renewal that is upon us, and as we work on improving our ability to articulate our opinions, we should also recognize that in a world of contending truths, provocations through words, cartoons, pictures or movies should be met not with violence or displays of religious chauvinism but with dialogue and decency.