If the books agree with the Koran, they are superfluous. If they disagree with it, they are heretical. "Taliban dynamite schools in NW Pakistan: official," from AFP, December 9 (thanks to James):
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Taliban militants on Wednesday dynamited two boys' schools in Pakistan's Khyber district, where troops are pressing an offensive against Islamist insurgents, an official said.The attacks took place in Bara town, about 20 kilometres (13 miles) south of the regional capital Peshawar, with most of the buildings reduced to rubble but no one injured in the blasts in the early hours of the morning....
"Both main school buildings were completely destroyed," said Shafeerullah Wazir, the top administrative official of Khyber district, adding that only two classrooms remained standing in the adjacent schools.
Wazir said that militants buried large quantities of dynamite around the outer walls of the government-run high school and primary school.
"Both Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam people are involved in this act," he said....
Islamist militants opposed to co-education have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years.
Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the Swat valley alone during a two-year Taliban uprising to enforce sharia law in a district once favoured by Western tourists for its ski slopes and bracing mountain air....
"Islamist militants opposed to co-education have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years."
anti-education or pro-fear?....The schools are easy targets for the followers of the peaceful religion of Islam...and the Government rarely seeks out the attackers...and the people have no will to fight back....Islam thrives on fear...
The Pak government is to blame since they first allowed and recognized the Taliban as long as they could use them against India, now the islamists are biting the Pak hand that fed them.
The aim of the taliban is to fill the pakistani people's brain with islamic nonsense and this is possible only if genuine education is kept away from them.
So these attacks on schools fulfill 3 functions:
1. To create an atmosphere of fear among the common people.
2. To keep the people away from genuine education.
3. To demoralise Pakistani and US forces.
"Islamist militants opposed to co-education ..."
This statement is disingenuous. It implies that the Taliban have no problems with all girl schools or all boy schools. They only have a problem with the educational setting where boys and girls are inter-mixed.
To be truthful the statement should read: "opposed to all education except that provided within the madrases." Of course, that eliminates all female participants as well.
Dear Robert,
I am surprised the "yawn-oralists" at the lazy-liberal-media missed out on this juicy "Breaking News" of a headliner:
MIRACLE OF SHARIA CREATES BUDGET SURPLUS !!
The main sponsors of Sharia, the Taliban in Pakistan in essence issuing a "live fatwa"; high schools and associated infrastructure (buildings, etc) as being un-Islamic, therefore must be done away with. I wonder if the Sharia compliant nations mainly Eurabaia, Londonistan (U.K.) and Canuckistan will follow suit to ban high school education, at least to remain Sharia compliant and more importantly not to hurt the feelings of Muslims, promote community cohesion and thereby creating huge budget surpluses. Dang, its a fiscal miracle in these difficult economic times.
As soon as the "bower-downer-in-chief" hears of this miracle on Downing Street, we can expect to see Reid and Pelosi on TV praying at a D.C. mosque, asking God for a miracle of our own this Christmas. Lord save us!
God Bless you.
RG
"If the books agree with the Koran, they are superfluous. If they disagree with it, they are heretical."
If she floats, she's a witch. If she drowns, she was innocent...
hay canuckistain should be torontostain theirs not enough muslims in the rest of Canada to be more than a minor irritation
hay canuckistain should be torontostain theirs not enough muslims in the rest of Canada to be more than a minor irritation
Your first line reminds me of 1984, like so much in Islam. If it agrees with Ingsoc, it is superfluous. If not, it is crimethink.
One of my children is on her school’s student council. Their project this year is ‘Pennies For Peace’, http://www.penniesforpeace.org/ a 501(c )3 non-profit started by Greg Mortenson, of Three Cups Of Tea fame. The project is to raise funds, one penny at a time, donated and collected by school children to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I have been meaning to speak with the teacher-advisor of the council about why this project was chosen over a local charity, along with other questions, such as how many schools funded by this program have been destroyed? How many children, especially girls have been maimed or killed for attending such schools? I can imagine the answer will be the usual stated goals of the project: to promote peace through education.
My daughter has bought in to the party line, being an impressionable seven year old. The earnest sincerity she projected when explaining this project to me as I read this article hurts me to the quick. She understands what happens when children in those places try to get an education, but she really believes she and her peers can effect change of an entire culture for the better, whereas NATO has not, nor cannot.
Is there any other religion that bombs schools?
One?
Is there any other people or ethnicity that INTENTIONALLY and WILLFULLY bombs schools?
Please, somebody, think very hard, google very hard, and name one people, one ethnicity, one gang, one collection of humanity, one group, just a single solitary self-described grouping of folks-that hates education and progress so much as to blow up schools.
Waiting............
"Is there any other people or ethnicity that INTENTIONALLY and WILLFULLY bombs schools?"
Are you some sort of Islamophobe, racist, hate speaker? /sarc
Waiting?... sound of crickets............. Nope.
Even when those schools are in operation, they do not accomplish much. There are other far more deserving places than Pakistan.
lkeevy1, I would counter that the Paki Govt. is complicit more than to blame. Aspects of their Secret Service and Military actively assist the Taliban.
No Western money should be going to that part of the World, I would rather we back India and let Pakistan/Afghanistan wither.
I agree. I despise this playing upon the natural goodness and generosity of children to further someone's misguided aim of kumbayah. If a worthy charity can't be found locally, we would be better off finding a rat-hole to toss these pennies into.
Sigh. Talk about exploitation of children.
The kids should be collecting to get better books and other materials for their own school. Or for the local library. A lot more good would be done there, than in Afghanistan or Porkistan.
Or how about funding training courses for the unemployed?
Pennies for the soup kitchen?
The local animal shelter even?
Like I believe the old Unicef don't collect candy collect for us scam was, it's simply a way to indoctrinate children with the idea that only people in far away countries are worthy of consideration, and that no one in the developed world really needs help. That if someone is poor here, they are merely lazy, while the masses of third-world people are the only victims of circumstance .. and that those circumstances are entirely "our" fault.
The same people who give to third-world charities are likely to glower at the beggar in his own city, and to ask the volunteer dog-walker for the humane society "Don't you care about PEEEEEEEEEPLE?!" (I got that a LOT.)
"The earnest sincerity she projected when explaining this project to me as I read this article hurts me to the quick."
Oh, dear Lorem, I know that hurt, too. The public school my 14-year-old son attends is working hard to turn him into an Obama-worshiping, climate-catastrophe-believing leftist. And he is young and trusting, and he believes. That does hurt. We want to support our children's enthusiasms, their dreams; on the other hand, we know they are being lied to.
My approach -- not particularly successful so far, but I keep hoping -- is to speak my views to him, ask questions to provoke some individual thinking, and most important I think, live the values I try to teach. I trust in time, when he is strong enough as a person, he'll remember my words and check them out on his own. That's what had to happen between me and my father.