Word: islam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...program's most crucial success was to introduce family-planning to revolutionary Tehran, an effort that has brought down the birthrate per female, from six children to two, with the full support of religious leaders. They at first urged Iranians to boost the ranks of the "soldiers of Islam" but then promoted contraception to stop the alarming growth in population. The lower birthrate is critical to a nation like Iran as its economy evolves. About 7,000 women went door-to-door in Tehran and talked to mothers about the benefits of smaller families, informed them of the different types...
...understand the scale of the challenge facing him as President Obama's envoy to promote U.S. interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke might consider the story of Amjad Islam. Islam, a schoolteacher in Matta, Pakistan, refused to comply when local Taliban leaders demanded that he hike up his trousers to expose his ankles in the manner of the Prophet Muhammad. The teacher knew Muslim teachings and had earned jihadist stripes fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their edict was wrong, Islam told the Taliban enforcers; no such thing had been demanded even by the Taliban regime...
...introducing Holbrooke's mission to promote counterterrorism cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama on Thursday warned that "there is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the al-Qaeda and Taliban bases along the border [in Pakistan]." But Amjad Islam was not killed in some frontier village abutting Afghanistan; his body hung 80 miles (129 km) from Pakistan's capital in the Swat Valley, which until 2007 had been a popular tourist destination dubbed the "Switzerland of Asia." Today about 75% of the valley is under the control of a particularly virulent branch of the Pakistani Taliban, which...
Ziauddin Sardar has written extensively on Islam, science (he used to be Middle East correspondent for Nature and the New Scientist), postmodernism, postcolonialism, multiculturalism and the complex reconciliation between Muslim belief and modernity. True to form, his latest book, Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience, is a simmering pot of topics that start off as an investigation into the origins of the dish that began life in the curry restaurants of Birmingham, England. It then moves into a historicized and dizzyingly wide-ranging enquiry into the origins, settlement, assimilation and cultures of the subcontinental diaspora...
...These issues pale beside the battle against radical Islam and its terrorist tactics, Bush insisted. Making his closing argument for the history books, the President declared, "America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil." And he pleaded with the country to maintain the focus. "America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict," he said. "But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard...