The commemoration was filled with formative and heated discussions with contents ranging from academic, ethnic and religious perspectives.

Among the contributors was Laween Atroshi, a 22 year old British Kurd and Peace ambassador. Here he discusses the successful and applause worthy developments the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq has made thus far in its running. Laween raises points such as our strong education system, and the legal laws implemented within the region which condemn honour crimes and honour killings as well as other acts of human injustice.

He also mentions and makes a request for the UK Labour Party to consider Kurdistan’s cause and struggle for independence and the not so long-ago history of our Halabja genocide.

Laween Atroshi on Kurdistan’s Rights & Development

]]> http://www.mideastyouth.com/2011/12/29/kurds-human-rights-talk-uk/feed/ 0 House of Lords,Human Rights Commemoration,Kurdish Youth,Kurdistan,Kurds,london,UK Human Rights Day 2011 was warmly welcomed in London's House of Lords where a board of delegates came together from across Europe in discussion and reflection of the developments and progress made within the global community on the agenda of human right... Human Rights Day 2011 was warmly welcomed in London's House of Lords where a board of delegates came together from across Europe in discussion and reflection of the developments and progress made within the global community on the agenda of human rights. The commemoration was filled with formative and heated discussions with contents ranging from academic, ethnic and religious perspectives. Among the contributors was Laween Atroshi, a 22 year old British Kurd and Peace ambassador. Here he discusses the successful and applause worthy developments the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq has made thus far in its running. Laween raises points such as our strong education system, and the legal laws implemented within the region which condemn honour crimes and honour killings as well as other acts of human injustice. He also mentions and makes a request for the UK Labour Party to consider Kurdistan's cause and struggle for independence and the not so long-ago history of our Halabja genocide. Laween Atroshi on Kurdistan's Rights & Development Mideast Youth no http://www.mideastyouth.com/2010/07/29/not-so-glamorous-the-aftermath-of-a-fashion-show-in-sudan/ http://www.mideastyouth.com/2010/07/29/not-so-glamorous-the-aftermath-of-a-fashion-show-in-sudan/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:40:40 +0000 Reem Shawkat (Sudan) http://www.mideastyouth.com/?p=8500

Recalling a 60′s experience

A.M.H was circumcised at the tender age of 9. She remembers the nitty-gritty details of this ordeal even though it has occurred over 40 years ago.

Her father, a highly-educated man was in a conference outside Sudan , he has repeatedly warned her mother and his mother, her grand-mother, of taking her to the cutter.

” My daughters will not be circumcised, this is backwards and oppressive, ” stated her father, a US- educated Sudanese professional.

The women gathered, conspired and produced a detailed plan of taking her to the cutter while her father, her only savior, was away. The plan was successful and A.M.H was pampered that day and promised a lot of sweets and toys. She was excited, she didn’t know what was in store for her.

Two women held her down with all their force and proceeded to cut a part of her body.

She remembers the blood gushing out of her , the overwhelming soreness, the inability to get up.

She wanted to get up and play, but she couldn’t move an inch. She felt disabled and helpless.

When her father came back a few days later, he figured out that something was wrong. He asked her and she told him the truth. She shared her pain with him.

It was the 1960′s and female circumcision was a widespread practice , hence, when her father announced his decision to divorce her mother for disobeying him, he was brushed off as insane.

The divorce never materialized, but female circumcision was the main cause of conflict between the young couple for the rest of their lives. It has changed their marriage as much as it changed the life of this 9 year old girl.

A.M.H is now a mother. When she married the father of her daughters in the early 80′s, they jointly made a decision to not let their daughters undergo this painful procedure. Despite protests from close family members, they’ve rejected their pleads and ignored their heartfelt advices.

Where did it come from?

Female circumcision is the excision of any part of the female genitalia. A age-old tradition passed down from the Pharaohs , it’s a popular practice in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. It’s also practiced in certain communities in Iraq, Yemen, Burkina Faso and Kenya.

Until very recently, the Sudanese were known for practicing the most severe type of circumcision, pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, in which all of the external genitalia is removed. However, in recent years, the least severe type, clitoridectomy, also known as sunni circumcision, has been on the rise. Pharanoic circumcision causes serious health problems and complications during pregnancy and childbirth since the sutures are cut and after the baby is delivered, the woman is sewn up again or refibulated.

According to traditional beliefs, the purpose of FC is to reduce a woman’s sexual desire to make sure that she remains a virgin until her marriage. It also aims at increasing the amount of sexual pleasure for the male partner.

However, some wholeheartedly believe that circumcision has roots in Islam.

Just a few days ago , M.S., a young Sudanese mother in her early 30′s organized a circumcision ceremony for  her 6 year old daughter in a country where FC is a crime punishable by imprisonment.

“I’ve conducted intensive research and based on this research, I believe that this practice is first and foremost an Islamic practice,” stated M.S.

Despite attempts from family and friends to intervene, M.S. used a book by an unknown Egyptian sheikh as her sole reference.

Although FC predates Islam, some scholars believe that Islam had to tolerate the practice as it was already ingrained in the society. In a hadith, the Prophet (PBUH) stated that  FC shouldn’t be excessive and harmful to the woman in question.

In modern times, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Prof Dr. Ali Goma’a announced during a meeting with ten scholars from all over the world that Muslims shouldn’t practice this custom seeing that it is a crime against humanity.

Urban Atittudes

In an attempt to understand the relevance of FC to today’s urban youth living in Khartoum and its twin cities, I was able to conduct an anonymous survey in which the participants were asked whether they are aware of the practice and  whether they are familiar with circumcised girls  and their opinion about the practice. Female participants were asked if they had undergone FC.

A.M, a 27 year old Sudanese man believes that we should distinguish between ordinary or sunna circumcision and pharaonic circumcision.

” Ordinary circumcision is common in most Islamic  and gulf countries and it protects the female from herpes and infections in the long term,” explains A.M.

A.A, a 24 year old Sudanese male agrees with A.M and adds that it’s important not only from a medical point of view, but it also ensures hygiene.

M.G , a 25 year old Sudanese  male student living in the United States believes that circumcision is a crime.

On the other hand, a young Sudanese woman working in the field of journalism stated that FC is “a traumatizing experience which can be likened to the horror of rape.”

She added that FC is based on cultural beliefs regarding a woman’s honor.

Other young Sudanese women interviewed used words such as damaging and painful to describe the practice.

From the results of my survey, I realized that Sudanese men are more aware of the different types of circumcision as opposed to Sudanese women who view FC as one barbaric practice and fail to see any variations.

What A Man Wants

In an article written by Meghan Sapp for Women-e-news, she recalls the story of a young Sudanese man, a son of a diplomat who has recently returned to Khartoum. He fell in love with a young lady and was getting ready to marry her.

He was hesitant about asking his young bride about FC so he asked her sister if she had undergone FC. The sister miscommunicated this question and the young woman panicked and before their wedding, she had the procedure performed.

The marriage didn’t last, FC was one of the main reasons to blame.

Dr. Babikar Bedri, a prominent researcher in the field of female circumcision at Ahfad University believes that there are no studies tackling how young couples discuss this issue before marriage.

According to Dr. Bedri, contrary to the old days when grooms returned their uncircumcised wives, a study carried out at Khartoum University among male students found out that 75% would like to have an un-excised future wife.

As our perceptions about a woman’s right to choice and female sexuality are changing at an alarming rate due to living in the digital age and the government’s intervention , I can’t help but wonder whether the desires of men to have an “un-circumsised” wife will play a significant role in decreasing the practice in the near future.

TEHRAN (AFP)–Iran’s parliament plans to scrap stoning and amputation of a hand as punishments in a revised version of the Islamic penal code, the official IRNA news agency reported Monday.

“Parliaments judicial commission decided not to put some Islamic punishments including stoning in the (revised) law in line with the interests of the country,” commission head Ali Shahrokhi told the agency.

He said the commission is also proposing the abolition of amputation and has considered the idea of a “special court for minors under 18.”

Once the commission has finalised the new version of the penal code, parliament will vote on whether to implement the revised law for a trial period.

Afterwards it will be discussed for final approval by the vetting legislative body, the Guardians Council. Source

I’d decided to write an article on stoning and i had even gathered enough data to show how much this punishment is not islamic and not possible to be practiced. Now after i read this news, am happy. They promised for more progress in Iran’s penal laws. Changes will come, regardless of whom on power.

Good news among all the miseries that western media feels completely ‘devoted’ to present the world about my country..

6 Iraqi gay people were executed by machine guns in Sader city in April 2009, this makes the number of executed gays in Iraq reach 10 after 4 other executions in March in the last few weeks, 25 boys and men are reported to have been killed in Baghdad because they were, or were perceived to be, gay. Three corpses of gay men were found in the Shia area of Sadr City last week – two of which were reported to have had pieces of paper bearing the word “pervert” attached to them. The Iraqi police condemned the action and said we will bring the killers to justice, as in Iraq since Saddam days there is no law forbidding people to become gay, but there is a strike tribal law to execute any one how dishonor the tribe name and acting as a gay means you dishonored the tribe and the tribe council will give the permission to kill you to your close relatives as in brother, fathers and cousins, it is an honor for them to have the chance to eliminate this part of the tribe that had brought the heads of the family down as they describe it.

But during Saddam days this tribal law lost its effective authority with the rise of the central government law, which considers homosexuality as a non-threatening issue to the party or the government, in the contrary it was useful to keep homosexual activities’ under discretion in a country were men are forced to stay for years in their army units on the front and women were stuck in houses waiting for them ,as Iraq went from 1 war to another the percentage of women to men became very high as into 3 to 1, gay behaviors were known in the society but kept in a forbidden discreet area were no one is allowed to mention it , if someone was found it usually was explained as curiosity or hyper activity and they rush the boy into marriage , as for women such acts were never found out due to close women society and the gap between the male and female members of the family as tradition and religion make it unorthodox to socialize between them ,making even the relation ship between family members distend and non personal ,so what happens in the women quarters are kept there

After 2003 a rise in the attack against gay people in Iraq started to show a return of the tribal power and rise of radical extremist calls to cleans the community of these weak people who had fallen to the temptation of the devil , a well known café for gays in Baghdad was burned to the ground ,many were beaten ,killed or kidnapped and in some cases they were raped by the same people who oppressed them for their homosexuality

Threats to any family how had gay member to start to take action against their relative or the tribe or the militia will do so, a UN human rights report in 2006 documented many cases of savage attacks against gays in Iraq, Amnesty International has urged The Iraqi government TO do more to protect homosexuals in the wake of a reported spate of killings of gay young men.

In a letter to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, the rights organisation called for “urgent and concerted action”. It also criticised the government’s failure to condemn the killings.

The recent killings are said to have been carried out by armed Shia militiamen as well as by members of the tribes and families of the victims, Amnesty said.

The letter also raised concerns that religious leaders may be inciting violence against members of Iraq’s gay community, and over reported statements by one senior police officer that appear to condone or even encourage the targeting of gay Iraqis, as it is told that in the web site of one of the biggest Shia holy men in Iraq he had answered a question on what to do against gays by answering they must be killed and not a normal death but a death after a judgment from the tribe and community to provide a near execution to the religious’ punishments’ .

Amnesty called on the government to bring those responsible for the killings to justice and to afford effective protection to the gay community in Iraq.

Reducing social problems in general and women’s problems in particular to a simple dilemma, i.e. Islam, is the misleading theme repeated by those who fail to comprehend complexity of social phenomena. From their point of view, Islam has been and is a fixed set of rules imposed on society by an external power. Such an argument is flawed at least from two perspectives: it’s neither a fixed set of rules nor imposed by an external power. Few months ago, I explained about former flaw. Now let’s consider the latter.

From a secular point of view, religion is a matter of supply and demand. In other words, any religion that successfully spreads throughout a certain demographic area can not be just an external thing. It should be constructed internally and appropriately to meet some needs of the people. In other words, society itself creates a religion to heal some of its perceived wounds. Then, even if that certain religion is removed from society, as long as the society prefers similar cure to its perceived wounds, it would continue to prescribe very acts endorsed by the outlawed religion. This time, however, such prescriptions would be made under a brand new name.

Let’s be a little more specific. A society may be eager to keep family a solid, unaltered foundation. Honor-killing may be considered, due to various historical reasons, an acceptable way to do so. Hence, the people expect any new religion to support such a well-established mean. That’s why honor-killing enters any new religion the people might choose to practice, and that is exactly why it would remain in the society even if that certain religion gets outlawed. Honor-killing is socially acceptable in some areas for people find it a cure to a perceived wound.

Above view is supported by some evidences, one of which is that people who do not practice a certain religion may share many beliefs with other people in their own society. That is why some people who do not practice any religion still resort to honor-killing; for honor-killing is originally a social issue not a religious one.

From above point, the best way to eliminate social problems is to educate the people, i.e. to make them rational compared to modern norms. That would make them reconsider their demands, which consequently results in a change in what the religion supplies to the society.

In practice, Iranian example may testify to above analysis. Education led many people to demand equal rights for men and women which consequently led some Ayatollahs to find some sort of justifications to reform religious rules. The process continued up to a point that some state rules were changed and some others are expected to change within years.

Religion, one might argue, can play a negative role by inhibiting education process. Yeah, that’s possible and indeed has happened frequently throughout history. In the age of information, however, that can be next to impossible. One just needs to join Global E-Village in order to overcome barriers to his/her education.

“In the Morning” is a short and powerful film that is based on the story of Kadriye Demirel, a young woman who was murdered by her own brother, after informing her family that she was raped. The rapist (who was a cousin of hers) denied the accusations and refused to marry her, the authorities failed to protect her, and in November 2003, Kadriye was brutally murdered. She was 6 months pregnant.

(Via StopHonourKillings.com)

Is it just my imagination, or do people in the Middle East get pissed off easily? Do you think that some of them, at least, get up in the morning wondering where the next insult will come from? And once they lose their cool, they don’t easily forget so easily, do they? And it’s not a religious thing, either. Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle East all seem to be afflicted with the same malady. Maybe it’s a tribal thing? Who knows?

I remember getting married some thirty-three years ago. We were married on the Champs Elysees in Paris, my wife having grown up there. We invited family from all over the world, and a lot of them actually showed up. But of special concern to us were my two uncles, on my father’s side, who hadn’t spoken to one another for some twenty-five years. How would they get along at the wedding, we wondered. Would they even come?

Well, both ended up coming, and we assigned them to be the two witnesses to sign the Ketubbah, which is the marriage contract in the Jewish tradition. God forbid you give one an honor, and not the other. But would they speak to one another after all those years of silence?

My fiancé and I came up with a strategy. We would spend a day with each one separately, showing each some of the sights of gay Paris. We asked one, “Tell me uncle, what was the fight with your brother all about?” He didn’t seem to remember. We asked the other. Same response. Hmm. Twenty-five years of not talking to one another, and no one remembers why? Interesting.

The day of the wedding, believe it or not, everything went well. The two brothers signed the Ketubba, and that seemed to break the ice. They chatted away, and stayed close ever since, until they passed on.

I’ve often wondered about the psyche of the Middle East. Could it be that people there are particularly sensitive, and prone to bear a grudge? And what are the implications for peace if this is so?

If I had to guess, I would say that there is a strain of ultra-sensitivity in the Middle East. Obviously, not in everyone, but the tendency is still there as part of the regional culture. Many Middle Easterners are very proud of their cultural and religious heritage. But the flip side of pride is extreme sensitivity, and a tendency to hold a grudge.

Do you have a father, or a family member, that has to be spoken to in just the right way? And if you miscalculate your wording, do you begin to feel the heat just as the words slip off you tongue? And do you sense that your faux pas will not soon be forgotten?

Why is any of this important? A sense of honor is important, but a craving for honor could easily bring dishonor. Honor killing is an extreme example. Honor killing brings dishonor to the family, even as the family strives to protect its honor. A sense of pride is important, but too much pride can shut one off from criticism, and can induce long term hatreds due to perceived insults. And like an elephant, one never seems to be able to forget, or to move on.

The business of peace in the Middle East will not be clean or comfortable. People abused by the scars of history will hurl insults at one another, to give expression to their collective sense of grief and injustice. How we react in light of those emotions will make all the difference in the world as to our success in brokering a peace.

It is natural for people to be emotional. And emotions run particularly high in the Middle East, and for good reason. But it may be time to cool the emotions, even if only a tad. It may be time to go about the business of peace with a cool, calculating, collected mind, one bent on strength of purpose, instead of emotional relief.

We may well have to swallow our pride, to create a reality that we can really be proud of. If that means shelving our emotions for a while, so be it. If that means bringing some flexibility to our sense of honor, well that’s how it goes. If that means giving up a piece of ourselves in the process, c’est la vie. We will have to be big enough and wise enough to admit that it’s not just about us, but about those who will come after us. We will have to step out of who we are, to become something more than we ever were, or could ever imagine.

Every so often yet another picture of a young woman appears with the caption: “victim of an honour killing”, and often these pictures are encountered as an easy way to fuel Islamophobic sentiments, playing on the Muslim woman as victim trope.

This aspect of the represenation of “justified murder” raises the question of whether there can be a balance between the very real need to do more to stop honour killings on the one hand, and on the other hand, the need to deal with the context in which honour killing is often represented.

 Perhaps one indication of the second problem is the proliferation of “memoirs” like the infamous Norma Khoury’s Forbidden Love or Souad’s Burned Alive, supposed biographies appealing to readers appetites for stories of oppressed Arab women.

But, while there may be hoaxes in the honour-killing survivor genre, honour killing is anything but Much Ado About Nothing. So, insensitivity aside, the link between honour killing and Much Ado About Nothing is this: apparently honour killing can be used as an educational aid to teach, of all things, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Juxtaposing Shakespeare’s comedy with an article informing the reader that one in ten British Asians back honour killing, beginning with this question:
Leonato wishes his daughter dead when he thinks she had brought dishonour on the family name. Is this idea of ‘honour’ old-fashioned?

A question which begs the question: is the main issue here how ‘old-fashioned’ honour killing is? And is this really the best way to introduce a debate around a complex issue to a group of Key Stage 3 students? Personally, I would have thought a topic like this would warrant a little more depth and attention than student-hooking teaching prop and aid to updating Shakespeare.

What really struck me upon seeing this, though, was my experience of being taught GCSE-level Romeo and Juliet, something which involved an earnest cross-questioning of all the Muslim girls in the class on arranged marriages: do you expect to have an arranged marriage, how many girls do you know who would have to have an arranged marriage, can you empathise with Juliet’s reaction to Paris, can you describe in your own words what that would feel like…and on and on and on. Not exactly a pleasant experience.

You’d think that there would be a little Shakespearean context involved in teaching Shakespeare. The Renaissance concept of honour in relation to women would be relevant. Or how about reading Browning’s My Last Duchess as a portrayal of an ‘honour killing’?

It sound odd, because the phrase ‘honour killing’ itself is so linked with Islam and Muslims that it seems incongruous in any other context. For obvious reasons: many honour killings occur in so-called “Islamic” countries. But this crime is neither exclusive to or invented by Muslims. Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, put it this way: “In countries where Islam is practiced, they’re called honor killings” but as she points out: “dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable… it goes across cultures and across religions.”

This article does point out that the Asians questioned came from various religious backgrounds. But then the native informant appears rather suddenly to explain that honour is “engrained” into Asian society, while a lecturer in criminology argues that violence against women will not be tolerated. The whole article exudes this “they must understand” rhetoric, reconfiguring honour killings into signs which posit modernity as singularly western. I don’t see that this is necessary to condemning violence against women. Instead, it distracts from the more pressing issue, the fact that this is about murder, not an anthropological debate on the old-fashioned concept of honour.

As in this article it seems attention is more often paid to fascinating “tribal” concepts than to the fact that honour killing actually involves killing. Murder. Something which is not restricted to the Asian or Middle Eastern community, not even predominantly. Something which should be condemned in all its forms, by whatever name.

Saudi woman killed for chatting on Facebook

A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged.

The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man, the al-Arabiya website reported.

The case was reported on a Saudi Arabian news site as an example of the “strife” the social networking site is causing in the Islamic nation….

[cont]

I so much hate these kinda extremists who dont really think about what they are doing and they become blind with hate and pure anger and go do these very stupid actions. They think that what do they is correct and they would be saved by God because of their wrong interpretations of what is said in Qu’ran. There is no difference between this father and those father’s/brother’s/ husband who kill women, because they [the women] supposedly did something and it was against the family honor. If he claims to have killed her because it was a matter of Honor, do NOT be surprised. He deserves to be killed for the honor of his family and how the bloody hell is he still alive?!?! He killed her in August. He should’ve been effing hanged by now!

Was her crime so much that she deserved to be beaten up and then killed by her own father? Did she deserve to die because of this, talking to an unknown man over the internet? Its natural human instinct to do so. Aint humans always compelled to do exactly what they are forbidden to do? I mean just for the thrill of it to see why we are forbidden? but seriously it resulting in death?

Facebook or any other social networking sites for that matter are now a part of life. A lot of the current Generation aka Generation Y use these kinda websites everyday because that is what it is. It’s no surprise that older generation aka Generation X are the ones who have some problem with these social sites and they are not able to comprehend them. Hopefully, one day, when the Gen X will have grown up and will see this as it is and not get overly excited . But hasn’t it become a little dangerous to be up there now? Especially if you happen to live in MENA region

Although Facebook’s Saudi Arabia network has about 150,000 members, it’s estimates on the true number of users vary . Tons of people dont join networks of the Country they live in. But also because extremists send hate mail and report the posts, pictures and related items as Spam and as ‘Hate’ in the groups like those which support the freedom for the Saudi Blogger and women driving among other groups. Because this is the only way we can support and protest since we cant do them on the streets, and blocking these sites wont do any good. because there are tons of other ways to do what someone wants to do. These sites were soo not designed for this kinda horrendous shit.

Many Saudi women use nicknames and post comic images or drawings on their pages instead of photographs. Some Saudi bloggers have dubbed the network “Faceless”.

Now this would be added to the worsening image of the whole Kingdom, when the deed is done by a single maniac. Just like what happened with the Qatif Girl
rayers for the victim of the First “Facebook Murder”:

Thanks to Amjad A, for alerting me to this

PS: I wonder what would he have done with her if she was on muslimspace.com

Sources:

The Telegraph

Arab Media Society

How is it that people come to believe in such things? And the Muslim world is not the only place where such thinking abounds. You could be riding a subway or a bus in a modern American city, and you make the mistake of looking at a young man in the wrong way. He pulls out a gun and shoots you in the head for “disrespecting” him, simply by looking at him in a way that, in his mind, demeaned his sense of “honor.”

A lot of times you see this kind of thinking among the poor and among the uneducated, but not always. If you are poor and uneducated, and if the weight of a hard life weighs heavily down upon you, then you man find yourself grasping at straws trying to reclaim a sense of honor and a sense of dignity. When you have nothing in your life that gives you dignity, or respect, you may end up looking for it in the strangest places: by stoning your daughter, or by shooting a fellow traveler for looking at you the wrong way.

What can I say? We have come to believe in a lot of stupid things. Why? Because many of us have no other reference point, and because sometimes it’s just easier to accept what we are told is right, instead of thinking it out for ourselves. But if we think things out before acting out, we may think twice about acting out in the wrong way, and against our own best interest.

Common sense would suggest that there is no honor in killing. Honor is not bestowed on us as a matter of right, but is earned by each of us with the good things we do for one another. We are not entitled to honor. We earn it as we go. Common sense would also suggest that we were put on this good earth to live; not to kill, and not to die, before our time.

But poverty and ignorance do play a part, as many of you rightly point out. They make it more possible for stupid thinking to grab hold. If a father, for example, has a decent job, and a decent education, and is able to provide adequately for his family, then chances are good that he will find his sense of honor in the good things he has, and does, without resorting to the perverse notion of “honor killing,” as a source of honor. If his daughter goes astray, he will find the strength, within himself, to set her straight with love and understanding, because his life gives him the self-respect he needs to respect others. But if that same father is left poor, and ignorant, he will find it difficult to respect others, even his own family, when he has no respect for himself.

People the world over will have to begin rethinking some of their deeply held beliefs, so that a semblance of order has a chance to emerge. We will need a new framework for rational thought based on universal notions of common sense—the collective wisdom borne of shared experience. We will also need to invest in one another, as many of you so rightly point out, so that the moderating influence of education and prosperity could begin to neutralize the influence of extremist thinking. Ideology plus Investment equals Hope, and with hope, all things are possible, even the kindness that we owe it to ourselves, to show one another.