Comments on: Dealing with Extremists – Education Trumps Bombs

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:59:30 +0000

@WellDuh: Try reading the book. Your concerns are addressed and put to rest.

By: Believer

Believer — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:04:46 +0000

“Well, Duh” sounds like a person with no faith in the power of anything. He should ask his mother what she thinks of keeping the female gender “uneducated and pregnant.” I submit that this person knows nothing about which he speaks.

By: saidullah

saidullah — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:28:37 +0000

Till the time no any school made by Greg Mortenson has burned becouse these Schools are made with the communuties own partispation. Mostly these Shools has comucity Education Commities who are responcible to run and protect. that is why sofar No any School of CAI has demaged or clossed.

By: Mary Witt

Mary Witt — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:45:12 +0000

Where is the documentation that educated Pakastani women are on a terrorist list?

I’ve heard that women’s schools have been burned in the past month. Are they Mortenson’s schools? More info, please?

By: WellDuh

WellDuh — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:21:51 +0000

Finally there is the point that several highly educated Islamic females are high on the terrorism watch lists and that in general female suicide bombers are the rise. The backside of this education program is that if the person in question retains a belligerent sense of cultural identity — you likely just made them a much more effective terrorist.

However, this education program is most important for its high profile symbol of offering an olive branch and for its offering third world citizens insights into why western cultures think as they do.

By: WellDuh

WellDuh — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:14:07 +0000

Also there is a certain naivety in assuming that terrorism stems from the male Islamic parent and can be quenched by an assertive educated female parent alone. If it is truly a old fashion extremist Islamic household, the male children are removed from the female’s influence as quickly as possible around age 5-6. This is done precisely for aborting such mother influence later in life and to avoid a mother’s tolerance for substandard religious behavior (e.g. being gay or a liar or a thief).

So instead this program ought to say it is focusing on broadening the world awareness and tolerance of the stay at home parent…exactly as similar programs in industrial nations try to reduce gang behavior through improvement of non-working mothers.

By: WellDuh

WellDuh — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:05:01 +0000

A high minded approach and certainly PART of the solution. However it ignores two issues.

First that military force is required to establish conditions under which such schools would be allowed to operate. Otherwise the schools would be burnt and the students and teachers harassed or killed.

Second, such schools work by eroding away the much of the existing culture and substituting our own culture. Open the big question of “providing opportunity or violating rights to be distinct and different.”

Thus in the long run this is not quite as high minded as it first sounds. Nor is it effective as advertised. Plenty of educated people still cling to extreme religious ideas or cultural hyper-sensitivity both here and abroad. But this idea is required to reduce cultural friction.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:24:03 +0000

Great post. I hope our next president will think outside the box for solutions such as this to international issues. I think Obama is our best hope for this sort of action.