Worth reading article in NYT about a parent trying to deal with radicalization of his son. some excerpts below;(f.sheikh)

“FREMONT, Calif. — The banging on the door jolted Sal Shafi awake.F.B.I. agents were looking for his son. “Where’s Adam?” they yelled. “Where’s Adam?”

Terrified, Mr. Shafi led the agents, guns drawn, up the stairs toward his son’s bedroom. He watched as they led his 22-year-old son away in handcuffs, backed by evidence of Adam Shafi’s terrorist ambitions.

He had come to the attention of officials not by a well-placed informant or a sting operation. His father, concerned and looking for help, had simply picked up the phone and led the government right to his son. For months, over the objections of his lawyer, Mr. Shafi had been talking to the F.B.I.,believing he was doing the right thing.

“My God,” he thought, soon after the arrest in July. “I just destroyed Adam.”

Had things been different, Mr. Shafi, 62, a Silicon Valley executive, might have become a much-needed spokesman for the Obama administration’s counterradicalization campaign. Who better to talk to other parents about the seductive pull of terror organizations? Trust the government, he would tell them. They do not want to take away your children.”

Despite nascent efforts to steer young people away from terrorism, the government’s strategy remains largely built on persuading people to call the F.B.I. when they first suspect a problem.

“Alert law enforcement,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in December. “It could simply be your neighbor having a bad day. But better be safe than sorry.”

For parents, particularly those who see their children as misguided but not dangerous, the decision to make that call can be agonizing. Do you risk sending your son to prison? Or hope things improve and he does not hurt anyone?

“This is an abject failure, that there is no system in place that doesn’t result in spending 20 years in jail,” said Seamus Hughes, a former National Counterterrorism Center official who once helped implement the Obama administration’s strategy for countering violent extremism.

“Though the White House and a congressional task force have endorsed this concept, no such program exists. So Mr. Shafi tried to create one. He flew to Washington in November to attend a Brookings Institution seminar on radicalization. There he met Daniel Koehler, a German de-radicalization expert who offered to help.

“There have simply been too many cases of families who didn’t have any help,” Mr. Koehler said in an interview. “I thought back then that this could be a good test case.”

“The process has shaken Mr. Shafi’s faith, both in his decisions as a parent and in his government.

“Every minute, I just imagine him in that solitary confinement, facing 20 years, because I cooperated with the government,” he said, adding, “It’s a horrible feeling. I can’t get rid of it.”

Less than a year ago, he had offered to quit his job and help build support for government counterterrorism programs. His message now to parents of troubled or confused children? “Don’t even think about going to the government.”

Click here for full article

(The article was forwarded by Azeem Farooki with following note:The Importance of Education for Women – an article written by Fatima Farooq was selected by Clarkstown High School South on this website.   She is the first one who got this opportunity in 12 years and in recognition they gave her login to publish anything she writes in future).

The Importance of Education for Women

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” Maya Angelou

Regardless of the fact that it is now the year 2016, issues such as the rights of women and the benefits of female education remain utterly controversial. There are no real disadvantages of teaching an entire population, so why is it that female education is one of the most popular subjects for popular debate? Knowledge, as symbolized and depicted in many illustrations, is shown as a lamp. And the only way to further this society, the only way to progress by the masses is to turn on this light.

The Fundamentals of a Society

Educated women really put the “fun” in “fundamental”. Literally. Since practically the beginning of time, men have acted as the providers while women were caregivers. They’re a part of every family, as mothers, and daughters, and sisters. Family can’t happen without them. Men are necessary to the process too, of course but we aren’t worried about them—the majority of them receive education already.

But women—when a man wants a child, she gives him a child. When he is away, she cares for and nurtures the child. And when this woman is raising this child, of course you want your child to be safe and happy and the best possible person that they can be. You want them to survive to grow old one day far in the future. Which is why you would want the mother to be educated, since according to the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, children with educated mothers are twice as likely to survive past the age of five. They can’t really grow old if they don’t get past the age of five.  And if, miraculously if this child should survive, they will reach the age of war between nature and nurture. If you want this child to thrive, to live up to the expectations you so dearly held for them, you will provide for them the best conceivable upbringing. You will want an educated mother to teach your child right and wrong, to teach them manners and how to survive in a world of snakes while so closely resembling the innocence and goodness of their next meal.  Do not allow the future to be snatched out from the gaps between your fingers and devoured—educate your women.

A Mind of Their Own

It is much too common these days, turning on the television or reading the newspaper or logging into nearly any form of social media and seeing something related to a woman either being left to fend for herself (and oftentimes her children) or are victims of an appalling issue that is shameful to admit still exists: human trafficking. Seeing as divorce rates are at an all-time high, women do need to have a plan in case things just don’t work out. And then they need a plan in case they have children and then things don’t work out.

Because if you are a woman without an education with an infant or young child to feed, it does not matter whether you are in a first world or a third world country. If you are hungry, if you want food, you have to work for it. If you are sick, if you need medicine, you need to pay for it.

And to pay for it, you will need a job. And in the highly competitive free-for-all wrestling match that is today’s job market, how will anyone get anywhere without a degree? Even if a woman is to get a job without a degree, it will most likely be badly compensated. According to UNESCO, just a single year of primary education has proven to increase a girl’s wages later in life by 20 percent. Just one year of education can increase wages by 20 percent, just imagine the benefits of a full education.

Of course, as the ideal situations in media are portrayed, a male superhero swoops in to rescue the struggling woman promising to make everything perfect. But realistically, there is not a superhero for every woman going through a hard time. And at the point of realization, women have to get up and save themselves.

Since women are most vulnerable to human trafficking when they are uneducated and poor, it is infuriating that there are a handful of countries are adamant in their opposition to female education. Indirectly, these leaders are supporting human trafficking by doing this to their female populations. Human trafficking is one of the most low, disgraceful crimes and anyone that assists in this blasphemy is just as equal a criminal than the one that committed it. Don’t be another statistic. Educate your women. Protect them.

The Economic Survival of a Society

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. This is used to determine the economic potential of a country or region. Now, in areas when only men manufacture goods and work, the resulting GDP is half of what it can be. Now if we throw women into the mix, GDP increases by 3 percent when 10% of women attend school. Therefore if both boys and girls were provided with equal education opportunities, GDP would soar. And now, in a world where nearly every economy is struggling, scraping their fingernails to keep from slipping into the crater that is bankruptcy, well—we could all use some extra money.

When women are provided with education opportunities in safe environments to learn and thrive, they end up participating in business and economic undertakings and events. Increased earning potential and income prevent poverty-filled futures by allowing women to be able to support entire families. This is needed. This is needed for widows and single mothers and sick husbands. Empowering women is not shameful—it is enlightening the future.

Marriage and Family

Marriage is great. People happy together is amazing, but what isn’t is this: child marriage. Still a big issue in a number of areas, young girls (more commonly than boys) are married off at shocking ages. In underdeveloped countries, one in every three girls is married off before the age of 18. But, in areas where girls are provided with a proper education, these marriages are delayed by an average of five years. In terms of sexual safety, a girl who completes primary school is three times less likely to contract HIV. Looking into the future, education essentially has the potential to prevent AIDS in future children. Education has the power to cut out and entire disease. A disease with no cure. Of course the fact that once a woman is educated, she can work to find the cures of diseases no one has found yet goes without saying.

An education could be the universal solution to overpopulation. As per surveys taken in Mali, women that did not receive an education had an average of seven children, while those who did had an average of three. As fertility rates decrease over time, seven or more years in school and later marriages are a great elucidation of a largely disputed issue for a better and brighter future.

Ultimately

One day, sooner or later the sun will burn out and the world will be plunged into eternal cold and darkness and everything will die. Of course, as per scientific predictions this will take a few billion years or so, but the end is inevitable. There will probably be nothing left of the planet we call home, no one to look back on our accomplishments and the things we’ve done. We don’t have a definite timeline on how long our civilization is to survive. It’s very simple to map out things that have burned and died and collapsed, it is easy to map out the lives of the ones that came before us through artifacts and research but there is no way to predict how long we have. And in this indefinite amount of time, it is our responsibility; it is what we owe the earth that weaned us and the earth that we will return to, to be the best and to do the best for humanity that we can possibly do.

The sun and the stars and the moon may all burn out one day—but for right here and for right now, we still have the opportunity to turn on the light.

Fatima Farooq

( posted by f.sheikh)

( Dr. A.S. Amin will be giving a talk in April on ” Is Reproductive Drive responsible for shaping our culture, society and even religions including Islam?” The lecture is based on his recently published book ,”Conflicts Of Fitness” Islam, America and Evolutionary Psychology.”The article below may add an other dimension to that interesting talk. F. Sheikh) 

Few creatures can boast of devotions so deep as greylag geese. Most are monogamous; many spend their decade-long adult lives with the same goose, side-by-side in constant communication, taking another partner only if the first should die. It’s a remarkable degree of fidelity, and it includes relationships of a sort that some humans consider unnatural.

Quite a few greylags, you see, are gay. As many as 20 percent by some accounts. That number might be high: It includes those males who first take a male partner but later pair with a female, or whose first bond is with a female, but after she dies, takes up with a gander. That said, plenty more are exclusively homosexual from beginning to end.

Which raises the question: Why?

That’s puzzled quite a few scientists—those who study greylag geese and also the hundreds of other animal species in which homosexuality is, confoundingly, found. After all, evolution is driven by reproduction. In animals, that requires—self-cloning reptiles not withstanding—the union of opposite sexes. Through a reproductive-success lens, homosexuality would appear counterproductive, if not downright aberrant. It’s certainly not aberrant, though, considering its ubiquity.

So to frame the question a bit more scientifically: Is homosexuality, in the words of Kurt Kotrschal, a behavioral biologist at the University of Vienna, “preserved because there was some stabilizing selection, or is it an unavoidable product of brain development?” Was homosexuality useful in evolution’s grand pageant—or just something that popped up and stuck around?

Researchers don’t have a simple answer. Not even Kotrschal, who has studied greylag geese for decades, working at a research station named for the late, great zoologist Konrad Lorenz, whose most famous studies involved the same bird.

Lorenz himself considered homosexuality useful. “We can be sure that every one of these instincts has a very special survival value,” he wrote in 1963, describing how pairs of partnered males frequently attained social superiority in goose colonies. Their superiority in turn attracted lone females with whom one gander might briefly copulate, before returning his attention to the true object of his affections, wrote Lorenz. By that light, homosexuality serves to promote reproduction. That is one possible explanation; there are plenty more

Other scientists have suggested that homosexual couples might perform some important social duty, such as helping to raise other couples’ goslings or guarding colonies from predators. That would help same-sex couples’ relatives rather than themselves, a well-known evolutionary strategy called kin selection, illustrated most dramatically by honeybee workers who forgo reproduction and sacrifice themselves for their hive’s greater good.

Kotrschal himself doesn’t think this likely—there isn’t much evidence for obvious, give-the-nephews-a-wing-up helpfulness in greylag geese, though it could manifest in other, subtler ways. Perhaps homosexuality is the inevitable byproduct of emotional systems that fuel mate pairing: You can’t have heterosexual love without some overflow.

http://nautil.us/blog/why-are-so-many-animals-homosexual

posted by F.sheikh

There was email discussion among few participants whether Islam is the fastest growing religion in USA. I thought let me do some research. I found some interesting articles on all religions including non religious groups. I am sharing them below with affiliates.

2015 PEW SURVEY:

“The study, which Pew says is the first of its kind, bases its projections on the age of populations, fertility and mortality rates, as well as migration and conversion patterns. Simply put, Muslims are having larger families, retaining more members (conversions are illegal in some Muslim nations) and are younger than adherents of other faiths. More than 1 in 3 Muslims is younger than 15.”

“Atheists, agnostics and religiously unaffiliated people will increase in the United States (from 16% to 26%) but decline as a share of the total worldwide population.

— Also in the United States, Christians will drop from 78% to 66% of population. Muslims will surpass Jews as the largest non-Christian religion in the U.S.

— Sub-Saharan African will be home to 40% of the Christian population and Nigeria have more Christians than any other country except for the United States and Brazil.

— India will have the largest Muslim population in the world, passing Indonesia, but Hindus will retain a majority.

— More than 10% of Europeans will be Muslim, while the number of Christians in Europe will drop by 100 million.

— Hinduism (1.4 billion adherents) and Judaism (16 million) will increase, while Buddhists will be about the same size as in 2010 (5.2 million).”

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/23/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/

2010 US Religions Census;

“Data released Tuesday from the 2010 U.S. Religion Census shows Islam was the fastest growing religion in America in the last 10 years, with 2.6 million living in the U.S. today, up from 1 million in 2000.

Immigration from parts of the Muslim world and a small rise in conversions are the driving force behind the growth, researchers said. Jones also speculated that the burst of anti-Islam sentiment after the 9/11 attacks could have done more to grow the religion’s presence in the U.S. than slow it. Those on the fence about converting to Islam may have decided to do so on principle.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/number-muslims-u-s-doubles-9-11-article-1.1071895“

NYT 2/25/08

“The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”

Immigration continues to influence American religion greatly, the survey found. The majority of immigrants are Christian, and almost half are Catholic. Muslims rival Mormons for having the largest families. And Hindus are the best-educated and among the richest religious groups, the survey found.

“I think politicians will be looking at this survey to see what groups they ought to target,” Professor Prothero said. “If the Hindu population is negligible, they won’t have to worry about it. But if it is wealthy, then they may have to pay attention.”

Experts said the wide-ranging variety of religious affiliation could set the stage for further conflicts over morality or politics, or new alliances on certain issues, as religious people have done on climate change or Jews and Hindus have done over relations between the United States, Israel and India.

“It sets up the potential for big arguments,” Mr. Green said, “but also for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts both ways.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/25cnd-religion.html?ex=1361682000&en=f0f81c08d22aea7c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Guinness Book Of World Record;

“However, according to others, including the 2003 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year: “Although the religion began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of all believers in Islam lived outside the Arab world.”