Nobel Laureate Wiped From Pakistan's Textbooks As Heretic 445
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Alexander Abad-Santos writes that in any other country, the late Dr. Abdus Salam would be a national hero: he's the Nobel laureate in physics who laid the groundwork for the biggest physics discovery in the past 30 years--the Higgs boson. But that isn't the case in Pakistan, where Salam has been wiped from textbooks and history for not being fundamentalist enough. 'He belonged to the Ahmadi sect, which has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants who view its members as heretics,' says Sebastian Abbot. 'His grand unification theory of strong, weak and electromagnetic fields opened the gateway for the discovery of bosons and laid down the basis for this quantum electrodynamics project,' writes Anam Khalid Alvi for Pakistan's Express Tribune. But Pakistan can't celebrate his achievements, since Ahmadis like Salam are and were prevented from 'posing as Muslims,' and can be punished with prison and even death. By contrast, fellow Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero. Khan is a Muslim."
Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, it's all fine, carry on. They keep saying it's a religion of peace and all that. Don't forget that they scrubbed "muslim" off his grave. And other muslims in the region are expected to go out of their way to persecute them.
Soon to be -1... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's coming soon to the U.S. Don't think they want this sort of thing to happen to Texas schoolbooks.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:1, Insightful)
More people get killed by lightning in a couple of months than from terrorism in the last few years.
Where is the war on lightning?
Oh... you can't funnel money to corporate buddies if you have a war on lightning.
Backwards country (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of backwards country would modify their curriculum to fit religious ideals?
http://www.aolnews.com/2010/03/12/texas-removes-thomas-jefferson-from-teaching-standard/ [aolnews.com]
Re:Soon to be -1... (Score:2, Insightful)
I wondered how long it would take for someone to try to take the attention off the matter at hand and turn it around on the US. Wow. Just wow.
I am laughing (Score:4, Insightful)
More proof as if we needed any (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridiculous comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
People can handle accidental, isolated deaths. Yes, someone dies, but there is no malicious force that caused it.
People can handle mass-death less easily, even when it's accidental (or not intentional). But things like the sinking of the Titantic, air disasters, bus accidents, and similar still disproportionately capture attention.
People cannot accept someone else who is out to kill them intentionally because of hatred or a belief system. Yes, foreign policy, resources, economics, geopolitics, and myriad other nuances are involved here, but it really is that simple at its core.
The reason there ever was a "war on terror" isn't to "funnel money to corporate buddies" — it's because, to be blunt, we don't put up with that shit, even if our response is imperfect — not to mention that Europe and the West has enjoyed US defense-by-proxy for over a half-century. The fact that war is an economic driver is incidental (even if it can be argued to be important in its own way). But make no mistake: when US policy makers of any political stripe make the decision to go to war, the thinking isn't, "Hey, this can line the pockets of my corporate buddies!! Lulz!"
But I know that you and many other readers here are cynical (and ignorant) enough to actually twist a story about Pakistan and Islam into, yet again in true topsy-turvy bizarro-world style, how the US is evil. (Same thing happened with the recent Syria Wikileaks story [slashdot.org].) It might be amusing if it weren't so predictable, pathetic, and shameful.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
More people get killed by lightning in a couple of months than from terrorism in the last few years.
Where is the war on lightning?
Oh... you can't funnel money to corporate buddies if you have a war on lightning.
This isn't about "terrorism". The routine killing, rape and subjugation of non-Muslims in muslim countries is "business as usual". Its only when they do something to Westerners that they say it is an "act of Terrorism" by a "tiny minority"
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google doesn't recognize him either. There's no doodle of him. But if you search for him on Bing, you find all the relevant info.
I think this google search [google.co.uk] shows that there are lies, damn lies, and Microsoft fanboiism.
The dose makes the poison (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I am an atheist, but it seems that low-levels of religious belief seem to do most people little harm and some good and at least in smaller communities seem to provide a certain amount of greater good & charity which might otherwise go missing.
It would be nice if the people involved could just enjoy getting together for the sake of getting together and do charitable works because helping people is usually the right thing to do without shame-based moralizing and all the hocus pocus, but human experience seems to suggest a more Hobbesian outcome without some kind of organizational direction.
Re:Ah don't worry...ALL! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying ALL Muslims follow the Taliban? Would any of you have a problem with saying ALL Atheists are baby killers?
You are setting up a nice straw man there. Not all Muslims follow the Taliban, but all Muslims follow a cdoctrine that says that non-Muslims must be killed or accept inferior status. Read the Qur'an.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.google.com/webhp?q=Bing [google.com]
(Hit the I'm feeling lucky button if you like... if not, all your answers can be found via Google!)
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, nice choice of source material. I'm sure that's entirely fair and well-considered.
The important part is that, being in a shit-hole place with shit education where everyone has been miserably poor for centuries has much more to do with you being a violent scumbag than the particular batshit superstitions you subscribe to.
Meanwhile, any muslim you meet in the states is almost certainly a non-violent person. At least on percentage with christians or atheists.
But yeah, it's all insanity and we need to eradicate religion in all forms for the good of our species.
Re:More proof as if we needed any (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they? Looking at history, all the most successful government before the 20th century had implied or official state religions. And even in the mundane, there's plenty of examples such as Pre-Communist Russia, which was officially Orthodox and where the church had a great deal of power, wasn't the most successful government. But at least it didn't murder tens of millions of its own citizens.
Re:Backwards country (Score:5, Insightful)
But hey, at least you got your +5, America Bashing mod
It's called not being hypocritical.
It would be hypocritical to sit around laughing arrogantly at Pakistan, while ignoring the fact that right here at home we can do similar things as well.
It may not be politically correct point out uncomfortable things about our own country, and you may get all offended and call it "America Bashing," but it is reality.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
This from an anti-Muslim hate site. No supporting citations to their numbers, but they promise to "supply sources upon request". Instead of each item linking to some citation, they link to other pages on the anti-Muslim hate site that says the exact same thing as the item.
Did you know that I'm the Emperor Napoleon? I can supply proof upon request. Instructions on how to request that proof can be found at http:\\morequestionsthananswers.con.
There are plenty of reasons to be oppose violent Muslim extremists without having to resort to that kind of baloney. If you were really trying to make a valid point in good faith, Mashiki, you could have done so. Instead, you expose only yourself.
Re:The dose makes the poison (Score:2, Insightful)
And of course there is good in religion: a lot of religious rules are merely codifications of existing rules and mores of the societies in which these religions sprang up. There is a lot to be said for something that encourages all of us to adopt the same set of rules. But then again it is no surprise that religion crept (and continues to creep) into stuff that we consider to be personal choices. After all, where is the priesthood's role if scripture merely echoes the secular law of the land? Religion has an innate need to meddle in your personal affairs... another good reason to steer clear.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Allah is not the only god in whose name atrocities have been committed and the Koran is not the only poorly written, poorly translated, self-contradictory book purportedly containing the One True God's Word that has been used to justify atrocities. I would agree that religions are usually silly and find it laughable that someone might single out Islam as the silliest one. Christianity -- with so much lip service given to peace and forgiveness -- is every bit as silly. Anyone remember the Crusades?
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:1, Insightful)
Last time I checked, the United States allows capital punishment. Let's start with that atrocity and all those innocent men that have been exected in Texas. That sounds a bit like Saudi Arabia.
Then let's move from that to the invasion of Iraq. I seem to recall that they named one of the invasions "Operation Just Crusade". That sounds like holy war stuff to me and we killed a hell of a lot more innocent people than were killed on 9/11.
But obviously you aren't working from a reasoned viewpoint here. You are trying to back up your xenophobic convictions with some poor rhetoric and non-facts. Try again.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be interesting to know how many of the people killed were Muslims themselves. I'd guess a majority in any year. If a bomber blows up a couple dozen police recruits in an Iraqi city, we chalk those up as deaths due to Islamic terrorism, which strictly speaking they are, but they could just as easily chalked up a civil war deaths.
There are 2.6 million Muslims in the US. That's a lot of people. If, say, 10% were what our media like to call "jihadis", that'd be 260,000 people living here who want to kill us because we're not Muslims. If 1% of those jihadis made at least one attempt each year, that'd be at least 2,600 domestic Islamic terror attacks. It'd be easy for them too. They live here, they know our weaknesses, often can pass as non-muslim if need be -- that's not counting their recent converts of European ancestry (we know converts are usually among the most zealous in any religion). They don't need Al Qaeda to teach them how to make bombs when they have the Internet.
So how many people in the US have been killed since 9/11 by this fifth column? So far as I can see, none. If Muslim==terrorist, there should be thousands of people killed every year here. Probably tens of thousands killed a year. Why isn't anyone keeping track?
How low does suspicion have to go before you chuck it out the window? 99.99%? Well that 1 in 10,000. Applied to the 2.6 million Muslims in the US, that's 260 American Muslim terrorists. That's almost surely too high, given the lack of any deaths in the US from home-grown Muslim terrorists, but let's go with that. Your chance of running into a Muslim terrorist here in the US is about the same (under these unfavorable assumptions) as bumping into a retired NASA astronaut.
The idea that Islam somehow makes someone inclined to terror does not hold up if you control for circumstances (e.g. look at American Muslims).
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
The war in Iraq was never a crusade, and "Operation Just Crusade" is never existed. (Feel free to prove otherwise.)
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, any muslim you meet in the states is almost certainly a non-violent person.
Incidentally, that's also true of the Islamic world. If you are a Muslim, you are far more likely to be the victim of an Islamist terrorist than you are to be an Islamist terrorist or sympathiser thereof. That's partly because Islamist terrorists mostly target Muslims.
The "religion of peace" also spawned the Arab Spring.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, nice choice of source material. I'm sure that's entirely fair and well-considered.
Yeah, well if you looked at the source material. You'd have seen that the source material is taken directly from...dun, dun, dun da, ta-da-ta...the news media. So unless you think that Reuters, AFI, AJE(Arab), and so on have this incredible bias to not report on the news. You're just being an idiot.
Let's not forget, that while you're parroting your view on the "almost certainly" that a dozen muslims were arrested in the UK for planning terrorist attacks on the Olympics. And before that, 30 more were arrested for grooming young girls and prostituting them in slave like conditions. And in the US itself, you had a few cases of sudden Jihad syndrome, in Dearborne, where some tried to run some Christians over for having differing points of view(does it matter they were being assholes? not really.) And let's not forget Ft. Hood either, that one is still on-going, but despite what the media keeps telling you he was a muslim, and it was another homegrown terrorist attack.
But let me ask you this, between Christians, Jews and Muslims can you tell me the difference between the three? The first two had reformations and keep their crazies in line. The last one actively persecutes their reformists as we see today, and as we see today, people are still supporting the crazies, and are railing against the reformers. I think you have more serious issues.
Re:Ah don't worry... (Score:3, Insightful)
>you end up with millions of people enslaved to a system that they can't escape that treats women, minorities, and non-muslims as second class citizens
That sounds completely indistinguishable from fundamentalist Christian conservatives in the United States today - Santorum style. The ONLY difference is that in the United States they are constrained by two factors: a constitution that prohibits religious interference with the law, and the fact that they can't ever get elected. They are a massive group - just not big ENOUGH.
Even so - Rush Limbaugh style conservatives love to call women whores for using birth control.
I fail to see how Islam is in any way unique.
All religions have their crazy fundamentalists and they are almost ALWAYS a minority but whenever those fundamentalists happen to get into positions of power - they abuse them according to their fundamentalism. Islam currently has some countries where this is the case.
The major reason the west went for secular states however is because EXACTLY THE SAME THING used to happen there until we did.
If you let religions dictate laws, you get atrocities, it doesn't matter WHICH religion. Hell the Budhists of Tibet used to practise a form of mass slavery and call it "karma" and Budhism is probably the most rational and peaceful religion ever concieved.