by Salman Hameed

There is a new paper out in the Journal of the Academy of Religion that provides a broad overview of the various creationist movements in Europe. The title of the paper is Creationism in Europe: Facts, Gaps and Prospects (you can download the full paper!) and it is authored by Stefaan Blancke, Hans Henrik Hjermitslev, Johan Braeckman, and Peter Kjaergaard. The same team is also behind a follow-up edited volume on this topic coming out in 2014, where I have also contributed a chapter on Islamic Creationism in Europe, and Martin Reixinger has a chapter on Turkey.

I had a chance to have a conversation with the lead author for the paper, Dr. Stefaan Blancke, who is affiliated with the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium. If you have 15 minutes to spare, here is the video:

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by Salman Hameed

I'm certainly entertained by the idea of a burqa (or burka) as a superhero cape. This was bound to happen. Already in Pakistan, I had heard of the "ninja-burqa". So here comes this new animated series in Urdu, Burka Avenger. I think it is a fantastic idea and, in it, there is an interesting secularizing of the burqa: the teacher doesn't take the burqa for religious reasons, but rather to beat-up the bad guys (not to mention that he bad guys seem to have at least similarities with the Taliban and their position regarding female education). Oh well, here is a trailer in English (the series is in Urdu):


Burka Avenger Trailer from Aaron Haroon Rashid on Vimeo.

Of course, there is also a precedence of Muslim superheroes in the series The 99 (see earlier post, Sharia-compliant superheroes). But Burka Avenger comes with its own Pakistani flavor. Here is a brief description of the key plot lines and a good sense of humor in the show:

The series is set in Halwapur, a fictional town nestled in the soaring mountains and verdant valleys of northern Pakistan. The Burka Avenger's true identity is Jiya, whose adopted father, Kabbadi Jan, taught her the karate moves she uses to defeat her enemies. When not garbed as her alter ego, Jiya does not wear a burka, or even a less conservative headscarf over her hair. 

The main bad guys are Vadero Pajero, a balding, corrupt politician who wears a dollar sign-shaped gold medallion around his neck, and Baba Bandook, an evil magician with a bushy black beard and mustache who is meant to resemble a Taliban commander. 

Caught in the middle are the show's main child characters: Ashu and her twin brother Immu and their best friend Mooli, who loves nothing more than munching on radishes in the company of his pet goat, Golu. 

In the first episode, Pajero wants to shut down the girls' school in Halwapur so he can pocket the money that a charity gave him to run it. He finds a willing accomplice in Bandook, whose beliefs echo those of the Taliban and many other men in conservative, Islamic Pakistan. 

"What business do women have with education?" says Bandook. "They should stay at home, washing, scrubbing and cleaning, toiling in the kitchen."
Bandook padlocks the gate of the school and orders the crowd of young girls outside to leave. Ashu steps forward to resist and delivers a defiant speech about the importance of girls' education – perhaps marking her as a future activist. 

"The girls of today are the mothers of tomorrow," says Ashu. "If the mothers are not educated, then future generations will also remain illiterate." 

Bandook is unmoved, but the Burka Avenger appears and fights off the magician's henchmen with martial arts moves reminiscent of the movie The Matrix. Using his magical powers, Bandook disappears in a puff of smoke. The Burka Avenger hurls a flying pen that breaks open the padlock on the school's gate as the children cheer. 

The show, which is slickly animated using high-powered computer graphics, does a good job of mixing scenes that will entertain children with those that even adults will find laugh-out-loud funny. 

In one episode, Bandook builds a robot to take over the world's major cities, including London, New York and Paris. As he outlines his dastardly plan with a deep, evil laugh, one of his minions butts in and says, "But how will we get visas to go to all those places?" – a reference to how difficult it can be for Pakistanis to travel, given their country's reputation.

And while we are on the subject of mixing religious garbs with entertainment, here is a highly entertaining tutorial video of how to make a Princess Leia Hijab:

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by Salman Hameed

It seems that some clerics may be turning to violent jihad after being shut-out from clerical positions. This comes from the dissertation work of Rich Neilsen, and briefly reported in the Economist (tip from Saleem Ali):

Now Rich Nielsen of Harvard University has examined the books, fatwas (religious rulings) and biographies of 91 modern Salafi clerics, as well as of 379 of their students and teachers. He found that the main factors behind radicalism are not poverty or the ideology of their teachers (as might be assumed) but the poor quality of their academic and educational networks. 

Such contacts determined the clerics’ ability to get a good job as imam or teacher in state institutions. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where most of the 91 came from, the government has long co-opted religious institutions. Those who failed to land a job were more likely to avow violence as a tool for political change.

So a bad combination of state control of religion and a general culture of nepotism can lead to creation of Jihadists. I wonder if his study included Pakistan, where religious education is not controlled in the same way as in Egypt and Saudi Arabia (religion is still used by the Pakistani government, but its control over clerics is less than the hold of the Saudi government or  the pre-Arab Spring Egypt). Okay back to article: 

The figures are startling. Clerics with the best academic connections had a 2-3% chance of becoming jihadist. This rose to 50% for the badly networked. 

Mr Nielsen reckons he has proved causation by controlling for other factors—eliminating the chance that those more inclined to extremism shun state jobs, for example. “It’s about a glass ceiling,” he says. “Clerics who don’t get positions must compete to appeal to an audience. Jihadist views are a way of making themselves appear credible, since there is often a high cost associated with it, such as prison time.” 

His research may help those seeking to stem the rise of radical preachers. Rather than spending a fortune snooping on them and then jailing them, it would be cheaper to offer them a decent job.

I don't know much about the rest of the work - but this seems interesting.

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by Salman Hameed

Well, Malala's name has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Actually, this might be good for the Nobel committee, after giving the prize to the drone-happy Obama and then last year to the European Union(!). A win for Malala may actually restore some of the lost luster.

In the mean time, she has made her first public statement and has mentioned the establishment of a fund dedicated for girls' education. In many instances, this kind of coverage overwhelms the subject in the middle. But it is different with her. She has always been confident and self-assured. So check out the video of her statement in English (first one below) and in Urdu. Often people focus on the religion of her attackers. But, as you can see from the video, religion plays a major role in her life as well - and it is that that she credits for her well-being. This is the reason why it doesn't make much sense to make blanket statements - both good or bad - about religions. The way people inhabit and interact with religion is complex, and it is the specifics that matter. And there really isn't much redeemable about those Taliban who found any kind of justification (religious or tribal or political) in attacking a 14-year old girl. [On the crazy spectrum of things, please check out this earlier post: Crazy Conspiracy Theories: From Malala to Newtown, CT]

I hope Malala recovers her spunky-self. To remind you of her (and her charming father's) sprightly personality, I have also posted the short NYT documentary from a few years ago.

Here is Malala's statement in English:

Here is her statement on Urdu:


Here is the NYT documentary:

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by Salman Hameed

Couple of years ago, I had several posts about a fantastic and energetic 11-year old girl, Malala Yusufzai, in Swat that was campaigning for schools for girls. See the following posts about her:

A schoolgirl's odyssey
Short documentary about the school situation in Swat
Taliban, Education, and diary of a 7th grade schoolgirl from Swat

What was so amazing was her level of enthusiasm and her charm. No wonder, she got attention from the world over. But now a 14-year old, she was shot today by the Pakistani Taliban. This was not a result of any cross-fire between the rival groups or between the army and the Taliban. No - she was singled out in the bus and targeted. Yes, this 14-year old girl represented a big enough threat to the Taliban that they put her on their assassination list this past spring and made an attempt today. She suffered serious injuries, but has survived the attack:

 Ms. Yousafzai, who won a national peace prize last year, was shot in the head and the neck, while two other people on the bus suffered lighter injuries, local health officials said. After emergency treatment, Ms. Yousafzai was taken by helicopter to a military hospital in the provincial capital, Peshawar, where doctors said she was in stable but critical condition late Tuesday. 

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Ms. Yousafzai had been targeted for her criticism of the Taliban and because it considered her human rights campaigning to be an “obscenity.” 

“She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” a Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said by phone from an undisclosed location. “She considers Obama as her ideal leader.”

The Taliban publicly placed Ms. Yousafzai on its assassination hit list this spring. Mr. Ehsan added that if she survived, the militants would try to kill her again. “Let this be a lesson,” he said.  

I hope this act would get an appropriate backlash against the Pakistan Taliban and their supporters. But what a tragedy. She is only 14!

Here are two videos by the New York Times from late 2009 that featured her along with the issue of girl's education in the Swat area:

A Schoolgirl's Odyssey:


And Class Dismissed in Swat Valley:

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by Salman Hameed

For our Friday Journal Club, here is a recent paper by Ronan Southcott and J. Roger Downie:  Evolution and Religion: Attitudes of Scottish Bioscience Students to the Teaching of Evolutionary Biology, published in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach.

Summary: 
This paper used a questionnaire-based survey to look at the acceptance/rejection of biological evolution amongst first-year and fourth-year bioscience students at Glasgow University. I actually really like the paper as the authors take a nuanced approach to the reasons why people accept and reject evolution. Let me highlight here a few items that I found interesting (this is not an exhausted list - but biased towards my interests):

1) Here is a table that looks at the response to the following question: "Do you agree that the process of biological evolution lasting many millions of years has occurred in one form or another?"

Level 1 includes first year biology students and level 4 are final year biology students. The "High" level 4 means that these students took evolution courses beyond their first years (usually the zoology students), whereas "Low" level 4 students only covered evolution in their first year. 

Couple of things immediately jump out. The overall rejection of evolution is low (around 7%) even amongst the first-years who haven't had any exposure to a university level biology course. But it is really striking that all students who took evolution course(s) beyond their first year accept biological evolution. And this is from a decent sample of 255 students. So good news here: Education actually matters! 

2) But the reasons for rejection can be complex. The authors did ask an interesting set of questions to assess if the rejection is linked to a general skepticism about the claims of science. The table below list their four questions grouped by acceptors and rejectors of evolution. While there is no significant difference between the two groups on CO2-climate change and smoking-lung cancer connections, the responses do differ on Einstein's energy-mass equation as well as on plate tectonics (you will have to click on the table to see the larger font).

The interpretation here can be tricky. It seems that smoking and climate change similarities may simply be due to media exposure of those two topics. But the difference on the other two questions may be related to general lack of exposure to science, the authors conclude, and not due to a general skepticism of science by the rejectors. I think it will be interesting to see how these responses relate to social class and the education of parents, etc. Nevertheless, I think this an interesting avenue to explore effects of media and education.

3) I think one of the most interesting result lies in Table 10 of the paper (you will have to click on the table to see the larger font):

This exemplifies the messiness of how people think. Yes - overall there is an expected trend: those who agree with evolution have a higher acceptance rate for human evolution, macro-evolution, and micro-evolution, compared to those who reject evolution. No surprise there. However, what is interesting is that a substantial fraction of students who said they rejected evolution not only accept micro-evolution, but also agree with the statement that humans have descended from ancient species of apes! Conversely, a few acceptors also reject not only human evolution, but also micro-evolution. This is fascinating! We have been encountering similarly complex responses in our oral interviews with Muslim physicians and students and it will be fascinating to explore the reasons for these contradictory responses.

4) One last thing. The authors also looked at final year students who rejected evolution. Remember, these were the ones who did not did not take any evolution course after their first year. The numbers are low (7), but it is interesting that most of them agreed that there would never be enough evidence to overcome their religious beliefs. It is a small number, but it represents an important sub-group of students. Similarly, the authors looked at those students who used to reject evolution, but then changed their mind over the course of their time at the university. The number is again small (7), but this is what they found:

Again, this is an interesting case where evidence takes a back-seat to the reason why they accept or reject an idea. This is again a small sample - but it is fascinating that the change of mind is related to their accommodation with religion.

A very interesting paper and I will be interesting in their follow-up studies.

You can find past Irtiqa Friday Journal Clubs here.
_________________
Southcott, R and Downie, JR. (2012), Evolution and Religion: Attitudes of Scottish Bioscience Students to the Teaching of Evolutionary Biology Evo Edu Outreach, Volume 5, Number 2 (2012), 301-311, DOI: 10.1007/s12052-012-0419-9

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by Salman Hameed

I think there is little debate over the usefulness of education. This is one thing that most world leaders would agree on. And many are also willing to spend a lot of money on it. But what does it take to turn around education standards in a developing country?

Some of the Gulf states in the Middle East are, of course, in the midst of an education experiment. Last year I had a chance to visit Doha for a conference and saw branch campuses of a number of American universities, from Cornell Medical School to Carnegie Mellon University (see this earlier post: Education City in Qatar). As far as I understand it, most of the costs for these campuses is paid for by the government of Qatar. Will these campuses transform the higher education landscape in Qatar? Perhaps more importantly, will it create a body of students with critical thinking skills necessary for the sciences, and creative independence necessary for the humanities? I think we have to keep an eye on this and we should be able to assess some successes and failures in the next few years.

A few days ago, Pervez Hoodbhoy raised a similar question about the school education. One of the political parties in Pakistan have recently called for giving away free laptops to kids. Pervez, rightly, asks the question, is it the laptop that is fundamentally going to make the difference? He points out that at one point television was considered the singular solution to the education problem, at another time, Apple 2C computers. And so now, we have the laptops:

Instead, the central question is: how exactly are these laptops to combat poverty and ignorance, or improve education? The answer is not clear in any developing country but is even muddier in Pakistan. The purchased computers did not come loaded with school books, supplementary educational materials, or programmes like “Comic Life” which make math learning fun. There are no locally-developed programmes, and none in Urdu or any local language. Nor have schoolteachers been trained to deal with computers as a teaching tool. Of course, there will be some Google searching and perhaps some educational material will be downloaded. But overwhelmingly they will be used for chatting, surfing, or video games. 

The false notion of technology as a magic wand has made our rulers euphoric from time to time. Few Pakistanis will remember the bulk purchase of Apple-II C computers for schools at the end of the 1980s. General Ziaul Haq’s minister of education, Dr Muhammad Afzal, (now deceased), was a progressive man in a religiously-charged government. Somehow he was seized with the notion that computers would revolutionise everything. In one of my occasional meetings with him, I unsuccessfully sought to persuade him that his idea was fundamentally flawed. Sadly, the warning turned out to be correct: it is likely that many machines were not even turned on before they were junked en masse 10-15 years later.
Earlier on, a still bigger revolution had been promised. Pakistan Television was founded on the premise that its core purpose would be education. At the invitation of the Pakistan government, a Unesco team visited Pakistan and met with the ministers of law, broadcasting, and education. In a subsequent report the team leaders, HR Cassirer and TS Duckmanton, wrote: 

“We arrived in Lahore on October 10, 1960, where we were the guests of the Regional Director of Radio Pakistan, as well as the Provincial Department of Education. We pursued our consultations with officials concerned with the following: university and college education, primary and secondary education, vocational education, village aid, broadcasting, the Arts Council”. The report document does not even mention entertainment or news broadcasts, but has paragraphs on how telecourses should be conducted. 

But PTV never made a sizeable contribution to education. For 50 years its broadcast content has been almost exclusively entertainment and news. In this period PTV has produced only two documentary serials that sought to popularise science for the general public, one in 1994 and the other in 2002.

Though to be fair, PTV did start showing education programs from the Allama Iqbal Open University aimed to increase adult literacy. These were first shown in the afternoon, and I think later as part of PTV2. I don't what happened to  PTV2 and Open University programs. Are they still on? But I think if done properly, that can still be very effective. I know that Indonesia used its satellite channels to provide educational programs across the archipelago. And televisions are indeed available across the board. But that success in Pakistan via this route has remained relatively limited. However, there may exist a study that has looked at it more systematically. If anyone knows the reference, drop me a line.

Pervez doesn't dismiss the use of new technology for education. But his emphasis is on good education values - a system that encourages learning over memorization - and that requires a change of mindset:

The bottom line: good education requires planning, organisation, integrity, resources and, above all, a mindset that is oriented towards the future and not the past. Techy hi-fi stuff has glitz, but it’s really the sub-stratum of thought that matters.

And that may apply to the experiments in higher education in the Gulf states as well.

Read the full article here.

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by Salman Hameed

I think if someone were to ask for the justification for being in academia, I can point to the last 10 days in the 5-college area. These days have been non-stop intellectually stimulating and phenomenally rewarding. Here are the highlights - starting from Thursday, April 19th.

Thursday - April 19th:
Screening of the new John Sayles film Amigo at Amherst Cinema and follow-up Q & A with the director. It was a pleasure watching his new film about the Philippine-American war at the turn of the 20th century.  It is one of the less talked about wars - and the movie brings up the questions of US imperialism at the time. The story - like all of Sayles films - looks at the issues from all sides: the rebels, those who reluctantly agree to cooperate with the US, American soldiers who thought they were doing the right thing, and commanders who knew what they had to win the war. It is a very well done film, but amazingly it didn't get a wide release!! No seriously. There is a problem when a director like Sayles cannot get a wide release for an excellent film. So if you get a chance, try to get it on-Demand or on a DVD/Blue-ray. Also, if you have never seen any of John Sayles films, give Lonestar - from 1996 - a try (and then proceed to Metwan and the Secret of Roan Inish.

Our film autopsy of Amigo will be coming soon. In the mean time, here is the trailer:



Wednesday-Friday: Worked on a paper with former Hampshire student, Don Everhart, who was here for three days. He is headed to UCSD this fall for graduate school in sociology (woo hoo!).

Saturday: Moderated sessions at student-organized 5-College Middle-Eastern and North African Studies Conference. Listened and learnt from some excellent talks about the history of North-African Jews in Israel, on Turkey's AKP, architecture of post-war Beirut, the record of the British state building in Iraq, and on fluid identities of Muslim medical professionals.

Monday: Attended a talk on the art and architecture of Dome of the Rock.

Tuesday: Attended a talk by Werner Herzog! Now this is amazing that we had John Sayles and Herzog here within a week. He was absolutely amazing. His main advice for student film-makers: "Read, read, read, read, and read!" He even gave a short reading list that he thinks is absolutely essential for everyone. Here are the three books I remember: Virgil's epic poem Georgics (it precedes The Aeneid), The Peregrine by Baker, and the third, I think was Bartolomé de las Casas' 16th century book A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. There is sooo much more to say about Herzog's  talk - but it will take just too much time. Needless to say - he is absolutely amazing. If you get a chance, see him speak in person. And if nothing else, check out his latest documentary, Into the Abyss. (Also see my earlier posts about Encounters at the End of the World and Cave of Forgotten Dreams)

Wednesday: Attended a talk on the development of Qur'anic writing and how the style of presentation evolved over the first few centuries. Also had a chance to watch the screening of a fantastic animated short film made by former Hampshire College students. It is called Caldera and here is the trailer:

Friday: Inauguration of our new President of Hampshire College, Jonathan Lash. There were some phenomenal music performances by students and faculty members, and then a rousing speech by Al Gore (and he was very funny as well! no really, he was very funny!). Well the video of the inauguration is not up, but here is a short bit from the local ABC affiliate:

And here is Laura Sizer (our Dean of the School of Cognitive Science and co-organizer of Science and Religion Lecture Series at Hampshire) and I with our new best friend, Al:

Phew! What a week. And now looking forward to the last week of classes. But the last 10 days highlight just why it is so amazing being in academia, and in a place with such high density of colleges. 

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by Salman Hameed

The issue of Young Earth Creationism (the idea that the world was created in the last 6-10 thousand years) is specific to the US. It didn't really exist at the time of the Scopes Trial. In fact, the main proponent of creationism at the trial, the colorful William Jennings Bryan, was an old earth creationist. The idea of a young earth took hold after the publication of a couple of books in the 60s arguing for flood geology - that all of the geologic features of the Earth have been shaped by Noah's flood only a few thousand years ago. This kind of fantasy geology is, thankfully, missing from most of the Muslim world. This is very encouraging! An acceptance of the age of the Earth in billions of years opens up the possibility for the acceptance of a change of species over this very long time. It is really a shame that a significant fraction of population of the most scientifically advanced country in the world accepts such young earth creationism. I know that social and political factors, colored by a particular form of religion, shape much of this view. But really, there should be no excuse.

But the US problem is further exacerbated by the way the school system works here. Instead of a federal system, local school boards set the curricula. And the school board members are picked through local elections. Texas school board has attracted a lot of attention as most public schools in the US use textbooks published in Texas - and the Texas publishers follow the local school board recommendation. So it has been particularly crazy to see a young earth creationist Don McLeroy, who also happens to be a dentist, head up the Texas school board. He is no longer part of the board, but he led a fierce fight to include creationism in biology textbooks. Now there is a new documentary out, The Revisionaries, about folks like him who are trying to change the textbooks. I haven't seen the movie, but I don't think it is a complimentary to McLeroy or other creationists. However, our creationist dentist did decide to show up on the Colbert Report. Here is the entertaining segment (I think Colbert could have been harsher...):

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

I think McLeroy should team up with Harun Yahya and Zakir Naik. They will make first class Musketeers. Or they can be the Three Stooges. Actually Ken Ham - of the Creation Museum - may be a better candidate than McLeroy.

And here is the trailer for The Revisionaries:

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This is a weekly post by Nidhal Guessoum (see his earlier posts here). Nidhal is an astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at American University of Sharjah and is the author of Islam's Quantum Question: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science.

The past two Fridays, GulfNews published two columns of mine that try to highlight the importance of science literacy and the rarely appreciated, much less taught, art/science of “guesstimating” (producing educated guesses or “back-of-the-envelope” estimates for questions without or before having to perform the full calculation).

Here are excerpts from each article, starting with the science literacy one:

On the first day of my Astronomy course, I give students a “pre-assessment” quiz for me (and for them) to get a general idea of the knowledge – and misconceptions – they bring in. Questions include: how old are the universe, the sun, and the earth; who was Copernicus; and what is the difference between a planet and a star… Few students are able to answer these questions correctly.

What I don’t tell my students is that a famous documentary once asked Harvard students on the day of their graduation why it is hotter in the summer than in the winter (in the northern hemisphere), and fewer than ten percent of them answered correctly. Similarly, at George Mason University, half of the seniors who were surveyed could not state the difference between an atom and a molecule. Such ignorance is much more widespread in the general public, as half of the (surveyed) American public does not know how long it takes the earth to orbit around the sun, and one in five thinks the sun goes around the earth. In recent studies, only about 7 % of American adults were judged to be “scientifically literate”…

Science literacy is the general understanding of scientific ideas (facts, terms, theories); it allows a reasonably educated person to digest scientific information that is received from various media; it also allows one to follow the discussion on a science-related topic (say stem cell research) and come to an informed conclusion. It is important to stress that such literacy is broad and does not depend on one’s scientific training. Indeed, studies (in the west) have shown that many scientists who possess high but narrow expertise in their fields do not have enough general and broad knowledge in other areas. (How many non-biologists know the difference between genes and chromosomes?)

Why is this type of literacy important?

…

The situation in the United States is quite instructive, because it has been studied for many years and in different population samples, and experts have been able to draw some useful conclusions. They have found that while the general public in the US is not very scientifically literate (not at international standards), Americans who have gone to college and majored in any field end up acquiring significant science literacy. This is because contrary to most other higher education systems, American universities require all students (even those majoring in arts or humanities) to take and pass 1 to 3 science courses.

Another important remark is the realization that Americans go to museums, zoos, and aquariums quite frequently; indeed, 30 % of US residents visit a museum in a given year, compared to 16 % of Europeans and 14 % of the Japanese; 58 % of Americans visit a zoo or an aquarium each year, compared to 9 % of Europeans and 32 % of the Japanese.

…

Read the whole (800 words) article here.

And here are a few paragraphs from the piece on guesstimating skills:

My students are often stunned to hear me ask them to estimate or even guess some answers. The expressions on their faces, and often the words from their lips, say it clearly: are you asking us to guess in a technical, scientific course at a respectable university? Yes, indeed, I not only ask my students to “educate-guess”, I try to show them the importance of this skill and how to learn it.

It was the Italian-American Nobel Prize winning physicist who made this skill popular when he posed to his (doctoral) students such questions as: how many piano tuners are there in Chicago; how far can a duck fly; and other such strange questions, which “obviously” had nothing to do with science or with education… Answering these kinds of questions, for which one could never obtain a precise result, became known as “guesstimating” or performing “back-of-the-envelope” calculations.

Why did Fermi want his students to be able to answer such questions? Why is this guessing/ estimating an important skill to acquire? I tell my students (most of whom are Engineering majors) that when they have an idea or a project they wish to propose to their supervisors, or if one of their staff members brings a proposal to them, that they better be able to quickly estimate the cost, the feasibility, the timescale needed, and the drawbacks in the idea under consideration. Moreover, if they want to convince their superiors of the need for some projects, they should be able to show simple and convincing numbers to the decision-makers.

For example, one should be able to estimate the amount of water lost in the undammed rivers of a given state, or the amount of time wasted by drivers or pedestrians or employees due to certain urban or architectural constructions, or the amount of energy that could be saved (and the attached costs) in placing solar panels on the roofs of a building. One simple and favorite question of mine is to ask students to estimate/calculate the amount of money they waste by skipping one class, knowing how much their parents have paid for their tuition in a given semester…

The tricky part is that for one to do a good estimate, one needs some facts/knowledge, some of which may not be available or easily accessible. And that is when the skill of “educated-guessing” comes in as an important tool. Conversely, when one is shown a result (say a student or an engineer brings me a calculation), one must be able to quickly check (by guesstimating) whether the result makes sense or not. This is where one combines some essential knowledge, some sharp mental skills, and some critical thinking. This is how the above components of education combine; this is what makes a smartly educated person in today’s era of quickly accessible facts.

…

Einstein once said “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. By this he meant that one should be able to solve problems as simply (not as precisely) as possible, but simplicity must not sacrifice the above elements of: basic facts/knowledge, sharp logic/skills, and critical thinking. We need to integrate this more fully into our approach to education.

Read the whole thing here, including some such questions I proposed that the readers try to tackle…

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by Salman Hameed

As part of  TEDx Pioneer Valley, here is a talk on science education in Afghanistan. I had/have no idea of the status of science and science education in Afghanistan. For example, we do hear a bit about primary and secondary education, especially when it comes to girls' education, but what kind and level of science is included in such schools? I'm sure there is more to the picture, but here is one snapshot. This is Camilla Barry on Teaching Everyday Science in Afghanistan:

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by Salman Hameed

Kamila Shamsie, the author several novels set in Karachi (for example, In the City by the Sea, Kartography), had an interesting article in Guernica about schools in Pakistan. The challenges are immense. It is not just a matter of creating more schools - after all, the Taliban are also "students". It is about the quality of education and its accessibility to all Pakistanis.

Here she talks about the infiltration of religion in textbooks (for example, on the encouragement of raising cattle, since it is a Sunnah of the Prophet), and a bit on ghost schools - schools that exist only on paper. But most of the article is about efforts to reform the existing educational system by an NGO led by couple if young Pakistanis, including Sana mentioned below. The efforts seems promising and I hope it works out, but then there have  been numerous efforts in the past that have fizzled out at the end.

But apart from a better curriculum, I was struck by the gender issues mentioned in the article - and it provides a glimpse of the challenges involved.

But problems didn’t just come from adults. Increasingly, the neighborhoods in Karachi are divided along ethnic lines with each group identifying with a political party. The relationships between some of these political parties are marked by violence and “target killing,” intimidation, and extortion to the perceived benefit of the party. By the time many boys are adolescents, they’ve already been pulled into some of the more thuggish aspects. “With the boys you have to get to them by the time they’re eleven or twelve. Any later is too late,” Sana said, recalling how a group of fourteen-year-olds told her, “What do we need education for? We’re in politics.” Even further, those boys were unwilling to listen to a female. Once, when Sana was trying to get them to be silent, one of the students said, “Get the bearded guy with a stick to come in if you want us to be quiet.” Not long after, she stopped teaching in the boys’ section of the school. 

“What about the girls?” I asked. 

The girls, she said, were an entirely different matter. “I can set any essay assignment, and without fail they’ll manage to work into it that their greatest wish is to just be allowed to stay in school and complete their education,” Sana told me. But all too often their parents pull them out of school by the time they’re twelve. Sometimes the parents want them to get married, other times they can’t afford the fees and feel it’s more important to pay for the education of their sons. 

The girls are as affectionate as the boys are macho, I heard from both Sana and Adnan. It was hard not to think that at home their brothers received all the attention. Damaging for both the boys and the girls, as well as for their relationships with each other. For Sana, it was particularly disheartening to realize how low the girls’ expectations for their lives were, how little they felt they could ask from the world.

This is a serious issue and the society as a whole has to work to find a solution. This is after all half of the student population of Pakistan! [and yes, I thought it was funny/sad that some of the boys thought they don't need education now that they are in politics]

Read the full article here.

Also see these earlier post:
The Enigma of Educated Pakistanis
Muslim Women Scientists Today

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by Salman Hameed

I have written multiple times about King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) before (for example, here, here, and here). KAUST has the second largest university endowment in the world and is supported by the Saudi government. I have written about the promise (it may open up genuine science opportunities) and also the perils of such an experiment (will it have any impact when it is isolated from the general Saudi society, etc.).

But now comes the news that two other Saudi universities, King Abdullah University (KAU) and King Saud University (KSU) have been buying academic prestige by offering money to high profile researchers so they can list one of these universities as affiliations. While there are couple of tricky issues here, ultimately, the central question ought to be: Is this the best investment of money for building the scientific infrastructure of Saudi Arabia?

So lets first look at what has been going on. From Science (tip from Gary Dargan):

At first glance, Robert Kirshner took the e-mail message for a scam. An astronomer at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was offering him a contract for an adjunct professorship that would pay $72,000 a year. Kirshner, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, would be expected to supervise a research group at KAU and spend a week or two a year on KAU's campus, but that requirement was flexible, the person making the offer wrote in the e-mail. What Kirshner would be required to do, however, was add King Abdulaziz University as a second affiliation to his name on the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI's) list of highly cited researchers. 

“I thought it was a joke,” says Kirshner, who forwarded the e-mail to his department chair, noting in jest that the money was a lot more attractive than the 2% annual raise professors typically get. Then he discovered that a highly cited colleague at another U.S. institution had accepted KAU's offer, adding KAU as a second affiliation on ISIhighlycited.com.
Kirshner's colleague is not alone. Science has learned of more than 60 top-ranked researchers from different scientific disciplines—all on ISI's highly cited list—who have recently signed a part-time employment arrangement with the university that is structured along the lines of what Kirshner was offered. Meanwhile, a bigger, more prominent Saudi institution—King Saud University in Riyadh—has climbed several hundred places in international rankings in the past 4 years largely through initiatives specifically targeted toward attaching KSU's name to research publications, regardless of whether the work involved any meaningful collaboration with KSU researchers.

Oh - and apart from all other things, all 60 researchers are men. At least there is consistently in the Saudi approach: If women can't drive, they can't be given money even if they are a top-notch researcher :)

Academics who have accepted KAU's offer represent a wide variety of faculty from elite institutions in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. All are men. Some are emeritus professors who have recently retired from their home institutions. All have changed their affiliation on ISI's highly cited list—as required by KAU's contract—and some have added KAU as an affiliation on research papers. Other requirements in the contract include devoting “the whole of your time, attention, skill and abilities to the performance of your duties” and doing “work equivalent to a total of 4 months per contract period.” 

Neil Robertson, a professor emeritus of mathematics at Ohio State University in Columbus who has signed on, says he has no concerns about the offer. “It's just capitalism,” he says. “They have the capital and they want to build something out of it.” Another KAU affiliate, astronomer Gerry Gilmore of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, notes that “universities buy people's reputations all the time. In principle, this is no different from Harvard hiring a prominent researcher.” 

Officials at KAU did not respond to Science's request for an interview. But Surender Jain, a retired mathematics professor from Ohio University in Athens who is an adviser to KAU and has helped recruit several of the adjuncts, provided a list of 61 academics who have signed contracts similar to the one sent to Kirshner. The financial arrangements in the contracts vary, Jain says: For instance, some adjuncts will receive their compensation not as salary but as part of a research grant provided by KAU. 

Jain acknowledges that a primary goal of the program—funded by Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Higher Education—is to “improve the visibility and ranking of King Abdulaziz University.” But he says KAU also hopes the foreign academics will help it kick-start indigenous research programs. “We're not just giving away money,” he says. Most recruits will be expected to visit for a total of 4 weeks in a year to “give crash courses”; they will also be expected to supervise dissertations and help KAU's full-time faculty members develop research proposals. Even the “shadows” of such eminent scholars would inspire local students and faculty members, he says.

Read the full article here (you may need subscription to access it). Okay now onto some tricky issues. I think it is absolutely true that having access to such researchers will not only improve the visibility of the universities but will also allow the ability to have fruitful collaborations that otherwise may be difficult to forge. It is also true that students will benefit - even if a top researcher visits there for only a few weeks a year. One can argue that this is better than no visit. 

The problem, however, in all this is the return on each dollar spent. Is spending $72,000 for a 2-3 week visit is the best use of that money? Perhaps, most importantly,this may tell us more about the attitude towards building scientific institutions. 

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. Money can only buy so much. Ultimately, scientific gains come from the human capital of the country, and that comes from developing strong educational institutions at all levels of educations and crucially for both sexes. Similarly, it is equally important to create an environment where students and faculty members can think freely (since Saudi government is behind these universities, we have to acknowledge that it is the same government that does allow women to drive or own a passport). Yes, money is also important - but the obsession to be included in a list of top universities is misguided at best. The goal should be to produce good thinkers and researchers, and the rankings should follow that. Is the best way to produce good thinkers and researchers depend on paying $72,000 for a 2-3 week visit per year? Probably not. Instead, may be, Saudi Arabia can look at places like Singapore. They also have an authoritarian regime, but their investments in education have been smart and have been producing interesting scientific results. It may take a decade or two, but the results may also be more permanent. 

Do you think the Saudi strategy of affiliations will be successful in the long run?

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by Salman Hameed

There is a new report out yesterday titled, Connecting the Dots:  Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistan. It is an extensive look at textbooks used in both public schools and in the madrassas in Pakistan, along with pedagogical methods used by instructors. The picture is not very pretty. Some of it is not much of a surprise for me as I went through the same system in the 80's. You can download the full report here (pdf). I haven't gone through it in detail as yet, but it looks thorough and has a nice literature overview as well. You can find a summary of the report here.

Here is what International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) did:

ICRD and its partner, the independent Pakistani think tank Sustainable Development Policy Institute, reviewed more than 100 textbooks from grades 1 through 10 from Pakistan’s four provinces. Students and teachers from public schools and madrassas were also interviewed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), Balochistan, Sindh, and Punjab. Thirty-seven middle and high schools were visited, with 277 students and teachers interviewed individually or in group settings.  Researchers interviewed 226 madrassa students and teachers from 19 madrassas.

And here are key findings:

The study involved the examination of social studies, Islamic studies, and Urdu textbooks and pedagogical methods in Pakistan’s public school system and its madrassa system, and the interviewing of teachers and students about their views on religious minorities. The goal of the year-long study was to explore linkages between the portrayal of religious minorities in public schools and madrassas, biases that exist against these minorities, and subsequent acts of discrimination or extremist violence.

The study found that –

• Public school textbooks used by all children often had a strong Islamic orientation, and Pakistan’s religious minorities were referenced derogatorily or omitted altogether;

• Hindus were depicted in especially negative terms, and references to Christians were often inaccurate and offensive;

• Public school and madrassa teachers had limited awareness or understanding of religious minorities and their beliefs, and were divided on whether religious minorities were citizens;

• Teachers often expressed very negative views about Ahmadis, Christians, and Jews, and successfully transmitted these biases to their students;

• Interviewees’ expressions of tolerance often were intermixed with neutral and intolerant comments, leaving some room for improvement. 

This is an important report. The findings in the report are not exactly shocking. I've had conversations with highly educated Pakistanis about Ahmadis, Christians, Shias, etc. where the level of vitriol or simple disrespect has been astonishing. That said, I also want to point out (and have done so many times before) that there are also a number of fantastic Pakistanis who are constantly fighting this tide of intolerance. But it makes it harder to fight this battle when such discrimination is embedded in the education system (as is pointed out in this report) or in the constitution (as is the shameful act of explicitly declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims and making an affirmation of this a part of passport requirement!). 

Intolerance begets intolerance. 

There has been an effort to reform the education system, but the effort has so far been anemic. Since this report on religious intolerance is going to get a lot of play in the US, lets also not forget America's role in promoting violence in shaping madrassas textbooks. Oh - not now. But in the 1980s. Here is a recent piece from Tribune Express:

Imagine that you learnt the alphabet and numbers with images of Kalashnikovs and tanks instead of apples and oranges. 

During the mid to late 1980s, a USAID funded project printed millions of textbooks in Peshawar. The funds came from Saudi Arabia and the books were distributed amongst school children in Afghanistan and in new madrassas across Pakistan. 

These textbooks were prepared to indoctrinate. Specialists from the Afghanistan Centre at the University of Nebraska Omaha received nearly $60 million to develop a curriculum, which glorified jihad, celebrated martyrdom and dehumanised invaders. 

By the mid-1980s, the Afghan mujahedeen were bleeding the Soviet Union, hastening her economic collapse and nearing the eventual end of the Cold War. 

The schools that survived across Afghanistan along with various madrassas continued using these same textbooks throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. 

Only in 2002 did the process of replacing textbooks begin, however, by then the template had been improved and widely distributed across both Afghanistan and Pakistan. A generation had been born to celebrate death rather than life. They accepted violence as a natural part of everyday life.

Pervez Hoodbhoy has documented some of the questions that were included in these textbooks. Here are two examples from textbooks published by University of Nebraska around 1985:

One group of mujahidin attack 50 Russians soldiers. In that attack 20 Russians are killed. How many Russians fled? [Grade 3] 

The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per second. If a communist is at a distance of 3200 meters from a mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the communist’s head, calculate how many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the communist in the forehead. [Grade 4]

This is stunningly insane! You can read more about the US sponsored textbooks in this Washington Post article from 2003: From US. the ABCs of Jihad. Now again, we have to be careful to not use this to deflect criticism of the education system in today's Pakistan. The anti-Hindu, anti-Christians, and anti-Ahmadi elements in public textbooks have nothing to do with the Soviets or the jihad. Those come from local politics and existing prejudices. Ultimately, the promotion of tolerance - and I would rather use the word 'respect' - of minorities is in the very interest of a 21st century Pakistan.

Also see:
How do students at elite Pakistani universities view the world?
Students expelled because of their religion

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The Clergy Letter project has been collecting clergy letters in support of the teaching of evolution. About 13,000 Christian clergy and roughly 500 rabbis have signed it over the last couple of years. Now there is a letter from American Imams - launched just this past week. Here are the contents of the letter:

Literalists of various religious traditions who perceive the science of evolution to be in conflict with their personal religious beliefs are seeking to influence public school boards to authorize the teaching of creationism.  We, the Imams of the mosques, see this as a breach in the separation of church and state.  Those who believe in a literal interpretation of scriptural account of creation are free to teach their perspective in their homes, religious institutions and parochial schools.  To teach it in the public schools would be indoctrinating a particular religious point of view in an environment that is supposed to be free of such indoctrination.

We, the undersigned Imams of the mosques, assert that the Qur’an is the primary source of spiritual inspiration and of values for us, though not for everyone, in our country.  We believe that the timeless truths of the Qur’an may comfortably coexist with the discoveries of modern science.  As Imams we urge public school boards to affirm their commitment to the teaching of the science of evolution.  We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

Sign Up Now!

• If you are an imam and would like to sign The Clergy Letter Project’s Imam Letter, please fill out the form by clicking here.

• If you are an ordained member of the clergy and would like to sign one of our other Clergy Letters, please fill out the form by clicking here.

• If you would like to be added to The Clergy Letter Project’s mailing list, please fill out the form by clicking here.

You can get to the Clergy Letter website here. Here is an excerpt form a related story from New Scientists here:

Like its predecessors, the Imam Letter explains why it's OK for believers to accept the truth of evolution. It also calls for a ban on creationist teaching in science classes. "As imams, we urge public school boards to affirm their commitment to the teaching of the science of evolution," says the letter, written by T. O. Shanavas, a doctor in Michigan and member of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo in Perrysburg, Ohio.

"It shows that evolution and science can transcend what some people see as quite deep religious divisions, providing a unifying factor representing common ground between them," says Michael Zimmerman of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, the architect of the Clergy Letter Project. "Christians are really excited about the Muslim letter," he says. "They realise that Islam is just as fractured as Christianity, with just as many people who take their scriptures out of context to deny the truth of evolution."

Read the full article here. I think is a great effort and should have a positive impact on the Muslim community in the US. I'm unsure about its impact in UK or even the larger Muslim world. For example, the recent craziness about the London Imam had its own local dynamics, and various cultural and political factors are shaping the diverse set of responses we see in different Muslim countries. 

But this is a positive move on behalf of American imams. If you are an imam and support the teaching of evolution (and good science, in general), sign up here.

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