Free Republic

Officially, it’s all part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign to eradicate absolute poverty in ethnic minority areas by teaching local people new skills to enable them to increase their incomes and improve their livelihoods. These so-called “vocational training programs”, made infamous by the Muslim Uighur camps run in western Xinjiang, have more recently been extended to Tibet. But it is evident from official Chinese declarations in Tibet and Xinjiang that it’s not only about educating “rural surplus workers” in ethnic minority areas Beijing perceives as “backward.” Official Chinese documents on “poverty alleviation” quoted extensively by the non-partisan, Washington-based Jamestown...

The catastrophe has driven a wedge between Haiti's religions as Christian groups make inroads among shaken Voodoo followers - some drawn by the steady flow of aid through evangelical missions and others frightened by a disaster they saw as a warning from God. "People see rice being distributed in front of churches and those homeless now needing papers are being offered baptism certificates that can act as identity documents," Voodoo priest Max Beauvoir told The Associated Press before speaking at Friday's service. "The horrible thing though is that by rejecting Voodoo these people are rejecting their ancestors and history. Voodoo...

Sometimes even a liberal has to admit that Islam has no intention of assimilation into anything. But every intention of assimilating you. The marital behavior of immigrants and their children (not to mention the entire history of colonization) shows that you can migrate to a place while being hostile to it, or at least while holding it in no special regard. Yes, immigrants “just want a better life”, as the cliché goes. But they don’t necessarily want a European life. They may want a Third World life at a European standard of living. They may want to use the cosmopolitanism...

In the 16th century, astrono mer Taqi al-Din built one of the world's great observato ries in Istanbul. It rivaled that of pioneering Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe -- while it lasted. "Taqi al-Din's observatory was razed to the ground by a squad of Janissaries, by order of the sultan, on the recommendation of the Chief Mufti," Bernard Lewis writes in his book "What Went Wrong?" "This observatory had many predecessors in the lands of Islam; it had no successors until the age of modernization." NASA Administrator Charles Bolden caused a furor when he revealed that President Obama had directed him...

President Mohammad Khatami Monday called on Iranian students and teachers to launch a six-month study to identify the reasons for Iran's backwardness as well as the exit routes, and report the outcomes to the administration, IRNA reported. Khatami, speaking at a ceremony in a girls' school southwest of Tehran to mark the beginning of the new Iranian academic year, urged students, particularly high-school students and their teachers, to inform the administration of proposals to promote Iran's status in the world's educational arena. "Iran, with a glorious history, has been a major bricklayer of civilizations that once reached the highest levels...