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May 4, 2008
Turkish Schools Offer Pakistan a Gentler Islam
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

KARACHI, Pakistan � Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher
from Turkey.


He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.


�Kill, fight, shoot,� Mr. Kacmaz said. �This is a misinterpretation of Islam.�


But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public
school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.


Mr. Kacmaz (pronounced KATCH-maz) is part of a group of Turkish educators who have come to this battleground with an entirely different vision of Islam. Theirs is moderate and flexible, comfortably coexisting with the West while remaining distinct from it. Like Muslim Peace Corps
volunteers, they promote this approach in schools, which are now established in more than 80 countries, Muslim and Christian.


The Turkish schools, which have expanded to seven cities in Pakistan since the first one opened a decade ago, cannot transform the country on their own. But they offer an alternative approach that could help reduce the influence of Islamic extremists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/world/asia/04islam.html?em&ex=12099...