Alaha Ahrar
Afghanistan
A new law has been approved in Afghanistan which limits equality in the society and weakens women’s rights and their movements. I do not want to call the new law a law for Shia women. It is a new law for Afghan women. I do not want to call them the minority, because we are all Afghans and we are the members of the same society and country.
Islam is a religion based on justice and equality. It emphasizes education and the rights of men and women. It is not …

Level: Community—Peace Principle: Community, Cooperation
This week’s featured story came in from Minneapolis, MN, USA:

Last week was my birthday and I was lucky enough to be able to spend it traveling to see a bunch of my family. It had been a while since we were all together, so they were excited to find ways to celebrate our time together and find just the right gift for my birthday. Now, I recognize that I am a difficult person to shop for, for gifts. . . Over the years I have come …

Nora Bawa
The West Bank
Saturday morning at 7:30, Melanie, a German colleague, Henri, a French Project Hope volunteer, and I went to Asira, a village north of Nablus, to accompany a farmer and his family to their field. The field, 20 dunums usually planted with sesame seeds, has lain fallow for some years because it lies just below an Israeli army installation, and the soldiers don’t let people till their fields near the camp. We were joining the farmers in the understanding that they were less likely to be harassed in …

Commentary by Mary Liston Liepold
I spent 15 of the best years of my life as a family day care provider, feeding and reading to young children, ordering their days, and cooperatively creating an environment where we all found it fairly easy to get along. It’s no surprise, then, that I tend to see events in the adult world through a playroom prism. This week, with news sites full of reactions to North Korea’s provocative missile launch, it seems I’m not alone.
Kim Jong Il’s North Korea is throwing things. …