THE POWER of M.Y VOICE

YOUTH UPDATE! THE AFGHAN YOUTH STAT NEWS:   Kunduz in northern Afghanistan is the country's fifth largest city and home to more than 300,000 people. It's fine to go to madrasa to learn about sharia, the Quran and Islam. But beyond that, they keep girls in total darkness like the blind. They keep them illiterate. It was once a Taliban stronghold where women were deprived of their basic rights and education for girls was prohibited. Today, particularly in towns and cities, women can go outside without their husbands or fathers, they can work, and girls can attend school and even university. But with a new wave of privately run madrasas - or religious schools - being opened across the country, there is a growing feeling among women's rights groups that these freedoms are again under threat. There are now 1,300 unregistered madrasas in Afghanistan, where children are given only religious teaching. This is increasing fears

Youth Update! THE YOUTH OF EUROPE AND MIDDLE EAST STATS NEWS: THE RECENT spate of random suicide attacks in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere in the world perpetrated by mostly young Muslims cannot be confronted by the usual drones and bombings intended ostensibly to decimate the ranks of these young people who have latched on to an organization sympathizing and articulating their own anger and frustration, the Islamic State. Ratcheting up the budget for intelligence and buying more sophisticated tracking equipment may not prevent these random acts of violence dedicated to “soft” targets like airports, train stations, malls and other places where people congregate, for maximum effect. The funds for these may be better directed at providing the social infrastructure for these young people to study, to dream to be engineers, architects or doctors like the rest of the youth around the world. These young people are born into oppression…