His Vice President is more explicit. We have no tolerance for hate and violence. From White Supremacists, neo nazis on the kkk. Hundreds of people are feared dead and others remain trapped after a mudslide on the outskirts of sierra leones capital, freetown. A 50 rise in the last year in the number of Airline Passengers arrested on suspicion of being drunk at british airports or on flights. And no more bongs for a while big ben will fall silent next week for nearly four years because of urgent repair work. Its five oclock. Our main story. This week, india and pakistan mark 70 years of independence from britain independence which created two states, but also a bloodbath of sectarian slaughter in which a Million People died and up to 12 million moved country. One of the largest Mass Migrations the world has ever seen. In 1947, the muslim majority state of pakistan was born, with muslims travelling in one direction, hindus and sikhs in the other. Reeta chakrabarti is in lahore for us toni
Carla power, who talks about the misconceptions westerners have about islam. It is a topic she writes about in if the oceans work ink. From the Commonwealth Club of california, this is an hour and 10 minutes. Jonathan my mic is on. That is an auspicious start. Good evening. Welcome to todays meeting of the Commonwealth Club of california, the place where you are in the know. We are online at commonwealthclub. Org. I am jonathan curiel, your moderator for todays program, cold bridging islam and the west. I want to introduce our esteemed speaker, carla power. Those of you who know carla know she is a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She is a journalist specializing in muslim societies and the author of if the oceans were ink an unlikely friendship and journey to the heart of koran, a result of spending a year with Sheikh Mohammed akram nadwi. It offers a look into the muslim world that is often ignored by our news media and explores the many complexities of one of the worlds most misunderstood r
I will start back in my childhood. Half the time i grew up in the midwest and have the time in the middle east and other islamic countries. I spent my childhood shuttling between suburban st. Louis and places like chiron and kabul and cairo. I got interested in islamic issues kind of the aesthetically, and then i went on to study them. As a journalist i was frustrated because as much as i tried to write about them i found that the narrative kind of bifurcated. One is that i was writing about strongmen with kalashnikovs, and oppressed women. Those were the two trope i would inevitably get written about. That was when i was writing news stories. When i went on to feature stories, its slightly widened. I was able to write about angst like pakistani punk rock bands or halal energy drinks, or muslim european professionals. And that gave a little bit more bandwidth to the terrorism and bailed woman narrative. Even then it was like, instead of saying, muslims, they are the other, i was saying