Singapore and Malaysia -- does not try to get the extremists to break with their radical, political interpretation of Islamic ideology, but rather to renounce violence, specifically suicide bombings and other mass casualty attacks on civilians.
O'Brien said that Nasir Abas, one of the former radicals now leading the program, "expected to be beaten and killed" when he was arrested. "They didn't (beat him). They treated him well," O'Brien said of the Indonesian police.
Indonesia is one of several Southeast Asian nations that are following the lead of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and launching programs to rehabilitate jailed Islamic extremists -- known as deradicalization.
"Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, a leading scholar of Sufism, the tradition within Islam that focuses on peace and tolerance, isn't the first Islamic teacher to denounce acts of terrorism.\nBut Qadri's 600-page judgment, or fatwa, is among the harshest denouncements of the theological arguments used by militant groups like al-Qaeda.\n"Whatever these terrorists are doing, it's not martyrdom," said Qadri on Tuesday."
"Environmental hazards in the home harm millions of children each year. In 1999, in response to a Congressional Directive over concerns about child environmental health, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched its Healthy Homes Initiative (HHI) to protect children and their families from housing-related health and safety hazards. HUD has developed a new Healthy Homes Strategic plan that lays out the next steps our office will take to advance the healthy homes agenda nationwide. Please take time to review this key document."
"These are my friends, my students," he said. "I trained some of them... I've visited almost all jails where there are detainees in terrorist cases."
But Abbas was not here to plot new attacks. Instead he had come to try to persuade his friends to follow his example and renounce violence.