Carla Robbins of The New York Times editorial board and Garrick Utley of the State University of New York join Martin Savidge to discuss the weeks top stories: The substance and impact of President Obama’s speech to the Muslim and Arab worlds and China 20 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Child advocacy groups have accused Islamic schools in Senegal of exploiting children by using them to beg on the streets.
Al Jazeera’s Yvonne Ndege reports from Dakar where the schools say they are simply teaching children in their care a lesson in humility.
Talibe is an Arabic word meaning “one who seeks and asks” and it also refers to street children in Senegal who are taken in by local Islamic teachers, known as marabouts, to study the Muslim holy book, the Koran. The children, in return, gather money in tin cans they hold out to pedestrians and drivers at intersections and give their coins to the teachers.
The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 2004 estimated that there are up to 100,000 child beggars in Senegal, constituting one percent of the country’s 11.4 million people. It is unclear how many of them are talibes. In Dakar, the estimate is 10,000 child beggars.
Senegal’s National Assembly in 2005 passed a law against the exploitation of children as beggars, carrying prison terms of two-to-five years and fines of up to the equivalent of US$4,000 but so far there have been no prosecutions.
Senegal is 95 percent Muslim and Islamic leaders have considerable political influence in the country. Historically, Koranic schools, or daaras, have been located in rural areas. Parents would send their children to the schools to study Islam and in exchange the children would carry out odd jobs for the marabouts.
But in the past 50 years the marabouts have steadily migrated to urban areas, especially following periods of drought and economic constraint. Begging among the children had been considered a way to learn humility. But that goal has been corrupted, child welfare workers say.
A suicide bomber has struck in the heart of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, killing a police officer and himself.
While no one has claimed responsibility, it followed threats from the Taliban of targeting the country’s cities in retaliation for an army offensive against fighters in the northwest.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan reports from Islamabad.