Muslim Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Nobel-Winners Worthy of the Prize
By Amitabh Pal
December 12, 2006

The Nobels were awarded two days ago, and the winners in the two main categories are progressive Muslim men trying to better their societies and, indeed, all of humankind.

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank (the co-recipients) deserve the Peace Prize. The model of microfinance that Yunus and the bank have pioneered is helping people—with a focus on women—throughout South Asia and far beyond. (The Grameen Bank set up operations in Arkansas in 1986 under Governor Bill Clinton, and Bill and Hillary have been Yunus’s friends and advocates for years.)

Yunus’s life story is an inspiring one. An economist with a Ph.D. from an American university (Vanderbilt), he went back home to Bangladesh and hit upon microfinance—the lending of small loans to the indigent with repayment being guaranteed by self-help groups—as a way to uplift the underprivileged. The Grameen Bank that Yunus founded has become a model for similar attempts across the planet. Very fittingly, nine women Bangladeshi villagers traveled to Oslo to receive the prize on behalf of the bank.

“Microcredit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions,” the Nobel Committee said in its award citation. “Economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male.”
http://www.progressive.org/node/4310

so-- this means he's on the islamic "hit list", right....?

reb said:

so-- this means he's on the islamic "hit list", right....?

Click to expand...

I don't really know what you mean by your post.

" By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty.

Poverty is a threat to peace. World's income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety-four percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while 60 percent of people live on only six per cent of world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace."

I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly against it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.
Poverty is Denial of All Human Rights

Peace should be understood in a human way—in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives."
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/15/poverty_is_a_threat_to_peace.php

reb said:

so-- this means he's on the islamic "hit list", right....?

Click to expand...

Muhammad Yunus, a U.S.-educated professor of economics started a similar experiment. Around 1974 during a famine in his native Bangladesh Yunus discovered that very small loans could make a significant difference in a poor person's ability to survive, but that traditional banks were not interested in making tiny loans to poor people, who were considered poor repayment risks. His first loan consisted of $27 from his own pocket which he lent to 42 people including a woman who made bamboo furniture, which she sold to support herself and her family.

In 1976, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank to make loans to poor Bangladeshis. Since then the Grameen Bank has issued more than $5 billion in loans to several million borrowers - at the close of 2005 the number of outstanding loans is more than 4 million. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of "solidarity groups": small informal groups, nearly all of them exclusively female, that meet weekly in their villages to conduct business with representatives of the bank, and who support each other's efforts at economic self-advancement. As it has grown, the Grameen Bank has also developed other systems of alternate credit that serve the poor. In addition to microcredit, it offers housing loans as well as financing for fisheries and irrigation projects, venture capital, textiles, and other activities, along with other banking services such as savings.

The success of the Grameen model has inspired similar efforts throughout the developing world and even in industrialized nations including the United States. Many, but not all, microcredit projects also emulate its emphasis on lending specifically to women. Close to 96 percent of Grameen loans have gone to women, who have been found to be much more likely than men to repay loans and to devote their earnings to serving the needs of the entire family. Originally the program started with men and women, but later focused on women when data showed a dramatically lower credit risk in women. In 2006, Yunus and the Grameen bank were honored for this achievement with the Nobel Peace Prize
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit

http://nobelprize.org/

School project sparks Nobel nomination for subject

Associated Press

PITTSBURG, Kan. - A high school project to tell the story of a Polish woman who saved thousands of children during the Holocaust has earned the woman a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

In 1999, a teacher at Uniontown High School suggested that four students research the facts behind the life of Irena Sendler, who is credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942-43.

Now, teacher Norm Conard and others are working with the president of Poland and the prime minister of Israel on Sendler's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Of course, a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is a long way from receiving it," Conard said. "But I was just telling someone today, the project has gone leaps and bounds above what any of us could have imagined."

The nomination is the latest step for Conard and the students, whose project grew to include a short play called "Life in a Jar," that depicted Sendler's story. The students presented the play hundreds of times and traveled to Poland to meet Sendler. The project was the subject of a documentary and has garnered international recognition for Sendler and the students.

"It has touched the hearts of so many people," Conard said. "It's a testimony to not only Irena Sendler, and the courageous acts that she completed, but also to a bunch of dedicated young people passionate about making a difference in the world."
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/16231423.htm

Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Elie Weisel, Aung San Suu Kyi, Jimmy Carter, Lech Walesa, Doctors without Borders, Koffi Annan, HH the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International, UNICEF, Wangari Maathai of Kenya ....