Hameeda Sarfraz, 19, lively eyes sparkling out of a black burka, was describing the boons of the afterlife.

"In heaven you get everything without hardship," said Sarfraz, daughter of a bus driver. "In heaven, if a martyr feels hungry, food appears, the best quality food, and you won't even know where it came from."

Sarfraz, an alumna of the now bullet-ridden Jamia Hafsa Islamic school for girls, said she deeply regretted missing her chance to be a martyr. She fled through the back door of the school July 3, just hours after a gun battle began between Pakistani special forces and militants holed up in the neighboring Red Mosque, the parent institution of Jamia Hafsa.
...
She and others returned with a mission to reform their families and their communities, cajoling their mothers and sisters to hide themselves in head-to-toe black burkas. They say they have lost interest in the pleasures of this life though some, like Akhtar, have yet to give up on pleasures like painting their toenails a dark blood-red. They express an obsession with the afterlife.

They say they would like to see a thousand Jamia Hafsa seminaries bloom across the nation. Sarfraz has already begun classes at home for the children in her village.

so not so much lancing a boil but inducing a sneeze which spreads the memes
i'm reminded of a puffball mushroom of which wikipedia says

When ripe, the rind tears at the apex and the spores escape through the aperture when any pressure is applied to the ball.

Pakistani students display a radical Islam - International Herald Tribune

If you’ve paid attention to the presidential campaign, you’ve heard the neopopulist story line. C.E.O.’s are seeing their incomes skyrocket while the middle class gets squeezed. The tides of globalization work against average Americans while most of the benefits go to the top 1 percent.

This story is not entirely wrong, but it is incredibly simple-minded. To believe it, you have to suppress a whole string of complicating facts.

the other side of the coin

A Reality-Based Economy - New York Times

Here's a bit of modern-day heresy: President Bush actually has some rather sound instincts about the Muslim world. He has visited mosques more often than any of his predecessors, and he frequently talks of winning Muslim hearts and minds. So why are those hearts and minds so estranged today? What went wrong?

The problem is that Bush has relied on ill-informed advisers and out-of-touch experts. By substituting their false expertise for his own sensible intuitions, he has failed to understand the Muslim world -- which means he has failed to understand the arena in which the first post-9/11 presidency will be judged. Instead of seriously explaining Muslim societies that are profoundly split in complex ways, Bush's aides have offered a fatally flawed stereotype of Islam as monolithic and violent.
...
In fact, we discovered three broad categories of Muslim responses to the modern world: the mystics, the modernists and the literalists.

a brief and interesting overview

Bush Still Doesn't Get It - washingtonpost.com

BURAIDAH, Saudi Arabia Islam needs a Reformation. It needs someone with the courage of Martin Luther.

This is the belief I've arrived at after a long and painful spiritual journey. It's not a popular conviction -- it has attracted angry criticism, including death threats, from many sides. But it was reinforced by Sept. 11, 2001, and in the years since, I've only become more convinced that it is critical to Islam's future.

Losing My Jihadism - washingtonpost.com

"I am Shiite," Ali said. "My uncles and cousins were murdered by Saddam's regime. I wanted desperately to get rid of him. But today, if Saddam's feet appeared in front of me, I would fall to my knees and kiss them!"

excellent article

Life in the 'red zone' - International Herald Tribune

After months of lying low, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd two-tiered strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street and distances him from the increasingly unpopular government.

Moktada al-Sadr the next leader of Iraq?

Iraqi cleric re-emerges, bolder than ever - International Herald Tribune

Could Dick Cheney and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be twins separated at birth?

The U.S. vice president and Iranian president, each the No. 2 in his country, certainly seem to be working together to create conflict between the two nations. Theirs may be the oddest and perhaps most dangerous partnership in the world today.

Cheney’s Long-Lost Twin - New York Times

Protests have taken place across Pakistan against the government's military operation against radicals in Islamabad's radical Red Mosque.

In the north-western city of Peshawar more than 1,000 protesters vowed to avenge the death of the mosque's deputy leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Mosque protests across Pakistan

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona told a congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

U.S. Surgeon General sees 4-year term as compromised - International Herald Tribune

As the 17th Congress of China's Communist Party approaches this autumn, party organizations in Beijing are abuzz with talk of democracy. Expect lots of "democracy" initiatives at the Congress. Some of these were signaled in an important speech by the party general secretary, Hu Jintao, to Politburo members and others at the Central Party School on June 25th.

While these initiatives do not constitute democratic institutions and procedures as recognized in real democracies, they nonetheless represent serious efforts to broaden what the Chinese describe as "inner-party democracy," "electoral democracy," and extra-party "consultative democracy." All of these forms go under the broad rubric of "socialist democracy" or "democracy with Chinese characteristics," as described in Hu's speech.

Let a thousand democracies bloom - International Herald Tribune