• Study Says Pregnant Women in India Are Gravely Underweight - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/world/asia/-pregnant-women-india-dangerously-underweight-study.html?hp

    NEW DELHI — Her first child survived eight months before succumbing to pneumonia; her second was stillborn; her third, delivered in a rickshaw, gasped for an hour before dying.

    When she got pregnant for a fourth time, Juhi, a woman from a South Delhi slum who uses only one name, was spotted by a local health worker and taken to a mobile clinic. A doctor diagnosed severe anemia, gave her iron pills and begged her to eat more.

    Juhi listened, and gave birth to a boy, Muhammad Sultan, who has survived his first birthday — a huge milestone in a country with about one-sixth of the world’s population but one-third of all newborn deaths.

    #inde #démographie #mortalité_infantile #santé_maternelle #population

  • Saudi Award Goes to Muslim Televangelist Who Harshly Criticizes U.S. - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/world/middleeast/saudi-award-goes-to-dr-zakir-naik-a-muslim-televangelist-who-harshly-critic

    BEIRUT, Lebanon — He has publicly declared that “the Jews” control America, that apostates can be killed, that the United States is the world’s “biggest terrorist” and that the Sept. 11 attacks were an “inside job” by President George W. Bush.

    But last weekend, Dr. Zakir Naik, a prominent Muslim televangelist from India, appeared at an elaborate ceremony at a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia, where the new monarch, King Salman, gave him one of the country’s highest honors.

    The award for “service to Islam” highlighted the conflicted position of Saudi Arabia as an American ally that continues to back Islamists who espouse hatred of the West.

    Scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s role in shaping thought in the Muslim world has grown with the rise of the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq and Syria, which shares some aspects of the fundamentalist Islam propagated by the Saudi state.

    Saudi officials reject any comparison to the Islamic State, noting that they are on its hit list and that they have joined the American-led coalition that is bombing the group.

    Notez la justification du tonnerre “Saudi officials reject any comparison to the Islamic State, noting that they are on its hit list and that they have joined the American-led coalition that is bombing the group.”...

    et les propos du lauréat
    "“I am absolutely against Muslims who kill, but what is the U.S. doing?” Dr. Naik asked, saying that the United States had killed Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian Muslims. “Is the U.S. really bothered about human rights? No!”

    Dr. Naik often deflects when talking about Muslim violence. Asked by phone about the Islamic State, he said he was against its actions if the media had reported them correctly, although he said he had no way of knowing.

    Years ago, he gave a similar answer about Osama bin Laden, saying he could not judge since he did not know the man. But Dr. Naik also said he supported him if he was fighting the United States.

    “If he is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him,” he said. “Every Muslim should be a terrorist.”

    Ca devient compliqué

    In Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Dr. Naik was given the King Faisal International Prize for service to Islam by the King Faisal Foundation, a research institute in Riyadh. The award citation called Dr. Naik “one of the most renowned non-Arabic speaking promulgators of Islam.”

    King Salman gave Dr. Naik his certificate. He also received a gold medal and a cash award of nearly $200,000.

    Saudi watchers were unsurprised that the kingdom would honor a harsh critic of its American allies, noting that many members of the Saudi religious establishment hold similar views.

    “If you ask them their opinions about America, they would share lots of Zakir Naik’s opinions,” said Stéphane Lacroix, an associate professor at Sciences Po in Paris who studies Saudi Arabia. “But usually they don’t talk about it.”