Imran Omer's Blog

Urbanization in the Developing World The trend of rural populations moving toward cities has created huge problems in the urban societies of developing countries. In the year 2005, half of the world’s population was living in urban areas. In 1994, there were fourteen mega-cities (the cities that had at least ten million inhabitants). This number increased to thirty-seven in 2017. This migration of rural population to cities has created huge problems. SLUMS Due to this influx of population, cities are unable to provide amenities to all their residents and the growing slums have become centers of crime in the cities.  A report by the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) says that some 96,150 housings units per day are required to avoid the urban crisis in the near future. Under the title “Financing Urban Shelter,” the same report says that more than two billion people would be added as city dwellers by 2030. To provide hou...

Nature, beautiful and sometimes stunning, has a great capacity to impress our hearts. These impressions often become a source of spiritual uplift and at times take a few of us to the heights of spiritual enlightenment. All religions insist on the sanctity of life, but in Buddhism this principal extends to connect an individual not only with all life but also with all Nature. In Buddhism, Nature is not merely a supply source for our material needs. The Earth is seen as a living entity, and therefore Nature has a dynamic role in our lives. This respect for nature is inherent in Buddhism not only because it is the basis for much of its teachings, but because Buddhism itself is a product of Nature. The American monk, Thomas Merton, writes about his personal transformation while he was at a forest monastery: “If we reside in nature and near trees and rocks we’ll discover feelings and thoughts arising that are truly out of the ordinary . . . the lessons nature teaches us lead to...

                                      Entangled Lives               Q. What was your motivation behind writing 'Entangled Lives' and when did you start writing it? A: Over the years, whenever I heard about terrorists and the conviction of going after them to the end of the word, I always thought about the lives they lived to commit all those acts of violence. Were they the only ones who as individuals were responsible? Or did those societies have something to contribute to the outcome we have seen on the world stage? And I didn't have to go very far to see the facets of the society in general, and the politics, both domestic and on the world stage, contributing to the violence they were committing. I was researching for Entangled Lives at the end of 2014, but I started working on it in 2015. Q. What all research did you do to write abou...