7/28/2019 American Muslims Ask Will They Ever Belong Deccan Herald September 08, 2010

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Wednesday, September 8, 2010 DECCAN HERALD11

Watch Over Her Dead Bodyat 9 pm on Sony Pix. P 12

Weight index doesnt tell the whole truthBy Jane E Brody

Afrequent question among people ofa certain age, including yours truly,is Why, when I weigh the same as

or less than I did when I was younger, doesmy waist keep getting bigger? Phrasedanother way, the question could be Why,when my body mass index has not changed,am I fatter than I used to be?

The simple answer is that the index, usu-ally called BMI for short, is a crude measureof fatness in individuals. Calculated by divid-ing ones weight in kilograms by the squareof ones height in metres, it doesnt differen-tiate between fatty and lean tissue.

The BMI tables are excellent for iden-tifying obesity and body fat in large popu-lations, but they are far less reliable for de-termining fatness in individuals,explained Dr Carl Lavie, a cardiologist atthe Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institutein New Orleans.

Fat takes up about four times the spaceof muscle tissue, for example, so it is quitepossible to look and feel fatter even if yourheight and weight remain the same. This isparticularly common among women past50 and men past 60, and the results arelikely to show around the middle.

For children and the elderly, body massvalues can be especially misleading be-cause the relationship of lean body mass to

height changes as they get older.BMI charts pop up all over the place, in

popular publications, exercise facilities anddoctorsoffices. The charts are widely usedby doctors to determine if their patients areunderweight, normal weight, overweight orobese. Thus, a body mass of less than 18.5is considered underweight; 18.5 to 24.9 isconsidered a healthy weight; 25 to 29.9 isoverweight; 30 to 39.9 is obese; and 40 ormore is morbidly obese.

If you fall into the healthy weightor un-derweightrange, you can easily be lulled into

a false sense of security. But thinness is notnecessarily healthy recall the 97-poundweakling from the Charles Atlas ads of yore.A low BMI could be indicative of malnutri-tion, anorexia, cancer or a wasting disease.On the other hand, if you are an athlete orbody builder, your BMI could mistakenlyput you in the range for overweight or obese.

Degree of body fatness is a better waythan body mass to classify individuals. Boththe WHO and the National Institutes of

Health define obesity as more than 25 percent body fat in men and more than 35 percent body fat in women. So a woman whois 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 120 to 125pounds could be quite fat,Dr Lavie toldme, even though her weight and BMIseem ok.

The obesity paradoxIn an editorial in the July issue of Mayo

Clinic Proceedings, Dr Lavie and colleaguesdiscussed what has been termed the obe-sity paradox among patients with heartfailure. The paradox refers to the repeatedfinding that while overweight people aremore prone to heart failure, patients withheart failure have lower mortality rates ifthey are obese. The reason for this paradoxis far from clear, though Dr Lavie suggest-ed that one explanation could be that oncepeople become ill, having more bodily re-servecould be to their advantage.

Their conclusion: Having more lean tis-

sue and less fat may more accurately pre-dict a patients survival chances. Thus,among patients with heart failure, these au-thors stated, body mass index may not bea good indicator of adiposity.

Dr Lavie and co-authors wrote, Al-though BMI is the most common method todefine overweightness and obesity in bothepidemiological studies and major clinicaltrials, clearly this method does not necessar-

ily reflect true body fatness, and BMI/bodyfatness may differ considerably among peo-ple of different age, race and sex.

A more reliable, but still relatively simple,assessment of fatness would rely on a skin-fold score based on measurements takenwith a caliper at several areas (in men, thethigh, midchest and abdomen, and inwomen, the thigh, triceps and area abovethe hip bone) that reflects the amount of fatunder the skin.

Or, since abdominal fat is more haz-ardous, simply take a tape measure around

the widest part of the abdomen and anoth-er at the hips and calculate the waist-to-hipratio. For men it should be no higher than0.90, and for women no higher than 0.83.

An oversize abdomen is symptomatic oftoo much metabolically active visceral fat,which increases the risk of heart attackand premature death. If just waist measure-ments are used, Dr Lavie said, a mans waistshould be less than 40 inches and a

womans less than 35.Exercise is the best way to minimise an

age-related rise in body fat, the doctor said.Aerobic exercise, though important at allages, is not enough. You must also doweight training to build and maintain mus-cle. And since the bodys production oftestosterone, the hormone that favoursmuscle-building, diminishes with age inboth men and women, you may have to in-crease the amount of strengthening exer-cises as you get older just to stay in place.NYT

By Laurie Goodstein

For nine years after the attacks of Sept 11,many American Muslims made concert-ed efforts to build relationships with non-

Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism,to educate people about Islam and to partici-pate in interfaith service projects. They took sat-isfaction in the observations by many scholarsthat Muslims in America were more successfuland assimilated than Muslims in Europe.

Now, many of those same Muslims say thatall of those years of work are being rapidly un-done by the fierce opposition to a Muslim cul-tural centre near ground zero that has un-

leashed a torrent of anti-Muslim sentimentsand a spate of vandalism. The knifing of a Mus-lim cab driver in New York City has alsoalarmed many American Muslims.

We worry: Will we ever be really complete-ly accepted in American society?said Dr Fer-han Asghar, an orthopedic spine surgeon inCincinnati and the father of two young girls. Inno other country could we have such freedoms thats why so many Muslims choose to makethis country their own. But we do wonderwhether it will get to the point where peopledont want Muslims here anymore.

Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Inter-faith Youth Core, a Chicago-based communityservice programme that tries to reduce religiousconflict, said, I am more scared than Ive everbeen more scared than I was after Sept 11.

That was a refrain echoed by many Ameri-can Muslims in interviews last week. They saidthey were scared not as much for their safety asto learn that the suspicion, ignorance and evenhatred of Muslims is so widespread. This is notthe trajectory toward integration and accept-ance that Muslims thought they were on.

Some American Muslims said they were es-pecially on edge as the anniversary of 9/11 ap-proaches. The pastor of a small church in Flori-da has promised to burn a pile of Qurans thatday. Muslim leaders are telling their followersthat the stunt has been widely condemned byChristian and other religious groups and shouldbe ignored. But they said some young AmericanMuslims were questioning how they could sim-ply sit by and watch the promised desecration.

They liken their situation to that of otherscapegoats in American history: Irish RomanCatholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s,the Japanese before they were put in intern-ment camps during World War II.

Muslims sit in their living rooms, aghast aspundits assert over and over that Islam is not areligion at all but a political cult, that Muslimscannot be good Americans and that mosquesare fronts for extremist jihadis. To addresswhat it calls a growing tide of fear and intoler-ance,the Islamic Society of North Americaplans to convene a summit of Christian, Mus-lim and Jewish leaders in Washington.

Young American Muslims who are tryingto figure out their place and their goals in life

are particularly troubled, said Imam Abdul-

lah T Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at DukeUniversity.

People are discussing what is the alternativeif we dont belong here,he said. There arejokes: When are we moving to Canada, whenare we moving to Sydney? Nobody will go any-where, but there is hopelessness, there is help-lessness, there is real grief.

Antepli just returned from a trip last monthwith a rabbi and other American Muslim lead-ers to Poland and Germany, where they studiedthe Holocaust and the events that led up to it(the group issued a denunciation of Holocaustdenial on its return).

Some of what people are saying in thismosque controversy is very similar to whatGerman media was saying about Jews in the1920s and 1930s,he said. Its really scary.

High hopesAmerican Muslims were anticipating a partic-ularly joyful Ramzan this year. For the firsttime in decades, the monthlong holiday fellmostly during summer vacation, allowing chil-dren to stay up late each night for the celebra-tory iftar dinner, breaking the fast, with familyand friends. But the season turned sour.

The great mosque debate seems to have un-leashed a flurry of vandalism and harassmentdirected at mosques: construction equipment

set afire at a mosque site in Murfreesboro,

Tenn; a plastic pig with graffiti thrown into amosque in Madera, California; teenagers shoot-ing outside a mosque in upstate New York dur-ing Ramzan prayers. It is too soon to tellwhether hate crimes against Muslims are risingor are on pace with previous years, expertssaid. But it is possible that other episodes are go-ing unreported right now.

Victims are reluctant to go public with thesekinds of hate incidents because they fear furtherharassment or attack,said Ibrahim Hooper,spokesman for the Council on American-Is-lamic Relations. Theyre hoping all this will justblow over.

Some Muslims said their situation felt moreprecarious now under a president who isperceived as not only friendly to Muslims but iswrongly believed by many Americans to beMuslim himself than it was under PresidentGeorge W Bush.

Patel explained, After Sept 11, we had a Re-publican president who had the confidence andtrust of red America, who went to a mosque andsaid, Islam means peace,and who said Muslimsare our neighbours and friends,and who distin-guished between terrorism and Islam.

Now, unlike Bush then, the politicians withsway in red state America are the ones whip-ping up fear and hatred of Muslims, Patel said.

There is simply the desire to paint an entire

religion as the enemy, he said. Referring to

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of theproposed Muslim centre near ground zero,What they did to Imam Feisal was highlystrategic. The signal was, we can Swift Boatyour most moderate leaders.

Several American Muslims said they werestunned that what provoked the anti-Muslimbacklash was not even another terrorist attackbut a plan by an imam known for his work withleaders of other faiths to build a Muslim com-munity centre.

This year, Sept 11 coincides with the celebra-tion of Eid, the finale to Ramzan, which usuallylasts three days (most Muslims will begin observ-ing Eid this year on Sept 10). But Muslim leaders,in this climate, said they wanted to avoid ap-pearing to be celebrating on the anniversary of9/11. Several major Muslim organisations haveurged mosques to use the day to participate incommemoration events and community service.

Ingrid Mattson, the president of the IslamicSociety of North America, said many AmericanMuslims were still hoping to salvage the spiritof Ramzan.

In Ramzan, youre really not supposed to befocused on yourself,she said. Its about look-ing out for the suffering of other people. Some-how it feels bad to be so worried about ourown situation and our own security, when itshould be about empathy towards others.

The New York Times

American Muslims ask,

will we ever belong?The debate over mosque at ground zero has unleashed a flurry of harassment of Muslims in the US

IN A FIX Ferhand Ashgar with wife Pakeeza and daughters Emaan and Zara at the Muslim Centre of Cincinnati. NYT

To solve the puzzle:To solve a su-do-ku puzzle,every digit from 1 to 9 must

appear in each of the nine

vertical columns, in each of

the nine horizontal rows, and

in each of the nine boxes.

Hard

SU-DO-KU-1815

SOLUTION

TO 1814

CMYK

Now, tongue tinglerto tackle snoringFed up of your part-ners snoring thatkeeps you up allnight? A new tonguetingler may be the an-swer to all yourprayers.

During eachbreath, the device sends a pulse of energy to anerve in the throat. This then stimulates amuscle in the tongue, which helps to keep the-airway open during sleep.

Partial blockage results in snoring but with

sleep apnoea the airway closes completelyand patients can stop breathing for up to tenseconds at a time. This lack of air causes themuscles to contract and open up the wind-pipe. The sufferer then takes in a big gulp ofair, hence the snore. This cycle may be repeat-ed hundreds of times a night.

The system, developed by the US-basedcompany Apnex, targets the nerve which con-trols the a muscle in the tongue. It is this mus-cle that collapses in sleep apnoea. By stimulat-ing the nerve, it stiffens the muscle, stoppingthis collapse.

In most patients, it reduced the severity oftheir sleep apnoea, allowing them to sleepbetter and feel better,said Dr Peter East-wood, West Australian Sleep Disorders Re-search Institute. However, scientists are look-ing to conduct further trials to really confirmthe efficacy of the device.

Growing number of Cambodiavultures offers hope

While vultures across Asia are on the verge ofextinction, the vultures of Cambodia are ap-parently increasing in number, providing abeacon of hope for these threatened scav-engers, say experts.

According to Wildlife Conservation Societyand other members of the Cambodia Vulture

Conservation Project the record numbers ofvultures have been counted in Cambodias an-nual vulture census, with 296 birds of threespecies found at multiple sites across theNorthern and Eastern Plains of Cambodia.

The record count means that Cambodia ishome to the only increasing population of vul-tures in Asia.

Specifically, thecensus indicatesthat the countryspopulation of white-rumped vultures isincreasing; popula-tions of red-headedand slender billedvultures were found to be stable.

The World Conservation Union has listed

all three of Cambodias vulture species as crit-ically endangered. The census success followsa record breeding season for vultures in Cam-bodia. This year, a total of 36 vulture chicksfledged from colonies across the north andeast of the country, an increase from lastyears total of 19 chicks.

Now, a plastic thatcan heal itself

It seems that a chemistry team in the US hasfound the key to producing a plastic that canheal itself.

Graduate student Jeremy Lenhardt wasapparently testing the limits of polymers molecules that form the basis for materials inour daily lives such as silicon, rubber and neo-prene in the chemistry lab at Duke Univer-sity in North Carolina.

He happened to stumble across one partic-ular species polymers, which contained ring-shaped molecules called gem-difluorocyclo-propanes, and when stretched, remained inthat state for much longer than expected, be-

fore shrinking back to even smaller rings.To come across this discovery was a bitlike having Christmas in July. And then Au-gust. And then September,said Lenhardt.

I ran up to his (colleague Stephen Craig)office (and said) Steve, something funny is go-ing on here. Look at this! he added.

WHATS THE BUZZ

By Matt Richtel andClaire Cain Miller

Auriane and Sebastien deHalleux are at sharpodds over The girl with

the dragon tattoo,but not aboutthe plot. The problem is thatshe prefers the book version,while he reads it on his iPad.And in this literary dispute, thecouple says, its never the twainshall meet.

She talks about the smell ofthe paper and the feeling of hold-ing it in your hands, said Se-bastien de Halleux, 32, who sayshe thinks the substance is thesame regardless of medium. Headded, sounding mildly piqued,She uses the word real.

By the end of this year, 10.3million people are expected toown e-readers in the UnitedStates, buying about 100 mil-lion e-books, the market re-search company Forrester pre-

dicts. This is up from 3.7 millione-readers and 30 million e-books sold last year.

The trend is wreaking havocinside the publishing industry,but inside homes, the plot takesa personal twist as couples findthemselves torn over the rightwayto read. At bedtime, a cou-ple might sit side-by-side, oneturning pages by lamplight andthe other reading Caecilia font inE Ink on a Kindle or backlightedby the illuminated LCD screen ofan iPad, each quietly judgmental.

DiscountsA few publishers and book-stores are testing the bundlingof print books with e-books at adiscount. Barnes & Noble start-ed offering bundles in June atabout 50 stores and plans to ex-pand the programme in the fall,said Mary Ellen Keating, aBarnes & Noble spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com isdoing its best to convince printlovers that reading on Kindle isnothing like reading on a com-puter screen.Its website prom-ises a display on which textpopsfrom the page, creating areading experience most simi-lar to reading on printed paperbecause it produces neitherglare in a well-lighted spot nor aglow in the dark.

Sony, which has introduced anew line of e-readers said theywere smaller and lighter thanbefore, with clearer text and

touch screens, all to make themfeel more like printed books.

Consistently the No. 1 thing weheard was it needs to feel like abook, so you just forget that youhave a device in your hand,saidSteve Haber, president of Sonysdigital reading division.

There is much more emo-tional attachment to the paperbook than there is to the CD orthe DVD,said Mike Shatzkin,founder and chief executive ofthe Idea Logical Co, which ad-vises book publishers on digitalchange.

A print book bundled withan e-book would have been use-ful for Liz Aybar, 35, and BetsyConti, 31, a Denver couple wholike reading together so muchthat when they read The GirlWith the Dragon Tattooin pa-perback, Conti ripped out sec-tions of the book as she finishedthem so Aybar could read them.

But since Conti, a director of

technology, bought an iPad, shehas gone to the other side. Theyare both reading Ken Robin-sons The Element, but boughttwo separate copies a printbook for $15 and a $13 Kindleversion for the iPad.

For Erin and Daniel Muskat,a couple in Brooklyn, the ink-stained quarrel has disruptedthe togetherness of their read-ing habits.

Erin Muskat, 29, bought herhusband, 33, who works at hisfamilys shoe business, an iPadbefore their honeymoon inJune, but quickly discovered thathis electronic reading impingedon her old-fashioned reading.

For Sebastien de Halleux, avideo game executive, the battleover reading tastes has skippedto a new generation. He and hiswife both read to their 3-year-old son, Tristan. He reads Win-nie the Poohto the child on ascreen. She reads it in old-fash-ioned paperback form.

Sebastien de Halleux said hewas confident the boy wouldeventually favour the digitisedversion.

And he said the discussion inhis household had brought inhis parents, too. His own fatherfavours paperbacks, arguingthey can be more easily shared,while his mother goes for the e-reader, which she says is easieron faltering eyesight as peopleget older.NYT

Torn over rightway to read