coming up, saul gonzales reports on refugees from the continuing violence in iraq, struggling to find a new life in san diego. >> our lives are in danger, so for the time being, we can't go back to iraq. also, lucky severson on the amazing success of one american social entrepreneur who has supplied 12 million school books for children in ten countries. >> our religion is literacy. our religion is gender equality and education.

major funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lily endowment dedicated to its founders' interests in religion, community development and education. additional funding provided by mutual of america, dsigni customized individual group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting. welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. amid the continuing investigation into the boston marathon bombing, president obama this week spoke of the threat of self-radicalized individuals here in the u.s. and the difficulty of identifying them. he said his counterteorism team has discussed ways it can engage communities where such radicalization can occur. in recent years, american muslim groups have launched their own efforts to combat extremism.

for more on this, i'm joined by our managing editor kim lawton and haris tarin. he directs the washington office of the muslim public affairs council. haris, welcome. the president referred to self-radicalizing. how does that work and what can the muslim community do to prevent it? >> well, the phenomenon of self-radicalization is where individuals who do not find a place in mainstream muslim institutions, places like mosques, and organizations, they don't find a place for their fiery rhetoric, for their violent extremist rhetoric, so they go online and they listen to sermons and they listen to individuals like anwar al-awlaki or adam gadahn or other folks who misinterpret the religion to give it a violent, violent ideology and they fall prey to these individuals who are basically onli predators and they get influenced by these

individuals to address their grievances through violence. >> and then what can you do about it? >> i think what we can do, number one, is to ensure that there's a counter narrative, that there's a narrative of life, of positivity, that even if you have a grievance or you have a disagreement on policy, whether domestic or international, you can address those policy grievances through civic and political engagement and change that, maybe not overnight, but eventually you have the power to change policy. >> i know the muslim community has been trying to offer these kinds of counter narratives. has that just not worked, or what do you need to do differently in order to combat this online issue? >> well, i think, you know, i said before, i think to overwhelming extent the american muslim community has not fallen prey to this. it's individuals who are radicalized online, but i think what needs to happen is that we need to ensure that we have a narrative that goes viral. a lot of these videos, they are very emotive, these sermons they use violence and gruesome images to tug at the emotion of young

people. and so we also need to ensure that whewe put out the counter narrative it's as savvy, it goes as viral and addresses the same issues and that we're not afraid to address some of the same policy grievances that they address but to make sure that the outcome is positive and not negative. >> and how do you deal with the perception that many outsiders have that the more religious someone, a muslim, gets the more prone he or she is to being violent or being an extremist? >> well, i think that notion, fortunately, is false. there's a notion that the more religious you get it, leads to acts of violence. the studies have shown that when people go through rigorous religious training and understanding, they're less prone to violence, but that people who skip that religious understanding part and have an awakening and then go straight to politics, that's where they become more prone to violence and twisted ideologies and perverted interpretations of the

religion. >> is there a special role here for young people? i mean, the perpetrators are young. does that invite then or say that the people who can best correct that are young people? >> the first thing you have to understand is a lot of young american muslims, they deal with everything else that all young americans are dealing with, college tuition, jobs, but there is a place for them to ensure that their peers on college campuses and youth groups are having a conversation that's positive, that when they see a negative conversation that they step in and they interfere and ensure that they move the conversation towards a more positive aspect. >> okay, haris tarin of the muslim public affairs council and kim lawton. many thanks to you both. >> thank you. in other news, religious groups are renewing calls for comprehensive immigration

reform, including a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented in the u.s. a coalition of faith leaders began a series of prayer vigils around the country, at the home offices of members of congress. and sister simone campbell, who spearheaded last year's nuns on the bus campaign, announced another multistate bus tour, this time in support of what she called, common sense immigration reform. former pope benedict xvi returned to the vatican this week. since his surprise retirement in february, benedict had been staying at the papal summer retreat, castel gandolfo. he will now live in a former convent on the vatican grounds, close to his successor, pop francis. meanwhile, in his weekly address, francis condemned working conditions that led to

the deadly factory collapse in bangladesh, in which more than 500 people were killed. he called the conditions "slave labor" and said businesses that don't pay a just wage and that value profits over workers are going against god. ten years after the war in iraq began, violence there has escalated. the united nations says last month was the deadliest since 2008. also continuing is the flight of refugees. most of the iraqis who have left their country went to other parts of the middle east, but some were able to come to the u.s. in san diego, california, as saul gonzales reports, iraqi refugees are grateful to be safe and to have access to food stamps and other services. but adjusting to everyday american life can be a problem, even with a lot of help. >> it's these kinds of images that have defined iraq over the

past decade, as america's 2003 invasion was followed by a long insurgency against u.s. forces. brutal sectarian violence among iraqis followed and continues to this day in the country. at least 100,000 iraqis have died in the conflicts. and fears of violence and religious persecution have led more than a million and a half iraqis to flee their country, with most settling in other middle eastern nations. thousands of these iraqi refugees have wound up on the very distant and unlikely shores of san diego, california, a place better known for the tanned and toned southern california good life than its connection to turmoil in the middle east. when did you get here, may i ask? >> about 42 days ago. >> you got to the united states only 42 days ago? >> yeah. >> iraqis milheer el anny, his wife hebba, and young daughter jumana are trying to adjust to their new life in the u.s. after leaving iraq and then spending a year in turkey as refugees.

>> we left iraq because there was a direct risk on our lives. it is very risky, especially for us because our lives are in danger. so for the time being, we can't go back to iraq. >> we met the el annys in the san diego offices of catholic charities, a nonprofit group which helps new iraqi refugees resettle in the community, regardless of their faith. >> they are what we call the unintended consequences of the war. >> mike mckay is catholic charities' director of refugee services in san diego. he says because of america's long and controversial military involvement in iraq, the u.s. has a moral obligation to help the iraqis now here. >> just like we help the veterans who come home from the wars, and they have a lot of challenges, so also we have a responsibility and a need to help these folks as well. >> in the early years of the iraq war, the united states only accepted a trickle of iraqi refugees. but that changed in 2007 when resettlement

restrictions were loosened. in the years since, more than 64,000 iraqi refugees have been allowed in to the united states, with thousands of them coming to the san diego area. that migration has transformed some communities, like el cajon, where a quarter of it's 100,000 residents are now iraqis, and where on some streets it's easy to feel like you're in the middle east. for the iraqis who come to the united states, they've traded the violence and desperation of their own country for the relative peace and prosperity of the united states. but for many it can be like traveling between two rlds and at creatests own problems. >> my name is muhammed, and i've been in the united states since 2009 as a refugee. >> muhammed is like many in the iraqi expatriate community when he requests that we don't reveal his identity. he fears it could put family members back home at

risk, either from militants or criminal gangs. >> they kidnap one of your family, thinking that because you are living in america you are a millionaire or something and asking for a ransom. that happens many times. >> muhammed says he was forced to leave iraq. he says just because he was an english teacher, militants thought he was working with the americans. many iraqis who worked with the u.s. military or private contractors as translators have been killed. >> they start targeting teachers, educated people. so we received a threat note to leave or you will be killed. >> and why did so many iraqis, like muhammed, choose to come to san diego? well, many of them had family connections here because of an older, establhed iraqi community that's been in the city for years. that's especially true for iraqi christian chaldeans, who have put down deep roots in san

diego. local chaldean churches, along with mosques and groups like catholic charities and the international rescue committee, offer aid and orientation to the iraqi refugees. >> by using the three techniques at least. apply online. what else? networking. >> that help often comes in the form of classroom instruction, where the newly arrived iraqis learn survival skills f everyday life in america. erica bouris is a resettlement manager for the international rescue committee in san diego. >> we provide cultural orientation. we help with housing and, you know, making sure that kids are immunized, kids enroll in school, those are the kinds of things that we are doing with folks in the first couple of months. >> really nitty gritty things? >> very nitty gritty things. absolutely. get your driver's license. do you know how to take the bus? we just saw in the class practicing how to write a check. do you know how to pay your rent and pay your bills? >> some institutions which try

to help the refugees, such as san diego's most prominent iraqi christian church, acknowledge providing assistance has stretched resources. father michael bazzi is the church's pastor. >> we used to have them coming to us a thousand, two thousand every year, three thousand every year, and lately, more than five thousand people. and i established here a committee to show them how to live as americans here, and we have many committees that take them to the schools and to, you know, insert them into american society. >> although grateful to be here, many iraqis complain that settling in the united states has been difficult, especially when it comes to jobs. according to catholic charities, only about a third of iraqi refugees find employment during their first year in the united states. anecdotally, the refugee agencies say long term unemployment or underemployment continues for most of the iraqis. >> we didn't get any orientation about life in america or even

the law, so we were lost. >> they have a chance to start a new life and seek the america dream. but at the same time, not unlike the hebrew people who left the slavery of egypt when they got in the desert, they said, oh, lord, moses, why did you bring us here? take us back. life is too hard in the desert. >> freshly arrived in this country, the choices and freedoms america offers is both confusing and exciting. >> for today, it's like introducing for the new world. the system here is different from the system in the middle east. especially the option. here in the united states, everything, there are options. many options. everything, yeah, there are

options. >> a little fear at times? >> sometimes we feel fear, yeah. sometimes. but with all the supports we have, things will be fine, i think. when we left catholic charities, the staff were preparing to meet new refugees from iraq in the coming days. for "religion & ethics newsweekly," i'm saul gonzalez in san diego. >> we have a lucky severson story now about john wood an american executive who discovered the world's need for school books and literacy and did something about it, in a big way. is he happy? he points to the faces of young girls in cambodia who have just received one of his books. >> we are not a religious organization. our religion is literacy, our religion is gender equality and

education. >> here is john wood spreading his religion in vietnam, in africa, in india. it was only 15 years ago that wood took a hike that changed his life and impacted millions of others. he was a microsoft executive trekking in nepal, when a headmaster invited him to visit his run down, dilapidated, overcrowded school. >> and i went to this school's library and it was a library in name only. they didn't have any books for the children. and i asked the headmaster why and he said we're too poor to afford books. and i said well that must make your job very difficult as a headmaster and he said well actually in nepal we're too poor to afford education for our children but until we have education we're always going to remain poor. >> this came as a shock to wood, who as a kid loved to read more than anything. >> i love to read. i've loved to read from the day i ould first decode words. and when i was growing up, if i did something well, you know, i surprised my mom by washing the dishes, and i was given anything

i wanted as a reward, i would always say i want to stay up late and read tonight. >> wood promised the headmaster that he would return with books for the school's library. he asked his friends and his parents for help and they did, big time-more books than his yak could carry. but he kept his promise. >> i was just in awe of how excited those kids were when we delivered the books. and then to see the kids then running with the book, sitting under a tree, and you see three kids all with their eyes wide open looking at a picture of a man walking on the moon, looking at photographs of african wild life, kids in a land locked nation who had never seen sharks or whales. >> wood says he's inspired by buddhism and had been reading the dalai lama's teaching that the greatest happiness comes from giving something to someone in need. >> i thought what am i doing patting myself on the back. that's one library in a world that needs tensf thousands of

libraries. that's 450 children helped in a world where 800 million people are illiterate. that's almost a billion people who can't read or write, and then people remain, you know, confused about why do the poor remain poor. well, if you don't get an education, if you can't read or write, the odds are stacked against you. >> so wood decided to leave his lucrative job at microsoft for the low paying life of a book peddler, although that may be an oversimplification of what his non-profit organization does. it's called room to read and they now have libraries and schools and millions of books in 10 countries, including cambodia. >> room to read has been doing very well in cambodia? >> i would not hesitating to say yes. >> kahn kall is the head of room to read in cambodia. he's happy because the cambodian government has given its rare blessing to the room to read mission. this is the country that barely survived the terror reign of the khmer rouge, in which education

was completely obliterated. it was so bad even after the khmer rouge that the current provincial education minister says as a school teacher he had to scrounge for a piece of paper. >> no chair, no table, no clothes for children, no books, sometimes i collect the paper from the road to make my lesson plan. >> even today in many schools in cambodia, reading, especially for pleasure is often frowned upon. >> you only allowed to read the book which is related to what you learn. any other books they always say it's not useful. and you know what i did, i go to the bookstore and then i rented book, i had to hide it behind my back, because otherwise my father when he saw i read the book that were different, i read the story, i read everything, he would spank. >> there are about 6,500 primary and secondary public schools in cambodia. until ten years ago, about the only books found in these schools were official

authorized textbooks. one per grade. now more 1,500 of these schools have their very own library, like the one behind me, provided by room to read with the blessings of the cambodian government. now, in phnom penh, hot off the press, books with pictures, created and published by room to read. >> if you look around the developing world, when you bring bright colorful children's books into a child's life, there's just something instinctive inherent inside them, where they just get it immediately. their faces light up. >> how many books have you read? >> around 30 books. >> how about your girlfriend? >> she reads five books a day. >> five books a day? >> yeah, yeah. >> these bright, colorful books were commissioned by room to read and created by local cambodian artists, always with a message.

>> yes, very popular among the children. >> ratana says this one is meant to discourage young girls from leaping into marriage. >> the message is that she is too young. she needs to learn more so she cannot get married when she is very young. >> the storylines always treat boys and girls as equals. >> if you're working with boys and girls you want to make sure you don't have gender stereotypes, right? so sometimes in books you'll see the boys are out playing soccer while the girl is inside you know washing the dishes. well, is that really the lesson we want to teach to kids or do you want to reverse that and make sure that you're having good gender roles in the books. >> room to read pays special attention to young girls because, wood says, that's where the need is the greatest. >> you know, two-thirds of those who are illiterate, two-thirds of those who are out of school are girls and women. and this is basically nothing less than planned poverty, that if you have a woman not get educated of course the next generation does not get educated. >> now room to read has a

program that guarantees girls an education all the way through high school, including when necessary room and board. borin is one of the organization's few full-time employees in cambodia. >> we provide the girls with something like school uniforms, the shoes. and we provide them with transportation, let's say a bicycle for those who live far away from the school. >> so far 20,000 girls worldwide have enrolled. these girls are old enough to be in college but this was their first opportunity to go to high school. >> my father and my mother when i study, he very happy. >> with you? >> yeah, with you, with me. >> and what about your parents, are they happy? >> ah, the same too. >> room to read now has an annual budget of 44 million dollars, funding that comes from individuals, foundations, and corporations. wood says one reason room to

rd has been so successful in the 12 years since it was founded is because local communities are also required to contribute. >> in room to read we honor the communities we work with by requiring them to co-invest. right, they can give land, they can give labor. you know, i've had parents who will point out, they'll point to the building and they'll say i painted that building. you know there's an old adage you can't help people if they don't want to help themselves. >> as philanthropic organizations go, few have grown as big and fast as room to read. >> somebody once just said to me you're no longer going to be rich monetarily but you'll be rich in books, you'll be rich in experiences and you'll be rich in just absolute happiness. in a certain sense it's like being a millionaire but you're counting your millions in terms of the number of kids and books. >> room to read has now constructed 15,000 libraries, over 1500 schools and distributed over 12 million books in 10 countries. >> i'm about done here.

>> i'm not. i got a lot more to say. >> for "religion & ethics newsweekly," i'm lucky serson in phnom penh, cambodia. >> on our calendar, this past week was holy week for orthodox christians, as they prepared for easter or pascha, sunday. because they follow a different calendar, eastern christians usually celebrate easter at a different time than western christians. and this coming week, many western christians observe ascension day, when they mark the ascension of jesus into heaven, 40 days after his resurrection. finally, a story for american clergy who are notoriously overweight. you are not alone. in thailand, monks have the same problem, apparently because many thais believe that feeding their monks generously is a good deed that will earn them special merit in the next life. but now, thai nutritionists are

leading a national campaign to help monks slim down. cocoanut milk, for instance, is not recommended. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernethy. you can follow us on twitter and facebook and watch us anytime on the pbs app for iphones and ipads. there's always more on our website. audio and video podcasts are also available. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you this eastern orthodox easter weekend, scenes of icons at the holy cross antiochian orthodox church in maryland. ♪

major funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lily endowment dedicated to its founders' interests in religion, community development and education. additional funding provided by mutual of america, designing customized individual group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for pubc broadcasting.

barry kibrick: today on "between the lines," a new approach for building a joyful life with rakesh sarin. welcome, i'm barry kibrick. rakesh is a professor of management at the prestigious anderson school of management at ucla. along with his co-author, economic professor manel baucells, they have been conducting ground-breaking research on happiness for more than a decade. now, what do professors of economics and management have to do with happiness? well, they are experts at solving puzzles. and with their book, "engineering happiness," they show how to solve one of life's greatest puzzles--the quest for a more blissful existence. linda ellerbee: i'm a writer