KABUL: The circle of scarred black stone pillars, standing forlornly in a leafy grove on the Kabul University campus, is among dozens of urban monuments damaged during a decade of civil conflict and half forgotten in the vast ruination of the once- grand Afghan capital.

But this battered shrine has unusual significance in Afghanistan’s tumultuous religious history: It honours a progressive, 19th-century Islamic thinker named Jamaladdin Afghani who was renowned for his world travels, reformist ideas and balanced criticism of Islamic rigidity and Western materialism.

Today, at a time of tension and mistrust between the Muslim and Western worlds, when Afghanistan has just emerged from the shadow of the extremist Taliban movement, the US Embassy is donating $25,000 to restore the Afghani monument in a small but high-profile gesture of support for moderate Islamic values and scholarship.

“I have always believed that learning about Islam is the most important weapon against fundamentalism,” said US Ambassador Robert Finn, an Islamic scholar who has served in embassies in several Muslim countries. “Fundamentalists capitalize on people’s ignorance of Islam. It is a religion of scholarship and law, with a basic vision that is tolerant and kind.”

Afghanistan, a largely rural and illiterate country with deeply entrenched tribal traditions, has long been dominated by a conservative Muslim ethos, especially among the Pakhtoon tribes that prevail in the south.

But in Afghan cities such as Kabul, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, a vigorous culture of academic study and progressive Islamic ideas has flourished at various periods in history. At Kabul University, for example, the School of Islamic Law, founded in 1951, produced several generations of prominent politicians and jurists before the Taliban took it over, stifling the academic atmosphere.

The law school is struggling to recover its former stature, again with assistance from the US Embassy, which has deliberately included the long-neglected facility in a package of economic assistance, including desks, dictionaries, window glass and copy machines-for the rundown campus.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.