Editor's note: Nadene Ghouri's Radio 4 programme about John Butt from a couple of weeks ago now has a melancholy postscript. On Tuesday, bombers struck the university he founded in Jalalabad. The programme is no longer available on the iPlayer so I've republished it here, in full. In this blog post, Nadene brings the story up to date - SB

An Islamic university run by former British hippie turned Islamic scholar John Butt, was bombed by the taliban on Tuesday. The attack came just two weeks after John Butt was profiled on Radio 4 in My Story - the Imam of Peace (listen to the whole programme below).

The programme revealed how John, now 60 years old, had gone to live in the often lawless Afghan/Pakistan border region in 1969 as a 19 year-old hippie. When the other hippies returned home he stayed on living among the Pashtun tribes who inhabit the region. He adopted the Pashtun's ancient tribal codes and became fluent in the language. He converted to Islam and is the only Western man ever to graduate from South Asia 's largest Madrassa, Darul Uloom Deoband as a fully fledged Imam.

However, the attack on the university, known as Jamiyat'al-Uloom, was not entirely unexpected. Over the last few weeks so-called night-letters (threatening letters sent at night and in secret) have been distributed in Jalalabad targeting those who work at the university, warning students not to attend and denouncing John Butt as a Christian missionary.

John Butt told the BBC he had welcomed the awareness the radio programme had created about the university and did not think airing the programme was related to the attacks:

Unfortunately anyone who works for peace in Afghanistan is going to be subject to attacks like these. But the voices of peace and moderation must be heard, whatever the personal risks.

During the making of the programme, he said:

We are trying to strengthen Islamic learning and promote a peaceful non-violent theology. To take a life is a sin. I look at those who do that so easily and wonder how far removed from true Islam they are.

The bomb, which appeared to have been set off by remote-control, was left in a water-cooler next to the gate of the building. No one was seriously injured in the attack, which caused considerable structural damage. The latest attack comes eight months after an similar bomb attack on a media training centre - also run by John Butt in jalabad.

In My Story John told how in recent years he saw the Pashtun way of life he had come to love become contaminated by a more militant hard-line ideology. He decided to fight back for his adopted culture by mobilsing young tribal men and women to work with him to promote their old culture over newer more hardline ideas; setting up a radio station broadcast messages of peace and solutions to conflict; and spearheading the formation of a new Islamic university to promote a non-violent theology and give a platform to moderates.

But as the hippie turned peace campaigner, his message of non-violent jihad has set him on a direct collision course with the Taliban and other militants who promote holy war, and who now seek to kill him. When asked in My Story if he feared he would be killed, he replied: "You only die once and I could hit by a bus tomorrow. But if I do die in the cause of doing good for humanity and promoting true Islam will be a good death."

Nadene Ghouri presented The Imam of Peace

• Read Nadene's story about John Butt on the BBC News web site and listen to the despatch she recorded for From Our Own Correspondent.
• The Guardian covered the story of the bombing. Butt wrote an article about Islamic learning in Afghanistan for the Hindustan Times at the end of January.

UPDATE: the Taliban debate on Radio 4 has now finished and I've closed the live chat. The chat will be archived here permanently and we've lifted the seven-day limit on the radio debate so you'll be able to listen again whenever you like. If you listened, or took part in the online debate, please leave a blog comment here and tell us what you thought. And for news of forthcoming debates and events, follow @BBCRadio4 on Twitter and 'like' our page on Facebook.

The debate is under way. Has the Taliban Won in Afghanistan? is on BBC Radio 4 now. Panellists include Peter W. Galbraith, outspoken critic of the 2009 presidential elections in Afghanistan and Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb who was working, until recently, as a senior advisor to US General McChrystal. Join the debate by typing your comments directly into the live chat below or, if you're on Twitter, by tweeting with the hashtag #TalibanDebate.

I'm hosting the debate and Radio 4 Producers Jo Mathys and Hugh Levinson are on hand. We'll publish as many of your comments as we can. We'll close the live chat at 2100, fifteen minutes after the programme ends, and we'll archive the whole debate here. We've also made sure that the programme will be available to listen to on the Radio 4 web site indefinitely.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Listen to Radio 4 on 92-95 FM, on DAB, on your digital TV or, from anywhere in the world, online. More details on the Radio 4 web site.
• The debate was recorded at Chatham House in London last night.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tmtqc

We'd like you to join tomorrow's Radio 4 debate about the outcome of the war in Afghanistan. Host Eddie Mair is heading over to Chatham House to record the programme after he's finished on PM this evening, for transmission at 2000 tomorrow. We'll be opening the discussion here on the blog half an hour before transmission at 1930 and producers Hugh Levinson and Jo Mathys will be on-hand to host the debate.

There are two ways to join in: either tweet using the hashtag #TalibanDebate or type your comment directly into the live chat here on the blog. We'll publish as many of your messages as we can during the debate and the live chat will be archived permanently after it finishes.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Listen to the debate on Radio 4 FM (92 - 95), DAB, digital TV or on the Radio 4 web site at 2000 on 8 September 2010.
• The picture shows Taliban in Afghanistan. It's from the BBC News web site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nnp0k

The seeds for Sunday Worship from Helmand were sown more than five years ago. I'd always been interested in the role of religion in an organisation where the job - when all else failed and to put it bluntly - was to blow things up and kill people. It took about 18 months from first contacting the Ministry of Defence until Martin Bell and I stepped on to a flight from Brize Norton to Iraq just before Christmas 2006.

We were heading for Basra to meet the Reverend Andrew Martlew, who was then stationed at the Shaiba Logistics Base with 40 Regiment Royal Artillery and the series for Radio 4 was called 'God and the Gun'. In the jargon of the Church his job is known as incarnational ministry. Getting out of the churches and on to the ground. Sharing the lives of the people who need you. And for a padre in the military, that can mean going in to some very uncomfortable places, both physically and spiritually.

The programme was a success, winning the premier award from the Sandford St Martin Trust, but I felt there was unfinished business. 'God and the Gun' was a documentary and came, I hope, with its own insights. But there was another way of exploring the experience of religion in a battle field. Why not through an act of worship? I thought that would allow us to explore the human side of this story at a much more profound level.

'Sunday Worship' is Radio 4's weekly act of worship. Mostly it comes in a conventional form as you'd imagine, from a church or cathedral, but occasionally it goes 'out on the road' and is recorded as a feature - still recognisably an act of worship with prayers and hymns, but with added documentary elements.

When the causalities started to mount in Operation Panther's Claw everyone I spoke to in the military told me that the atmosphere on Remembrance Sunday this year would be different. In July I suggested recording a Sunday Worship in Helmand on the themes of sacrifice, service and remembrance and that Andrew Martlew, who's still a serving padre, would be the ideal man to do it.

So, after a lot of behind the scenes negotiation with the Ministry of Defence, that's how we found ourselves early one October morning once again at Brize Norton waiting for the RAF flight to Afghanistan. When you're making a programme dealing with such powerful and emotional themes, getting the right tone is the most important and difficult challenge - giving an honest account of what the people serving this summer in Afghanistan have been through, without being voyeuristic and sensationalist, or sentimental and mawkish.

I'd be lying if I said that I had an exact image of the tone I wanted for the programme and I think I'd doubt any producer in similar circumstances who told me they had. I don't believe you can ever have an advance plan; you've just got to rely on your antenna and thankfully, in this case, your presenter. We were interviewing the sergeant major of the hospital in Camp Bastion. He's a member of the Territorial Army and in civilian life worked for BT. In Helmand he found himself, among other things, in charge of the mortuary.

He'd steeled himself for preparing the bodies of soldiers for repatriation; what he didn't expect was to be wrapping in shrouds the bodies of young children - victims of accidents who'd been brought to the hospital, or who'd been caught up in the fighting, and sometimes victims of IEDs - those roadside bombs can't tell the difference between a British soldier and a local child.

As the SM told us, you can't see the sight of small children in large body bags without it changing you and not surprisingly he started to cry. And so did my presenter Andrew Martlew. But then something extraordinary happened. Something which I, coming from a documentary production background, had never encountered. Andrew Martlew the presenter, instinctively and unselfconsciously became Padre Martlew, the army chaplain. He reached out to that soldier knowing, in a way that only another soldier would, what he was going through and offering comfort and reassurance. For chaplains, this is what incarnational ministry is about.

For me this small moment, mirrored countless times in different guises, distilled the essence of remembrance from a soldiers' perspective. This is the window I wanted to open for listeners. I think only Sunday Worship could do that and perhaps only an army padre would understand what tone to take. And there were three people crying in the corner of that ward in Camp Bastion hospital.

Phil Pegum is a Producer in the BBC's Religion & Ethics department

• Sunday Worship is on Radio 4 at 0810 Sunday. Listen again to the Remembrance Day special.
• Both episodes of Phil's God and the Gun, presented by Martin Bell in March 2007, are available on the Religion and Ethics web site.
• Phil also produced last week's Moral Maze about Twitter and mob rule.
• Phil took these photographs while he was at Camp Bastion.

Eric Joyce MP.

Brigadier Buster Howes, Head of overseas operations, MOD.

Francesc Vendrell, former EU Special Representative to Afghanistan and Lindsey German, Stop the War Coalition.

Eddie Mair, presenter

Eddie Mair, presenter

To warm you up for tonight's debate about the war in Afghanistan, chaired by Eddie Mair, here are some pictures taken at the recording. They were taken by photographer Tully Chaudry.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Afghanistan: Is It Mission Impossible? At 2000 on BBC Radio 4 tonight.

Steve Bowbrick is Editor of the Radio 4 blog