Dear HumanDHS network friends
Please find below the Common Ground News Bulletin: 26 August - 1 September 2008.
Kind regards
Brian Ward
Common Ground News Bulletin
Inside this edition 26 August - 01 September 2008
A short walk between Jews and Muslims
by Rabbi Burton Visotzky
Rabbi Burton Visotzky considers how bringing Jews and Muslims together to help their fellow New Yorkers could be as simple as a walk across Central Park.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), August 26, 2008)
Voice of power threatens voice of dialogue
by Sharunas Paunksnis
Amidst the controversy and speculation surrounding the arrest and recent appearance of Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui in New York, Sharunas Paunksnis, a PhD candidate at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania, examines how the truth and rumours about extraordinary rendition, arbitrary arrest and detention centres like Guantanamo Bay widen the gap between “them” and “us”.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 26 August 2008)
Egyptian women at crossroads
by Fatma Khafagy
Fatma Khafagy, senior policy advisor on women’s rights at the German Technical Assistance programme in Egypt, assesses the social and legal constraints facing Egyptian women, and the taboos they are breaking to speak out against them.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 26 August 2008)
The future of American-Muslim relations
by Iason Athanasiadis
Sitting in on a course on international terrorism offered at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Iason Athanasiadis, a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, gets a sense of where “tomorrow’s western and westernised elites” stand on “the long war against terrorism”.
(Source: Guardian, 12 August 2008)
Muslim filmmakers face challenges: an interview with Maheen Zia
by Martin Gerner
In this interview, freelance writer Martin Gerner, interviews Maheen Zia, a founding member of the Union for Short Filmmakers of Muslim Countries, about the unique challenges Muslim filmmakers face in gaining recognition in international markets.
(Source: Qantara.de, 18 August 2008)
A short walk between Jews and Muslims
Rabbi Burton Visotzky
New York, New York - New York City is divided by Central Park into an East and a West Side. We New Yorkers joke about the cultural differences between the two parts of town: how society ladies dress up to go grocery shopping on the East Side, while famous writers wear blue jeans to the theatre on the West Side. But there are other cultural divides that Central Park displays, and these can loom much larger in our imaginations.
I live and work on the West Side of Manhattan. When I travel by taxi over to the East Side, the 96th Street Mosque emerges before me. Despite its starkly modern structure, many are tempted to think it contains a congregation with a medieval mindset.
In the weeks before Passover, the imam of that mosque, Shamsi Ali, travelled with some of his congregants across Central Park to visit us at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) where I teach. In a short sermon there, he spoke frankly about the issues that divide Jews and Muslims politically, but also noted how much unites us religiously. He was received enthusiastically and with full attention, as a close neighbour should be.
We reciprocated, and in so doing, were reminded that the distance across the Park can be a short walk. Several members of my Jewish community went to Friday prayers at the 96th Street Mosque. The imam invited me to stand next to him in the prayer line, and during his Friday sermon, as he spoke from Qur’anic texts, he taught his congregation that there is no compulsion in religion and that each religious community has its own path to God. He preached that Muslims must reach out in friendship to their neighbours and warmly welcomed us Jewish visitors.
If I had ever wondered what imams preached in their mosques, I then knew – this was emphatically not a medieval way of thinking. Instead, I had just heard a vision for the 21st century, a modern call to brotherhood as eloquent as any ever preached.
Imam Ali then called upon me, a rabbi, to address the almost 1,000 Muslims assembled. I had just published a historical novel, A Delightful Compendium of Consolation, set in 11th century North Africa. It is a story about a time when Jews and Muslims lived together in harmony. At his suggestion, I invoked those halcyon days, yet recognised the difficult relations that Jews and Muslims experience today.
I shared with them how some of their mosque members had visited our seminary and how Imam Ali had also brought prominent imams from Indonesia to visit us. And I proudly related that under the auspices of the US State Department, our seminary has also welcomed imams from Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia over the past three years.
I noted how essential it is for neighbours to work together to help one another since New York is a city with so many needy people. I spoke of our joint plans to bring together the Islamic Cultural Center and Jewish Theological Seminary to work side-by-side at a local soup kitchen. It remains clear that there is so much we can do to serve our broader community together. There are so many ways we can, each from our own traditions, perform God’s commandments through joint efforts.
When my short sermon and the Friday service were completed, dozens upon dozens of Muslims ― black, brown, white, and every colour in between, American and foreign born ― came to shake my hand and welcome me. They identified with the need to respect one another. They expressed their unbridled enthusiasm for our joint projects. They spoke of their pride in their mosque and their happiness that their imam had taken the first step. Mostly, by their warmth and hospitality, they spoke to the common bond between us.
Through such simple acts we were reminded how co-existence can be strengthened and some small redemption achieved – just by crossing Central Park.
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* Rabbi Burton Visotzky is Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and the author of A Delightful Compendium of Consolation (Ben Yehuda Press). This article is part of a series on Jewish-Muslim relations written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service, 26 August 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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Voice of power threatens voice of dialogue
Sharunas Paunksnis
Kaunas, Lithuania - They always come at night, George Orwell told us. You wake up to find people holding flashlights and surrounding your bed.
This image always reappears during times of tension and mistrust around the world – the faceless secret agency whisking off the unsuspecting to unspecified horrors because of the way they look or their refusal to conform.
For many, this image overshadows the controversy surrounding the July arrest of Aafia Siddiqui in Afghanistan and her 5 August court appearance in New York. She is charged with attempted murder of an American interrogator while in custody in Afghanistan where she was allegedly detained for acting suspiciously and carrying suspected bomb-making materials, instructions and a guide of New York landmarks in her handbag.
Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman listed by the United States in 2004 as one of seven suspected al Qaeda associates feared to be planning an attack, disappeared with her three small children in Karachi in 2003, and reappeared suspiciously five years later in New York with the hollow look of a concentration camp prisoner on her face.
What happened to Siddiqui and her children during those five years remains a mystery. Her sister Fauzia alleges she was abducted and taken into secret custody by the United States. The United States denies any knowledge of her whereabouts during this time, although many Pakistanis believe that she was kidnapped and spent those years in a secret prison for Muslim militants in Afghanistan before being transported to the United States to face charges.
The speculation surrounding this case reminds me of a recent Pakistani movie, Khuda Kay Liye (In the name of God), directed by Shoaib Mansoor. The protagonist, Mansoor, is arrested in Orwellian fashion following the events of 9/11.
His character could be seen as a model for contemporary Muslims, as well as a victim of the system. He was unlawfully detained, repeatedly questioned by US authorities (”What is your relationship with Osama?”) and tortured – a clear allusion to Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
The film reflects general fears that are present in the world at the moment – the fear of an evil “other” – for whom one’s name and skin colour may be sufficient to blame them for conspiracy against the “free world”.
Mansoor represents the absurdities of miscommunication between Muslim societies and the West, fuelled by the fashionable Huntingtonian division of the world into groups that seek not to communicate with and understand one another, but to confront one another, thereby widening the supposed chasm between nations and people who in fact have so much in common.
Khuda Kay Liye demonstrates that such incidents put prospects of mutual understanding into question and emphasise the division between “us” and “them”. No wonder there are so many who believe that Islam is under siege.
It was not long after the huge success of this movie in Pakistan that Aafia Siddiqui finally surfaced publicly.
Oftentimes, in matters such as this, truth and justice are lost in a political and legal jungle of conflicting agendas. We may never know the truth about Aafia, but the image of a malnourished and devastated mother of three will remain among the increasing number of symbols used to uphold an image of oppression.
Can we, the inheritors of past century’s legacy of brutalities, not learn from the wars, conflicts and torture of our own and past generations? We must realise the controversy, speculation and inadequate evidence surrounding the Siddiqui case is just the type of thing that pushes us further away from the hope of mutual understanding.
How many stories like this will we, co-inhabitants of this small world, bear witness to before we stand up and demand a better way of doing things?
Whether or not Siddiqui is found to have been held in a secret prison in Afghanistan, and whether or not there is truth to the charges against her, recent events have resulted in a loss of trust between the United States and many of the world’s Muslims.
We are faced with an ethical dilemma. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Shocking arrests and mysterious disappearances. Extraordinary renditions. These are not fictional plot lines. Will these initiatives, conducted in the name of security, really make the world a better place, or will they contribute to irreversibly dividing it, feeding on our anger and distrust?
Everything is in our hands.
Can we remain silent in the face of processes that threaten to divide our world and lend credence to the argument of a global conflict of identities?
Today, the voice of power is much louder than the voice of dialogue, and our hope is that someday the latter will dominate both politics and public perception. We must join those who are trying to pull down the wall of ignorance that is being built between Muslim societies and the West.
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* Sharunas Paunksnis is pursuing a PhD in social theory and Asian studies at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service, 26 August 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
Egyptian women at crossroads
Fatma Khafagy
Cairo - This summer, Egyptian women have broken taboos to speak out against the constraints of traditional marriage rites and the prevalence of sexual harassment in the country. Despite their recent push for greater legal and social recognition, however, Egyptian women are receiving conflicting messages about their rights, especially when it comes to Egypt’s family law.
Civil society organisations are launching awareness campaigns calling for gender equality and equal legal protection in the family structure. Yet at the same time, the religious establishment is telling women that they already have sufficient family rights under existing laws.
During the past decade, Egypt and other Arab countries have witnessed legislative reforms that have resulted in constitutional amendments granting women equal rights. For example, Egyptian women who are married to non-Egyptians can now pass their nationality on to their children. In addition, for the first time Egyptian women have secured the right to divorce, and husbands can no longer prevent their wives from travelling abroad alone. Rapists cannot escape court penalty by marrying the women they have raped, and family courts have been established to mediate between spouses and speed up divorce proceedings.
But, family law remains untouched. The present code of laws dates back to 1920 and is based on assumptions meant to keep the traditional patriarchal system intact. One such assumption is that husbands will provide for their families and women will be subordinate to their husbands. This personal status law gives men the unconditional right to divorce, while women have to resort to court approval, which is often granted only if women relinquish all financial rights – including their dowry, or prove that their husbands have been abusive.
However the reality of today is – and has been for sometime – very different. More women are working and contributing to the support of their households. Yet the family’s gender roles have not been challenged. They are legally upheld and socially reinforced, preventing an important social and cultural transformation from taking place.
There are loud calls for change. Civil society organisations in Egypt, and especially women’s groups, are demanding the reinterpretation of shari’a law (a legal framework based on Islamic principles), with regard to women’s rights.
The religious community, however, advocates that women have sufficient rights within the family. They tell women that they have the right to demand their husbands provide for them and their children, to keep their own income and earnings for personal use, and to earn money from their husbands when they fulfil their motherly responsibilities such as breastfeeding. The religious establishment is thus perpetuating a strict gender-based division of roles.
Unfortunately, access to legal support to change or challenge existing laws is a problem for many poor women. The cost of hiring lawyers is high, the time spent in court to get a verdict can be unfeasible for women who work both inside and outside of the home, and there is no guarantee the verdict will come out in their favour. Frequently, judges and police officers are influenced by the religious establishment and patriarchal culture that supports gender inequality and reinforces traditional gender roles.
To make matters worse, religious extremists consider preserving the existing role of women in family as a critical battle in the fight to uphold social ethics and morality. Women are therefore pressured in many cases to wear the hijab (headscarf), to practice female genital mutilation and to prove their virginity. Media and school curricula also play a major role in preserving the traditional roles of men and women, portraying females as weak, emotional, dependent and in need of protection.
Voices for change, however, are getting louder. Several institutions in Egypt, including the National Council of Women, the Ministry of Justice and the National Democratic Party, as well as a number of feminist non-governmental organisations, are working to reform both the personal status law and the family court procedures law.
Rather than have gender roles dictated to them, at this difficult crossroads Egyptian women are demonstrating the courage to question these roles, and to seek full participation and rights as equal citizens.
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* Fatma Khafagy, PhD is a senior policy advisor on women’s rights at the German Technical Assistance in Egypt and a board member of Alliance for Arab Women. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service, 26 August 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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The future of American-Muslim relations
Iason Athanasiadis
Cambridge, Massachusetts - A course about al Qaeda and the rise of international terrorism was one of the most popular last term at Harvard’s elite Kennedy School of Government. The international students crowding into the school’s largest auditorium for the twice-weekly classes were a cross-section of Americans, Europeans and Middle Easterners, and current members of the US army and intelligence community on sabbatical leave. Simply attending it gave me a sense of where tomorrow’s western and westernised elites stand vis-à-vis “the long war”.
The instructor for the course was Peter Bergen, the journalist who bagged Osama bin Laden’s first face-to-face interview on CNN. His book, The Osama Bin Laden I Know, made him sought-after in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, as his international relations colleagues scrambled to shed backgrounds in Soviet studies and switch to the geopolitics of the Middle East. Bergen became a transnational terrorism analyst who challenged the tendency to lump all terrorists into one group. Instead, he classified them by generation, regional provenance and the conflict that shaped their intellectual outlook.
The last class of the course was the most instructive: how elite Americans’ perspectives of the “war on terror” have matured. From horror, incomprehension and the rush to conclude that “they hate us for our freedoms” – typical of the post-9/11 response – there is now a shift towards viewing al Qaeda as a fractious group that can be subverted and defeated by manipulating its internal divisions.
Bergen paced the auditorium, asking his students for their recommendations on defeating al Qaeda. Intelligence reform and the restructuring of the bureaucracy topped the agenda. Some suggested that the shortage of analysts in intelligence agencies could be overcome by scrubbing top secret intelligence of any clues that might suggest what its source was (thus not jeopardising field agents) and then inviting non-security-cleared analysts in the commercial intelligence arena to mull it over.
Others thought America’s Arab immigrants should be seen as a strength rather than the liability that the security clearance programme currently tends to classify them as. Kareem, a student of Lebanese origin, suggested that the department of homeland security deploy a network of informants drawn from immigrant communities because “these guys have come over here and benefited from the bounty, so they should put something back”. A diplomat wearing a “US-Kuwait Friendship” T-shirt suggested (apparently seriously) that Pentagon employees with 20-plus years of service should be recycled into the US State Department and the CIA to rejuvenate these institutions.
Generally, the American students leaned towards superficial solutions for winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world. A deft repackaging of the “war on terror” or the realigning of bureaucratic entities in the Departments of Defence and State would do it, they seemed to think.
One American student proposed that the US government should confront al Qaeda with “brand denial” by banning US spokesmen and officials from referring to the organisation by its name. Deprived of the oxygen of publicity, he reasoned, the terrorists would shrivel up and die. Bergen asked the student whether the Bush administration should also ban the domestic press from referring to al Qaeda. The student spluttered and the auditorium exploded in laughter.
Many Americans are still reluctant to acknowledge that slicker packaging will not make US policies more palatable to Middle Eastern audiences or improve Washington’s image in the region. The debacle of al-Hurra, the Arabic-language TV network funded by the State Department is one example. But such shallow reasoning echoes at the very highest levels of the administration. In a speech last November, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates expressed surprise at how “al Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America”.
Al Qaeda’s anti-western, anti-interventionist message resonates with Arab and Muslim audiences sick of what they view as neo-colonial meddling in their region. These views are fed by daily television coverage of US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, American support for unpopular governing elites and the stymieing of popular political movements such as Hizbullah and Hamas when they win at the ballot box.
Back in Bergen’s auditorium, a lone European student ventured that only a substantive shift in Washington’s policy towards the region could bear true fruit and boost the US quest to succeed in the struggle against terrorism. Ceasing uncritical support for Israel, the student proposed, might overcome the impression in the Arab world that the United States is not an “honest broker”. Silence greeted his comments.
Will a new generation of Kennedy School graduates become effective bureaucratic and military foot soldiers in the long war? Can they provide America with the cultural awareness it needs if it is to vanquish its foes on the Middle East’s battlegrounds?
Terrorism experts such as Marc Sageman believe that al Qaeda is already on the ropes. Others, like former CIA agent Michael Scheuer, have more cynical explanations for what is described as a “stunning turnaround”. Premature declarations of al Qaeda’s demise, Scheuer thinks, “may be intended to assure Americans that al Qaeda is beaten if in the next few months it becomes necessary for US forces to attack Iran”. Wherever the truth may lie, the Kennedy School graduates of 2008 will be remembered as the generation shaped by the long war.
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* Iason Athanasiadis (www.iason.ws) is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and covered Iran for the international press from 2004 to 2007. This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews). The full text can be found at www.guardian.co.uk .
Source: Guardian, 12 August 2008, www.guardian.co.uk
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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Muslim filmmakers face challenges: an interview with Maheen Zia
Martin Gerner
Bonn, Germany - The “Union for Short Filmmakers of Muslim Countries” aims to overcome problems that moviemakers face and help them gain access to international film festivals. Martin Gerner talked to Maheen Zia, founding member of the union from Pakistan.
Why was the union created and what have you achieved in the first year?
Maheen Zia: In this first year we have been screening films from member countries at our respective festivals: Palestine, Lebanon and Syria have had programmes with films from our union.
But it is a slow start. We still do not have an office – we are still working out of the office of the “Tehran International Short Film Festival”. And there was supposed to be a programme at the Karachi festival as well but it did not happen because of the attack on Benazir Bhutto. We had to cancel the 2007 festival because it was a very uncertain time.
The union was founded in Tehran. Isn’t there a certain contradiction to have your head office there on the one hand and want to be as free as possible as an organisation on the other?
The initiative came from Iran. The “Iranian Young Cinema Society” invited the initial group of people who formed the union. The treasurer is from Afghanistan and the head of international relations is from Tunisia. So it is not what you would call a concentration of control and power. It is spread out. Membership is open and we are inviting other filmmakers.
Who is part of the union?
Our members range from countries in Asia to Africa. We already have filmmakers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, the Palestine territories, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Sudan, for example. India has applied for membership. It has a Muslim minority. But the organisation is open to any country where there are Muslims, though it is not restricted to Muslims. Non-Muslim filmmakers can also become members.
What is your main purpose? To answer to all the clichés about the Muslim world that we find in western films, especially after 9/11?
I think it would be fair to say yes. There is a discrimination that Muslims do face.
The aim is also to counter the black and white culture that you see in the media that says, “this is a liberal Muslim; this is a conservative Muslim.” At the same time it is a way to celebrate the diversity of Muslim cultures. Muslim culture in India is different from Tunisia or Turkey. So it is in order to have a place for this diversity and share it.
What do you mean by “discrimination”?
Generally, the countries I’ve mentioned are poor. Filmmakers face economic disadvantages. At the same time, I feel that Muslims are misrepresented in a lot of western media. But even in India you can find clichés. A Muslim would always be turbaned and you would always find Arab belly dancers in these films, even in big Bollywood productions – lots of mistakes like that.
How is Islam misrepresented in western films in your opinion?
Take the issue of the veil for example. It is seen as exclusively oppressive, but there is a very limited understanding of what a veil can mean and what its cultural roots are. There was a film called Yasmin that was produced in the United Kingdom a few years ago. In this film and in others it is mainly extremes that are portrayed, almost caricatures of Muslims. There are some people like that in reality, but the majority are not like that.
You try to work for better access to festivals for Muslim filmmakers. What difficulties do they face?
Filmmakers in Afghanistan for example are not aware of international festivals. They do not know they exist. And in Pakistan we didn’t have the connections until a few years ago, when we started finding out that festivals would accept films from us. So, one aim is to educate.
Another aim is to provide a database. International festivals anywhere in the world can access a greater variety of films from member countries now.
Yet another aim is to make a selection of films available to international markets that could be interested in purchasing them. This is generally a weak point for filmmakers. They are not very good at marketing their own work or selling it. So we hope to do this with the union.
What plans do you have for the coming year?
Right now we don’t have a big budget. We are still looking for sponsors. There are no more than a few dozen members. It would be good if we could get up to 500 members next year to give the union a boost. Also I hope we can have our own website soon with information for filmmakers about upcoming festivals. And maybe we can help with language gaps in accessing entry forms or subtitling. These are things we can do without having to meet physically.
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* Martin Gerner is a freelance writer. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Qantara.de, 18 August 2008, www.qanatara.de
Copyright permission is granted for publication.