The Common Ground News Service, February 1, 2005
The Common Ground News Service, February 1, 2005
CGNews-PiH
February 1, 2005
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The Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity, brought to you
by Search for Common Ground, seeks to build bridges of understanding
between the West and the Arab World and countries with predominately
Muslim populations.
Please note: The views expressed in the articles and in CGNews-PiH are
those of the authors, not of CGNews or its affiliates.
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UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL ARTICLES ARE AVAILABLE FOR RE-PUBLICATION.
Common Ground News Service- Partners in Humanity
Article #1
Title: Iraqi artist reflects a lost generation in a time of chaos
Author: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Publication: Daily Star
Date: January 25, 2005
Wilson-Goldie gives a profile of Iraqi artist, Saadi al-Kaabi, who
talks about what it is like to live and work in Baghdad under
occupation as well as his optimism about the future of Iraq.
Article #2
Title: Islam's democratic imperative
Author: Sheik Dia Al Shakarchi
Publication: Jordan Times
Date: January 26, 2005
Another voice from Iraq, Sheik Dia Al Shakarchi considers whether
Islam and democracy are compatible at such a time when this notion may
soon be put to the test.
Article #3
Title: Rice must deploy more 'soft power'
Author: Joseph S. Nye
Publication: Daily Star
Date: January 25, 2005
Speaking to the United States government, Nye makes a cause for the
use of non-coercive tactics in the Middle East. Looking at historical
precedent, he suggests several new policies that he feels Condoleezza
Rice would be wise to adopt.
Article #4
Title: A Public Peace Process
Author: Shamil Idriss, Director Partners in Humanity, SFCG
Publication: ~~CGNews Commissioned Article~~
Date:
The eighth in a series of articles on the Muslim world and the West
commissioned by Search for Common Ground in partnership with Al Hayat,
Idriss? article advocates a ?citizen-led peace process? to address the
conflicting views and perceptions between the West and Islam world.
From his perspective as director of the Partners in Humanity program,
he considers some initiatives that may help to spur this course of
action.
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Article #1
Iraqi artist reflects a lost generation in a time of chaos
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Saadi al-Kaabi, still based in Baghdad, talks of life and work under
occupation, and his fears for his country's young people
BEIRUT: As a prominent member of the second generation of modernist
artists in Iraq, Saadi al-Kaabi is lucky. Born in Najaf in 1937, he
came of age at a time when the arts in Iraq were celebrated, when
painters were put on a pedestal and promoted, and when young talents
were given resources and funds and travel grants to develop their
skills. More basically, Kaabi has lived and worked in Baghdad for more
than 40 years. His studio lies in a posh residential district. He
feels safe in this space, despite the U.S. invasion and occupation and
the ever-more pathological spread of anarchic violence on the city's
streets. At times, the materials that Kaabi needs to work have grown
expensive, then scarce, then nonexistent in the local market. Yet he
has been able to continue painting.
From now through the end of January, 18 of Kaabi's canvases are on
view at the Agial Art Gallery in Hamra. All were produced between 2002
and 2004. And all are typical of Kaabi's contemporary work - subtle
earth tones seep from background to foreground; human figures haunt
the compositions like abstracted ghosts rendered in thick black
lines; the surface of the work alternates from the smooth resin of
ceramics to the rough texture of chiseled stone. In the 1960s, Kaabi's
style was more cubist in composition, with a garish blue and red
drenched color palette borrowed from fauvism. He painted women with
enormous eyes, oceanic enough for a viewer to drown in, and desert
scenes. His early work was brash, stylized and expressive. His late
work is spare, pensive and subdued.
Kaabi was able to travel to Beirut for the opening of this most recent
exhibition, his fourth in Lebanon, having shown twice at Gallery One
in the mid 1960s and once at Agial in the late 1990s. His physical
mobility is a mark of his social status, he suggests, as an artist who
has been established for a long time in Iraq. But his psychological
resilience at a time when his country is splitting its seams is
uniquely, impressively Kaabi's own.
"Usually a crisis makes you feel better about your presence in the
world," he explains. When you feel more aware of your presence, when
it burns your insides, you can produce. If you have five fingers and
you lose one, you feel the importance of the other four even more. A
crisis makes you feel the importance of your existence, which makes
you produce more, and better."
"[Iraq] is not a safe place," he acknowledges. "But I do whatever I
can to make it feel safe. I have an underground," he adds, "and a
dog." The community around where he lives has also developed its own
mechanisms for self-defense.
Kaabi may deal well with his day-to-day existence, but he's not
especially optimistic about the impending elections. "I feel afraid,"
he admits. "Should I vote for someone I don't know, whose program I
don't know?" There are 280 electoral lists, he explains, and it would
take him two months to read through them and another two months to
understand the policy initiatives behind each list, if they were to be
made available for the public. They have not.
"Plus, I hate sectarianism. Everyone is there for their private
interests so why should I dirty my hands?"
To hear Kaabi's thoughts on the political situation in Iraq is to view
the country through the eyes of its artists (those who stayed, as
opposed to those in exile). It is also an exercise in understanding
all that Iraq has lost, and stands to lose still, as there will likely
never be another generation quite like Kaabi's.
Flipping through a recent catalogue of the artist's work, there are
old photographs of him with his classmates, horsing around in front of
Baghdad's Institute of Fine Arts in 1957; Kaabi debonair, dressed in a
suit, and painting a landscape on an outdoor easel; the artist on
trips to Tunisia, Japan, Bangladesh, in front of the Great Wall of
China. Besides the sepia-toned nostalgia of these pictures, there's a
sense of possibility in them that has since been dashed.
When asked whether or not there will be any continuity between Kaabi's
generation and the next to come up in Iraq, he answers
definitively, "No. Everybody pities them [the younger generation]. The
government - nobody is interested in anything related to people
anymore. In my time, the government cared about people. They gave
grants, sent artists to travel. In the past there was a system to take
care of the collectivity, where now, no one cares." And, he adds, "The
newly rich people who are supposed to help artists don't know anything
about art."
In Kaabi's day, he and his colleagues were concerned with laying the
groundwork for a viable art practice. "First, identity was very
important. Second, we were interested in the conceptual underpinnings
[of creating art], so we wrote a lot. And third, we were organizing
the art." Kaabi's generation was heavily involved in shifting
folkloric traditions in ceramics into sculptural techniques, something
that can still be seen in Kaabi's work today. For his own part, Kaabi
was, and remains, intent on developing a visual language adequate to
represent the nuances of the human condition.
The outlined figures in his works, he explains, "are meant to cancel
the time factor. This human being can belong to any time, the past or
the future. The point is to reflect my own interior. And my interior
is also the result of my environment, my heritage, and the rest of
the world. I digest them all and project them back into the
paintings. I don't want [my figures] to belong to any particular
period in time."
As a young man, Kaabi earned a reputation among his peers as an
impressive draughtsman. This pushed him to draw better and he started
to win prizes. "From then, I felt I was a big artist," he
recalls. "Later on, I realized I was not."
About 25 years ago, Kaabi woke up one morning and burned his entire
archive of press clippings. He suddenly felt that everything that had
been written about him had been said to please him. He felt trapped by
an image that had been created around him. He said to himself, "This
is not real!" and torched the whole lot. The effect was a symbolic
liberation, freedom by fire. His act of destruction allowed him to
begin working from scratch. "The real thing is working," he says
simply.
"I still consider myself to be always learning and getting better."
After the episode with his archive, he says, "I became very motivated.
In bits and pieces, I started to discover something a bit blurred,
which is the dialogue with the self. That helped me to understand
things that looked very mysterious in my paintings. The knowledge of
the unconscious in the work, from that point, I am always working on
and thinking about."
To this day, Kaabi is chaotic in his working process. He doesn't paint
at regular times, but rather insists on keeping his canvases prepared,
so they are ready when inspiration strikes. "When I am not satisfied,"
he says laughing, "I run away or I sleep." Then, after running away or
sleeping, when he returns to his studio or wakes up from a nap, he
says he can see clearly the ways in which a painting is not working.
The break is necessary for him to understand where his work has
escaped him.
Kaabi insists that he remains optimistic about the Iraq his children
will inherit. He believes the current crisis will pass and the arts
will blossom again. "But for myself," he says, "I don't think I will
see stability in my time. I'm 70," he exclaims, throwing up his
hands, "What am I going to do, wait?"
**Saadi al-Kaabi's paintings are on view at the Agial Art Gallery in
Hamra through January 29. For more information, call +961 1 345213
Source: The Daily Star
Visit the website at: www.dailystar.com.lb
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
**********
Article #2
Islam's democratic imperative
Sheik Dia Al Shakarchi
January 26, 2005
During the last 25 years, Islam has played an increasingly influential
role in politics, and not only in the Islamic world, with political
Islam frequently expressing itself in radicalism and terror. Muslims
and non-Muslims have not always agreed on the extent to which this is
compatible with genuine Islam. How Islam is understood varies widely
among devout, moderately religious, and non-observant Muslims, as well
as among Islamic scholars, political parties and organisations. Even
Western experts and critics of Islam hold different views. Overall,
there are two conflicting images of Islam: a peaceful Islam, which is
ready for dialogue and coexistence, and a fundamentalist Islam, which
is militant and even terrorist.
There is a widespread misperception that Islam's holy texts are
written in a way that can justify both interpretations. But, in my
opinion, the reason for different and frequently
contradictory?interpretations
is an incompetent and incomplete approach that detaches individual
texts from their context and construes them without a thorough
understanding of the true spirit of the Koran.
This approach to Islamic texts?coming from both secular and
religiously oriented Muslims, as well as from non-Muslims with an
interest in the subject? calls into question Islam's compatibility
with democracy, and also whether Islam is capable of peace and
moderation. But based on more than a decade of study and debate, I am
convinced of the compatibility between Islam and democracy. Indeed, in
my view, democracy is not only permitted by Islam, it can be regarded
as a religious rule.
My understanding is drawn from a principle contained by the basic
Islamic theory of legal reasoning, which asserts that when strong
religious interests can be realised only through a particular path of
action, that path itself is no longer a matter of choice. It also
becomes a religious rule. Thus, if we can establish that democracy is
the means to realise the strong interests of the Muslim community?and
I believe we can do this? then democracy may be declared a religious
duty in Islam.
Even if democracy might be viewed primarily as an evil from an Islamic
point of view, there is another principle of interpretation of
religious laws in Islam, according to which minor evils?even if
religiously impermissible or not recommended at first? become
permissible, recommended, and even mandatory if they alone can prevent
major evils.
The Muslim interest in democracy is best understood through a clear
perception of the reality of how Muslims live. A country like Iraq,
for example, is home to a diverse and varied population: Arab and Kurd,
Sunni and Shiite, not to mention minorities of other religions and
ethnic groups. Moreover, not all Muslims practise Islam, nor do those
who practise do so in the same way.
So religion cannot be imposed; individuals must practise it according
to their own decisions. Any enforcement of religious practice only
creates hostility towards religion. Thus, I believe that a political
system that best serves free choice? including the choice of people to
be practising Muslims? is the best system for Islam.
Of course, the problem of Islam's compatibility with democracy may be
analysed from different points of view. One possible approach is
purely practical, comparing democracy with all other conceivable
alternatives. In my opinion, there are only five conceivable
alternatives in a Muslim country.
The first is secular dictatorship. This is unacceptable for two
reasons. First, dictatorship itself is ugly and unacceptable; second,
secular dictatorship excludes Islamic parties from participating
normally in the political system. We have considerable experience of
this in the Middle East.
Of course, an Islamic dictatorship is also possible. But this, too, is
unacceptable. As with a secular dictatorship, Islamic dictatorship is
ugly and destructive. Such a dictatorship would damage Islam by
associating it with unjust rule and creating enemies for Islam.
A third alternative is democracy, but with secular restrictions on
religious parties. In fact, this would be a pseudo-democracy, and
would infringe on the rights of religious people to full
participation. Likewise, an Islamic democracy with restrictions on
nonreligious parties would be a mockery of democracy and harmful to
Islam. This would also be unrealistic, because in the current age of
globalisation, any claims to democracy would be exposed as obviously
false.
So, in my view, true democracy is the only alternative, because it is
realistic and promotes peace. Call this ideology-free democracy: a
political system that tolerates restrictions imposed only from within,
never from outside, the democratic process itself.
We must recognise that democracy has proved its worth around the
world. It is the best way of organising a society based on reality and
not ideals. Why shouldn't Iraqis benefit from the proven experience of
other peoples?
**The writer is a Shiite theologian living in Baghdad. Project
Syndicate.
Source: Jordan Times
Website: www.jordantimes.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained from the author for publication.
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Article #3
Rice must deploy more 'soft power'
Joseph S. Nye
A year ago Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser,
announced, when speaking about the war on terrorism: "We are engaged
primarily in a war of ideas, not of armies." She was right, but it is
a war that the U.S. is losing, because it is regularly out-flanked by
Al-Qaeda.
Rising anti-Americanism around the world threatens to deprive the U.S.
of the soft or attractive power that it needs to succeed in the
struggle against terrorism. As Iraq has shown, hard military power
alone cannot provide a solution. Poll after poll confirms that
America's soft power has declined, particularly in the Islamic world.
Even in supposedly friendly countries such as Jordan and Pakistan,
more people say they trust Osama bin Laden than they do George W. Bush.
Information is power, and today a much larger part of the world's
population has access to it. Long gone are the days when U.S. Foreign
Service officers drove jeeps to remote regions of the third world to
show reel-to-reel movies to isolated villagers. Technological advances
have led to an information explosion, and publics have become more
sensitized to propaganda. The world is awash in information, some of
it accurate, some of it misleading.
As a result, politics have become a contest about credibility. Whereas
the world of traditional power politics is typically defined by whose
military or economy wins, politics in an information age is about
whose story wins. Governments compete with each other and with other
organizations to enhance their own credibility and weaken that of
their opponents. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has not kept up.
Even the Pentagon's Defense Science Board recently admitted this,
reporting that America's strategic communication "lacks Presidential
direction, effective interagency coordination, optimal private sector
partnerships, and adequate resources." In the final years of the
Clinton administration, Congress mistakenly abolished the U.S.
Information Agency and gave its tasks to a new undersecretary for
public diplomacy at the State Department.
This office has subsequently been left vacant or, for two of the past
four years, filled on only an interim basis. The entire budget for
public diplomacy (broadcasting, information and exchange programs) is
$1.2 billion, about the same as spending in France, or what McDonald's
spends on advertising. The U.S. government spends 450 times more on
hard military power than on soft power.
In 1963, Edward R. Murrow, the famous journalist who directed the U.S.
Information Agency during the Kennedy administration, defined public
diplomacy as interactions not only with foreign governments, but also
primarily with non-governmental individuals and organizations, often
to present a variety of private views in addition to government views.
Skeptics who treat "public diplomacy" as a euphemism for broadcasting
government propaganda miss the point. Simple propaganda lacks
credibility and thus is counterproductive. Public diplomacy, by
contrast, involves building long-term relationships.
Most important in the current situation will be the development of a
long-term strategy of cultural and educational exchanges aimed at
developing a richer and more open civil society in Middle Eastern
countries. Given low official credibility, America's most effective
spokesmen will often be non-governmental. Indeed, some analysts have
even suggested that the U.S. create a non-partisan corporation for
public diplomacy that would receive government and private funds, but
would stimulate independent cross-border communications.
Corporations, foundations, universities and other non-profit
organizations can promote much of the work of developing an open civil
society. Companies and foundations can offer technology to help
modernize Arab educational systems and take them beyond rote learning.
American universities can establish more exchange programs for
students and faculty.
Foundations can support the development of institutions of American
studies in Muslim countries, or programs that enhance journalistic
professionalism. They can support the teaching of English and finance
student exchanges. In short, there are many strands to an effective
long-term strategy for creating soft power resources and promoting
conditions for the development of democracy.
The response to the recent tsunami disaster in Asia is a case in
point. President George W. Bush pledged - albeit belatedly - $350
million in relief to the victims, and sent high-level emissaries to
the region. There has also been an impressive outpouring of private
support by American charities and non-profit organizations. The images
of U.S. soldiers battling in Iraq have been supplemented by images of
America's military delivering relief to disaster victims.
But effective follow-up is essential. Bush's prior announcements of
increased development assistance and stronger efforts to combat HIV-
AIDS in Africa were not only moral imperatives, but also important
investments in American soft power. Unfortunately, the funds needed to
implement these initiatives have not flowed as rapidly as the
rhetoric. Equally important, none of these efforts at relief or public
diplomacy will be effective unless the style and substance of U.S. policies are
consistent with a larger democratic message.
That means that Condoleezza Rice's chief task as secretary of state
will be to make American foreign policy more consultative in style as
she seeks a political solution in Iraq and progress on Middle East
peace. Only then will she be able to begin the job of repairing
America's tattered reputation by shoring up its neglected public
diplomacy.
**Joseph S. Nye, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense, is
Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard and author of "The Power
Game: A Washington Novel." This commentary is published in
collaboration with Project Syndicate.
Source:
Visit the website at:
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained from the author for publication.
**********
Article #4
A Public Peace Process
Shamil Idriss
William Butler Yeats once wrote: ?The best lack all conviction, while
the worst are full of passionate intensity.?
He was commenting on violence in the 19th century, but his words
resonate today. In the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim
world it seems that the best among us are paralyzed and muted while
the most extreme proceed to determine the world in which we all must
live.
Opinions on how to improve this situation abound: a just settlement to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an end to the U.S. presence in Iraq
and Afghanistan, an end to acts of mass murder in the name of Islam,
American independence from Middle Eastern oil...
These political realities cannot be ignored, but our problems run
deeper. Consider the head-scarf debate in France, the vandalism of
mosques in the U.S., the debate over Turkey?s acceptance in the EU, or
the denial of entry to the U.S. of such harmless figures as Tariq
Ramadan and Yusuf Islam.
Many Americans and Europeans now believe that Islam espouses violence,
oppresses women, and opposes democracy and it would be a mistake to
think these views are held only by the closed-minded. People see what
is done in the name of Islam and can?t help wondering if there is
something essentially barbaric about the religion.
In Muslim countries, views of the U.S. are more complicated. Polls
reflect that while U.S. policies are largely despised, Americans are
viewed favorably. But despite this nuance, those speaking loudest on
behalf of Islam are those videotaping beheadings, blowing up civilians
in Iraq, Indonesia, Egypt, and Israel, and murdering schoolchildren in
Russia. Muslim opposition to such atrocities is increasingly vocal
but tempered, perhaps because we sympathize with the causes of
Palestinian, Chechen, and Iraqi independence even as we abhor the
means that some use to pursue them. This equivocal response feeds
Western suspicions of Islam.
Political agreements alone will not address these problems ? what we
need is a citizen-led public peace process.
One such initiative is Partners in Humanity (PiH), a program co-launched by HRH Prince El Hassan bin-Talal and the international
conflict resolution organization Search for Common Ground. Among
other initiatives, PiH seeks to foster cooperation in fields that
touch millions of lives: mass media and development assistance.
Media polarizes, but it can also unite - by facilitating the exchange
of views. The Common Ground News Service through which this article
and hundreds like it have been distributed to editors in the West and
in the Muslim world provides a pipeline for constructive ideas to
appear in major newspapers. Similarly, televised citizen-conferences
linking Americans with citizens from diverse Muslim countries for
dialogue should be broadcast. Americans want to know what Muslims
think of Beslan and Muslims want to know what Americans think of
events in Iraq.
The media can also amplify thoughtful views. Public relations
companies should be enlisted to serve dialogue centers and activists.
It is not enough to bemoan the polarizing effect of the media.
Advocates of rational discourse should learn to write press releases
and opinion pieces in ways that are likely to get them published and
aired, especially in times of crisis.
Finally, the media can broadcast models of cooperation using popular
reality-television formats. Imagine TV shows featuring Americans and
people from Muslim countries confronting challenges that require them
to cooperate in order to prevail. Such programs might seem irrelevant
given the seriousness of the times, but one can not underestimate the
power of millions of viewers watching and rooting for Iranians,
Egyptians, Indonesians, and Americans of diverse backgrounds and
viewpoints cooperating toward a common goal.
Partners in Humanity?s second field of cooperative action is
development assistance ? a good in itself which is also a way to
relieve conditions that feed extremism.
Concerns that charitable giving might go to terrorist organizations
have had a chilling effect on Muslim charities. As Hany el-Banna,
President of the UK-based humanitarian agency Islamic Relief reports,
people are scared to donate money for fear of making mistakes or being
wrongly targeted by overzealous government agencies.
Non-governmental aid agencies, multi-lateral institutions, and
governments must cooperate to develop mechanisms to verify the
transparency of charities working in Muslim countries. This would
allow cash to flow again to good organizations so that those in need
can receive support. PiH supports El-Banna?s efforts to mobilize this
initiative. If successful, it will improve the lives of needy
populations in Muslim countries and provide Western governments a way
to combat extremism through compassion, not just military action.
This public peace process can work because the roots of activism run
deep both in Islam and in the national ethos of the United States.
Americans are taught that we can achieve anything - that we can affect
change, even on the grandest of scales. At an early age we learn of
national heroes whose bold vision inspired millions to overcome huge
challenges, none greater than that captured by Martin Luther King
Jr?s ?I have a dream? speech. Americans take pride in believing that
ordinary citizens can advance social justice on a grand scale.
Similarly, Islam instills its adherents with hope and commands us to
activism. We are taught that Islam not only accepts other
monotheistic faiths, but embraces their roots as part of the same
revelation ? there is perhaps no more hopeful perspective for
interfaith harmony. We are taught that we must work for justice in
this world, rather than resign ourselves to finding justice in the
afterlife. These lessons assume that changing the world for the
better is not only possible but is in fact a duty of every Muslim.
Drawing on this shared activist tradition, Partners in Humanity and
initiatives like it constitute a public peace process through which we
can develop cooperative ventures in any field. They won?t solve the
political issues, but our ability to resolve differences will increase
as we cooperate in those areas where we agree. And by acting
together, we can begin to shape the world around us, rather than feel
helpless as extremists do it for us.
**Shamil Idriss is Director of Search for Common Ground's Islamic-
Western Relations Program and a member of the Coordinating Committee
for the World Economic Forum's Council of 100 Leaders.
Source: This article was commissioned by Search for Common Ground and
first appeared in Al Hayat.
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained from the author for
publication.
**********
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