The Common Ground News Service, October 25, 2005
Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
October 25, 2005
The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) is distributing the enclosed articles to build bridges of understanding between the West and the Arab World and countries with predominately Muslim populations. Unless otherwise noted, all copyright permissions have been obtained and the articles may be reproduced by any news outlet or publication free of charge. If publishing, please acknowledge both the original source and CGNews, and notify us at cgnewspih@sfcg.org.
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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:
1. “Terminal Debate” by Bernard Haykel
Bernard Haykel, associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York University, 2005 Carnegie Scholar and the author of "Revival and Reform in Islam, notes that some jihadis are coming to question the tactics of their jeers and advocates that “Western governments should encourage the debate among jihadis [rather than shutting down their websites and or expelling disenters] because, if the promise of absolute salvation through suicide attacks is thrown into question by some within the jihadi movement, potential recruits may come to doubt the wisdom of engaging in such tactics.”
(Source: New York Times, October 11, 2005)
2. “A Homeland is a State of Mind, not a Place” by Talajeh Livani
Talajeh Livani, a recent graduate of the School of International Relations at George Washington University, describes the experience of being an Iranian who grew up in Sweden and was educated in the United States. Explaining the different challenges and kindnesses she encountered in each culture and the facets of her own identity that were tested, explored and highlighted in these different situations, she feels that she is living proof that “barriers can be transcended and that bridges to other cultures can be built.”
(Source: CGNews-PiH Youth Views, October 25, 2005)
3. “Journalists and the plague of being identified with interviews” by Daoud Kuttab
Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist and the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, worries that independent media is in danger of “shooting the messenger” syndrome: that expressing the sentiments of those they are interviewing should not make them guilty of whatever crime or opinions their interviewees espouse. Particularly concerned with the case of Al-Jazeera journalist Tayser Alloun, he worries that Europe is tainting its image as a region where freedom of expression is a right held by all.
(Source: AMIN.org, October 12, 2005)
4. “This time, the ballot is an act of faith” by Jane Arraf
Jane Arraf, a longtime Baghdad correspondent for CNN and visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, compares the situation in Iraq, with what a similar scenario would look like in the United States and ask how Americans would feel about the security of their country if such was the case. She praises the large numbers of Iraqis who were brave enough to get out and vote in the recent elections over the constitution and heralds it is a sign that Iraqis still believe in the future of their country.
(Source: International Herald Tribune, October 18, 2005)
5. “Female firefighters find they can take the heat in Iran” by Scott Peterson
Scott Peterson, a staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor, describes the new all-female unite of Iranian firefighters as “pragmatic progressivism in Iran that is rarely matched elsewhere in the region,” particularly when it comes to Islam and gender issues. Hopefully, these women suggest, their success in this industry will encourage other women in the region to take on jobs usually reserved for me.
(Source: The Christian Science Monitor, October 19, 2005)
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ARTICLE 1
Terminal Debate
Bernard Haykel
New York - When Iraq's most notorious terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared a "full-scale war" on Iraq's Shiites on Sept. 14, he appeared to be speaking for all or most jihadis. But Mr. Zarqawi's war on Shiites is deeply unpopular in some quarters of his own movement. In fact, growing splits among jihadis are beginning to undermine the theological and legal justifications for suicide bombing. And as that emerging schism takes its toll on the jihadi movement, it could well present an opportunity for Western governments to combat jihadism itself.
The simple fact is that many jihadis believe the war in Iraq is not going well. Too many Muslims are being killed. Images of that slaughter, conveyed by satellite television and the Internet throughout the Muslim world, are eroding global support for the jihadi cause. There are strong indications from jihadi Web sites and online journals, confirmed by conversations I have had while doing research among Salafis, or scriptural literalists, that the suicide attacks are turning many Muslims against the jihadis altogether.
The movement's leadership is sensitive to Muslim public opinion. Mr. Zarqawi's mentor, Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, has denounced the campaign against Shiites as un-Islamic. Other prominent radical Islamists have advanced similar criticisms. And in a letter made public last week, Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, cautioned Mr. Zarqawi against particularly gruesome executions and attacks on Iraqi civilians for fear of their negative impact on the global jihadi cause.
To be sure, the alternatives these critics recommend are no less violent. Rather, many of the movement's dissidents suggest that jihadis diminish their efforts in Iraq and revert to spectacular attacks in the West, like those that took place on Sept. 11. These, such thinkers maintain, are singularly popular among Muslims and the only effective means of doing long-term damage to the West.
Still, Western governments should encourage the debate among jihadis because, if the promise of absolute salvation through suicide attacks is thrown into question by some within the jihadi movement, potential recruits may come to doubt the wisdom of engaging in such tactics.
The prevailing jihadi theoretical argument consists in saying that there is religious sanction for the killing of Muslim civilians, and that neither the innocent victims nor the bombers are doomed to suffer in hell. Jihadi claims about the certainty of salvation are the most important tools in their recruitment efforts. But they are also so fractious and unstable as to comprise the movement's Achilles' heel. In order to sustain these claims, theorists quote examples from the Prophet Muhammad's time that permit the targeting of Muslim civilians in war. They then draw tendentious analogies between these cases and today's political situation. For example, jihadis falsely claim that Iraqi civilians are being held as human shields by the occupying forces.
Furthermore, in Iraq, the jihadis bank on the fact that their attacks primarily kill Shiites. The fighters presume that their Sunni brethren, who consider Shiites to be heretics, will either approve or turn a blind eye. This policy is clearly failing, except among the radical Salafis in Saudi Arabia whose hatred for Shiites exceeds even that for the United States.
Not only are some jihadis queasy about targeting Shiites, but particularly following the London bombings, some jihadis have questioned the targeting of civilians more generally. One major jihadi ideologue, Abu Baseer al-Tartusi, has issued a fatwa arguing that all suicide bombing that targets Muslims, or innocent non-Muslims, is unlawful.
Abu Baseer, a Syrian who lives in Britain, no doubt fears that in Britain's changing legal climate, he might be extradited to his homeland, where he would face certain imprisonment and torture. Some jihadis have excoriated him on Internet message boards for placing self-preservation above religious conviction. But the important point is that real chinks are widening in the jihadi ideological armor, whether by the real consequences of suicide attacks or because the religious justifications that have underpinned them are becoming untenable.
Arguments can be built on Abu Baseer's position that suicide attacks inevitably involve the killing of innocent civilians, including Muslims living in the West, and that these are difficult to justify in Islamic law. Rather than expelling him from his asylum in Britain, concerned authorities ought to allow Abu Baseer to remain in Britain and make his case, which amounts to one of the first principled arguments by a jihadi thinker against suicide bombings since 9/11. Any would-be suicide bomber will have to weigh these arguments.
The West needs to understand that reasoned debates take place within jihadi circles and that such reasoning can change minds. Indeed, Al Qaeda's most recent statements, like that of Mr. Zawahiri, betray an anxiety about these splits within the movement and seek to reassert the legitimacy of suicide attacks both in Iraq and in the West.
The West should refrain from interfering in this evolving debate. Western governments should not shut down jihadi Web sites or expel the movement's dissenters, many of whom reside in the West or write from prisons in the Middle East. Rather, they should allow this process to take its course. By employing extreme tactics, the jihadis have laid bare the contradictions within their own movement. Their internal debates about suicide tactics are a sign of weakness - and of the fraying of the consensus Al Qaeda so carefully built over the last decade.
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* Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York University and a 2005 Carnegie Scholar, is the author of "Revival and Reform in Islam."
Source: New York Times, October 11, 2005
Visit the website at www.nytimes.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Cpyright © 2005 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.
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ARTICLE 2
A Homeland is a State of Mind, not a Place
Talajeh Livani
Washington, DC - In the late 1980s, my family and I left our homeland of Iran and made a new home for ourselves in Sweden. Our knowledge of this northern European country was limited. Like most people, we had heard old stories about Vikings and we had been warned about the cold climate but we didn't know much more than that. All we knew was that we would start a new life, hopefully a better one, in this country. When we arrived, the concept of immigration was still fairly new to Scandinavia. There were clear lines between the Swedes and non-Swedes. Either one was ethnically Swedish or one was an immigrant - and if you had immigrant parents, you were placed in the "immigrant" category. Sweden was as foreign and unfamiliar to us as we and our culture were to them. Questions such as "do you have cars in Iran?" or "do you have universities?” were common. Swedes of my parents' generation viewed Iran only through the lens of the Iranian revolution, but there was and is more to Iran than the Ayatollah.
Yet they also assumed all immigrants came only because of financial hardship at home, and thought it was their duty to help. The enormous generosity the government and people of Sweden showed us helped us feel at home. Native Swedes were often surprised to hear that we already had what they thought we had come to their country to gain.
People of my generation were very different from those of my parents. Sweden was slowly becoming multi-cultural, and barriers were beginning to come down. My Swedish friends increased in number with the passing of each year. Still, there were occasions when cultural differences made it challenging to establish deep friendships. Middle Eastern parents were stricter with their children, and did not like the fact that Swedish parents allowed young Swedes to stay out as late as they liked at night, drink alcohol, and date freely. This attitude extended into adulthood - Swedish children were independent and were expected to separate from their families at the age of 18. They could then live as they liked while we had to continue taking our families into consideration for many personal decisions.
As a teenager, it was a struggle to reconcile identities that were so often in conflict. I loved certain aspects of Iranian culture but found other aspects to be illogical and impossible to accept. Like myself, many Middle Eastern-Swedish children were also trying to find a balance between their two nationalities. Despite our different cultures, we - Persians, Arabs, Turks and Kurds for the most part- felt like one people. We bonded because we were all only fifty percent Iranian, Arab, or Turk, and also because we were minorities and didn’t quite fit into the picture that Swedish culture portrayed as ideal. We realized that being a minority worked to one’s disadvantage, especially when it came to finding employment.
With the start of the new millennium, I moved to the United States to pursue higher education. Like most people, I wanted to see the "melting pot" and experience the "land of opportunity." I was amazed at how people of all colors were integrated into American society. I would meet people from the Middle East and ask them where they were from, expecting to hear the name of a Middle Eastern country, and was always surprised to hear the name of an American city. For the first time, I started using the term "Iranian-Swedish" to describe myself. In Sweden, I had always and only been an Iranian so I was excited about being able to use a term that described exactly what I was, that is Iranian AND Swedish. It was fascinating to have come to a place where my appearance alone didn't prove that I was a "foreigner."
But then came the 9/11 tragedy and everything changed. Once again, I found myself to be one of “them.” This time, the stakes were much more serious. It was no longer a question of curfew times or other family matters - now thousands were dead, and Americans were stupefied. American friends from school approached me with a million questions. They wanted to know more about Islam, the Middle East, and the "terrorists" and their ideology. I wanted to explain, not justify, the attacks but when conversations turned toward American foreign policy, the smallest criticism was viewed as evidence of support for the terrorists. American nationalism was at a peak. I witnessed many instances of prejudice, which led me to adopt a defensive, even nationalistic position. I became more vocal about my pride in being Iranian. I also became interested in knowing more about Islam, and attended every lecture I could find on the Middle East, US foreign policy, and Islam. My “Iranian identity” was being brought to the surface and winning out over my other identities – nationalism was giving rise to more nationalism. Ironically, when I returned to Europe, I was accused of supporting American positions.
The pattern had become obvious. In the US, I was perceived to be Iranian and European. In Europe, I was Iranian and American, and with the Persian crowd, I was considered somewhat “Western.” It seemed that everywhere I went the things that were different about me stood out more than the things I had in common with the community. Or perhaps, in every society, I had attempted to represent the part of my identity which I felt was least manifested, or simply be a bridge between different nations. I am proud to say that I’m Iranian, Swedish, and even partly American. I’m fortunate to have been exposed to and benefited from the best of several cultures. As a result I have been able to become a unique and strong person, a person with a vast and inclusive “homeland” of my own creation. I am living proof that cultural barriers can be transcended and that bridges to other cultures can be built. And I am not alone. Millions of children in Europe and America come from backgrounds similar to mine – criss-crossing between cultures, sometimes easily, sometimes with difficulty, but always with the knowledge that there are many worlds on this earth, worlds that can be brought together when there is enough will and desire to do so.
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* Talajeh Livani is a recent graduate of the School of International Relations at George Washington University.
Source: CGNews-PiH Youth Views, October 25, 2005
Visit the website at www.sfcg.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
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ARTICLE 3
Journalists and the plague of being identified with interviews
Daoud Kuttab
Ramallah - It has always been a problem for journalists: how to carry on the profession of journalism without being accused of sympathizing with the person you are covering. Every journalist who covers a conflict can't help but have some sympathies for his subject. Internationally famous New York Times columnist Tom Friedman once told me that a good journalist always shows his subject that he is genuinely interested in what he is saying. You have to give the person you are interviewing the feeling that you are hanging on every word he or she is saying, he explained.
Professional journalists of course have a responsibility to reflect what their subjects are saying and not what they themselves are thinking. Likewise, journalists covering a murder are not murderers, and those interviewing thieves are not criminals. We are simply messengers and therefore we should not be judged by the message, even if it is a very ugly one.
I read in detail the verdict of the Spanish court against Al-Jazeera journalist Tayser Allouni and it seems clear that the most important issue involved in the case is the exclusive interview he had with Osama bin Laden. True, the court also talked about a $4,000 cash transfer he made by hand to a fellow Arab. Anyone familiar with the cultural habits of the peoples of the Middle East would not consider such an action anything other than a normal, everyday act of helping someone out. Even the tightened security surrounding current travel has not materially abolished the habit of generations by which Arabs transport small gifts, and especially money, for others. And $4,000 is scarcely an amount to be equated with funding terrorism. In fact, the verdict gives so much importance to the issues connected to the interview that it is impossible for me to believe that he has been punished for seven years in jail for anything more that for appearing to be supportive of bin Laden.
Allouni is a journalist who seeks a scoop and for me his personal thoughts and sympathies are his right and are protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such a punishment largely for his thoughts reminds us of the worst days of American McCarthyism or those under the Franco dictatorship
The leading world organization, the International Press Institute (IPI), also agrees. In a statement issued following the conviction, IPI blasted the Spanish court. "Although acquitted of being a member of Al-Qaeda, Tayser was convicted for allegedly collaborating with Al-Qaeda. The arrest, detention, and conviction of Tayser are clear signs of the witch-hunt taking place against Muslims today, whereby even journalists are punished for simply doing their job," the statement said.
In the 1980s, Abie Nathan, an Israeli peace activist who in 1973 had run the Voice of Peace radio station ship as close as possible to the fighting and broadcast appeals for both sides to lay down their arms, was jailed for six months because his interview with Yasser Arafat in Lebanon was declared a violation of an Israeli law that considered sympathy for the PLO equal to support of a terrorist organization. Peace supporters, including many in
Spain, denounced this imprisonment.
As a Palestinian journalists I have often found myself having to defend why I am interviewing Israelis. Closed-minded Arab nationalists consider such interactions with Israelis tantamount to sleeping with the enemy and attacked me for what they considered "normalization of relations with the Zionists aggressors."
Journalists are professionals whose main job is to seek the truth and to present all points of view. This is what we try to teach young Arab journalists who are trying to break out of the once- closed Arab media. Al-Jazeera was a breath of fresh air to supporters of independent media because it provided a badly needed outlet that had been denied to Arabs for many years. By presenting the points of views of both governments and opposition, Al-Jazeera and the other new media outlets greatly weakened Arab government media monopolies.
The verdict of the Spanish court must raise the blood pressure of every lover of independent media the world over. Supporters of freedom of expression and the right of all, including those whose opinions we might not like, must not let this judgment pass. If showing sympathy when interviewing bin Laden is a crime, one day mere sympathy with anyone opposed to the government's point of view or that of the majority will become a crime. The model of a tolerant Spain and that of an enlightened Europe has been tainted in the eyes of many true Arab democrats. The sooner this cloud moves away, the sooner we can get back to the efforts of getting our governments to respect our rights to produce independent media that reflects the opinions and thoughts of all.
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* Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah. This review is the first of four reviews on the documentary The Shape of the Future.
Source: AMIN.org, October 12, 2005
Visit the website at www.amin.org
cistributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Cpyright permission has been obtained for publication.
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ARTICLE 4
This time, the ballot is an act of faith
Jane Arraf
Nw York - The last time Iraqis voted in a referendum, it was to ratify Saddam Hussein's rule. As I went to the polling center near the Information Ministry that day three years ago to talk to Iraqis, a sedan was pulling away - Uday Saddam Hussein had just cast his ballot for his father.
Not to vote was dangerous in that test of loyalty to Saddam's regime; it as even more dangerous to vote "no." " It was a painful exercise, one Iraqi told me later: "The 'yes' was bitter, and the 'no' was bitter."
For many Iraqis this weekend's voting on ratifying a constitution was still a bitter choice. It was a vote on a document that few had read and fewer understand; a document that may ultimately lead to the death of the idea of a unified Iraq. A document that met a U.S.-imposed deadline only by being so ambiguous that it left to governments yet to be elected many of the hardest questions about what Iraq will be like.
But in a vote that in many places required immense bravery simply to show up, casting a ballot was as much the point as the result. The fact that millions of Iraqis believe enough in the process to go out and cast their ballots, however they voted, speaks to a belief in their future that suicide bombs, kidnappings and dashed hopes have not fully eroded.
There are many Iraqs now. The Iraq knitted together by Saddam's web of fear and control has shattered into countless pieces. There is a Shiite identity, a long-standing Kurdish identity and, to some extent, a Sunni identity defined by the feeling of exclusion. But the Iraqi cities and towns in which I've spent the past two years defy easy labels. That's partly why there is no one leadership that speaks for the Sunnis.
In Baquba, in the heart of what is considered the Sunni triangle, I saw Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians coming out to vote in parliamentary elections in January. Communities where Sunni and Shiite, Turkomen and Kurds and ancient religious groups most Americans have never heard of are still living in the same neighborhoods without killing one another.
The constitution looks likely to pass. It is a legitimate victory for those understandably eager to speed Iraqi further along its political timetable. But those ballots being counted by the light of U.S.-supplied lanterns don't mean by themselves that the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq can come home any sooner.
The political timetable is perhaps the least important aspect of an equation that relies on Iraqi troops to replace them and a functioning economy that creates jobs.
There are still vast areas of the country near the Syrian border where there is essentially no law except the U.S. military. After destroying and then disbanding the Iraqi army, the United States is finding it more difficult than many expected to build it again from scratch.
American politicians and military leaders trying to put a positive spin on Iraq like to say that 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces are peaceful, that the violence is overblown. I wonder if they'd say all was well in the United States if Washington, New York and Chicago were wracked with violence.
It's hard to overemphasize the cumulative effect of two years of fighting in some of Iraq's major cities. For most Iraqis, major combat was nothing compared to this. In Baghdad, almost every family has been touched by the violence. Almost every family has had a relative killed by insurgents or by U.S. forces, or their home raided or destroyed, or knows someone who has had. To go through Baghdad now is to pass a gauntlet of security barriers, barbed wire, demolished buildings and reminders everywhere of an ever-growing list of friends and acquaintances dead before their time.
The Baghdad most Iraqis know isn't the Iraq of the expensive constitutional ad campaigns on television with soothing music over inspiring scenes. The soundtrack of the city too often is sirens, gunshots, and the messy, inconsolable grief of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers finding the remains of their loved ones.
Iraqis and Americans have never been well-served by false hopes and selective praise. What's inspiring about the weekend's voting is not the constitution itself or what it says about the state of the country, but that so many Iraqis took the risk - not just of going to the polling stations, but of believing in a future for their country.
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* Jane Arraf, a longtime Baghdad correspondent for CNN, is a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Source: International Herald Tribune, October 18, 2005
Visit the website at www.iht.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
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ARTICLE 5
Female firefighters find they can take the heat in Iran
Scott Peterson
Karah, Iran - The rewards are great - and the disappointments as powerful as any felt by firefighters around the world.
But at Station No. 9 in Karaj, west of Tehran, a small unit prides itself on being like few others: the only squad of women firefighters in the Middle East.
Not every rescue requires a feminine touch. But in the Islamic Republic, which tolerates little public mixing of the genders, the 11 women here are breaking new ground and creating a model for cities across the country. They also represent a strain of pragmatic progressivism in Iran that is rarely matched elsewhere in the region.
Women are still subject to a strict Islamic dress code here, though at the moment it is loosely enforced. But there is a women's police division. Women parliamentarians and even vice presidents and a Nobel Peace Prize winner voice their opinions loudly. And in Iran's roiling political atmosphere, women can be criticized as harshly as men.
Wearing polished silver helmets - with only a head scarf underneath to distinguish their garb from the men's - this squad slides down the fire pole when the alarm sounds, just like their male peers.
"When we rescue a child, and the mother cries and comes to us to thank us, we feel so good," says Mahboubeh Khoshsolat.
Finding a balance between Islam and gender issues is easier in Iran than in some other Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive, much less hold office.
A women's unit might have made a difference in the holy city of Mecca in March 2002, during a blaze at a girls' school. Some 15 girls died and 50 were injured when Saudi religious police, according to eyewitnesses, beat the girls and kept them from leaving the burning building because they were not wearing "correct" Islamic dress.
Firefighters here in Iran, men and women alike, say men have not hesitated to help in gender-sensitive situations. "Of course we still do it," says Ali Aghayari, a mustachioed 25-year veteran of the department. "It can be a matter of life and death."
But the women think their presence inspires others to take on jobs usually reserved for men. "100 percent," says Zahra Haji, who has been with the Karaj force since the women's unit was created three years ago.
The women are part of a department that includes 11 stations and 375 firefighters. Divided into three shifts, they work 24 hours on, 48 hours off.
While they respond to every alarm alongside the men, these women also describe rescues in which their gender helped get the job done - such as the time a large woman had fallen into an narrow underground septic tank, up to her neck in sewage, and needed rescue with a harness and ropes.
I've seen them in action and they are good, they are strong - sometimes they are better than the men," says Mr. Aghayari. When they are in protective gear, fighting alongside the men, he says he can barely tell the difference.
"Physically we can manage it, we don't think we are anything less [than the men]," says Zeinab Karimi. Her father's tales of his work as a firefighter shaped her as a girl. When ads for the positions appeared, he mentioned them to Karimi, who had never thought she'd fight fires herself. "We believe in our abilities."
Those abilities are honed by training the same way as the men's, rappelling down a multistory training wall, jumping from heights, carrying the injured, and finding escape routes. Members of the unit have long experience with competitive sports, and their daily routine includes 30 minutes of vigorous exercise.
Such preparation can pay off. Karimi remembers a call at 3:30 a.m. A gas truck was burning so hot that a neighboring building caught fire.
"The whole area was lit up like day, and it was tough. [T]here was the possibility of an explosion," recalls Karimi. "It was so frightening, but [we] controlled the fire. Even our gloves were burning"
Not all stories end happily. Ms. Haji relates a call this summer when the unit was unable to resuscitate a toddler who had fallen in a pool. Several of the women went to the boy's funeral to offer comfort. "It was my first bitter experience," says Ms. Haji. "But they were appreciating us."
Such performance has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in Iran, where a number of cities have expressed interest. "Karaj is a good model," says Gholamreza Abbasi, head of the program. "The [Islamic] system will accept it, and people want it."
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* Scott Peterson is staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, October 19, 2005
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Reprinted with permission. Further reprint permission can be obtained by contacting Lawrenced@csps.com.
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