Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
November 22, 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. “Muslim-American Relations: Women’s Crucial Role” by Cyra McFadden
In the third in a series of views on "The Role of Women in US-Muslim Relations,” Cyra McFadden, a Bay Area novelist and journalist, looks at how Muslim women participate in peacebuilding efforts. McFadden considers the complex, varied roles of women in Islam and more specifically the part women are playing to counter the idea that gender equality is impossible in Islam and to bring about dialogue and cooperation in their communities.
(Source: CGNews-PiH, November 22, 2005)

2. “Arab Christians and relations with the West” by Jonathan Kuttab
Jonathan Kuttab, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian human rights lawyer and peace activist, highlights the unique role of Arab Christians, not as a fifth column in the region, but rather as an integral part of Arab society. Through their unique connections with the West, particularly the missionary community, Kuttab argues that Arab Christians “have been better able to understand, appreciate, and ultimately resist the political influence of the West and its attempts to dominate their homeland.”
(Source: CGNews, November 7, 2005)

3. “Arab opinion is not monolithic when it comes to religion” by Rami G. Khouri
Rami G. Khouri, senior writer at the Daily Star, considers the ” role of religion in public, personal and political life in the Arab” based on empirical data from a new poll of six Arab countries. He explains that “the issue of religion in public life is more nuanced and less frightening than it is often made out to be” because “first, Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East hold a very wide range of views on religion's role in their lives and do not share monolithic perspectives; second, religion is an important part of people's identities and therefore should apply to business and governance in a manner that raises the quality of life; and third, people should continue to interpret religious law and its everyday applications.”
(Source: The Daily Star, November 16, 2005)

4. ~ YOUTH VIEWS~
“Sarkozy must apologize or resign” by Ludovic Blecher, Jacky Durand, Karl Laske & Gilles Wallon
Libération journalists, Ludovic Blecher, Jacky Durand, Karl Laske & Gilles Wallon, interview youth in France to try to understand the roots of the recent violence in their country – poverty, religion, failed assimilation? Although the views of youth in the most affected areas are diverse, one young interviewee explains where they find solidarity: “We have a minister who said: ‘You’re all alike.’ I say ‘no’ to that; we all say ‘no’ to that. But they keep saying ‘you’re all the same.’ Well, that gives us something in common.”
(Source: Libération, November 5, 2005)

5. “A poet on the run in Fortress Europe” by Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk, a prominent British journalist and Middle East correspondent for The Independent, considers the plea of an asylum seeker in Holland in the aftermath of Van Gogh’s murder, the bombs in London, and the rioting in France. He worries that the European “moral compass” has changed as he fields questions like "Why should we help Afghans or Iraqis or other Muslims when their own governments treat them like crap?" and "Why should we have to save them from their own people?". Pointing to the long history of European and American interference in the Middle East, Fisk tries to explain why the West should “treat Muslims any better than they treat each other".
(Source: The Independent, November 5, 2005)

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ARTICLE 1
Muslim-American Relations: Women’s Crucial Role
Cyra McFadden

San Francisco - When Turkish-born filmmaker Binnur Karaevli described her latest project on the website www.LightMillennium.org, her article provoked a bristling response from a young Muslim woman living in the US. The documentary “Women Who Dare” examines “the complex issues that are faced by educated Muslim women” and features three women who “have created their own identities by defying the roles of their society . . . in a culture where many women are still weighted down by the demands of tradition”. The letter writer accused Karaevli of misrepresenting and denigrating Islam.

President Bush’s advisor and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, Karen Hughes, came in for similar criticism last month after her trip to Turkey and Saudi Arabia on a mission to improve the US’s image in the Middle East. The English language daily Arab News reported that when Hughes met with a group of Saudi women, one of them told her, “The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn’t happy. We are all pretty happy”. The hall resounded with applause. Ms. Hughes didn’t get a much warmer reception in Turkey, where the women she met with ignored her attempt to speak to them woman to woman by telling them, “I’m a mom and I love children”. Rather, they used the occasion to criticize American foreign policy in the Middle East.

We have here what’s known as a communications breakdown, and people who’ve been trying to improve US-Muslim relations for years are not surprised. One of them, Dr. Charles Gibbs, says that while the tensions and the unwillingness to credit the other faction with good intentions are nothing new, attitudes have hardened since September 11, especially for American Muslims; “The trust factor now is pretty low”. Most recently, after the London bombings, they feel “misunderstood and beleaguered”.

Gibbs is Executive Director of the United Religious Initiative, an organization that works to end religiously motivated violence through dialogue and cooperation between different faiths. To this end, it seeks to include people whose voices may not often be heard in their own societies, such as indigenous people, the young, and women. Women have been crucial to its successes from the start.

URI creates “exercises” all over the world in furtherance of peace processes. The idea isn’t to negotiate peace between nations -- only governments can do that -- but “to create an infrastructure that will help build and sustain a peace when the politicians finally get around to declaring it”. Women are key players in this endeavor. Gibbs says, “One thing we identified immediately everywhere in the world where the exercises worked was the increasing role of women in leadership roles in all sectors of society”.

In some Middle Eastern countries male attitudes preclude women’s participation in public life. But URI presses on, and may find its work easier as more Muslim feminists demand a role in the affairs of their countries and the overturning of laws that affect them adversely.

At the end of October, organizers of “The First International Congress on Islamic Feminism,” held in Barcelona, called for a “gender jihad” to refute what attendees believe are misogynistic distortions of the teachings of the Koran. They also want to counter the notion that women’s equality is impossible in Muslim societies. Three hundred or so women attended the conference, a tiny number in the larger scheme of things, but a start.

Another attempt to promote mutual respect is made by the San Francisco-based Global Fund for Women, which raises money for women’s human rights organizations around the world. In 2002-2003, it awarded 24 grants totaling $234,748 in support of “Rights Within Religious and Cultural Traditions.” One grant went to Middle Eastern women’s groups to help them oppose “personal status codes”, which legalize practices such as polygamy and easy divorce procedures for husbands.

While, on the face of it, it seems both presumptuous and unrealistic to assign women a larger role than men in bringing about a peaceful world, which means assigning them more responsibility as well, history suggests that they’re up to the task. In l981, 36 people, most of them women, began an anti-nuclear protest on an American airbase at Greenham Common in England, where missiles were stored. The protest became women only and ended l8 years later. That’s when the Americans packed up their missiles and went home.

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* Cyra McFadden is a Bay Area novelist and journalist. She is also former columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a wide range of publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek.
Source: This article is part of a series of views on "The Role of Women in US-Muslim Relations", published in partnership with the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) and United Press International (UPI).
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
Arab Christians and relations with the West
Jonathan Kuttab

Jerusalem - Arab Christians have always been an integral part of Arab society. Yet in the confrontations between the Arab world and the nominally Christian West, Arab Christians have been uniquely situated to play a vital role. Ever since the West became intimately involved in the affairs of the Arab World, starting from the Napoleonic campaign, through the period of colonialism, and independence, the Zionist enterprise and the State of Israel, and continuing through the current "war on terrorism" they continue to hold a unique position.

Arab Christians do have a greater understanding of the West, its languages, culture, politics, and methods. Through certain shared knowledge, important connections, as well as the education of their children in the West, or in Western Christian missionary institutions, Arab Christians have been better able to understand, appreciate, and ultimately resist the political influence of the West and its attempts to dominate their homeland.

Those who expected (or accused) Arab Christians of siding with the "Christian" West, and of being a "fifth column" or Trojan Horse for the outsiders, were consistently proven mistaken. To the contrary, the unique position of Arab Christians, with their knowledge and understanding of the West have always been used to promote the interests of the Arab world and press for its positions at every turn of the road. Even Christian institutions that were created by missionary funds and efforts (such as the American University of Beirut) turned out to be hotbeds of Arab nationalism and think tanks for creatively promoting the interests of the Arab World in confronting the "Christian" West. Arab Christian institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and NGOs, which are often funded by Christian churches in the West, continue in the same tradition to promote the interests of their people, especially in the face of invasion, occupation, or aggression by the West.

Part of the reason for this, of course, is that there was nothing religious, or Christian about the onslaught of the West. Arab Christians were cognizant from the beginning that they were facing colonial and imperial interests which threatened their societies and that wanted to dominate its resources and populations for purely secular gain. Therefore, they saw no more contradiction in fighting off these forces than the original Christian Arabs saw in the need to fight the European Crusaders, who, incidentally, wreaked havoc with Arab churches and subjugated local Christians no less than their Moslem co-nationalists.

This history is well worth remembering in the current context when again the confrontation between the Arab World and the West utilizes religious terms and is presented as a struggle between Western Christianity and Islam. To be sure, much of the political effort of Arab Christians found expression in secular nationalism, for which they were early pioneers and zealous advocates. From George Antonious (the Arab Awakening), Albert Hourani, Michele Aflaq, and George Habash to Edward Said, Arab Christians have been prominent leaders and thinkers and activists in the Arab Nationalist movement. One of the tenets of that movement has always been setting aside religion as a matter of personal choice, and insisting on equal responsibility of Christians and Moslem in the national enterprise. The slogan was "Religion belongs to God, but the homeland belongs to all". While Arab nationalism was not anti-religious in its secularism, it was always emphatic in acknowledging the equality of Christians and Moslems, and the need to leave religion to the spiritual sphere.

Arab Christians recognized that their societies were culturally and socially Moslem and participated in that culture, dreaming with their fellow countrymen of a revival of a modern, relevant, vibrant, tolerant form of Islam.

As secular Arab nationalism suffered great defeats in its struggle against the West and Israel, and as Arab regimes professing to champion that ideology turned into ineffective and corrupt dictatorships, political Islam became increasingly a significant force, and presented itself as an alternative. Of course Arab Christians could not partake of this new movement, and viewed it with deep distrust, but they remained loyal to their nationalism and to their societies.

Their efforts are now needed more than ever, both by their own communities and the West. It is needed by the West to counter those who wish (for their private reasons) to turn the current "war on terrorism" into a religious war between the Christian or the Judeo-/Christian world, and Islam and the Moslems. Their efforts are needed to utilize whatever knowledge or connections they have to explain the Arab point of view to the West in terms the latter can understand and appreciate ( human rights, international law, etc.). They are also needed to explain to their own communities what they know about the West, its values, and its institutions.

There are enough negative stereotypes and ignorance in both communities about “the other”, and in the current poisonous atmosphere, such ignorance, stereotypes, and negative perceptions are extremely destructive. Arab Christians are able to play that very important role today, precisely because of the authenticity of their loyalty and organic belonging to their society- an identification and identity that is centuries old, and which has proven itself under much more trying circumstances in the past.

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* Jonathan Kuttab is a Jerusalem-based Palestinian human rights lawyer and peace activist.
Source: Common Ground News, November 7, 2005
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Arab opinion is not monolithic when it comes to religion
Rami G. Khouri

Beirut - The role of religion in public, personal and political life in the Arab world has become a common issue of discussion at gatherings looking at regional trends. Unfortunately, the subject is usually discussed with such intense passion and ideological bias that useful analysis is hard to achieve.

That is why the discussion on religion in business, education and politics in the region that took place a few days ago at the annual meeting of the Arab Business Council in Bahrain was useful and important. Instead of heated argument, a tempered, probing discussion took place, based on empirical data from a new poll of six Arab countries by the leading pollsters Zogby International. The poll, based on face-to-face interviews in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) during October, asked citizens and residents for their views on education, business and the importance of Sharia (Islamic) law.

Three important overall results struck me (and many others) as significant, suggesting that the issue of religion in public life is more nuanced and less frightening than it is often made out to be by many people both in the Middle East and beyond. The three are that, first, Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East hold a very wide range of views on religion's role in their lives and do not share monolithic perspectives; second, religion is an important part of people's identities and therefore should apply to business and governance in a manner that raises the quality of life; and third, people should continue to interpret religious law and its everyday applications.

The first point has always been clear to citizens and residents in the Middle East, but has been heavily obfuscated or ignored by a growing Western tendency to paint Arabs, Islam and Muslims in a single color. The poll confirmed yet again that Arabs hold a very wide range of views on the role of religion in their public lives, reflecting, for example, the same sort of lively debates on abortion, evolution or prayer in public school that defines American culture. There is no such thing as "an Arab view" on Islamic governance or applying Sharia law. There are many different and often conflicting views, within countries as well as across the region.

The second point is that Arabs tend to be very comfortable with religion's playing a public role in their societies, but they want the impact to produce positive results, in terms of good government, honest business practices and quality education that improves their children's life prospects.

A majority of respondents, except in Lebanon and Jordan, want to apply Islamic Sharia law to business operations (82 percent in Saudi Arabia, 69 percent in the U.A.E., 58 percent in Morocco and 50 percent in Egypt). In Jordan, just 39 percent favor this, and in Lebanon majorities of both the Muslim and Christian populations soundly reject applying Sharia.

The third and perhaps most significant point is that while a majority of citizens polled said Sharia law should be applied to businesses, they also believe that further interpretation is needed to allow businesses in the Muslim world to integrate into the global economy. In other words, most Muslims see Islam and the laws derived from it as living, evolving phenomena that are inspired or dictated by the divine, but that also require constant human reinterpretation to best serve temporal needs like education, business and governance.

Majorities or pluralities in every nation said that further interpretation of Islamic law is needed (78 percent in the U.A.E., 60 percent in Morocco, small majorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and just two-fifths of the populations in Egypt and Jordan).

One important issue that keeps many analysts and politicians busy in the region these days is the prospect of Islamist movements - Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood - winning democratic elections and coming to power peacefully. The citizens polled across the Arab world "differed substantially on whether they would trust a popularly elected Islamic government to abide by the rules of a democracy," the survey analysts concluded.

Asked whether they would trust an elected Islamic government to follow democratic rules, 72 percent of Saudis and 70 percent of U.A.E. residents said yes, while just 36 percent in Lebanon agreed. Skepticism was highest among Christians in Lebanon - just one in five believes an Islamic government would abide by the laws of democracy. People in Morocco, Egypt and Jordan were more lukewarm to this idea, which is supported by pluralities ranging from 39 percent to 46 percent.

The survey also documented "a striking split between various Arab states on the quality of their education systems." Just 15 percent of Egyptians believe their system prepared young people for successful careers in today's global economy, while 56 percent of Saudis and U.A.E. residents held this view.

The Arabs polled also had very different outlooks on the influence of religion on education in their states. Majorities in Egypt and Lebanon believed religion held too little sway on education and preparing youth for the future (although in Lebanon, this was a majority viewpoint only among Christians). A 54 percent majority in the U.A.E. believed religion was too powerful an influence, though in all other polled countries just 30 percent or less shared this view. In Saudi Arabia, 45 percent believed religion's influence on education was about right and 24 percent thought it too little.

There is much food for thought in these poll results for those who would like to analyze the reality of an Arab-Islamic region that is both differentiated and nuanced in its views on religion and public life. The results certainly show the region is not that imagined Arab world where all people are believed to think the same.

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* Rami G. Khouri is senior writer for the Daily Star.
Source: Daily Star, November 16, 2005
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.

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ARTICLE 4
~ YOUTH VIEWS~
Sarkozy must apologize or resign
Ludovic Blecher, Jacky Durand, Karl Laske, and Gilles Wallon

Paris - As the Prime Minister received youth from the affected areas on Friday evening, new violent incidents were beginning. But others – masked demonstrators, grandes-frères [literally, big brothers, older, more mature youth in the suburbs who sometimes work as government mediators and look out for younger children], or neighbors are speaking out. After a week of violent confrontations in Ile-de-France, they’re turning back to discussing the reasons for their anger.

It has become an obsession. Nearly every one of them mentions “Sarko,” and angrily condemn his recent remarks. With just as much intensity: his lack of “respect.”

Christophe, 22, is a student from Hauts-de-Seine. “When I think about what’s happening right now, I always return to one image: when Sarkozy was in Argenteuil, he raised his head up and said, “Madam, I’m going to clean all that up [with a high pressure water hose].” The result? By trying to play the superhero, and a super megalomaniac, Sarko pushed us too far. He showed his disrespect for everyone.”

Ludwel, 19, and Warren, 18, both studying for a post-high school vocational degree in Aulnay-sous-Bois, criticize the minister for not differentiating between good and bad youth. “Sarko chose his words poorly. Even in the housing projects, even the ones with a reputation for being very dangerous or violent, everyone’s not the same. There is a tendency to make us all out to be ‘rabble’ even though there are good, hardworking people there, people without problems.”

Rachid is younger. He comes from Clichy-sous-Bois. He has no doubts about the origin of the surge of anger: Sarkozy’s remarks, and the tear-gas grenade in the mosque. “They touched a religious place by attacking the Bilal mosque, we will never forgive that. And no one said anything! We’re the ones no one cares about. All we ask is that they apologize.” Youssef, 20, who works with youth in the Bondy suburbs, says much the same. “The youth here are not all practicing Muslims, but they are all believers.” Mounir and Patrice are grandes-frères from Sevran, and think politics might be involved. “Sarkozy’s provocation was no accident. He wants to make sure public safety is one of the big issues for the 2007 elections.”

If such was the case, the objective has been met. Everything is out of control. There are some who watch, the younger ones who act, and some who try to limit the destruction. “The ones starting the fires? They’re between 14 and 22. They’re smashing everything in their path,” states Mourad, 28. “We don’t really know who they are because those who are doing it don’t talk about it. They cover their faces and don’t come back and brag about it the next day.”

Mourad sides with them only to a point: “Instead of wrecking everything here, it’d be better if they demonstrated or went to break stuff in Paris. Every evening I have to drive the car around to keep it safe.”

According to a group of teenagers, even the inhabitants of a housing block in Aulnay have become targets. “When they really get going, they don’t care about anything. One evening, a kid from around here tried to protect his car, so they hit him, then flipped the car upside down and burned it.”

Criticism remains half-hearted. At night, most of them feel solidarity with the rioters. “Did I participate in it? That’s classified information,” states a 13 year old boy sarcastically. “We’re going to clean Sarkozy out, that [phrase] was the mistake of his career.” Sarkozy, always Sarkozy. Another young boy, barely 16, wearing his cap low on his head and sporting a childlike smile: “Sarko needs to shut up, apologize or resign instead of coming to stir up crap in the suburbs like Bush in Iraq.” He accuses the media of doing Sarkozy’s bidding. “From the beginning, the media has been Sarkozy’s accomplice. They’ve followed him everywhere, it’s not like when Villepin was Interior Minister. They mix everything together – young people equals housing blocks equals hoods equals Islamists. When they film teenagers, they always end up producing the same caricature: yelling and screaming kids, you can’t even understand what they’re saying.”

Eric, 34, has spent 24 of those years in Montfermeil. He tries to get a little distance on things. “The teenagers, as they throw Molotov cocktails, aren’t paying attention to the fact that youngest kids are watching them, not comprehending what’s going on. Now there’s some kind of solidarity. We have a minister who said: ‘You’re all alike.’ I say ‘no’ to that; we all say ‘no’ to that. But they keep saying ‘you’re all the same.’ Well, that gives us something in common. And now, there is even more violence in some spots because people want to get attention. They say to themselves: ‘If we can create a panic, they won’t forget us, they will know this is a sensitive slum.’”

Because there are other factors - the difficulty of life in the poorly designed housing blocks, the frequent identify checks by the police, and the omnipresent unemployment. Ali, 20 years old, failed to graduate from high school. “When you’ve had enough, things explode, no question. It started over there where the largest number of buildings are, where all the buildings are very close together. In Aulnay-sous-Bois, there must be forty buildings all stuck together. The kids are just there all day long with nothing to do. There’s never any work. Bac +2 [a high school diploma and two years of university], bac + 2, I’m sick of hearing it. I’m looking for a job, and if I can’t find one in a couple of months, I’ll start doing ‘business,’ selling mobiles or hashish; it’s easy. Seriously, I don’t know what the youngest ones are going to turn into. I saw a kid about 14 or 15 who was smoking pot and drinking at three in the morning. In any case their parents can’t be right behind them all the time, they can’t do anything.”

Samir, from Clichy-sous-Bois, says the systematic identity checks are close to getting out of hand. “The police even provoke the mediators. They stopped me because I was running. I was running to get out of the way of the tear gas, and when I said I was a mediator from the mayor’s office, their response was ‘Shut up, we don’t need your opinion.’ They threw me on the ground. They searched me. They never asked for my identification.” Mohammed strikes the same tone: “The cops are always trying to show you who has the power. They call us ‘sand-niggers’ (bougnoules), and say ‘screw your race.’ The police around here are a new generation. Every day, even during identity checks, they insult you. I was checked out in the train station because I had my feet on a bench. Fine, you shouldn’t put your feet on benches. They called in reinforcements just for that. Three cars were waiting for me at the Raincy station. The cops said to me: ‘Why don’t you stay in your garbage dump?’”

So what’s next? Julien, 22 years of age, who sells goods at the market in Hauts-de-Seine, is worried. “The youth here aren’t doing our image any good. The fires, the riots, it’s all going to justify more police, and more mistreatment in the suburbs. The kids feel like they’re on a crusade. I’m not totally in agreement with that, but, at the same time, if I was in a social situation as difficult as theirs, I’d snap too. When you don’t have a job, when you’re crammed into the corner of some building, you think less, you don’t have much perspective on your life. And even if you go to school to get yourself out, there’s always some friend of yours making money by doing stupid things. In the suburbs, there are a lot of bad choices available.”

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* Ludovic Blecher, Jacky Durand, Karl Laske, and Gilles Wallon are journalists for the Libération.
Source: Libération, November 5, 2005
Visit the website www.liberation.fr
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
Copyright is held by Libération. Please contact their copyright team for reprint permission.

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ARTICLE 5
A poet on the run in Fortress Europe
Robert Fisk

London - Mohamed sits on the chair beside me in Amsterdam and opens his little book of poetry. His verse slopes down the page in delicate Persian script, the Dari language of his native Afghanistan. "God, why in the name of Islam is there all this killing, why all this anti-people killing ... the only chairs left in my country are chairs for the government, those who want to destroy Afghanistan." He reads his words of anger slowly, gently interrupted by an old chiming Dutch clock. Outside, the Herengracht canal slides gently beneath the rain. It would be difficult to find anywhere that least resembles Kabul.

"The donkeys came to Afghanistan, Massoud, Rahbani and the rest," Mohamed reads on. "All the people were waiting for the donkeys. Gulbudin said these donkeys have no tails - ’only I have a tail, so I shall have a ministry,’ he said. The donkeys are now in the government." Donkeys may be nice, friendly beasts to us, but to call anyone in the Muslim world a khar - a donkey - is as insulting as you can get. Mohamed was talking about the "mujahedin" guerrilla fighters who moved into Kabul after the Russian withdrawal in 1990, an arrival that presaged years of civil war atrocities which left at least 65,000 Afghans dead. This was the conflict which so sickened the anti-Soviet fighter Osama bin Laden that he left Afghanistan for Sudan.

Mohamed looks at me - a small energetic man with dark, sharp eyes. "I wanted future generations to know what we went through, to understand our pain," he says to me. I couldn’t stop myself writing this poetry." This was his mistake. Betrayed to the "mujahedin", he was thrown into a foul prison in Kabul, rescued only by the intercession of his father. The Taliban came next and Mohamed could not prevent his pen from betraying him again. "I kept my poetry ’under the table’, as we say, but someone at my office found a poem I had written called Out of Work and told the boss who was a mullah." When he knew that he had been discovered, Mohamed ran in terror from his office to his father’s home.

Mohamed seems to spend his life on the run. He and his wife and three children live in the north of Holland, desperate to stay in the land to which they fled six years ago, but the courts - in the new spirit of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Europe - have rejected their pleas to stay. Mohamed’s papers have expired. Now he waited in fear for the policeman who would demand: "Your papers please." A family friend, Hoji Abdul-Rahman, originally arranged for Mohamed and his family to flee Kabul for Jalalabad and then across the Afghan border to Pakistan where "Hoji" - an honorific title bestowed on those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca - obtained fake visas and passports that enabled them to fly to Holland. "I went straight to the police to tell them we were here," Mohamed said. "They were very good to us. They told us to register at Zevenaar as asylum-seekers, which we did."

He was housed in a small Dutch village where the local people treated the Afghan family with great kindness. "They always came to see us in our flat and gave us food and invited us to their homes," Mohamed said, producing a sad poem entitled Thank You for Everything in tribute to the Dutch people. But fate struck Mohamed again. Had the last of four court hearings into his case have dated his refugee status from the day he arrived in Holland rather than that of his first visit to Zevenaar in 2000 - which was delayed because the Dutch authorities were enjoying the week-long millennium celebrations - he would probably have qualified for permanent refugee status.

"But the court dated my arrival from the delayed registration at Zevenaar and told me my family had to leave Holland. They said that the Taliban had been defeated and that Afghanistan was now a ’democracy’. But they wouldn’t accept that Karzai’s government includes many of the ’mujahedin’ warlords who locked me up in prison. They will do the same again." Which is probably true. But now Mohamed, his wife and three children - one of them born in Holland - wait for the police to take them to Schipol airport for the long journey back to their dangerous homeland.

The ferocious murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh and the callous behaviour of his Muslim murderer - who announced in court that he felt no compassion for van Gogh’s family - has hardened Dutch government hearts just as the rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois has hardened those of Messrs Sarkozy and Chirac. So what am I to say to Mohamed as he sits hunched in the deep, soft armchair of my hotel room, clutching his poetry book and his sack of expired refugee papers, a mechanical engineer with a foreign language degree from a Ukrainian university who must now clear garbage from Dutch apartment blocks to earn money? I can’t help you, I say quietly. I will write about you. I will try to pump some compassion out of the authorities. But the days of such humanity - if they ever existed in Britain - have run out.

Next day, I am giving a lecture in the Belgian city of Antwerp when a man in the audience starts to berate me. "Why should we help Afghans or Iraqis or other Muslims when their own governments treat them like crap?" he asked. "Why should we have to save them from their own people. Why do we have to treat them better?" I explain that it was us - we, the West - who armed the "mujahedin" to fight the Russians and then ignored Afghanistan when it collapsed into civil war, that we nurtured the Taliban via Saudi Arabia and Pakistan when we thought we could negotiate with them for a gas pipeline across Afghanistan, that the current US ambassador in Iraq - that other blood-drenched democratic success story - was once involved with the company Unocal, which negotiated with the Taliban over the pipeline route, that Karzai had also been working for Unocal. To no avail.

Our new moral compass, it seems, is no longer "Saddam was worse than us" but "why should we treat Muslims any better than they treat each other?". And now we know that the CIA is holding other Muslims in bunkers deep beneath the earth of democratic Romania and brave old democratic Poland for a little torture, what hope is there for Mohamed? For him - and for us in Britain soon if Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara gets his way - it will be a familiar story from Europe’s dark past. Vos papiers, Monseiur. Arbeitspapiere, bitte schön. Your papers, please.

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* Robert Fisk is a prominent British journalist, currently Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent.
Source: The Independent, November 5, 2005
Visit the website at www.independent.co.uk
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
First published in The Independent. ©Independent News & Media.
Please contact syndication@inuk.co.uk for reprint permission.

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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. This service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal in June 2003.

Every week, CGNews-PiH will distribute 5 news articles, op-eds, features, and analyses that aid in developing and analyzing the current and future relationship of the West and Arab/Muslim world. Articles will be chosen based on accuracy, balance, and their ability to improve understanding and communication across borders and regions. They will also reflect the need for constructive dialogue around issues of global importance. Selections will be authored by local and international experts and leaders who will analyze and discuss a broad range of relevant issues. We invite you to submit any articles you feel are compatible with the goals of this news service.

Partners in Humanity also regularly publishes the work of student leaders and journalists whose articles strengthen intercultural understanding and promote constructive perspectives and dialogue in their own communities through its Youth Views column. Student journalists and writers under the age of 27 are encouraged to write cbinkley@sfcg.org for more information on contributing.

We look forward to hearing from you, and welcome any questions, concerns, or comments you may have about this service. Please forward this message to colleagues and friends who may also wish to subscribe to the service. To subscribe, send an email to subscribe-cgnewspih@sfcg.org with subscribe in the subject line.

If you are a member of the media, please join us in promoting constructive dialogue to improve understanding and perceptions. 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 you choose to republish any of the articles, please acknowledge both the original source and CGNews, and notify us at cgnewspih@sfcg.org

The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews or its affiliates.

Common Ground News Service
1601 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite #200
Washington, DC 20009 USA
Ph: +1(202) 777-2207
Fax: +1(202) 232-6718

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Ph: +32 (02) 736-7262
Fax: +32(02) 732-3033
E-mail: cgnewspih@sfcg.org
Website: http://www.commongroundnews.org

Editors:
Emad Khalil
Amman Editor

Juliette Schmidt
Beirut Editor

Elyte Baykun & Leena El-Ali
Washington Editors

Michael Shipler & Chris Binkley
Youth Views Editors

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Posted by Evelin at November 22, 2005 11:49 PM