Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
March 7, 2006

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

1. Open the gates of ijtihad by Claude Salhani
This first article in a series on the role of ijtihad in Muslim-Western relations looks at the position held by the United States Institute of Peace that ‘opening the gates of ijtihad’ would allow for a beneficial reinterpretation of Islamic law, or Shari’ah, for the 21st century. Providing a basic explanation of ijtihad, Claude Salhani highlights some of the challenges facing such reinterpretation as well as the support for it from proponents who feel that “the cures for what ails some Muslim communities can only emerge from Islam itself”, and that reopening these gates will encourage positive community participation by mainstream Muslims.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), March 7, 2006)

2. Here's how to tame the volatility of 'connectedness' by David Ignatius
David Ignatius, syndicated columnist, considers two theories that help to explain why our growing global interconnectedness feels so chaotic, particularly when it comes to recent tensions between the West and the Muslim world. The first is that as elites around the world become more connected with the global economy, they become more disconnected from their own cultures and political systems. The second is to do with the Internet’s characteristic as a 'rage enabler'. He argues that understanding these two theories is key to “restabilising” our disorderly world.
(Source: Daily Star, February 23, 2006)

3. Muslims and the West: a culture war? By John L. Esposito
Highly critical of the European papers that reprinted cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, University Professor at Georgetown University, John L. Esposito, argues that this issue has little to do with freedom of expression, quoting polls that demonstrate the value many predominantly Muslim countries place on freedom of speech. Suggesting that the salient issues are religion, identity, respect (or lack of it) and public humiliation, Esposito concludes that 'pluralism and tolerance today demand greater mutual understanding and respect from non-Muslims and Muslims alike'.
(Source: Islam Online, February 14, 2006)

4. ~YOUTH VIEWS~
In Brussels we trust? The continuing struggle of Turkey’s Alevis for recognition by Ipak Ruzcan
Ipak Ruzcan, a doctoral student in political science at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, explains how the upcoming talks on Turkey’s ascension to the EU may positively impact Turkish minority groups such as the Alevis. Describing the historical and modern roots of the discrimination that Alevis face, Ruzcan explains how, in order to meet EU requirements, Turkey will have to begin to acknowledge and grant them the same rights as Turkey’s majority Sunni population.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), March 7, 2006)

5. Extreme vacation by Amelia Thomas
“Once you know someone in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan, once you have friends on the 'enemy' side, you understand that those people are human beings just like you, and it's much harder to demonise them.” Amelia Thomas, contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, interviews the owner and participants of Hospitality Club, an Internet-based organisation that puts travellers in touch with each other as a way of bridging gaps in communication and understanding between cultures. Paul Gabriner, a retired English professor from the Netherlands says "the world would be a better place if regular people across the world met each other regularly ... there would be much more international understanding."
(Source: The Christian Science Monitor, February 28, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
Open the gates of ijtihad
Claude Salhani

Washington, D.C. - The solution to the turmoil gripping Muslim society today may be found in reintroducing ijtihad. Re-opening the gates of ijtihad will allow Muslims "to reinterpret Islam for the 21st century," states a comprehensive August 2004 special report produced by the United States Institute of Peace.

"The practice of ijtihad," stresses the report compiled with the participation of several respected Muslim scholars, "must be revived." Ijtihad -- or hermeneutics -- refers to the institutionalised practice of interpreting Islamic law (sharia’h) to take into account changing historical circumstances and, therefore, different points of view.

Ijtihad is the independent or original interpretation of problems not covered by the Qur’an (Islam's holy book), the Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet's life and utterances), and ijma' (scholarly consensus). In the early days of the Muslim community, every adequately qualified jurist had the right to exercise such original thinking.

Fearing too much change would weaken their political clout, the gates of ijtihad were closed to Sunni Muslims by religious scholars about 500 years ago. From then on, scholars and jurists were to rely only on the original meaning and earlier interpretations of the Qur’an and the Hadith. However, there is now a growing movement among scholars and intellectuals to revive the practice of ijtihad.

Today, Muslim society is experiencing turbulence; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued occupation of Palestinian lands, the frustrations caused by oppressive regimes and the absence of democracy have all conspired to give birth to a radical, politicised and violent form of Islam, whose adherents have turned to terror as a means of achieving their aims. They have politicised Islam.

Contrary to Samuel P. Huntington's belief that Islam and the West are headed for a clash of civilizations, other scholars argue that the real clash is between two diverging ideas within Islam itself. The clash is between the politicised Islam of a radical element which has turned to violence as a means of expressing itself, and the mainstream majority which remains largely silent. In fact, the violent tactics of this fringe-force of highly-politicised Muslims has proven useful in directly intimidating the mainstream into relative silence.

"Political Islam has proven a formidable force even though Islamic movements or organizations often constitute a minority of the community," states John Esposito, a professor of religion at Washington's Georgetown University.

As in most conflicts, solutions can only come from within. Similarly, the cures for finding what ails some Muslim communities can only emerge from Islam itself. Resolutions cannot be imposed from the West. But before that can come to pass, however, two things must happen.

Firstly, the Muslim mainstream must play a greater role in its community; and secondly, it must be given an authoritative tool enabling it to enact positive changes. That tool is ijtihad.

The re-introduction of ijtihad enjoys the support of a growing number of scholars, intellectuals and Islamic institutions, both in the West and in the Arab world. Even the Saudi Arabian Minister of the Waqf, or Religious Affairs, Sheikh Saleh Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, and Ali Bardakoglu, president of the Diyanet, or the highest religious authority in Turkey, support this. Both al-Sheikh and Bardakoglu divulged in interviews that they were in favour of reinstating ijtihad.

"The general strategy is to expand the base of ‘moderates’," said the Saudi minister. But he warned, however, that "so long as there were bad things" happening in Iraq and Palestine, it would prolong negative events in the rest of the world.

The roadblocks to ijtihad are numerous and tough. A preliminary study shows that the Muslim world remains divided over who should have the authority to implement ijtihad and how much should be allowed to change. There is no religious hierarchy in Sunnism, the branch of Islam that dominates the Muslim world, as there is in Shiism.

Still, the belief is that with time, effort and education, ijtihad will eventually be re-introduced, allowing important changes to be made.

Another hurdle is that historically, reform of Islamic law has often been confused with criticism of Islam itself. Conservative Muslims have, at various times, labelled those who have attempted to introduce reforms as non-believers. Fatwas, or religious edicts, have even been issued against potential reformers, at times condemning them to death. This hurdle is real and will require Muslims to see the difference between critiquing Islam in order to tear it down, and reforming Islamic law in order to build up Muslims and their societies.

If ijtihad's doors remain closed and political Islam continues to rise, this will lead to a greater schism between the average Muslim and the radical as well as between Islam and the West. This would expand the existing conflict, turning it into the infamous ‘clash of civilizations’, and would have severe repercussions for Muslims everywhere, especially those living in the West.

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*Claude Salhani is International Editor and a political analyst with United Press International in Washington. Comments may be sent to Claude@upi.com.
This article is part of a series of views on "The Role of Ijtihad in Muslim-Western Relations”, published jointly by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and United Press International (UPI).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), March 7, 2006
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
Here's how to tame the volatility of 'connectedness'
David Ignatius

Washington, D.C. - One of the baseline assumptions of U.S. foreign policy is that "connectedness" is a good thing. Linkage to the global economy fosters the growth of democracy and free markets, the theory goes, and that in turn creates the conditions for stability and security. But if that's true, why is an increasingly "connected" world such a mess?

This paradox of the 21st century is confounding the Bush administration's hopes for democratisation in the Middle East. It turns out that in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps nations yet to come, the growth of democracy and modern technology have had the effect of enfranchising pre-modern political movements - ones linked to religious sects, ethnic minorities and tribes. This trend astonishes Westerners who meet with Arab modernisers at events such as the World Economic Forum or see the skyscrapers of Dubai and think the world is coming our way.

Among military strategists, the bible of connectedness is a book called "The Pentagon's New Map" by Thomas P.M. Barnett. He argues that the world today is divided between an "integrating core" of orderly commerce, stretching from America and Europe across to China and India, and a "non-integrating gap", which is his shorthand for the messy rest of the world. The task of American foreign policy is to connect the two. Thomas Friedman's influential book, "The World is Flat", argues that technology itself is driving this process of integration, and that it's creating a richer, smarter global community.

So why does the world feel so chaotic? Why is there a growing sense that, as Francis Fukuyama put it in a provocative essay in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and - yes, unfortunately - terrorism"? I have been discussing this conundrum with friends, and I've heard two interesting theories worth sharing.

The first comes from Raja Sidawi, a Syrian-born businessman who owns Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and is one of the most astute analysts of the Arab world I know. He argues that Barnett misses the fact that as elites around the world become more connected with the global economy, they become more disconnected from their own cultures and political systems. The local elites "lose touch with what's going on around them," opening up a vacuum that is filled by religious parties and sectarian groups, contends Sidawi. The modernisers think they are plugging their nations into the global economy, but what's also happening is that they are unplugging themselves politically at home.

Sidawi's theory - that connectedness produces a political disconnect - helps explain some of what we see in the Middle East. Take the case of Iran: a visitor to Tehran in 1975 would have thought the country was rushing toward the First World. The members of the Iranian elite looked and talked just like the Western bankers, business executives and political leaders who were embracing Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi's modernising regime. And yet a few years later, that image of connectedness had been shattered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution, whose aftershocks still rumble across the region. The Iranian modernisers had lost touch with the masses. That process has been repeated in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority - where the secular elites who talked the West's line have proven to be weak politically.

A second explanation of the connectedness paradox comes from Charles M. McLean, who runs a trend-analysis company called Denver Research Group, Inc. (I wrote a 2004 column called "Google with Judgment" that explained how his company samples thousands of online sources to assess where global opinion is heading). I asked McLean last week if he could explain the latest explosion of rage in our connected world - namely the violent Islamic reaction to Danish cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammad.

McLean argues that the Internet is a ‘rage enabler’. By providing instant, persistent, real-time stimuli, the new technology takes anger to a higher level. "Rage needs to be fed or stimulated continually to build or maintain it", he explains. The Internet provides that instantaneous, persistent poke in the eye. What's more, it provides an environment where enraged people can gather at cause-cantered Web sites and make themselves even angrier. The technology, McLean notes, "eliminates the opportunity for filtering or rage-dissipating communications to intrude". I think McLean is right. And you don't have to travel to Cairo to see how the Internet fuels rage and poisons reasoned debate. Just take a tour of the American blogosphere.

The connected world is inescapable, like the global economy itself. But if we can begin to understand how it undermines political stability - how it can separate elites from masses, and how it can enhance rage rather than reason - then perhaps we will have a better chance of restabilising a very disorderly world.

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* Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is published regularly by The Daily Star and is op-ed columnist for The Washington Post.
Source: Daily Star, February 23, 2006
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 3
Muslims and the West: a culture war?
John L. Esposito

Washington, D.C. - Newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad have set off an international row with dangerous consequences, both short and long term. The controversial caricatures, first published in Denmark and then in other European newspapers, target Muhammad and Islam and equate them with extremism and terrorism. In response to outcries and demonstrations across the Muslim world, the media has justified these cartoons as freedom of expression; France’s Soir and Germany's Die Welt asserted a "right to caricature God" and a "right to blasphemy," respectively.

One of the first questions I have been asked about this conflict by media from Europe, the US and Latin America has been “Is Islam incompatible with Western values?” Are we seeing a culture war? Before jumping to that conclusion, we should ask: whose Western democratic and secular values are we talking about? Is it a Western secularism that privileges no religion in order to provide space for all religions and to protect belief and unbelief alike? Or is it a Western “secular fundamentalism” that is anti-religious and increasingly, post 9/11, anti-Islam?

What we are witnessing today has little to do with Western democratic values and everything to do with a European media that reflects and plays to an increasingly xenophobic and Islamophobic society. The cartoons seek to test and provoke; they are not ridiculing Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi but mocking Muslims’ most sacred symbols and values as they hide behind the façade of freedom of expression. The win-win for the media is that explosive headline events, reporting them or creating them, also boosts sales. The rush to reprint the Danish cartoons has been as much about profits as about the prophet of Islam. Respected European newspapers have acted more like tabloids.

What is driving Muslim responses? At first blush, the latest Muslim outcries seem to reinforce the post 9/11 question of some pundits: “Why do they hate us?” with an answer that has become ‘conventional wisdom’: “They hate our success, democracy, freedoms…” - a facile and convenient as well as wrong-headed response. Such answers fail to recognise that the core issues in this ‘culture war’ are about faith, Muhammad’s central role in Islam, and the respect and love that he enjoys as the paradigm to be emulated. They are also more broadly about identity, respect (or lack of it) and public humiliation. Would the mainstream media with impunity publish caricatures of Jews or of the holocaust? As France's Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk observed: "We gain nothing by lowering religions, humiliating them and making caricatures of them. It's a lack of honesty and respect", he said. He said freedom of expression “is not a right without limits".

A recently completed Gallup World Poll that surveyed Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia enables us to find data-based answers about Islam by listening to the voices of a billion Muslims. This ground-breaking Gallup study provides a context and serves as a reality check on the causes for widespread outrage.

When asked to describe what Western societies could do to improve relations with the Arab/Muslim world, by far the most frequent reply (47% in Iran, 46% in Saudi Arabia, 43% in Egypt, 41% in Turkey, etc.) was that they should demonstrate more understanding and respect for Islam, show less prejudice, and not denigrate what Islam stands for. At the same time, large numbers of Muslims cite the West’s technological success and its liberty and freedom of speech as what they most admire. When asked if they would include a provision for Freedom of Speech, defined as allowing all citizens to express their opinion on political, social and economic issues of the day if they were drafting a constitution for a new country, overwhelming majorities (94% in Egypt, 97% in Bangladesh, 98% in Lebanon etc.) in every country surveyed responded yes, they would.

Cartoons defaming the Prophet and Islam by equating them with terrorism are inflammatory. They reinforce Muslim grievances, humiliation and social marginalisation and drive a wedge between the West and moderate Muslims, unwittingly playing directly into the hands of extremists. They also reinforce autocratic rulers who charge that democracy is anti-religious and incompatible with Islam.

Where do we go from here?

Core principles and values, like freedom of speech, cannot be compromised. However, freedoms do not exist in a vacuum; they do not function without limits. In many countries, hate speech (such as holocaust denial, incitement to racial hatred, advocating genocide) is a criminal offence prohibited under incitement-to-hatred legislation. Our western secular democracies represent not only freedom of expression but also freedom of religion. Belief as well as unbelief needs to be protected. Freedom of religion in a pluralistic society ought to mean that some things are sacred and treated as such. The Islamophobia which is becoming a social cancer should be as unacceptable as anti-Semitism, a threat to the very fabric of our democratic pluralistic way of life. Thus, it is imperative for political and religious leaders, commentators and experts, and yes, the media, to lead in building and safeguarding our cherished values.

And what about Muslim responses? Muslim leaders are hard pressed to take charge, asserting their faith and rights as citizens, affirming freedom of expression while rejecting its abuse as a cover for prejudice. A sharp line must be drawn between legitimate forms of dissent and violent demonstrations or attacks on embassies that inflame the situation and reinforce Western stereotypes. The many Muslim leaders, from America and Europe to the Muslim world, who have publicly urged restraint and strongly condemned violence, play a critical role.

Globalisation and an increasingly multi-cultural and multi-religious West test the mettle of our cherished democratic values. As the current cartoon controversy underscores, pluralism and tolerance today demand greater mutual understanding and respect from non-Muslims and Muslims alike.

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* John L. Esposito, University Professor at Georgetown University, is a Gallup Senior Scientist and co-author of the forthcoming “Can you Hear Me Now: What a Billion Muslims are Trying to Tell Us”.
Source: Islam Online, February 14, 2006)
Visit the website at www.islamonline.net
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~
In Brussels we trust? The continuing struggle of Turkey’s Alevis for recognition
Ipak Ruzcan

Ankara, Turkey - In a few weeks’ time Turkish and European Union officials will sit down for the European Union (EU) entry talks, during which over thirty “chapters” of European norms and standards will be discussed and reviewed. Turkey will have to comply with all of them before it can join the club.

The first session, covering standards and norms in science and research, will no doubt prove to be relatively unproblematic. But Ankara knows all too well that it is just a matter of time before such thorny issues as religious freedoms and human rights come up for discussion. For the Alevis, a cultural and religious group facing religious discrimination in Turkey, there is hope that the negotiations will bring needed relief.

The Alevis are a non-Sunni religious community that makes up around one fifth of Turkey’s predominantly Sunni population. The faith emerged as a mix of mystical Islam with elements of pre-Islamic shamanism in 9th century Anatolia. In the 16th century, Alevis were driven underground when the Ottoman Empire wrested control of the Anatolian peninsula from its greatest rival, the Shi’ite Safavid Empire. Alevis, as victims of pogroms and accusations of heresy, practiced their faith in secret, often pretending to be Sunnis as late as the twentieth century.

One reason Sunni Turks have often disparaged and stigmatised them is that Alevis, like other Shi’ites, revere Ali and his descendents as the true heirs of the Prophet Muhammad. However, many other Alevi practices differ significantly from those of both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam. Alevis do not worship in mosques, instead gathering in various locations to practice their religious ceremony, the Cem. During Cem ceremonies, men and women pray together, facing each other rather than Mecca. Alevis also reject many other tenets of Islam, such as the pilgrimage to Mecca, fasting and daily prayers, in favour of a more mystical, humanistic approach. Officially, Alevi places of worship do not enjoy legal status as places of worship – instead the Turkish establishment labels them cultural centres.

Also, because Alevis often worship in secret, rumours and prejudices about the Alevis are common. As recently as 1995, a Turkish comedian joked on television that Alevis practiced incest at their ceremonies. The EU has no magic wand with which to combat these attitudes, yet it has made its message clear: Turkey has to improve the status of its Alevi community before it can be admitted.

Politics in the last half of the 20th century has also contributed to the Alevis’ low status. In the 1970s, many Alevis held left-leaning political beliefs that were seen as support for Marxism, leading to violent clashes with right-wing militias. After the military takeover in 1980, governments enhanced the role of Sunni Islam in Turkish society, partly in response to Communism, leading left-leaning Alevis to fear for their existence as a distinct cultural group. The government went so far as to ban some Alevi religious celebrations and to allow infrastructure projects in Alevi areas only if accompanied by mosque-building. Liberalisation and further entrenchment of democracy in Turkey in the early 1990s only partly resolved the conflict -- as recently as 1993, a fundamentalist Sunni mob set fire to a hotel full of Alevis participating in a nearby conference, resulting in 36 deaths.

Since then, the Turkish state has generally preferred the status quo - secularism mixed with strong support for mainstream Sunni Islam - to increasing recognition for distinct cultural groups and a possible renewal of the ethnic and political violence of the 1970s. However, thanks to a new Law on Associations that aims to bring Turkey in line with EU standards, many restrictions on civil society have been removed and Alevi cultural groups are flourishing. A ruling by an Ankara court in 2002 that an Alevi organisation was inciting religious separatism was also recently overturned by a higher court. In 1997, top government officials, including the prime minister and the president, took the courageous step of attending the annual Alevi cultural festival. Meanwhile, the EU itself has stepped in to assist Alevi associations with grants from the EU’s pre-accession funds.

In addition, the European Court of Human Rights may well settle the issue of compulsory religious education in the near future. In a case presented to the Court, the family of one Alevi student asked for exemption from compulsory religious education at school on the grounds that the curriculum fails to mention non-Sunni Islamic sects in Turkey. Though the case has not yet been decided, this year’s curriculum does include some mention of the Alevis, and it will be up to the Strasbourg-based court to judge if these efforts have been sufficient.

Despite this progress, as the EU continues to monitor Turkey’s reform process, it has been quick to note the difficulties faced by the Alevis with regard to their places of worship. The most recent EU report on Turkey’s progress calls on the Directorate General for Religious Affairs in Ankara to start allocating funding for Alevi places of worship, as it does for Sunni mosques. However, as far as the Directorate itself is concerned, the Alevis do not exist at all, and classifies them as a type of Sunni Muslim.

Thus far, Brussels has treaded carefully with regard to issues of religious freedom in Turkey, and has preferred to approach the Alevis’ status piecemeal. Over eighty thousand pages of EU rules and regulations must be made a part of Turkish law before actual membership, however the spirit of the law is just as important, and Turkey’s commitment to upholding human rights and religious freedoms will be watched carefully by many, both in and outside of Brussels.

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* Ipak Ruzcan is a doctoral student in political science at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), March 7, 2006
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 5
Extreme vacation
Amelia Thomas

Deheishe Camp, West Bank - The streets of this seething Palestinian refugee camp, just outside Bethlehem, are dirty and crowded. The main street, where screeching strains of a political rally mingle with the din of animal and mechanical obstacles, gives off onto a dismal lane where Hamas posters merge with graffiti and a ragged Fatah flag flutters.

This hardly looks like the ideal holiday spot. But nestled on this chaotic lane is the al-Haj apartment: tourist destination.

Vacationing in a Palestinian refugee camp - past Israeli military checkpoints and onto streets most often photographed for nightly news not tourist brochures - may seem unlikely. But a stream of foreigners - Americans, English, Dutch - booking stays at Yasser al-Haj's apartment here prove otherwise. Despite frequent blackouts, Israeli army incursions, a lack of hot water, and nary a mint on the pillow, some foreigners find the West Bank - and other global hot spots like Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan - prime vacation territory.

Mr. Haj, a Palestinian who's lived here all his life, is one of more than 100,000 members of Hospitality Club, an Internet-based organisation that puts travellers in touch with each other, favouring free home stays and personal introductions over generic hotel accommodation and guided tours. Through the club, vacationers connect with one another and arrange to meet for dinner, drinks, or sightseeing in the host's city, or stay at his or her home. In Haj's case, this is a small ground floor apartment that he shares with his aging parents, in the dismal depths of the West Bank.

The majority of HC members from 188 countries live in pleasant Western locations. A handful, like Haj, is from truly off-the-beaten-track countries unlikely to make the Top 5 - or even Top 105 - holiday destinations.

Raving about her recent visit to Kabul, Afghanistan, Kathrine Frygtloes, a Dane interested in Afghan dancing, credits it all to her young Afghan host, Abdul Waheed, who safely steered her through "so many soldiers and weapons everywhere."

"It's nice that members from France can visit members in the USA," says Veit Kühne, a German who founded the club when he was in college and now works with it full time. "But what I've always really wanted to do is bring people from more 'difficult' places, like Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Serbia, and Palestine, in contact with people from outside those areas.... Once you know someone in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan, once you have friends on the 'enemy' side, you understand that those people are human beings just like you, and it's much harder to demonise them."

As soon as you enter Haj's living room, his elderly mother, in a long embroidered gown and headscarf framing a careworn face, immediately appears with a tray of fruit and strong cardamom-flavoured coffee. "You see?" he smiles, "Palestinian hospitality already." We shiver in the chilly, unheated room, furnished in "Arabic baroque" with a mural of a blazing sunset vista.

In the eight months he's had his profile on the website, he's had dozens of e-mails and has hosted several travellers. "I first joined Hospitality Club in order to make new friends abroad," says Haj, who visits Germany frequently because the small youth centre that his nongovernmental organisation, Karama, runs receives funding from charities there. His effort to meet HC members in Germany received no answers, he says, unsure if it was the result of an unfavourable image of Palestinians in the West. "Instead," he adds, with genuine puzzlement, "people started to e-mail me, asking if they could stay with me."

Despite limited means, Haj refuses to accept payment for phone calls, food, or lodging. It's a matter of pride to even the poorest Palestinians to welcome even strangers with open arms.

Still, why - out of the whole world - would a traveller turn up on this grim, albeit hospitable, doorstep? It's important to experience local life from the "inside," say some travellers like Paul Gabriner, a retired English professor from the Netherlands who stayed with Haj. "The world would be a better place if regular people across the world met each other regularly ... there would be much more international understanding," he says.

Most who visit the Haj family are intrepid souls. "But they're scared to be here alone," says Haj, "because they think the Palestinian Territories are unsafe. People have ideas that Palestinians are thieves, terrorists, and killers.... And being with a friendly local makes them feel safer."

Though he doesn't automatically tell guests unless they ask, Haj admits his own record of youthful "terrorism," having thrown stones at Israeli soldiers, burned tires, and sprayed anti-Israeli graffiti. At 15, he was thrown in Israeli detention for two years for cutting a hole in an Israeli fence encircling the camp. (On the issue of host-guest security, Mr. Veit notes that HC requires passport number exchanges to make a reservation. "Risk is relatively small," he says if a host has been rated well on the website by several guests.)

But regardless of his personal history, which might be enough to immediately send some guests packing, Haj's visitors keep on coming.

Israel's "security wall" is the biggest photo opportunity near Haj's apartment, and the cuisine, though hearty and home-cooked, isn't exactly a gourmet's delight. Some, like Mr. Gabriner, volunteer for a few days at Al Haj's Karama centre to complete the experience.

"There aren't any up-to-date guidebooks, so people don't know where to go," explains Roel Forceville, a Belgian development worker in Palestinian East Jerusalem and one of nine HC hosts in the Palestinian Territories. As unlikely as it sounds, there's actually a lot to see when vacationing in the West Bank - especially with someone who knows the region. Beside Bethlehem and Jericho, there are many impressive monasteries in the countryside. And, Mr. Forceville and Haj both suggest, the West Bank is a relatively safe destination for foreigners. Suicide attacks and bombings usually take place in Israel - not in the Palestinian Territories. Visitors, they say, arrive scared of what they'll find on this side of the wall - and leave realising the threat lies just as much on the other.

Guest Gabriner agrees that before and after impressions are poles apart: "When I thought of a 'camp' I thought of ... something impermanent. But it's not: it's a permanent slum, still called a camp because people living there need desperately to believe that they're not there for good."

This balance - seeing beauty through the decrepitude, and finding that danger doesn't always lurk where it is expected - says Haj, is central to the visitor's experience of "Palestine."

When Haj's weary mother enters the living room carrying another tray of coffee and fruit she hands her son a cell phone, worriedly relating how her brother has just been arrested by Israeli troops for illegally trying to cross the border into Israel.

"He was trying to get to Jerusalem, to look for work," explains Haj. "They might let him go with a fine, or he may go to prison. I'll see what I can find out," he says as he starts a string of calls.

To a Western Hospitality Club vacationer, able to walk in and out of the West Bank with relative ease, this might be an exciting, thought-provoking vacation moment; to a Palestinian at Deheishe Camp, it's just a regular day.

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* Amelia Thomas is a contributor to the Christian Science Monitor.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, February 28, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity.
To obtain copyright permission, please contact lawrenced@csps.com.

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government, and the United States Institute of Peace, the service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict resolution

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Posted by Evelin at March 9, 2006 07:49 AM