Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
April 25, 2006

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The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim-Western relations.

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ARTICLES IN THIS EDITION:

1. ~Youth Views ~ Women’s rights in the Middle East and Islam by Bushra Jawabri and Talajeh Livani
World Bank consultants Bushra Jawabri and Talajeh Livani make a distinction between laws that are derived from Islam and those that come from old Middle Eastern traditions, social norms and imported European legal codes that have not been modified since the days of colonialism. Considering the roots that sustain the myths about women’s rights or lack thereof in the region, they insist that “Islam is not the culprit”. They claim that traditional views of family honour lead many men to keep their wives, daughters and sisters out of the workplace and that “if Middle Eastern women understood their rights and the origins of the patriarchal traditions binding them, they would know that nothing in Islam permits men to abuse, beat or control them.”
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), April 25, 2006)

2. Of caliphs and the caliphate: setting the record straight by Asma Afsaruddin
Asma Afsaruddin, an Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame, considers the negative connotations for many of the terms “jihad”, “shari‘a” and, more recently, “caliphate”. Placing these words in historical context, Afsaruddin attempts to dispel the fears of many in the West and to make a case for the relevance of these concepts today. For example, “many of the values and practices associated with the earliest Islamic caliphate could and can translate into democratic governance, equal rights for women and religious minorities and creation of civil societies today. They set powerful historical and legitimising precedents for genuine reform and revival in contemporary Islamic societies.”
(Source: New America Media, March 22, 2006)

3. Embers of Muhammad row smoulder in Denmark over TV host's headscarf by Slim Allagui
Agence France Press journalist and photographer, Slim Allagui, talks about a new debate in Denmark: “Asmaa Abdel Hamid, a 24-year-old Dane of Palestinian origin, is the co-host of an eight-part series on the public DR2 network on the fallout of the cartoons affair that led to violent reactions throughout the Muslim world.” The reaction by the Danish public demonstrates the diversity within the country, with some claiming that “the choice of Asmaa as co-host is an insult to Danish and Muslim women […and] sends the message that an honourable woman can't go out unless she is covered up," and others calling it "an historic breakthrough because for the first time a Muslim woman, even one wearing a headscarf, is accepted as part of Danish society and she is not necessarily an extremist".
(Source: Middle East Times, April 7, 2006)

4. For Francis Fukuyama, there is life after the neocons by Peter Nolan
Peter Nolan, an investment analyst based in London and a director of the Freedom Institute, explains the growing divide within the neoconservative movement in the United States being led by the well-known political analyst Francis Fukuyama. Shedding light both on the thinking that informed recent American policies towards the Middle East as well as the harsh critique of these policies stemming from a similar ideological perspective, Nolan highlights the conflicting views that currently shape the foreign strategy of this global superpower.
(Source: Daily Star, April 19, 2006)

5. My Afghan fitness guru by David Montero
Christian Science Monitor correspondent David Montero describes how joining a gym in Islamabad, Pakistan became the highlight of his day thanks to his Afghan physical trainer. While Montero came back day-after-day to build muscle, his trainer Nesar struggled to build his English vocabulary. “Every good story comes at a price though,” admits Montero. “For this one, I have paid with weeks of excruciating pain, the humiliation of knowing my own weakness, and periodic dressings-down from Nesar when I missed workouts or cut out early…But it's been worth it, because in addition to getting stronger, I've formed a great bond with another foreigner in this city, and that makes it feel more like home.”
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
~Youth Views~
Women’s rights in the Middle East and Islam
Bushra Jawabri and Talajeh Livani

Washington, D.C. - "I am not a feminist - but why should women be lazy and weak?” responds Laleh Seddigh, an Iranian woman who has emerged as one of Iran’s champion race-car drivers, when asked about her unusual career. Seddigh is an example of a new generation of young, Middle Eastern women striving to achieve their goals despite social constraints in a male-dominated region.

Unfortunately, even bringing up the issue of gender equality in the Middle East is often seen as a misguided attempt to impose Western ideas on Middle Eastern countries. Often, those discussing it are accused of being “feminists”, “Westernised”, “not Muslim enough” or “not good Arabs”, and so on.

Still, in comparison with other regions, Middle Eastern women score high on factors such as health and education despite the lack of support for gender equality.

There are three main obstacles to the empowerment of women in the Middle East. First and foremost is the lack of economic opportunities in the region as a whole. With unemployment rates averaging 15-20% across the Middle East, the region's women find it difficult to be self-sufficient, and as a result, remain dependent on men to provide for them. Because of the lack of jobs in many countries, women are also discouraged from working because of a belief that this will lead to higher unemployment for men. Simple bias against women also contributes to their lack of employment. If an equally or better qualified woman competes with a man for a position, often the man will be hired because of a belief that men are simply more capable.

The second obstacle is the legal system in many Middle Eastern countries. Laws regarding marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance, nationality and others tend to reduce women’s legal power and rights. However, contrary to common belief, many of these laws are not derived from Islam, but from old, Middle Eastern traditions and social norms and imported European legal codes that have not been modified since the days of colonialism. For example, in most Middle Eastern countries, a man can get a divorce by simply saying “I divorce you” whereas a woman must meet certain conditions, such as showing proof of abuse. In contrast, Islam allows a woman to divorce her husband even if the reason is simply that she is no longer attracted to him, which means that women are technically as free to leave a marriage as men. Islam clearly stipulates capital punishment by stoning for rapists but in many countries, a rapist may escape punishment by marrying his victim despite this stipulation, which in principle covers “married” rapists also. National laws seem designed to induce a sense of helplessness and worthlessness in women.

The third obstacle is social constraints. Recently, there seems to be a trend for men in Iran, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and even in the more conservative Gulf countries to pay lip service to women’s rights. Many men will be the first to tell you that women should have the right to vote, and to be politically and economically active. However, when it comes to women related to them, the old ways often remain the best. Women are rarely accepted as heads of households, even if they are financially supporting their husbands. Many men state publicly that women should be able to seek jobs -- as long as it is not their own wife, daughter, mother or sister.

Why are social constraints in general so effective? Because pride, reputation and honour mean everything in the majority of Middle Eastern societies. Islam is not the culprit, and general acceptance of the main principles of gender equality is widespread. Nonetheless, many men still believe that they are protecting the honour of their wives or relatives by not “letting” them work. And if they do, they set certain conditions, and may go so far as to check on who she is working with, why, where and whether or not society thinks their job is honourable.

“Honour” has more value in Middle Eastern culture than life itself. Honour is derived from ownership of land and the behaviour of one’s family. The latter, family honour, requires female purity and modesty, and therefore much effort is expended on protecting females from possible contamination or misbehaviour. Notably absent from this schema is the man himself – men are able to do dishonourable things, or marry below their station, without fear of damaging their reputations.

The idea that women have to be married by a certain age, a common obsession of mothers in the Middle East, is another tradition that often prevents women from pursuing careers. Because marriage, and not a successful career, is the measure of a woman’s success, mothers worry about their daughters reaching a certain age (usually the early twenties) without marrying because this makes them a subject of pity in the eyes of others.

Women themselves are the fourth and final barrier to women’s empowerment. Many women are not aware of their rights. Many also mistakenly ascribe certain old, Middle Eastern traditions from the jahiliya, or the “dark age” which preceded the arrival of the Prophet’s message, to Islam. If Middle Eastern women understood their rights and the origins of the patriarchal traditions binding them, they would know that nothing in Islam permits men to abuse, beat or control them.

What many people, not only those in the Middle East, are not aware of is that gender equality is not only a social justice issue but an economic one as well. Many studies have shown that countries with gender equality have less poverty, more outside investment, higher productivity and faster growth than countries where women’s right to work is constrained. If Middle Eastern countries are serious about development and wish to truly prosper, they will need to abandon the old traditions and invest in the forgotten half of their populations.

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* Bushra Mukbil Jawabri is a Palestinian, and grew up in a refugee camp. Talajeh Livani is an Iranian who was raised in Sweden. They both currently work as consultants to the World Bank in Washington, DC. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be found at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), April 25, 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 2
Of caliphs and the caliphate: setting the record straight
Asma Afsaruddin

South Bend, Indiana - Many Muslims watch in horror these days as some of the terms they associate most positively with their religion are appropriated by extremists and then fed back to Western media with a negative spin. "Jihad" and "shari‘a" were the first victims. Now "caliphate" has met the same fate.

"Jihad" has traditionally referred to the effort made by pious Muslims to better themselves and the world around them through spiritual, mental, educational and physical -- including military -- means. But the extremists today use the term only in the military sense, against anyone they arbitrarily name as the enemy, including Muslims they disagree with. Similarly, "shari‘a", an Arabic word meaning "the Way", refers to broad moral and legal principles from which specific laws may be created through human interpretation.

Mainstream Muslims regard the shari‘a as a source of mercy and justice. A considerable number among them insist that, outside of matters of worship, much of it is subject to different interpretations in different times and circumstances. The shari‘a is not simply a collection of harsh punishments, such as stoning for adultery and amputation of hands for theft, nor does it necessarily dictate an inferior social status for women and religious minorities. Yet thanks to the extremists, jihad and shari‘a have entered the Western media primarily as terms which point to essentially violent, merciless and unchanging Islamic societies.

Now militants have tainted another cherished concept, the caliphate, something they hope to recreate in order to impose their bloody world order. Understandably, this has caused concern in many circles. President Bush recently raised the "spectre" of a revived caliphate, causing goose bumps to form on the collective national epidermis. Others have warned of the dire consequences of a universal community of Muslims united under a single leader, their caliph. This would inevitably lead to totalitarian rule and a holy war against the West, an event desired by mainstream Muslims, or so we are told.

For those who know anything about early Islamic history, these characterisations are alarmist and historically inaccurate. The caliphate for which most Muslims have a high regard is specifically that of the Rightly Guided caliphs. This is the name given to the first four men who ruled the community between 632-661 CE, after the death of the prophet Muhammad. As recorded in early texts, the time of the Rightly Guided caliphs represents certain cherished ideals.

For instance, these men who succeeded one another were not related by blood and came to power through some process of consultation. They admitted their accountability publicly, as did Abu Bakr, the first caliph, who asked the people to correct him if he should fall into error. They became fabled for their tolerance toward religious minorities and respect for the rights of women. Thus Umar, the second caliph, refused to pray in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem when invited to do so by the patriarch there because he was afraid that the site might later be wrongfully claimed by Muslims as a mosque.

According to the ninth century historian Tabari, Umar promised the Christians of Jerusalem that their churches, crosses, lives and possessions would be protected. Umar also appointed a woman to the influential post of market inspector for the city of Medina and entrusted his copy of the Qur’an, which was the basis for the final version, to a daughter and not to a son.

Many mainstream Muslims I know point to examples such as these when they wax poetic about the Rightly Guided caliphs.

But a very different Umar crops up later in history as a kind of intolerant twin to the above. In contrast to the caliph described by Tabari, this Umar forbade Christians from repairing their churches and imposed humiliating restrictions on the practice of their faith, according to the terms of a treaty called the Pact of Umar. Is this also the Umar invoked by certain Muslims today? Certainly, and particularly by extremist Muslims. He has been used to justify discriminatory attitudes toward non-Muslims at different points in history.

Interestingly, Umar's double does not make his appearance in any historical source before roughly the 11th century. The second, later Umar was clearly invented in more sectarian, troubled times. Quest for worldly power and social privilege sometimes trumped fair treatment and justice and became reflected in law. This has been the unhappy experience of most societies of the world in relation to women and minorities. In our own times, when a Christian West is perceived by many to be on a collision course with the world of Islam, the alternative Umar's harsh decrees have been marshalled to legitimise bigotry practiced by, and against, Muslims.

So should mainstream Muslims today want a return of the caliphate? They should - but of the first type as exemplified by the early, magnanimous Umar, and in a metaphorical sense. Muslims should indeed want a revival of many of the tolerant and compassionate values and practices associated with the Rightly Guided caliphs and their era. We forget how much of modern Western political and legal reform was predicated on a return to the past for a selective retrieval of ideals. It was an appeal to an idealised ancient Roman republic that brought about the establishment of representative government in the West after centuries of despotism that had been justified by some on religious grounds. More recently, it was the privileging of Biblical insistence on the dignity of human beings that focused attention on human rights in the West.

Many of the values and practices associated with the earliest Islamic caliphate could and can translate into democratic governance, equal rights for women and religious minorities and creation of civil societies today. They set powerful historical and legitimising precedents for genuine reform and revival in contemporary Islamic societies. Rather than causing goose bumps, a responsible and critical engagement with the past, including the caliphate, on the part of reform-minded, forward-looking Muslims should be cause for optimism.

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* Asma Afsaruddin is an Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be found at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: New America Media, March 22, 2006
Visit the website at www.newamericamedia.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 3
Embers of Muhammad row smoulder in Denmark over TV host's headscarf
Slim Allagui

Copenhagen - Violent protests over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons have died down in the Muslim world but in Denmark, where the drawings were first printed, debate over the role of Islam has flared again, this time over a TV talk show host who wears a Muslim headscarf.

Asmaa Abdel Hamid, a 24-year-old Dane of Palestinian origin, is the co-host of an eight-part series on the public DR2 network on the fallout of the cartoons affair that led to violent reactions throughout the Muslim world.

Abdel Hamid's appearance on television - the first time that a female TV host has worn a headscarf in Denmark - has led to a flurry of negative reactions from viewers and feminist groups; evidence, say experts, that a wide gap still divides Danes and Muslims.

In this week's episode, Abdel Hamid, together with her atheist Danish co-host Adam Holm, grills a moderate Danish imam. Bright, frank and funny despite her austere looks, she engages in hard talk with her guest to get to the bottom of the crisis that has enveloped Denmark for two months.

"Our aim is to dissect the misunderstandings between Islam and the West in eight shows," she says after the broadcast of "Adam and Asmaa", wearing a sky-blue headscarf of the kind that she has worn since she was 14.

In her office, where a bouquet of flowers and a gift from one of her fans stand on a table, she welcomes this reporter. She refuses to shake his hand, placing her hand on her heart. "But don't think I'm a fanatic, I'm not," she insists with a warm smile.

Trained as a social worker and known as an ardent defender of Islam, Abdel Hamid's serene, almost angelic face is in sharp contrast to the angry reactions sparked by her television debut.

"The choice of Asmaa as co-host is an insult to Danish and Muslim women. She sends the message that an honourable woman can't go out unless she is covered up," blasts Vibeke Manniche, the head of the Women for Freedom association.

Manniche has started a petition to get the program taken off the air, insisting that DR2 "is a public service channel and it is important that its program hosts be objective and that its shows not be a meeting point for fanatic points of view".

Another group, the Iranian Women's Rights movement, has also urged viewers to voice their opposition to Abdel Hamid.

Denmark's minister for social affairs and gender equality, Eva Kjaer Hansen, has even jumped into the fray: "I want to remind DR that its employees should not serve as missionaries," she said recently.

DR2 defended its decision this week, saying, "headscarf-wearing women are part of Danish society and we need to accept this fact".

Abdel Hamid takes the criticism in stride but says that she is disappointed by it.

"I have a hard time understanding it, accepting that just because you wear a headscarf you are labelled a fundamentalist. That's too simplistic. I have no ties to fanatic circles," she insists.

She is a member of one of the Muslim organisations that sued Danish daily Jyllands-Posten for publishing the 12 cartoons, considered by Muslims to be blasphemous.

"I want to give a more nuanced image ... than that of Muslim women oppressed by the veil. You can still be strong and independent even with a piece of fabric on your head."

"I thought I would be supported when I accepted this job as host, which shows other Muslim women in Denmark that it is possible to actively participate in society," she says, adding: "Denmark is in many ways an Islamic society because it's a society that has a lot of what I believe in."

While she acknowledges that many "Muslim men in particular would rather see me at home than as the star of a television show", some of the reactions have been positive.

The movement Feminist Forum has been one of Abdel Hamid's supporters.

"Her hiring by DR strengthens ethnic and gender equality in Denmark and is a step in the right direction toward a more egalitarian representation in the media sphere," it said.

Tim Jensen, a religion expert at the University of Southern Denmark, says that the protests confirm that there is "still a wide lack of understanding between a good part of the Danish people and Muslims living in the country, which was brought to light by the cartoons row".

Yet, he stresses, Abdel Hamid's appearance on television "is an historic breakthrough because for the first time a Muslim woman, even one wearing a headscarf, is accepted as part of Danish society and she is not necessarily an extremist".

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* Slim Allagui is an Agence France Press journalist and photographer. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be found at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Middle East Times, April 7, 2006
Visit the website at www.metimes.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 4
For Francis Fukuyama, there is life after the neocons
Peter Nolan

London - History may not repeat itself, but historians certainly replicate each other and few scholars have been talked about by their peers as much as Francis Fukuyama. The American social scientist became famous for writing in 1989 that the world had reached an ideological "end of history". First fascism and then communism had been defeated, as was dramatically proven a few months after his article appeared in the journal The National Interest, when the Berlin Wall fell. The great ideological struggles that convulsed the 20th century were over, Fukuyama argued, leaving liberal democracy as the sole credible model for organising society.

Although his optimistic message was later welcomed by both the Clinton Democrats and internationally minded Republicans, Fukuyama has long been counted among the neoconservative school of foreign policy. In the 1970s, Fukuyama and his mentor, Paul Wolfowitz, worked together on nuclear arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. Under President Ronald Reagan, he worked on Palestinian autonomy negotiations following the Camp David Accords, and on Lebanon. Later, he followed Wolfowitz to teach at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. In 1998, along with Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, Fukuyama signed open letters calling for Saddam Hussein's overthrow, published by the Project for a New American Century.

More recently, however, Fukuyama changed direction, questioning the Bush administration's policies, in particular the invasion of Iraq. What ensued was a vitriolic debate with Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, a steadfast neocon, one battle in an all-out civil war in the American right. In a new book, "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy", Fukuyama finalised the break: "Having long regarded myself as a neoconservative, I thought I shared a common worldview with many other neoconservatives - including friends and acquaintances who served in the administration of George W. Bush ... I have concluded that neoconservatism ... has evolved into something that I can no longer support."

Fukuyama now argues that the international community should have continued to contain Iraq. "There was a lot you could have done to keep Iraq bottled up without invading them," he told me recently in London. The Clinton administration's regime-change strategy was largely restricted to giving financial support to the Iraqi opposition. With a new impetus after September 11, 2001, Fukuyama noted, United Nations sanctions on Iraq would have been sustainable without embarking on another war.

In "America at the Crossroads", Fukuyama tries to reclaim some neocon principles. He maintains the neocon belief that dictatorships are dangerous to the world because of their totalitarian aspirations and behaviour, while democracies live in peace with each other. Fukuyama also writes scathingly about the UN: the left, he believes, overemphasises the international organisation's potential to do good, while he largely agrees with critics on the American right that the UN is often corrupt and has only rarely offered a solution to international security problems, with the Korean War and the 1991 invasion of Kuwait as exceptions, when America was in the driving seat at the Security Council.

Instead, Fukuyama offers, as an alternative, something he calls "realistic Wilsonianism", named for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who sought to advance a more ideals-based foreign policy and was the main force behind the post-World War I League of Nations and the promotion of self-determination. Fukuyama describes U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as "moving towards that position, because [the administration has] made democracy promotion a fairly important part of the foreign policy and they've been multilateral." British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he believes, understands this approach instinctively, as he pushes Bush into taking the Palestinians seriously and working multilaterally. Of Democrats in general, he says that their constituencies want more protectionism and "I don't particularly trust any of them."

Fukuyama's past dealings with the Middle East help nourish a variety of contrasting views on leading regional issues. "Lebanon," Fukuyama says, "is the one part of the Arab world where the scenario is working as the Bush administration had hoped. I always thought that it was very different, the Maronites in particular, from other Arab countries."

However, in the rest of the region, it's the Islamists who have gained the most from greater openness. Hamas' election victory, notes Fukuyama, was a setback in the short run, ending any chance for a peace process for a long period. However, he was sceptical about past policies, saying that relying on Fatah to build a Palestinian state and suppress Islamists when it had no legitimacy and was extremely corrupt was unrealistic. "We now have to hope for an evolution on the part of Hamas over time and I've no illusions that that will be a quick process or an automatic one."

On Turkey, Fukuyama has mixed feelings. "I always thought the Islamic world needed something equivalent to Christian Democracy," and to him Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party shows promise. However, Fukuyama also underlines that Turkey was now infected to some degree by the same paranoia prevalent in the rest of the Islamic world. With tensions rising in Europe with Muslim immigrant communities, he doubts that Turkish entry into the European Union would be possible.

On Saudi Arabia, Fukuyama expects little real change. America's partnership with Osama bin Laden's homeland has been troubled since September 11, and is under attack in both countries. Fukuyama says that American influence over the kingdom's domestic politics will probably be minimal. "I don't think that we can affect Saudi Arabia. It's such a bizarre society; I think that most of the usual rules don't apply there."

For Fukuyama, Osama bin Laden is a keen evangelist of the idea of a "clash of civilisations". In his view, it's not the "Madison Avenue selling of the United States that is the problem" with America's image in the Arab world. The problem is Washington's underlying policies - not taking the Palestinian issue more seriously and invading Iraq. From a former neocon, such strophes help explain why Fukuyama's split with his former comrades was so powerful.

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* Peter Nolan (Peter.Nolan@thefi.org) is an investment analyst based in London and is a director of the Freedom Institute, an Irish public policy research organisation. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be found at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Daily Star, April 19, 2006
Visit the website at www.dailystar.com.lb
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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ARTICLE 5
My Afghan fitness guru
David Montero

Islamabad - Many evenings, when I first moved to Islamabad, I used to walk the streets to pass the time. The city is beautiful at night, and it seemed a better idea than watching more MTV and soaps in the native Urdu.

Then I discovered Ultimate Gym, a fitness centre just down the street from my house. I was sucked in by the blaring techno music and the earnestness of its young patrons, whom I spied through a wall of windows, gallivanting on treadmills and furiously working half-dilapidated exercise machines.

Life has never been the same.

At first I wasn't serious about the exercise; I thought of it as merely something to do. Joining a gym wasn't something I'd have done back home, but in a foreign place it seemed nice to belong to something.

Then I met Nesar, an Afghan fitness trainer who works for the gym. Nesar is huge, with chiselled jowls any Tajik would be proud of. He looks like he walked off the set of "Rambo III", a mujahiden extra, and talks like it.

"In six year, I made beautiful body," he told me, flexing in the mirror.

The first day I walked in, he suggested I let him train me, giving me a cold look up and down. He inspected my shoulders, patting them sceptically, the way one appraises leather goods or fruit.

"In few months I can make good body for you," he said. Physical trainers, it seems, make the same promises everywhere. I wasn't sure he was right, but he seemed sincere and I had a feeling I'd just stumbled onto a good story.

Every good story comes at a price though. For this one, I have paid with weeks of excruciating pain, the humiliation of knowing my own weakness, and periodic dressings-down from Nesar when I missed workouts or cut out early. If I tell him I have to leave for an interview, he'll just shake his head.

"But I did a lot today," I'll say in defence, suddenly the guilty student. My justifications only prompt his laughter. "You think that's a lot?!" he'll guffaw, then point at my gut, a gesture more powerful and guilt-inducing than any of his words. His real revenge is piling on more weight the next day, yelling “Come on, big guy!" as I squirm.

Sometimes I feel like I'm paying him to do the exercises for me. Like when I'm doing sit-ups and he just pulls me up and down with one arm. He's pretty energetic. It's the music they pump at the gym. He likes 50 Cent and Shakira, and does a little dance when Michael Jackson comes on. Just don't play Indian music; it ruins his workout.

"Psychologically, I'm feeling very bad when Indian music comes on," he says.

For me, feeling bad comes more from the pain than the music. But it's been worth it, because in addition to getting stronger, I've formed a great bond with another foreigner in this city, and that makes it feel more like home.

Nesar and his family fled Kabul 14 years ago, after his aunt was killed by a missile in the civil war. They were among more than 3 million Afghan refugees who flooded into neighbouring Pakistan.

Today, nearly 2 million Afghans have returned to their country, but many, including Nesar's family, still feel safer here. Life in Pakistan has been tough, but bodybuilding has been something of a savoir for Nesar. After a life of turmoil and upheaval, joblessness and scrapping by, bodybuilding seems to give him a sense of calm and ease, even a sense of control.

"I spent a really hard time living in Asia," he told me one day over an orange soda, adding later, "Bodybuilding encourages me mentally."

He's convinced that many young Afghans are crazy about bodybuilding, and says they have Arnold Schwarzenegger's film "Commando" to thank for that. "This encouraged us a lot," he says.

Nowadays, with life settled into a routine, working with Nesar is one of the highlights of the day. He says bodybuilding inspired him to make a better life for himself, so he started taking free English lessons a few years ago. Speaking with me every day helps.

"Today I learned, 'fortunately' and unfortunately,' " he said the other day. He thought for a second before uttering, "Fortunately I went to play tennis today." A smile. "Unfortunately it started raining." A frown. "Really, I like that one," he enthused.

I like to think the training is a workout for him as well. Once he asked me to make him a list of vocabulary words - advanced, journalistic things, he told me. So I wrote down some terms on a slip of paper - "Strategic relationship", "Escalating conflict", "Destabilising factor" - which he went over the next day while I worked out.

I was doing a "special" exercise he'd taught me, standing with knees bent, trying to curl a heavy dumbbell up and down. It's usually not so hard, because Nesar helps me - maybe a little too much.

This day, however, he barely seemed to notice I was there. All of his attention was focused on the list of words, which he clenched in his hands as tightly as I clenched the dumbbell in mine. My arm was shaking like agitated jello as I strained to lift the dumbbell, but Nesar intervened only half-heartedly, barely looking, giving my arm a little push from time to time. I was straining, but there was Nesar straining more, fumbling through "strategic".

When I learned I'd soon be going to Afghanistan, I asked Nesar for advice.

"Even the people serving food, how they're speaking, it will be very exciting for you." It reminded me that he'd once told me about how he saw a concert in Afghanistan and the stage collapsed. "Afghanistan is exciting country," he had said, a bright smile fanned across his lips.

Hopefully not too exciting.

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* David Montero is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. This article was distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be found at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
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Posted by Evelin at April 27, 2006 04:13 AM