Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
July 11, 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~ The day the wall went up by Stephen Coulthart
Stephen Coulthart, a recent political science and public justice graduate from the State University of New York, describes the “wall” that went up around the United States after 9/11. Americans were afraid and confused about their new enemy, and U.S. foreign policy prescriptions were adopted that seemed unfathomable a decade ago. But how could this happen in a world where technological advances claim to bring the world closer together and more information is available than ever before? Coulthart posits some reasons for this rapid change and suggests ways of using these same global tools and increased access to information to understand our differences and break down the wall.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 11, 2006)

2. Two countries, a common heritage by Assia Djebar
Franco-Algerian novelist and Georges Vedel Chair at the “Académie française”, Assia Djebar, introduces us to the literary masters who hailed from her native Algeria – Apuleius, Tertullian and St Augustine, whose works greatly shaped Christian thought. She makes a case for bringing these historical intellectuals together with modern thinkers in an educational effort that includes the under-appreciated history of North Africa.
(Source: Le Monde, June 24, 2006)

3. Reforms vs. democracy in the Arab world by V. Balaji Venkatachalm
The head of the research department of Forbes Arabia questions the current trend by governments and NGOs to spread democracy in the Middle East: “Democracy requires certain conditions, such as a market economy and a middle class in order to thrive. The empty political rhetoric of democracy as seen in Iraq will not fulfil the utopian dream of the U.S. administration for the Arab region.” He argues that “the three key problems afflicting Arab societies are a deficit of social freedom, a lack of opportunities for women and a knowledge gap with the rest of the world. Democracy can wait.”
(Source: Arab News, July 5, 2006)

4. What US wants in its troops: cultural savvy by Mark Sappenfield
A staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor describes a new kind of training now being taught to troopss based in the Middle East to make them more sensitive to local cultures. "It's the non-lethal aspects of our business that I think we're gaining a much greater appreciation for," said Gen. William Scott Wallace in a briefing last year. "It's appreciating the fact that the urban terrain includes people who grew up in a particular culture that we don't necessarily understand." Barak Salmoni, deputy director of the Center for Advanced Operational Cultural Learning at the Quantico base, adds that “cultural training can help build a better-prepared marine - one who sees Iraqis as more than just an inscrutable enemy”.
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2006)

5. IslamExpo seeks Muslim-West bridges by IslamOnline Staff
IslamOnline staff describe another tool that is being used to help build understanding and encourage greater communication between Western and Muslim cultures. The IslamExpo in London is an annual exhibition comprising conferences, lectures and seminars with renowned speakers on topics as diverse as art, literature, science, architecture, technology theology and politics. In addition, it includes films, dramas, photo exhibits, concerts, comedy, theatre, live shows and fun and educational activities for children. "It's also a great opportunity to debate the role and challenges that British Muslims face in the political arena," added Labour MP Sadiq Khan.
(Source: IslamOnline.net, June 30, 2006)

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ARTICLE 1
~Youth Views~
The day the wall went up
Stephen Coulthart

Syracuse, New York- Like many Americans, I can vividly remember where I was when four hijacked airliners were used as weapons that fateful fall day. It was also the day the wall went up, not a physical wall like the one that fell in Berlin, but all the harder to crack because it is invisible. Beyond the immediate horror of the situation something else was occurring in the very fibre of the American psyche. Amongst the shock, dread and awe caused by the attacks of 9/11, there was a shift in America's overall perspective of the world. Suddenly, the United States was under siege by an unknown and dangerous enemy. Fear and misunderstanding led to support for new U.S. foreign policy prescriptions that would have seemed unfathomable 10-15 years ago. America was entering a new political epoch and, under attack and hurting, America was being pushed to the right.

The "smoke them out" and "bring them on" messages from the current U.S. administration are the embodiment of a new attitude that has shaped not only U.S.-Middle East relations, but U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Treaty, rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, investment in a missile defence shield and the nomination of John Bolton to the United Nations all provide further proof that the United States is "putting up a wall" between itself and the world.

But how did all this happen, in less than a decade?

The short answer is perhaps that human nature causes us to seek out the familiar and avoid the strange or unknown, especially when we feel threatened. As the controversial author Samuel P. Huntington tried to demonstrate in The Clash of Civilizations, humans in one group have a tendency to find solidarity with one another by highlighting how members of other groups differ from them, a tendency that becomes stronger in times of crisis. Instead of identifying Al-Qaeda as a specific group with only a handful of followers from among hundreds of millions of otherwise regular Muslims, lack of understanding caused many Americans to falsely label Islam as a violent religion.

The surge of patriotism after the attacks of 9/11 harkened back to the days after Pearl Harbor when lines formed outside of military recruitment centres. As the so-called 'Greatest Generation' united after this fateful event on December 7th, 1941, suddenly we saw American flags and bumper stickers everywhere, and the story of the day, a missing Congressional intern and the Congressmen she worked for, vanished from the headlines. Scandal and celebrity news means little when your country was being attacked by terrorists bent on destruction of the free-world.

In the months after 9/11, the wall really went up. Unfortunately, anger that should have been directed only against the perpetrators of the attacks was all too often directed at all Muslims. Through slurs, discrimination, and even assaults against Arab-Americans, America, always seeking to define itself, found an easy answer by defining itself by what it was not.

But how can the United States throw up this wall to the globalising world? What about the rapid movement of information, shouldn't that destroy stereotypes? The amount and access of information available to the average American has increased a hundred or even a thousand-fold in the past decade but with the increase in access, there has also been an increase in the creation of rumours and misinformation. Even though we should have more points-of-view available to us than ever before, perhaps it is this confusing overabundance of information that causes us to limit ourselves only to the familiar and the known.

Sensing perhaps that the rhetoric had had unintended effects, the administration has since then gone out of its way to show that our enemies are terrorists, not the Muslim world. Many Americans now understand that Al-Qaeda does not represent all Muslims and nearly all Muslims condemn terrorism. But at the same time, Americans are becoming less interested in the rest of the world. Surveys show Americans do not want to stay in Iraq, would rather the United States played less of a leadership role in the world, and are less interested in foreign affairs then after 9/11. The wall is getting thicker. It is no surprise misunderstandings, stereotypes, and a refusal to see the other side’s point-of-view are still common.

However, we, the people of the Middle East and the United States, can create the solutions. We can bridge the cultural gaps and tear down the wall. For a start, we need new ways of making sense of and interpreting the torrents of information raining down on us. Reading as much as we can and being knowledgeable of current events has always been a moral imperative for citizens in democracies, but in today’s world, we must all raise our standards. We must read a number of different sources, to make sure to cross-check our information and perspectives. It is not enough anymore just to read the New York Times and watch CNN: we should also read Al Hayat (an Arab paper that covers Middle East news in both Arabic and English) and watch Al-Jazeera. With the Internet, automated translation tools, and new cheap international means of interaction such as Skype, this is all possible.. The tools of globalisation can provide us with ways to understand our differences but the first and most important change has to occur in the human mind. We must make the effort. Then, acceptance and tolerance will be the new weapons "to wage peace”.

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* Stephen Coulthardt is a recent graduate from the State University of New York, where he studied Political Science and Public Justice. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), July 11, 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
Two countries, a common heritage
Assia Djebar

Paris – During my childhood in colonial Algeria (when people described me as “French Muslim”), we were taught much about “our ancestors, the Gauls”. Less well-known was the history of my ancestral land of North Africa, then called Numidia, which produced high-quality literature in Latin languages during that same period of Gallic history.

Three names in particular stand out: Apuleius, born in 125 A.D. in Madaura in East Algeria, was a student in Carthage and later in Athens who wrote in French, a brilliant lecturer in Greek and the author of an abundant body of literature. His masterpiece, The Golden Donkey or the Metamorphoses, is a picaresque novel whose verve, freedom and iconoclastic humour display a surprising modernity. What a revolution it would be to translate this work into Arabic, be it literary or colloquial dialect -- at the very least, it would be a welcome vaccine for today’s fundamentalisms of all stripes.

As for Tertullian, a pagan born in Carthage in 155 A.D. who later converted to Christianity, he is the author of over thirty works, including his Apologia, a work full of puritanical rigor. Just a couple of phrases from this 2nd century, Christian work are enough to lead the average reader to think that they emanate from some misogynist and intolerant African tribe. Take, for example, this affirmation from his opus On the Veiling of Virgins: “Any virgin who shows herself participates in a kind of prostitution!”

Yes, let’s promptly translate it into Arabic so that we may show that the misogynist obsession that always chooses the woman’s body as its focus is not only an “Islamist” specialty!

In the middle of the fourth century, the greatest African of this Antiquity, undoubtedly of all our literature, hails once more from the Algerian East: St Augustine, born of Latinised Berber parents. There is no need to detail the well-known trajectory of this father of the Church, of his long struggle of at least two decades against the Donatists, who were Christianised Berbers bitterly stiffened by their dissidence.

After struggling for twenty years against this group of believers who became the “fundamentalist Christians” of his day, and having doubtlessly been in contact with the Berber-speaking members of their flock, St Augustine thinks he has conquered them. In fact, he thinks that he has triumphed over them in 418, at Cesarus of Mauretania (my family’s city, where I spent part of my childhood). He is wrong. Thirteen years later, in 431, he dies in Hippone, besieged by Vandals from Spain who had just destroyed almost everything on those shores in a single year.

These literary masters are a part of our heritage. They should be studied in North Africa’s high schools, in their original language or in French or Arabic translations.

What is the use of my French today? I ask myself this question almost ingenuously. At 20 years of age, I had already chosen to teach North African history at the university level. After all, I was only following in the footsteps of my father who, as an instructor in the 1930s, would teach, in French, young boys in the middle of the Algerian mountains , in an isolated school not even accessible by roads. He also taught adult courses for mountaineers of his age. He taught accelerated training in French, thus preparing them for small administrative jobs to ensure a steady flow of resources to their families.

But jogging the memories of peasant women in the Dahra mountains in Arabic, and sometimes in Berber, has also meant emotional upheaval and a stirring of open wounds. It has been a return to the roots, I would even say an ethics and aesthetics lesson from women of all ages from my maternal tribe. I imagine that at this moment, above our heads, François Rabelais is speaking in the empyrean with Avicenna while I smile down here at Dean Georges Vedel, to whom I owe being where I am today.

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*Franco-Algerian novelist Assia Djebar is Georges Vedel Chair at the Académie française. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Le Monde, June 24, 2006
Visit the website at www.lemonde.fr
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
Reforms vs. democracy in the Arab world
V. Balaji Venkatachalam

Dubai – U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking last month at the Vienna summit, said: “What is past is past and what’s ahead is a hopeful democracy in the Middle East.”

No American administration has talked more about democracy in the Arab region than the Bush administration. The president and his advisers have spoken optimistically about a post-Saddam democracy in Iraq, one that might eventually become a veritable light to other Arab nations. This grand vision assumes that sooner or later, advocates of democracy throughout the Arab countries will demand the same freedoms and rights that Iraqis are now claiming. Yet, however inspiring this vision appears, the actual reform plan that the administration has thus far set out has been doomed to a large extent by things going dramatically bad in Baghdad.

From Moscow to Singapore, we are witnessing a new trend of democracy that is altering the so-called copy book definition of “democracy”. Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s political mastermind, rebuffed the U.S. vision of democracy by saying “democracy in the era of Boris Yeltsin resulted in the creation of oligarchs and businessmen who used wealth to achieve political power, damaging the country’s economy and development.” At the same time Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, criticised multiparty democracy by saying “although democracies make exciting politics, the national interest could suffer in a multiparty system. Endless debates are seldom about achieving a better grasp of the issue but to score political points.”

Both countries have transformed themselves, the former in the last few years and the latter in the last few decades, into successful economies. Unlike in the 1990s, when public cries for freedom were leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a survey conducted last month by Pew Global Attitudes Project Today a majority of Russians said they believed that their country would be better served by a strong leader rather than a democratic government. The poll found that the Russian people would choose a strong economy over a good democracy by a margin of almost six to one. Of course, Russia is far from alone in the priority it gives to a vibrant economy; even in countries where confidence in democracy is strong, the desire for economic wellbeing is stronger. Majorities or pluralities in eight of the nine countries in which this question was asked said that the economy was a more important priority than democracy. This includes India, which has been a functioning democracy for more than half a century. Indeed, Indians are now closely divided over the relative merits of democracy and prosperity, a significant change from 2002 when they favoured democracy by a 56 percent-31 percent margin.

Democracy (by which I mean a system in which adult universal suffrage is used to elect representatives) and reforms need each other. Reforms generate better living standards; the other cushions injustices and thereby anchors public support. But this mutual dependence is tricky, because if democratic prerogatives are overused, they may strangle reforms.

The Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) has persistently quoted gender inequality as one of the main obstacles to development in Arab countries, along with deficits of knowledge and freedom that were addressed in consequent AHDRs. The oil wealth in Arab countries is matched by social backwardness, and the only other region of the world with an income level lower than the Arab region is sub-Saharan Africa. Productivity is decreasing, scientific research is virtually nonexistent, the region is suffering a brain drain, and illiteracy afflicts half of Arab women. Arab countries have the largest proportion of young people in the world, 38 percent of Arabs are under the age of 14, and by 2020 the population of all Arab countries combines may top 400 million. In Libya, over 60 percent of the country is under 15, with unemployment close to 30 percent. In Saudi Arabia, 38 percent of the population is under 15, with 25 percent unemployed.

The Arab region has the highest population growth rates in the world, home to more than one quarter of the earth’s total unemployed young people between 15 and 24. If several million youth are entering the job market each year, who will supply the jobs needed to employ them? Who will generate millions more such jobs to bring down sky-high unemployment rates? Mastering the task of employing these teeming Arab millions is not only hard to imagine in current circumstances, but impossible without a major rethink of the current economic and social model that prevails in the Arab region.

Reforms do not measure up when compared with the pace of reform in other parts of the world. Elsewhere, true revolutions are underway, as countries cope with the challenges of globalisation by opening up, liberalising their trade and investment regimes, investing heavily in information and communications technologies and implementing reforms which aggressively try to create friendlier policies and regulatory environments for private sector development. Knowledge determines the wealth of nations and defines the liveable state in this age of globalisation. There are only 18 computers per 1,000 citizens in the Arab world, as compared to the global average of 78 per 1,000.

Presently, the more significant topic for the Arab region is reforms on the social and economic fronts rather than democracy. The Arab region today stands at a very critical juncture. Sustaining the status quo will only widen the development gap between this region and the developed world — not to mention the growing number of developing countries and regional blocs that are taking swift measures to integrate into the global economy.

The three key problems afflicting Arab societies are: a deficit of social freedom, a lack of opportunities for women, and a knowledge gap with the rest of the world. Democracy can wait, as it happened in Korea and Taiwan, both now vibrant democracies. The important issues are social and economic reforms.

Arab countries need to understand that the false populism and religious fanaticism of Islamic extremism offer no political, economic or social model capable of satisfying the real world necessities of a growing Arab world. Immediate economic and social reforms are needed. Sustained economic and social reforms will expand opportunity and allow the people to satisfy legitimate aspirations in all walks of life.

As for political reforms we can wait for the time being and concentrate more on economic issues that are affecting the Arab masses. At the end of day jobs and shelter are a more important issue for an average Arab than democracy. Democracy requires certain conditions, such as a market economy and a middle class in order to thrive. The empty political rhetoric of democracy as seen in Iraq will not fulfil the utopian dream of the U.S. administration for the Arab region. International multilateral organisations should engage with Arab countries and communities in promoting peaceful social and economic reforms.

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* V. Balaji Venkatachalam heads the research department of Forbes Arabia and the views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Forbes Arabia.This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Arab News, July 5, 2006)
Visit the website at www.arabnews.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
What the US wants in its troops: cultural savvy
Mark Sappenfield

Quantico, Virginia - Lt. Thomas Tompkins had a decision to make. His unit had come under fire from a band of insurgents, who had just fled for cover in a mosque.

Strictly speaking, the rules of engagement allowed Lieutenant Tompkins to storm the front door and spread through the mosque in search of the enemy. But there was another option, it turned out: knock on the door and talk to the imam.

Tompkins's test came not in the furnace of Baghdad or Baquba, but in a quiet classroom exercise on the lush countryside campus of Marine Corps Base Quantico. The lesson is one example of the U.S. military's efforts to instil in troops the notion that - in a war where support from the local populace is as important as raids and air strikes - cultural awareness can be an effective weapon.

In addition to their core training on the rules of engagement, U.S. troops of every stripe are learning how to lunch with sheikhs and conduct raids without offending the man of the house. Though recent allegations of murder, rape, and massacre by U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq may point out the limits of this type of training, they may just as easily underscore the importance of reinforcing it for all troops who will come into contact with the local citizenry.

"One of the things we educate most repetitively ... is being comfortable in an uncomfortable environment," says Barak Salmoni, deputy director of the Center for Advanced Operational Cultural Learning (CAOCL) at the Quantico base.

Though the armed forces have sought to take culture into consideration since the beginning of the Iraq war, CAOCL represents how that accumulated knowledge on the ground is being distilled into discrete lessons and institutionalised.

As the Marines' "centre of excellence" for culture and language, the year-old centre is charged with spreading cultural understanding - of lands wherever marines are deployed - into all levels of its forces education, training, and operations. Likewise, the Army has opened a similar "centre of excellence" for cultural training at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

In Iraq, the commander of US forces, Army Gen. George Casey, has created a Counterinsurgency Academy for all arriving officers. Meanwhile, Central Command, the military command that oversees Iraq and Afghanistan, started a three-week course in which Jordanian forces teach US soldiers about Arabic culture.

The purpose is not to be a nicer military. Rather, it is to help troops grasp how cultural factors can affect tactical decisions.

"They have us think about cultural factors as if they were battlefield factors," says Tompkins. "The placement of mortars and machine guns is still important, but cultural issues are just as important - and they can win or lose us a city."

Of course, no amount of training about Iraqi culture can halt deliberate criminal action, as is alleged in the most recent case against a U.S. serviceman in Iraq. Federal authorities on Monday charged Steven Green, a recently discharged Army private, with murdering four members of an Iraqi family in Mahmudiya. He is also charged with raping one of the alleged victims before shooting her. At least three other soldiers, all still on active duty, are under investigation in connection with the March incident, military officials said last week. Media reports have stated that investigators believe the crime might have been premeditated. It is perhaps the most inflammatory of five incidents that have come to light in recent weeks and prompted investigations or charges of murder against U.S. servicemen.

For his part, CAOCL's Dr. Salmoni acknowledges that basic training and strong leadership are the best bulwarks against crimes in wartime. But cultural training can help build a better-prepared marine - one who sees Iraqis as more than just an inscrutable enemy, he says.

Before marines deploy abroad, CAOCL gives them information and training specific to where they are going. Here in Quantico's officer schools, it supports and promotes the sorts of cultural exercises that Tompkins participated in.

That day, captains were teaching a class to lieutenants, and on one side of the classroom stood a map. But this map was not marked with arrows showing how best to attack a convoy or engage an enemy. It showed three square blocks of an Iraqi city. On it, the captains had highlighted a school, a Red Crescent relief centre, a market, and a mosque. The students' task: explain how they would conduct a foot patrol through the city.

At every stop, the captains gave them a new hypothetical problem to solve. At the school, the patrol took fire from the building's rooftop, injuring one. At the Red Crescent, there was a large crowd with people firing guns into the air. At the mosque, insurgents attacked and then sought shelter inside.

The idea to knock on the mosque door didn't come from Tompkins - or from any of the other lieutenants, for that matter. It came from the captains. In every exercise, "they mentioned something that we never thought of," says Tompkins. What surprised him "was how much the teachers encouraged critical thinking," he says. "At what point is killing [the enemy] less important than the cultural problems it will create?"

The military began to learn these lessons in earnest a decade ago in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, where battle lines blurred, bringing troops into close contact with civilians. Iraq and Afghanistan, however, have been the tipping point for change.

Now, the push for cultural learning comes from the highest levels of the military hierarchy. The commanding officer of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command has made it a top priority.

"It's the nonlethal aspects of our business that I think we're gaining a much greater appreciation for," said Gen. William Scott Wallace in a briefing last year. "It's appreciating the fact that the urban terrain includes people who grew up in a particular culture that we don't necessarily understand."

It is a vital lesson, say experts. But some wonder whether the military has taken too long to act. Says David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization in College Park, Maryland: "Three years into this war, they're figuring out how to fight it."

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* Mark Sappenfield is a staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2006
Visit the website at www.csmonitor.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright © The Christian Science Monitor. For reprint permission please contact lawrenced@csps.com.

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ARTICLE 5
IslamExpo seeks Muslim-West bridges
IslamOnline Staff

Cairo - The largest Muslim cultural exhibition in the world opened in London on Thursday, July 6 to promote a better understanding of the Islamic faith, history and society, and help build bridges between the Muslim world and the West.

"In this climate of tension full of talk of clashes of civilisations, the need to build bridges between cultures has never been greater. That, we hope, will be IslamExpo’s legacy," said the organisers in a press release.

The annual exhibition includes conferences, lectures and seminars with renowned speakers on topics as diverse as art, literature, science, architecture, technology theology and politics.

It also features films, dramas and a photographic exhibition from the Muslim countries as well as concerts featuring music from around the world.

The event also features music concerts, comedy, theatre, live shows and fun educational activities for children.

A series of economic activities will also be held on the sidelines of the four-day event.

More than 150 exhibitors from Britain, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Australia and America will be exhibiting their products and services at IslamExpo.

Leading among attendees in the event are Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Wadah Khanfar, the general manager of the Doha-based Al-Jazeera channel, Dr. Abdul Bari, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), and Norman Kember from the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

The event is expected to attract in excess of 40,000 attendees from across British society.

British Muslims

IslamExpo also discusses the role of the Muslim minority in Britain — estimated at 1.8 million — in fighting terrorism and in promoting democracy in the Muslim world.

"It's important to debunk some of the myths that exist about Islam and to explain the true teachings of Islam," Labour MP Sadiq Khan, who will be speaking at the event, said in the press release.

Participation of the British Muslims in politics will also be discussed.

"It's also a great opportunity to debate the role and challenges that British Muslims face in the political arena," Khan added.

Despite the fallout from the 7/7 attacks on London's underground by four British Muslims, the sizable Muslim minority in Britain still feels luckier compared to fellow Muslims across Europe thanks to the successful integrationist policy of the government.

An ICM survey found in February that 91 percent of British Muslims are "loyal" to Britain and 80 percent still want to live in and accept Western society.

The poll showed that that 99 percent of British Muslims believed the July 7 bombers were "wrong" to carry out the atrocity.

British Muslim leaders have, however, joined forces with senior politicians and rights activists in opposing the recently adopted amendments to the anti-terror bill, which made the vaguely "glorification" of terrorism a crime and curbed personal freedoms.

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* This article was written by IslamOnline staff. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: IslamOnline.net, June 30, 2006
Visit the website at www.islam-online.net
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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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, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.

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Posted by Evelin at July 12, 2006 10:38 AM