Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) for constructive & vibrant Muslim-Western relations
03 - 10 September 2006

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Inside this edition

1) by Rev. Canon Andrew P B White

Reverend Canon Andrew P B White, President of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East and Anglican Priest for Iraq, challenges the use of the term “moderate” when used to describe Muslims who shun violence and terrorism. “If we are going to be serious about dealing with the very real problems between Islam and the West, we need to begin by using the right language. In the very first place it will mean doing away with the language of the ‘moderates’. We need to truly respect Islam, which will mean having regard for those who are serious about their faith.”
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 05 September 2006)

2) by Mujtaba Hamdi

Mujtaba Hamdi, former editor-in-chief of Syir’ah magazine in Jakarta and participant in the South East Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) Journalism Fellowship 2006, describes how Shazeera Ahmad Zawawi, a 27-year-old female Malaysian Muslim, reconciles wearing a headscarf and working in human rights: “Yes, I am a Muslim, but I’m a human being first.” She sees others first as human beings with all of their rights, before their other identities, such as Muslim or Christian. Zawawi “lives an open-minded and living Islam, which appreciates human beings with their diversity of race, culture, skin colour and religion. By understanding and appreciating this diversity we hope that more and more people will realise that despite our unique identities, we are all human beings.”
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 05 September 2006)

3) by Janessa Gans

Janessa Gans, a former U.S. official in Iraq and founder of the Euphrates Institute, considers the divergent Iraqi and American views on the U.S. role in Iraq and offers a set of suggestions for U.S. policymakers. “It is not that admitting to past mistakes will turn the situation around in Iraq. But understanding what the United States has done wrong, or is perceived to have done wrong, would have an immediate impact in Iraq in two significant ways: 1) We could at once stop committing the error and do right; 2) If our error is a misperception and not true, we can set the record straight.”
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, 31 August 2006)

4) by Lawrence Pintak

Director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo and co-editor/publisher of TBS Journal/Arab Media & Society, Lawrence Pintak, discusses the rhetoric of war – the use of the such terms “martyr”, “terrorist” and “aggression” in television reporting, and specifically in the recent conflict between Hizbullah and Israel. Citing standards that have recently been employed at Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, he lauds these media outlets as setting an example in using neutral terminology to describe the region’s constant violence.
(Source: Jakarta Post, 25 August 2006)

5) by Alan Riding

New York Times correspondent, Alan Riding, talks about how Islamic art exhibits have been popping up in Europe and North America since 9/11 to “present a largely Western audience with a different image of the Islamic world, one that dwells on its artistic sophistication rather than the radical stereotypes often reinforced by newspaper headlines.” Wondering whether such exhibits are really “a way of promoting greater understanding and bridging the cultural gap between the Judeo-Christian and Muslim worlds,” Riding provides an account of the history of Islamic art and appreciates that these exhibits throw a “contemporary spotlight…on a long-neglected culture.”
(Source: International Herald Tribune, 3 August, 2006)

1) Let’s stop the call for moderates
Rev. Canon Andrew P B White

Baghdad - There is certainly a crisis between Islam and the West, and all the time we are being told to both strengthen and deal with the moderates. The term “moderate” is being used to describe the tolerant Muslims who shun violence and terrorism. The problem is that this word itself shows a total misunderstanding of the very nature of Islam. What’s more it strengthens further the position of the intolerant as the true disciples of their faith tradition.

I am a Christian and a priest of the Anglican Church. I would take great offence to being called a “moderate” Christian. I am not; I am serious about my faith tradition. When I say the creed on Sundays, I mean it and believe it. I share with my Muslim brothers and sisters their concern about growing Western secularism and disbelief.

I have the privilege of spending most of my time in the Middle East; most of my colleagues are Muslims. Some of my most trusted staff are Muslim, including those who translate for me at church services. I probably have the only Church in the world that meets in a Shi‘a Muslim Prime Minister’s office. My staff and colleagues are not moderates. They are serious about their faith and beliefs. They shun all forms of violence and terrorist activity. They are, like the majority of Muslims, loving, trustworthy and ardently against all forms of violence.

The reality is that I have more in common with many of my Muslim brothers and sisters than I do with many of my so-called Christian colleagues. I do not consider any of these people moderates; they are not, yet they are totally serious about their faith and totally tolerant to the “other”, both Christians and Jews. What they want to see are people who are serious about their faith and their service of the Almighty.

If we are going to be serious about dealing with the very real problems between Islam and the West, we need to begin by using the right language. In the very first place it will mean doing away with the language of the “moderates”. We need to truly respect Islam, which will mean having regard for those who are serious about their faith. Realising that if we really want to make progress in Muslim-Western relations we must begin by respecting Islam and the language and means it uses of self-identification. We must realise that most Muslims are tolerant and serious about their faith. They want to work with others, but they want others to respect them, and even be willing to learn from them.

Maybe, just maybe, the West has a lot to learn from Islam. Maybe even we as Christians can learn from them and become more serious about our faith tradition. If we are going to seriously break down the barriers between Islam and the West, let us begin by looking at ourselves in the West and seeing how we can become more serious about our faith and beliefs, and let us begin by doing away with this language of moderations, for what is being asked for is to disregard the fundamental tenants of Islam. Islam requires both serious commitment and tolerance of the other. Let us also stop thinking that those from the West who engage with Islam should just be liberal Christians in the West. We can be serious about our own faith, and we don’t all have to be Western either.

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* The Reverend Canon Andrew P B White is President of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East and Anglican Priest for Iraq. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 05 September 2006, www.commongrounews.org (http://www.commongrounews.org)
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

2) Headscarves and Muslim identity
Mujtaba Hamdi

Jakarta - Headscarves can elicit many questions. Shazeera Ahmad Zawawi, a 27-year-old female Malaysian Muslim, fields them all the time. “Gee”, as Shazeera is known to her friends, is a human rights activist from Malaysia, a country which is racing with enthusiasm toward upholding Islamic law. When attending a human rights conference in Canada, Gee received many looks and questions, "How does your headscarf fit with your human rights activities?"

Those who were asking such a question were clearly surprised to see headscarves at a human rights event. Gee was asked her opinion on human rights issues, including homosexuality, polygamy and women’s rights. There was the suggestion in these questions that her preference to wear headscarves goes against homosexuality, supports polygamy and ignores women’s rights. However, Gee had an answer to their question: “Yes, I am a Muslim, but I’m a human being first.” Gee sees others first as a human being with all of their rights, before their other identities, such as Muslim or Christian.

Perhaps those who were asking this question did not know that Gee was part of a “living” Islam as opposed to a staticone. This living Islam is a religion which comes from her heart in her daily life, a religion which can easily live with diversity, and a religion that prefers to engage in dialogue with the other existing religions. In her own words, “I live in an Islam that does not judge wrong or right.”

From the beginning, Gee has grown up in an atmosphere that is comfortable with opposition. Haji Mahmud, her grandfather, was involved in Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya or Malayan Melayu National Party, a “leftist movement” in the era of colonialism, which combined the spirit of Islam, nationalism and socialism. Gee likewise, when she was waiting for her university entrance examination, preferred to volunteer as an English teacher for children at a program owned by the Parti Islam se-Malaysia or Malaysian Islam Party, the most persevering opposition party in Malaysia.

That opposition’s lively, open-minded debate about Islam is what actually brought Gee to join the PMI, Persatuan Mahasiswa Islam or Islamic Student Association, when she was a student at the University of Malaya.

However, PMI was not the right place for Gee, who was inspired by an open living Islam, as alive as life itself. In PMI, Gee often received reprimands from senior members about her headscarves. The fabric which covered her head was considered not enough to express her “Islamic dress” based on Islamic law. Gee was pressured to wear larger, longer black headscarves which covered all of her head, shoulders and chest. She refused, while the senior members insisted. They argued. Gee was adamant that she felt comfortable with her own headscarves and did not want to change the style.

Gee wanted to show that what was “Islamic” was not the desire to subjugate the “other” or “what is different” to homogeneity, but the act of opening up and accepting diversity as a rich mosaic of Islam. Furthermore, as a human being she also believed that there are many religions which should co-exist in the world, alongside Islam. That was why Gee also refused to join PMI’s demonstration to oppose a music concert on campus. This concert was not a Western style rock concert but one of Indian music. Gee realised those who protested the concert were predominantly afraid that they would lose the “Islamic nature” of the campus.

Now, Gee prefers to work on human rights advocacy for the indigenous people of Malaysia. She is a human being who wants to do something for humanity, not only as a Muslim who helps in the name of her religion. When Gee listens to the story of how the government stole the land of Malaysia’s indigenous population and then stood by to watch its children go hungry and its traditions get lost, she is thought of as a human being and everyone forgets about her headscarf .

Perhaps gradually they begin to realise that Gee lives an open-minded and living Islam, which appreciates human beings with their diversity of race, culture, skin colour and religion. By understanding and appreciating this diversity, we hope more and more people will realise that despite our unique identities, we are all human beings.

At the end of April 2006, at an office in Kuala Lumpur, Gee was busy with her humanitarian work. But if you listened carefully, from the loudspeaker of her computer, you could hear rock music fill her room. Gee was playing In the Walls, a rock song from Stellarstarr, a music group from Brooklyn, New York. At the left of her desk, you could see a used rock concert ticket, a souvenir from a rock festival in Bangkok, Thailand. These things serve as a reminder that “Yes, I’m a Muslim, but I’m a human being first.”

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* Mujtaba Hamdi is former editor-in-chief of Syir’ah magazine, Jakarta, and participant of the South East Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) Journalism Fellowship 2006. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 05 September 2006, www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org)
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

3) How to bridge two views of success in Iraq
Janessa Gans

Washington, D.C. - In November 2003, as the insurgency in Iraq blossomed, I - as a U.S. official in Iraq - tried to sort out the various actors, groups and causes behind it. But in a meeting with top Sunni political leaders, it became abundantly clear to me that the American view and the Iraqi view about the causes were completely divergent. And that if we were ever going to help develop a sustainable democracy in Iraq, it was imperative that we analyse and understand the Iraqis' perspective and include that in any future solutions for the insurgency or the burgeoning sectarian conflict.

The following shows the divergent Iraqi and American views. Below, ways to reconcile them ...

1.
(Iraq) The United States toppled Saddam Hussein, but its troops humiliate us. Look at Abu Ghraib.
(US) We got rid of their brutal dictator, and they respond by attacking and killing us.

2.
(Iraq) After Saddam left, chaos - looting and terror - claimed the streets of Baghdad.
(U.S.) The people were reacting to newfound freedom after 35 years of dictatorship.

3.
(Iraq) We have been told there are billions of dollars being spent on improving our lives, but we have yet to see it.
(U.S.) We spend billions of our money to improve their country and reconstruct it. They are so ungrateful.

4.
(Iraq) The world's most powerful army can't keep my neighbourhood safe? This must be a conspiracy to keep Iraq embroiled in turmoil so they can stay and steal our oil.
(U.S.) Suicide bombers are nearly impossible to detect and prevent. We're dealing with a savage method of warfare that we are ill-suited to fight.

5.
(Iraq) The world's richest country does not fix the electricity grid or provide generators to alleviate our desperate plight. Yet, the Green Zone is lit up like a Christmas tree.
(U.S.) We try practical projects, like rebuilding parts of the pipelines and electricity grid, and the insurgents continue to bomb them.

6.
(Iraq) Iraq is a sovereign nation, but we believe the US still controls the reins and is holding us back. Look how the U.S. Embassy occupies Saddam's presidential palace.
(U.S.) Iraq has been a sovereign nation for more than two years. Why hasn't it accomplished anything? Why are the politicians so incompetent?

7.
(Iraq) The only U.S. presence we see is its heavily armed convoys careening through our streets, causing traffic jams and smashing or shooting anything that gets in its way.
(U.S.) We are targeted wherever we go. Iraqis who cooperate with Americans are frequently targeted and killed by insurgents.

8.
(Iraq) Sectarian politics and the ensuing strife is partly the Americans' fault for bringing religious parties to power when the Coalition Provisional Authority ran the country.
(U.S.) We are the ones preventing a civil war by pressuring for a unity government and increased Sunni participation.

9.
(Iraq) They speak constantly of democracy but no one has explained what it means and how it can work in our culture.
(U.S.) The Arabs are not ready for democracy, as evidenced by their politics that are mostly based on sect rather than competence.

A better course

What if U.S. policymakers realised that many Iraqis blame us for the current Islamist dominance of Iraqi politics and the worsening sectarian conflict? The Iraqis say that the United States first empowered Islamist clerics and created a strict sectarian model for governance on the initial Governing Council, created by the Coalition Provisional Authority in July 2003. The subsequent Iraqi elections and governments have merely continued that precedent.

If we realised the sectarian model was a recent fabrication, not the way Iraq has always been, this would not seem to be a civil war that was destined to happen. The conflict between Sunnis and Shiites would be seen as something that could have been - and perhaps still could be - prevented.

Understanding the issues and problems from the local point of view has never been the forte of Americans, but it is especially difficult in Iraq, where security and the language barrier offer unique challenges. Travel outside the Green Zone is dangerous and limited. Moreover, practically none of our diplomats stationed in Iraq today speak Arabic and most consort primarily with top-level Iraqi officials who are isolated and unfamiliar with "ground truth".

Putting more U.S. officials who speak Arabic or have Middle East experience in Iraq and reducing movement restrictions for U.S. officials are key to discerning ground truth in Iraq. Deepening the understanding that many in our government have about Iraq would mitigate damaging and ignorant mistakes in our policies and actions. Decisions on military actions and those concerning Iraqi politicians should be cleared with experts in the U.S. Embassy to assess political ramifications. The political coordination should include those operating somewhat independently of the embassy, such as the CIA, USAID and the military. From personal experience, this would have saved much time and energy. Several times my colleagues and I saw a relationship we had painstakingly cultivated over many months destroyed by a military mistake - a wrongful detention or shooting. Moreover, lack of coordinated financial assistance and discrepant viewpoints from government agencies also undermined U.S. policies and decision-making.

It is not that admitting to past mistakes will turn the situation around in Iraq. But understanding what the United States has done wrong, or is perceived to have done wrong, would have an immediate impact in Iraq in two significant ways: 1) We could at once stop committing the error and do right; 2) If our error is a misperception and not true, we can set the record straight. If the United States makes no attempt to understand its mistakes, Iraqis and Americans end up moving along two parallel tracks of self-made and self-perpetuated truths that never coincide. This may be successful in convincing Americans that we are doing what it takes to succeed in Iraq, but we will never actually be successful until the Iraqis perceive us so.

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* Janessa Gans served as a U.S. official in Iraq from October 2003 to July 2005. She returned to Washington in March 2006 with the non-profit organisation she founded, The Euphrates Institute. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org).

Source: Christian Science Monitor, 31 August 2006, www.csmonitor.com (http://www.csmonitor.com)
Copyright © The Christian Science Monitor. Please contact lawrenced@csps.com for reprint permission.

4) Look who's fair and balanced
Lawrence Pintak

Cairo - The summer of 2006 marked an important milestone for Arab media. Israel and Hizbullah were locked in a bitter conflict that would claim the lives of more than 150 Israelis and an estimated 1,000 Lebanese -- a third of them children. Each day brought brutal new images of civilian casualties.

On American television, leading journalists,such as CNN's star presenters Anderson Cooper and John Roberts, regularly referred to Hizbullah as "terrorists" or a "terrorist militia", without bothering to attribute the label to Israeli or U.S. sources. But on the news broadcasts of the Arab world's dominant all-news channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, such polarising language was rarely heard.

The irony, of course, is that Al-Jazeera was condemned by the Bush administration for using terms like "martyr", "aggression" and "terrorism" in describing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Arab journalists should be "unbiased" like their colleagues in America, was the constant refrain from Washington.

"The words 'terror' and 'terrorist' are not in our dictionary," Ahmed Sheikh, Al-Jazeera's chief editor, told me in late summer, as a shaky ceasefire took hold in southern Lebanon. "We only use them when we are quoting someone."

Nor were dead civilians or fighters referred to as shaheed, Arabic for "martyr". Such terms are still bandied about on Al-Jazeera's talk shows, which tend to resemble the cable shout-fests in the U.S., but they were officially exiled from news reports.

At Al-Arabiya, the story was much the same. "We use Hizbullah 'fighters' and sometimes 'militants', but we don't use 'fighters for freedom', executive editor Nabil Khatib told me. "We agreed we would not take a clear position supporting Hizbullah. We are covering this war as a war."

Al-Arabiya went a step further, imposing an almost complete ban on showing dead bodies, a radical move in an Arab media culture in which the camera often zooms into open wounds.

Khatib recalled a report on the aftermath of an Israeli bombing raid on a building in the town of Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The hour of raw footage received at the channel's Dubai headquarters was all "parts of bodies and relatives taking the body parts in their hands and showing them to the camera. It was a crazy situation. Some colleagues were very angry about what happened and felt we should show the pictures."

In the end, on Khatib's orders, the channel used just one "three- second-long shot of a body with no details visible."

Both Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera have been vigorously criticised for this new approach by viewers and colleagues in the Arab media where sensationalism, distortion and misinformation often are rampant. "We have received hundreds of calls from viewers asking, 'Why are we not calling the dead civilians in Lebanon 'martyrs’? " says Sheikh, himself a Palestinian. "It was very difficult for me personally to explain, but that is the policy."

Of course, Arab politics can't be discounted in any explanation of this more "responsible" approach. Al-Jazeera is funded by the Emir of Qatar and Al-Arabiya, which seemed to downplay the conflict in its early stages, is part of a media empire owned by a member of the Saudi royal family. Both countries are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, while Hizbullah is Shiite. Sunni heads of state across the region initially condemned Hizbullah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, the spark that touched off this war, because it was seen as part of Shiite Iran's strategy to strengthen its position in the region at the expense of Sunni countries like Egypt, Jordan and the royal families of the Gulf.

Arab public opinion -- driven by media coverage of the conflict -- eventually forced the Sunni leaders to backtrack, condemn the Israeli invasion and give tacit support to Hizbullah.

But the degree to which the policy changes at Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya also represent a new chapter in the evolution of Arab journalism that cannot be dismissed. Until Al-Jazeera was launched ten years ago, the term "television journalism" was an oxymoron in the Arab world. All stations were government-owned. Now there is a new spirit of -- or at least aspiration for -- independence and professionalism.

When I visited Al-Jazeera's headquarters in June, Sheikh and his counterparts from Al-Jazeera's soon-to-be-launched English-language sister channel, Al-Jazeera International, were busy drafting a new set of standards and practices, which included a glossary of neutral terms journalists on both channels should use to describe the region's constant violence.

When it's ready, the U.S. channels might want to request a copy.

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* Lawrence Pintak is the director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo and co-editor/publisher of TBS Journal/Arab Media & Society. His most recent book is Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org (http://www.commongroundnews.org).

Source: Jakarta Post, 25 August 2006, www.thejakartapost.com (http://www.thejakartapost.com)
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

5) Art as an ambassador for insights into Islam
Alan Riding

London - It was not a happy coincidence that the Victoria and Albert Museum's splendidly refurbished Islamic art gallery should open here late last month just as the Middle East was once again going up in flames.

After all, one of the gallery's aims is to present a largely Western audience with a different image of the Islamic world, one that dwells on its artistic sophistication rather than the radical stereotypes often reinforced by newspaper headlines.

Certainly, it was with this in mind that Mohammed Jameel, a wealthy Saudi, footed the $9.8 million bill for reinstalling the Victoria and Albert's Islamic collection for the first time in half a century. The display area on the museum's main floor has now been renamed the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in memory of the benefactor's parents.

Yet political turmoil in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond only underlines the challenge of using the past to illuminate the present. Put differently, can 400 carefully chosen objects, some dating back to the 11th century, provide us with any fresh insight into what is happening in the Middle East today?

The question is pertinent because, notably since 9/11, many museums in Europe and the United States have begun highlighting collections and exhibitions of Islamic art as a way of promoting greater understanding and bridging the cultural gap between the Judeo-Christian and Muslim worlds.

In Western Europe, this strategy also implies recognition that, because of massive immigration from North Africa, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Islam is now also a European religion - and it is therefore important both for Europeans to show respect for Islamic culture and for Muslim immigrants and their children to take pride in their past.

But are we asking too much of art, giving it too much political weight?

Evidently, culture has always served as a political tool. And the Middle East was no exception. Like European art's dependence on court and church until the Renaissance, Islamic art from the seventh century until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I was inseparable from political and religious systems of power.

Even today, for instance, France is unblushingly courting good will in third world countries by devoting its new $295 million Musée du Quai Branly to non-Western art. And, with its eye on Muslims at home and abroad, the Louvre is also spending $60 million on an ambitious new wing, scheduled to open in 2009, to house its Islamic collection.

The Victoria and Albert's aim is more modest: to tell the story of Islamic art in a concise and digestible fashion - without addressing the present. Yet this approach is also instructive: through the peephole of art, we can see a more complex and subtle world than the rigid, oppressive and inward-looking theocracies promoted by some Muslim extremists today.

During construction of the Jameel Gallery, the Victoria and Albert showed part of its Islamic collection in the United States, Japan and northern England in a travelling exhibition called "Palace and Mosque". And this title provides the conceptual framework of its new display here: serving both palace and mosque, Islamic art took secular as well as religious forms.

"The political character of Islamic art arose because, in the absence of a priesthood, the formative role in its development fell to those who were politically powerful," Tim Stanley, senior curator of Middle East collections at the Victoria and Albert, writes in a catalogue accompanying "Palace and Mosque". In other words, Islamic art always reflected political realities.

These variables included the outside world. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 A.D., Islamic art inherited two distinct artistic traditions: those of Christian Byzantium to the west and of the Sassanian empire to the east. Then, as the new Muslim empire swept west as far as Spain and, later, east into Asia, it absorbed new influences, notably from China.

Most of all, though, Islamic art reflected the whims of successive regimes, from the early Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates to the later Safavid, Qajar and Ottoman dynasties. And here, the perceived Islamic ban on figurative art was interpreted differently.

Religious art invariably respected the rule, relying on calligraphic citations from the Qur’an and abstract, often geometric, ornamentation. But secular art, which included utilitarian objects like carpets, ceramic vases, ivory caskets, glass jugs and metalwork, frequently showed flora and fauna. Some Muslim rulers even commissioned portraits of themselves. And while calligraphy remained important, it used poetry as well as the Qur’an.

This eclecticism is well illustrated in this small selection of the Victoria and Albert's 10,000-piece Islamic collection. The Jameel Gallery itself, though, has been designed around the so-called Ardabil carpet, which the museum describes as "the world's oldest dated carpet." Measuring 36 by 16 feet, or about 11 by 5 meters, and comprising 30 million hand-tied knots, it was made in 1539-1540 for the Ardabil mosque in northwest Iran.

In the past, the carpet was hung vertically and was hard to appreciate. Now, it has been laid out in the centre of the gallery and placed inside a specially constructed case with appropriate lighting. As a carpet destined for religious use, its elaborate design in 10 colours is non-figurative. In contrast, hanging nearby, the so-called Chelsea carpet, also from 16th-century Persia, is alive with flowers, fruits and animals, as if evoking earthly paradise.

More unexpected is a 17th-century Christian vestment portraying the crucifixion, which was made in the style of Islamic art for the use of Armenian priests living in the Iranian city of Isfahan. This also reminds us that the Islamic world included large populations of Christians as well as Jews.

Other objects require no explanation in order to be admired: an 11th-century rock crystal ewer from Egypt; a 16th-century Iznik pottery mosque lamp from Istanbul; a 15th-century bowl depicting a Portuguese sailing ship made in Spain using the lusterware technique invented in Iraq centuries earlier; a 19-foot-high wooden minbar, or pulpit, made in the late 15th century for a Cairo mosque.

Through this display, then, a contemporary spotlight is now thrown on a long-neglected culture.

Yet, for the Victoria and Albert, this is not exactly new: inspired by the beauty of this art, eager to learn from its exquisite designs, the museum acquired most of its collection in the 19th and early 20th centuries, long before the Middle East meant trouble. The Prophet himself is quoted as saying: "God is beautiful and He loves beauty." In these ugly times, this too may be worth remembering.

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* Alan Riding is a veteran correspondent of The New York Times. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongrounews.org (http://www.commongrounews.org).

Source: International Herald Tribune, 3 August, 2006, www.iht.com (http://www.iht.com)
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.

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Posted by Evelin at September 16, 2006 03:53 PM