Common Ground News - 27 June - 3 July 2007
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Please find below the 27 June - 3 July news from the Common Ground News Service
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Brian Ward
Common Ground News Service
Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
for constructive & vibrant Muslim-Western relations
27 June - 03 July 2007
The Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) aims to promote constructive perspectives and dialogue about Muslim–Western relations. CGNews-PiH is available in Arabic, English, French and Indonesian.
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Inside this edition
1) The third alternative in Iraq by William Ury
William Ury, director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University, co-author of Getting to Yes and author of The Power of a Positive No, looks at the two options that Americans see in Iraq – to stay or to go – and rejects them both. Instead he details, with some precision, a third opportunity, with its benefits and costs.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 26 June 2007)
2) Religious solutions to political problems by Claude Salhani
Claude Salhani, international editor and a political analyst with United Press International (UPI), considers the opportunities within Islam to combat extremist movements and thereby reduce tensions between the Muslim world and the West. Looking at some of the non-religious factors that contribute to religious extremism, he urges Muslim leaders to “take concrete steps to erase the misunderstandings that have contributed to painting a negative image of what should be a religion of peace.”
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 26 June 2007)
3) ~Youth Views~ Consult our youth: a Moroccan example by Leila Hanafi
Originally from Morocco, Leila Hanafi, an international law student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, describes youth efforts, including her own, to improve the role of youth in Morocco and empower them to help reach the UN’s Millennium Development Goals to combat poverty and promote sustainable development. Harnessing the creativity and energy of young people, she engages them to identify the problems, develop solutions and present their suggestions to decision-makers.
(Source: Common Ground News Service(CGNews), 26 June 2007)
4) US military’s new Iraq strategy: religious conciliation by Gordon Lubold
Christian Science Monitor staff writer, Gordon Lubold, examines the potential for the new Iraqi Inter-Religious Congress to engage in dialogue and bring about larger-scale political reconciliation in the country. Although it is too early to see many tangible results, “media reports from Baghdad indicated that imams from various mosques in Baghdad have recently been encouraging each other to attend one another’s mosques for Friday prayers.”
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, 21 June 2007)
5) Church plus state can equal democracy by Mirjam Kunkler and Michael Meyer-Resende
Mirjam Kunkler, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) at Columbia University in New York, and Michael Meyer-Resende, coordinator of Berlin-based group Democracy Reporting International, considers the “misconception of state-religion relations in democracy.” Looking at European examples, they suggest that institutional connections between religion and politics are not antithetical to democracy.
(Source: Daily Star, 19 June 2007)
1) The third alternative in Iraq
William Ury
Cambridge, Massachusetts - The public debate on Iraq is framed around two main alternatives: to stay or to withdraw.
Neither solution is particularly attractive.
If we stay, we further inflame violence and resistance. We are not wanted there by the great majority of Sunnis and Shiites. And we continue to spend precious lives and treasure.
If we simply leave, however, we risk making the situation worse, leaving behind a failed state, a haven for our enemies, and a spreading civil war.
Faced with these two alternatives, it should come as no surprise that most Americans are uncertain about just what to do. We feel stuck in a terrible trap.
There is, however, a third and much more promising approach, mentioned by some, but never given the full and proper attention it deserves in the public debate.
The third approach is to invite the “third side” to help. The third side is the community surrounding the parties in conflict. The third side approach is to invite the community of different groups within Iraq, the community of neighbours around Iraq, and the larger global community to engage in a serious peacemaking and peacekeeping process.
The peacemaking process would take the form of a standing peace conference, an ongoing forum under the auspices of the United Nations, involving all the stakeholders, barring none. Such a conference would offer an umbrella for informal as well as formal negotiations, creative deals, and unlikely coalitions that together could lead to agreement.
The chair and architect of such a conference would be an international diplomat such as UN Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, a master negotiator who has already shown how to assemble a third side for effective peacemaking in war-torn Afghanistan and Lebanon.
The peacekeeping process would take the form of a peacekeeping force from the Arab League and the United Nations, which, with the invitation of the Iraqis, replaces our troops.
It will be far from easy to reach agreement. What makes it conceivable, however, is that even as the parties’ short-term interests appear to diverge sharply, the reality is that each of the major groups in Iraq has a lot to lose from a worsening civil war, as does each of the neighbouring countries, especially considering the danger of a wider Sunni-Shiite war.
However difficult, a third side approach is worth pursuing for it offers perhaps the only realistic chance to bring the civil war to a negotiated end while containing the worst violence and preventing a wider regional escalation. And it allows us to withdraw in a responsible manner without making matters still worse.
There is a price for us to pay, of course. In order for the third side to get engaged, we need to do something at once very difficult and very simple. While it does not cost us a life or cent, it demands from us a measure of moral courage and honesty.
Just as you cannot expect a friend or neighbours to help you in a self-inflicted emergency if you’ve previously ignored all their appeals and advice to you, so we cannot expect the world community to come to our aid – unless we take the first courageous step of facing reality, acknowledging our mistakes, assuming our responsibility, and asking for help.
A request for help addressed to the people of Iraq and the world community requires us:
• To announce we have no intentions to maintain a military presence in Iraq and to make clear we are ready to leave at any time
• To call for a UN standing peace conference to determine how best we can withdraw our forces without further destabilising the situation
• To offer to pay for and support in all ways an internationally legitimated peacekeeping force and an economic rebuilding effort in Iraq
Many may feel it is impossible to expect President Bush to make such a request. But all that is needed is, in fact, what candidate George Bush called for in 2000 — a “more humble foreign policy”.
As we weigh the merits of staying versus withdrawing, the third-side approach deserves our full public consideration. Whatever we would pay, it would cost us so much less than we are currently spending in lives and treasure. And we have so much to gain – a chance to put this tragic chapter behind us, to heal our wounds, and to make the world safer for ourselves and our children.
* William Ury directs the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University. He is co-author of Getting to Yes and author of The Power of a Positive No. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
2) Religious solutions to political problems
Claude Salhani
Washington, DC - Some scholars insist that what is happening today in the world – the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the war between the West and al-Qaeda and the acts of terrorism practiced by a very particular, extremist and violent branch of Islam - amounts to a clash of civilisations. Others disagree, arguing instead that the clash is more within Islam itself. There are factors on both sides of the equation leading to tensions between the West and Muslim societies, and I remain convinced that it is worthwhile considering where opportunities lie to address the problems on an intra-Muslim level.
Maybe what drives my convictions is the fact that I was raised in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment where although many argue that religion became the catalyst of two civil wars in as many decades, it was in fact something else that drove the beast in that case, namely politics: in the microcosm in which I lived my formative years in West Beirut, I had the great privilege of living in an environment where Christians, Muslims, Druze and Jews coexisted in a peaceful universe where all religions blended, along with a variety of nationalities and races.
When I stopped going to church on Sundays in my teen years, my best friend, a Sunni Muslim and my Jewish girlfriend would each grab me by an arm and force me to attend mass just to please my mother. My two friends would remain by my side throughout the service, standing and sitting and kneeling along with the rest of the congregation.
Growing up in Beirut, I counted many Muslims among my close friends. Religion was never an issue. I lived in the part of town which later, when the civil war erupted, became known as “Muslim West Beirut”. I never felt as though I didn’t belong.
I don’t buy the theory of the clash of civilisations because for me the problem is driven by power politics, and supported by factors such as education and environment. Those with better education tend to be more tolerant of the “other”. And by education I don’t mean those in possession of college degrees, because as September 11 demonstrated, that was not the case - several of the 9/11 hijackers had college degrees. I refer rather to the education received from one’s parents, the environment in which one is raised, and the charismatic influences, in this case often religious, to which one is exposed.
When you look at the extremists, the Taliban and company, at the associations or training institutions where the supremacy of one religious view over others is an integral part of the curriculum, and at the very compelling sense of belonging and purpose that being a part of such groups often imparts, it becomes obvious that part of the problem is influenced by different religious interpretations, albeit often with political ends in mind. Therefore it follows that, although the problem is one of politics, it may be in religion where the solution is to be found.
This sentiment is shared by Gijs de Vries, the EU’s counter-terrorist chief in Brussels. When I interviewed him two years ago, he told me he did not believe there was a clash between Islam and the West. Rather, he said, he thought the clash was within Islam.
Ali Bardakoglu, president of the Diyanet, Turkey’s highest religious authority, told me when I interviewed him in Istanbul that same December that “there are a lot of problems within Islam to resolve. If religion leads to clashes, then there is something missing,” Bardakoglu told me.
Yet when I repeated those words to a group of visiting Muslim scholars at Washington’s American University two weeks ago, the reaction among the majority of the audience was somewhere between icy and hostile.
For the most part they resented being told that there was a problem in Islam. Several of them said it would be more correct to say that there are problems among Muslims, not within Islam.
It may be a simple matter of restructuring a sentence, but at least they half-admitted the fact that not all is well.
For positive change to come about, mainstream Muslims - individuals and organisations - must demonstrate a concerted effort in combating extremists. Those who misquote the Holy Qur’an must be stopped and the mainstream, including very conservative Muslims, must explain that this is not the way of Islam.
Concentrated efforts must be made to root out extremism through dialogue. It’s up to the leaders of the Muslim community to take concrete steps to erase the misunderstandings that have contributed to painting a negative image of what should be a religion of peace.
*Claude Salhani is international editor and a political analyst with United Press International (UPI) in Washington, DC. He may be contacted at Claude@upi.com . This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
) ~Youth Views~ Consult our youth: a Moroccan example
Leila Hanafi
Washington, DC - Around 50% of the combined populations of developing and least developed countries are below the age of 25 according to the 2007 World Bank Annual Development Report. This highlights the need to improve the rights of youth and their role in achieving nearly all of the Millennium Development Goals that were adopted by the United Nations in 2000 to combat poverty and promote sustainable development.
More than half of the Arab world’s population is under the age of 25. Such a youth cohort, now more educated than preceding generations and more aware of its global context, is confronted with a unique set of opportunities and constraints. Young people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are at crossroads, witnessing major changes in their countries. The current generation of young Arab men and women face enormous challenges in finding decent employment and in participating in democratic decision-making processes. Yet they are rarely consulted during the formulation of development strategies nor identified as a major group experiencing poverty.
Improving the status of young people is vital not only for their own sake. The welfare of society relies increasingly on a country’s quality of human resources, and youth remain a largely untapped resource. Thus, youth issues need to be viewed as central in policy design and implementation. Specifically, governments need to focus their efforts towards promoting youth participation with the firm understanding that these issues are principal elements of the development process.
As one of the winners of the World Bank’s MENA Youth Innovation Fund, I recently travelled to Morocco to implement my project Youth Employment Initiative: Reaching Marginalised Youth in Urban areas of Rabat-Salé. The project addresses the issue of youth unemployment in urban areas by testing innovative mechanisms to improve the employment opportunities of marginalised youth, particularly female university graduates, and facilitate their transition into the labour market.
In Morocco, even though young people represent the majority of the population, they still experience low social and economic status due to their inadequate training and schooling. The full participation of youth in the development process is therefore hindered, depriving Morocco of the potential of this key component of its society.
On February 2nd, 2007, we officially launched the project in Rabat with our partner NGO, Ribat Alfath, a leading development organisation in the country. The project launch featured policy-and-decision makers, representatives of youth organisations and the business community. The event was covered by various media outlets that stressed that such a youth-led initiative presents a platform for launching action to promote youth employment, to emphasise the fact that young people are key agents of change, and to serve as an advocacy platform and a medium for youth action. The project is a pilot-initiative which will be replicated in other communities in Morocco in the upcoming months.
All youth participants were female university graduates from marginalised neighbourhoods as identified by the Moroccan National Initiative for Human Development. The participants were involved at all stages of design of the training workshop in a consultative capacity. The inclusion and engagement of participants was key to implementing this initiative. It was an empowering approach that enabled the young women to influence and gain control over their own employment opportunities through job skills training and development. While many youth training programs follow a supply-driven approach, this initiative was “demand driven” in that it started from the perspectives and beliefs of young women by helping them identify their needs, and then supported them by providing orientation and guidance services. This enabled the participants to voice their opinions and perspectives on the pressing issues youth face in finding jobs in Morocco.
Young people have catapulted onto the international development agenda with an absolute urgency in the space of just a few years. Yet their actual lives, struggles and desires are often little understood. One of the goals of our initiative is to situate youth perspectives on economic and social development in Morocco. Participants discussed the challenges that Moroccan youth are facing through their French and Communication classes to define solutions and participate in a prioritisation process inspired by the Copenhagen Consensus model.
Unlike past prioritisation processes, the Copenhagen Consensus Model is not a hypothetical exercise but rather a tangible model for meeting community challenges with innovative solutions. In July 2007, participants will give presentations in a youth forum featuring representatives of relevant government agencies, the business community, universities, media and local youth organisations. They will voice their opinions on the pressing issues youth face, propose ideas to government and suggest innovative ways to combat poverty from a youth perspective.
Today, young people constitute a source of knowledge and innovation, and when harnessed effectively, provide an excellent resource to make a vital contribution to the youth agenda and other developmental issues. I believe that with the growing concerns in Morocco over the level of youth participation in the development process, our project will substantially help in bringing about a major break-through in the ability of youth to contribute to progress and development in Morocco. As my generation experiences an unprecedented level of interaction and interdependence throughout the world, I can only hope that in years to come we will still have the idealism of youth to take risks, to look beyond obstacles, and develop innovative solutions to create positive change in the world.
* Originally from Rabat, Leila Hanafi is a recent honours graduate of American University’s School of International Service and is currently pursuing her studies in international law at Georgetown University in Washington DC. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
4) US military’s new Iraq strategy: religious conciliation
Gordon Lubold
Washington, DC – A fledgling group of Sunni and Shiite religious leaders met for the first time in Baghdad last week to condemn sectarian violence in their country, a move US military officials framed as a first of its kind and a small step toward broader political reconciliation.
The group of 55 delegates composed of Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish and other religious representatives from around the country signed an accord June 12 during a two-day meeting that denounced Al Qaeda and vowed to protect holy sites. But it wasn’t enough to stop the truck bombing of a Shiite mosque in downtown Baghdad that reportedly killed 87 and injured 200 more. The bombing is the most recent example of the kind of violence between Sunnis and Shiites, although no one had immediately claimed responsibility for it. That attack follows a wave of attacks against mosques recently, including five in Basra – three Sunni and two Shiite – and the second attack on the historic Shiite mosque in Samarra in which the two remaining minarets were virtually destroyed.
The group of religious delegates who met in Baghdad was attempting to stem just this kind of violence. Billed as the Iraqi Inter-Religious Congress, it was the largest number of religious leaders from the broadest geographic base in Iraq to meet in 37 years, American officials in Baghdad say. Many of the 55 delegates, which also included Christians as well as Yazidis, a primarily Kurdish sect in northern Iraq, were themselves some of the “bad actors” who have directed sectarian violence, officials say.
“The biggest miracle of the conference was that it was the first time since the war that these antagonists sat down in a room and had a reasonable dialogue instead of passing out ammunition,” says Army Col. Micheal Hoyt, chief chaplain for US forces in Iraq.
Colonel Hoyt says he doesn’t want to oversell the significance of the event. Nonetheless, he points to it as a positive sign of the kind of large-scale political reconciliation that could still occur in Iraq.
“If this step hadn’t occurred, there wouldn’t be any movement in that direction,” he says. “This is the foundational step to allow broader reconciliation, at least among religious leaders, many of whom are perpetrators of violence, to begin to move forward.”
But at least one US analyst says such meetings have occurred on some level before and while they yield conciliatory rhetoric, that rarely translates into a decrease in violence.
Many of those perpetrating violence, at mosques and elsewhere, don’t listen to the clerics, says Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. “It would be great if this works, but I’m deeply pessimistic at this stage in the civil war that it can be reversed by meetings like this.”
Much of the meeting was spent on deciding how the meeting would proceed and included only a little substantive discussion beyond denouncing extremist Sunnis in the form of Al Qaeda and vowing to protect holy sites around the country, Hoyt says. The accord they signed included other broad points around the ideas of free expression of faith, tolerance, and unity.
Hoyt declined to say what the issues of contention that remain are, saying those are negotiating points that will be addressed at the next meeting within the next two months. Media reports from Baghdad indicated that imams from various mosques in Baghdad have recently been encouraging each other to attend one another’s mosques for Friday prayer.
* Gordon Lubold is a staff writer for 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, 21 June 2007, www.csmonitor.com
Copyright (c) The Christian Science Monitor. For reprint permission please contact lawrenced[c]ps.com .
5) Church plus state can equal democracy
Mirjam Kunkler and Michael Meyer-Resende
New York, New York/Berlin - The recent crisis in Turkey over the reach of secularism highlighted the relation between religion and the state in Muslim countries. The Turkish generals, who warned against diluting the separation of state and religion, did not get good press internationally. However, the rebukes were mild considering the setback their intervention created for Turkish democracy.
The generals could count on a deep-seated concern in Western democracies for the role of religion in Muslim-majority states. While some of these concerns are legitimate, there is a misconception of state-religion relations in democracies. Many in the West and in Muslim-majority states believe a functioning democracy requires a strict separation between state and religion - the latter regarded as a purely private matter. Functioning democracies, however, have introduced a range of institutional relationships between religion and state.
The United States and France, for example, have strongly separated the two. In the United Kingdom and Norway, however, there is a complex and intertwined rapport between state and religion, with high degrees of legislation related to religion. What the examples of most long-standing democracies in Europe show is that a relationship between religious institutions and the state does not need to be detrimental to democracy - it depends rather on the nature of this relationship.
A look at state support for religious education, religious financing and the allocation of airtime to religious communities in public media illustrates how states grant public space to religious communities without jeopardising democratic politics.
Take religious education. Virtually every state in the European Union provides either some form of religious instruction in public schooling or state funding for religious schools. In the Netherlands, for example, the state subsidises religious educational institutions, which make up more than 50 percent of all elementary schools. In most of the German Lander, religion is an elective subject taught in public secondary schools. Even in “republican” France, teachers in religious schools qualify for state support and as much as a fifth of the total educational budget goes to private Catholic schools. In England, non-denominational religious education is mandatory in all state schools.
At the same time, many of the European states fund and design the training of religious teachers, as well as that of future theologians in state university faculties of theology. In Norway, for instance, the government even appoints bishops and deans, exercising considerable influence over the profile of the church’s leadership.
With respect to religious finances, in Germany, Italy, Spain and Finland, the state, in return for a significant administrative fee, collects religious levies together with income tax and forwards them to the recognised religious communities. Such a system only works where religious communities have created a centralised administration through which such levies can be distributed back to the local levels. An absence of such centralised structures, however, usually hinders charismatic Protestant and Muslim communities from enjoying the same benefits.
In several European states, religious communities also receive extra tax breaks. In Norway, again, almost the entire church budget - most salaries, much of other running budgets, as well as maintenance and the raising of new churches - remains part of the state and municipal budgets.
Finally, in many European states, religious communities have guaranteed airtime on public television and state-owned radio stations. As public corporations, the churches and other religious groups are represented on the boards of public-owned stations and media regulatory bodies in the German Lander. The churches have fixed slots for airing morning prayers, church services and meditation programs. In France, the broadcasting of religious programs on public television is determined by law: the Catholics have 360 minutes per month for broadcasting, while the Protestants and the Buddhists have 60 minutes each.
Are such institutional connections between religion and politics antithetical to democracy? The European examples suggest not. The relations between religious and political institutions in the EU often exist under the aegis of the democratic rule of law, and the commitment of states to democratic liberalism is usually not questioned.
From the perspective of Muslim-majority countries, the myth that democracies must be based on a strict separation of state and religion can be dangerous. On the one hand, it allows authoritarian “secular” regimes in the Arab world, for instance, to portray themselves as a bulwark against religious “non-democratic” parties and groups, without affording moderate Islamic parties due process to prove that their platforms are not anti-democratic. On the other hand, it allows religious fundamentalists to suggest that Western democracies are oblivious, if not openly hostile, to religion. Longstanding democracies, notably in the EU, should make much greater efforts of public diplomacy to clarify that there are many constitutional constructions that are not inherently illiberal and that combine democratic governance with some sort of public role for religion.
A strict separation between state and religion is not a precondition for functioning democracies. For democracy to obtain, rather, what must be respected are the rule of law and the safeguarding of human rights.
* Mirjam Kunkler is the deputy director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) at Columbia University in New York. Michael Meyer-Resende is the coordinator of Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based group that promotes accountability of state bodies and the development of democratic institutions ( www.democracy-reporting.org). This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Daily Star, 19 June 2007, www.dailystar.com.lb
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
Youth Views
CGNews-PiH also regularly publishes the work of student leaders and journalists whose articles strengthen intercultural understanding and promote constructive perspectives and dialogue in their own communities. Student journalists and writers under the age of 27 are encouraged to write to Chris Binkley ( cbinkley@sfcg.org ) for more information on contributing.
About CGNews-PiH
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 constructive, offer hope and promote dialogue and mutual understanding, to news outlets worldwide. With support from the British, Norwegian, Swedish and US Governments, the United States Institute of Peace, the National Endowment for Democracy and private donors, the service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the fields of conflict transformation and media production.
This news service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in June 2003.
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The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews or its affiliates.
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