Dear HumanDHS network friends
Please find below the Common Ground News Bulletin for 15-21 April 2008.
Kind regards
Brian Ward
Common Ground News Service
Partners in Humanity for constructive & vibrant Muslim-Western relations
15 - 21 April 2008
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, Indonesian and Urdu. To subscribe, click here.
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Inside this edition
1) Spring election crossroads for Kuwait by Shafeeq Ghabra
Shafeeq Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, contemplates the current challenges facing the Kuwaiti government in the aftermath of the dissolution of parliament, as well as the democratic and developmental opportunities that the upcoming elections present.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 15 April 2008)
2) Tunisia vows to preserve religious moderation by Mourad Sellami
A Tunisian journalist with the French-language daily Le Temps, Mourad Sellami, explores how to uphold Tunisia’s cultural diversity and open religious atmosphere, while struggling against rising extremism in the country.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 15 April 2008)
3) Questioning the death penalty by Ayesha Khan
In light of the recent conviction of Pervez Kambaksh, tried for blasphemy for distributing literature on women’s rights in Afghanistan, Ayesha Khan, a documentary filmmaker based in London, considers the opinion of the individual when it comes to the death penalty.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 15 April 2008)
4) ~Youth Views~ Conflict in Nigeria by Olivia Rammel, Funda Ozcelik, and Doha Samir
Olivia Rammel of the University of Amsterdam, Funda Ozcelik of Sabanci University, and Doha Samir of Cairo University offer a comprehensive analysis of the resource-driven conflict in the religiously diverse nation of Nigeria, and provide a solution to the socio-economic inequalities.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGnews), 15 April 2008)
5) Double standards and dialogue by Mona Sarkis
In his interview with Mona Sarkis, Georges Corm, former Lebanese Finance Minister and the author of Histoire du Moyen Orient (History of the Middle East), reveals the flawed thinking in looking at Muslim society as a cohesive block, showing the limitations of Huntington’s clash of civilisations, as well as much of Western foreign policy.
(Source: Qantara.de, 1 April 2008)
1) Spring election crossroads for Kuwait
Shafeeq Ghabra
Kuwait City - The recent resignation of members of the Kuwaiti government and subsequent dissolution of the parliament reflects severe structural imbalances and an ongoing conflict between a government lacking in strategy and a parliament lacking in vision.
The challenge for Kuwait today is to take advantage of the May 2008 elections to shift strategy and prepare for privatisation, smaller government, good governance and a diversified modern economy. To succeed, the government must find a way to support meritocracy, open the way for international and regional investment, and relax cultural restrictions surrounding co-education, tourism, women’s rights in the social and personal spheres, entertainment and censorship.
Since the steep 2003 rise in oil prices, Kuwaiti MPs have dedicated their time to spending surplus revenue not on development, but on benefits for government-sector employees – which include some 90 percent of Kuwaitis. In one failed attempt, parliamentarians championed forgiving personal loans by the state for all Kuwaitis; another successful effort sought larger stipends for students studying in free, public universities. Such proposals were viewed as key to securing re-election.
These MPs had increasingly resembled unionists, pressuring government for more concessions for employees. In fact, the emir dissolved parliament on 21 March 2008, one day before the parliamentary vote on a bill proposing the second salary increase in a month for government employees.
MPs had also been particularly keen on appealing to Kuwaitis of Bedouin origin – the country’s new majority – who consider themselves economically deprived relative to the urban commercial elite.
In addition, most MPs had also adopted a somewhat populist, anti-business position advocating more restrictions and regulations on the commercial sector. One battle after another eventually left the government exhausted, and major companies, including telecommunications-leader Zain, began moving offices to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and other nearby countries. None of this sat well with a government that had declared its intent to turn the country into a financial and commercial centre.
The government also had other worries. In February, tensions grew between the Shi’a community, which comprises 30 percent of the population, and majority Sunnis when two Shi’a MPs attended a rally to honour Imad Mughniyah. Mughniyah, a Hizbullah commander, who was assassinated in Damascus that month in an attack his supporters claimed was orchestrated by Israel.
Mughniyah was believed to have been involved in the hijacking of two Kuwaiti Airlines planes and in orchestrating a series of bombings in Kuwait. The government mishandled the public’s reaction, which resulted in verbal attacks against the two Shi’a MPs, including threats by fellow MPs to strip them of their nationality.
In addition, a conservative social agenda appeared to gain advantage in parliament. The Islamist bloc sought to implement a law on gender segregation that many universities, as well as the liberal parliamentary bloc, opposed. They also wanted to apply the law to co-educational British and American high schools. Students and community-based organisations rallied against the measure.
Furthermore, in fall 2007 the parliament passed a bill forbidding women to work in certain areas deemed “difficult” for their gender (industrial work, positions requiring the operation of heavy equipment, and construction) and banned women from working beyond 8pm in most jobs. Such laws alienated the liberal sectors of society and the business community.
Despite these challenges, Kuwaitis continue to exercise their right to speak their mind. In 2007, for example, the government banned talk shows from public television, including this writer’s weekly program, but similar shows and provocative discussions continue to be broadcast on private stations and satellite channels in the region. The country has 12 daily newspapers and Kuwaiti bloggers are writing extensively; fully regulating public expression has become an impossible task for the state.
Parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2008 will allow Kuwaitis to select representatives from five large districts, instead of the previous 25. Many MPs were previously elected through vote buying, which will be much harder to accomplish with approximately 70,000 voters per district. The elections will also feature more individuals running on political lists such as the Islamic, liberal, Shi’a, nationalist and tribal ones. This coming election will have a smaller role for independent candidates.
During the last two years Kuwait has experienced a division within. On the one hand, people have supported MPs who can bring about transparency in government while benefiting their districts, while on the other, they have wanted a government able to make critical decisions on development, rule of law, education and privatisation.
Most Kuwaitis see their country as lagging behind neighbouring nations in development, administration, education and services but ahead in democratic freedoms, transparency and rights. Kuwait must ultimately create a model for society and a government capable of successfully merging democracy and development, simultaneoulsly prioritising both.
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* Shafeeq Ghabra is professor of political science at Kuwait University and president of the Jusoor Arabiya Leadership & Consultancy Company, dedicated to meeting the challenges of future development and reform in the Arab world. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service, 15 April 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
2) Tunisia vows to preserve religious moderation
Mourad Sellami
Tunis - In Tunisia, synagogues and churches stand side by side with mosques. Jewish and Christian minorities freely practice their religious rituals. This tolerant climate is ensured by the constitution which provides for habeas corpus, guarantees freedom of conscience and protects freedom of religious practice. But this open atmosphere for religious practices has been challenged in recent years by the rise of radical Islam in the Arab-Muslim world.
Dozens of young Tunisians have joined conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia over the past decades, and are flocking to Iraq in particular today. Within the country, the kameez (knee-length shifts worn by men in Afghanistan and Pakistan) is making an appearance on the streets of Tunisian cities as symbols of support to the people of these countries. For women, religious headscarves are now replacing the traditional Tunisian safsari (a large piece of white cloth worn by women over their head and clothes).
These changes worry a vast number of Tunisians, because they concern the pillars of their society, based on religious diversity and – almost – secular legislation. These two principles are under attack by more radical Muslims, who regard them as discordant with Islam.
Where else in the Arab world today would you find a Jewish community almost 6,000 strong? In Tunisia, the main body of the Jewish community lives on the island of Djerba, alongside a Christian community numbering over 20,000, comprised of Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Greeks. They share a mutual respect for the culture and rituals of the other faiths. In fact, Muslim Tunisians attend Christian and Jewish festivals, primarily Christmas and the Jewish pilgrimage to Djerba.
This tolerant and liberal approach also applies to the status of women. In 1956, the first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, promulgated the “Personal Status Code” (CSP), the one and only piece of legislation instating monogamy in the Arab-Muslim world. The incumbent president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has further strengthened the CSP. In addition, Tunisia is one of the few countries in the world where religious ceremonial marriages are not conducted. Weddings are performed only by civil authorities, although they sometimes take place in a mosque.
The Tunisian people are not prepared to give up this rule of civil law under the pressure of a rising radical Islam that is using satellite TV channels to condemn religious freedom and the presence of non-Muslim tourists in Tunisia, and calls for the end of secular legislation.
Civil society supports the concept of a modern and tolerant society. Universities have staged seminars on the co-existence of religions and respect for cultural differences. And dozens of petitions have been circulated to promote support for the maintenance of women’s rights in Tunisia and to call for their further strengthening.
The government has opted for extreme security measures. Any activities and media which could likely be infiltrated by fundamentalists – religious activities such as Islamic discussion circles and discussions for the elucidation of the words of the Prophet Muhammad – have been frozen. And the use of mosques has been restricted to the five daily prayers.
Any imams who may be suspected of religious extremism have been disbarred from Friday predication, when mid-day prayers are preceded by two predications by the preaching imam, and include precepts for daily life. Headscarves are banned in schools, universities and government offices.
For many human rights observers, such coercive measures have scant regard for religious freedom. By casting extremists in the role of victims, they glamorise extremism in the eyes of young people in search of identity or opposition. Such measures offer only cosmetic protection against rising fundamentalism.
An in-depth, pro-active discussion, based on tolerant religious discourse, is necessary to eradicate the ramifications of fundamentalism within society. The moderation of the Maliki brand of Islam (one of four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence) and the generally tolerant culture of the Tunisian people should be used to proclaim peaceful co-existence for all social classes and respect for others, including their differences.
Tunisia has always been at the crossroads of various civilisations. This cultural diversity should be conducive to the peaceful co-existence of all cultures and religions on the basis of mutual respect.
Only such a policy is capable of warding off the feelings of sympathy that may be garnered by extremists whose agenda is to create contention in society by branding as infidels all those who do not follow them. If a hard-line policy were adopted, the extremists might as appear as victims of intolerance, punished for their religious beliefs.
The ongoing struggle for tolerance in Tunisia is more nuanced than the fight for women’s rights ever was. Now, as before, it is vital to wage and win this struggle by the force of argument.
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* Mourad Sellami is a Tunisian journalist working for the French-language daily Le Temps. His articles can be found at www.letemps.com.tn . This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service, 15 April 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
3) Questioning the death penalty
Ayesha Khan
London - We should not wait for Turkey to lead us in understanding the diversity of Islamic thought on different matters. It is essential for Muslims to be aware of the many opinions that are out there and not assume that what they have been told by imams, scholars or their elders is the only option. Since there is no priesthood in Islam and no agency between the individual and God, it is vital for every Muslim to educate themselves and make up their own minds.
Take the death penalty, for instance, which is part of the legal code in some Muslim countries. Given that in the Qur’an God equates the taking of one innocent life with the killing all of humanity (Qur’an 5:32), it seems quite irresponsible not to clarify any potentially grey areas when it comes to taking someone’s life.
The story of 23-year-old Pervez Kambaksh is a case in point. Kambaksh was tried and convicted for blasphemy in Afghanistan for distributing literature taken from the web about women’s rights. He will be executed if his appeal is unsuccessful and the campaign to save him does not succeed.
Despite the view some people have of Islam as a strict and homogenous ideology, crimes that are understood to be punishable by death vary depending on who you speak to and where you are. Even the four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence have different views on which crimes deserve the death penalty. The differences come largely from the various interpretations of the hadith, a collection of sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.
Some people may think that Turkey’s plans to revise the existing body of hadith – reinterpreting some while extracting those that are deemed inauthentic for having suspect sources – and to re-examine Islamic law for the modern age is an encouraging step. But can Turkey deliver an Islam that has universal application? And can the various hadith ever really be separated from the era and circumstances they were collected and written in?
I recently talked to a conservative and prominent Wahhabi scholar, Sheikh Suhaib Hasan, about the crimes punishable by death. He is a board member of the British Islamic Shari’a Council and has been accused of having extreme views; even he admits there is variation in opinion over which crimes are deserving of the death penalty: “There is a great debate amongst scholars about whether [for example] apostasy is punishable by death… No one was killed for apostasy during the life of the Prophet”.
Haroon Khan, co-founder of free-minds.org, a website which seeks to promote the Qur’an as the only source of religious guidance for Muslims, explains, “The Qur’an tells us that the only crimes punishable by death are crimes against humanity. That is mainly for people like Slobodan Milosevic. [Even] in individual cases of murder, the option of compensation is given.”
The verse from the Qur’an to which Haroon is referring states that the only crimes punishable by death are “murder or spreading mischief in the land” (Qur’an 5:32). The problem is how people choose to interpret these terms. Some consider “mischief” as large-scale corruption or sedition, while others, as in the case of Kambaksh, see it as handing out flyers from the internet.
In the case of Kambaksh, who has not chosen to leave Islam but only to distribute information, talking about whether or not he is guilty seems almost like a diversionary tactic. Muslims must first try to raise awareness of matters of religious freedom within Islam and debate whether current interpretations which advocate the death penalty for those who challenge the authority of the state are valid.
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* Ayesha Khan is a documentary filmmaker based in London. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service, 15 April 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
4) ~Youth Views~ Conflict in Nigeria
Olivia Rammel, Funda Ozcelik, and Doha Samir
Amsterdam/Istanbul/Cairo - It’s been nine years since Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer and most populous nation, ended its military rule and became a democracy. The transformation, though slow and problematic, has been characterised by three consecutive elections, the latest one in 2007. Despite this process of democratisation, Nigeria still remains at risk of ethno-religious, community, and resource-related conflicts, largely due to its tumultuous history.
In the 1960s, Britain created an artificial Nigerian state that included about 200 ethnic groups who spoke different languages; the three major ethnic groups were the Muslim Hausa-Fulani, Catholic Igbo and the mixed Muslim and Christian Yoruba. Administrative boundaries created by the British colonial government deepened the division between the different ethnic groups. Also, Nigeria’s large geographic territory with its different environmental climates limited interaction between different groups, creating different cultures and economic conditions.
An imposed system of indirect rule not only reinforced ethnic divisions, but also gave power to traditional leaders. By abusing this power, rulers in the villages established patronage networks, which in the long run, encouraged the tribalism and nepotism that Nigeria still suffers from today.
These territorial divisions and indirect rule were further complicated by socio-economic disparities, in part due to the unequal spread of education. In the North, the percentage of individuals receiving western-style education was much lower than the percentage in the South. And those who did receive higher education in the North were primarily descendants of elite families and aristocracies, many of whom have dominated Nigerian politics and held major civil service positions.
Competition for scarce resources also caused ethnic affiliations to become stronger and created antagonism among different factions. The patronage networks and corrupted tendency of the elites to benefit themselves and their ethnic groups first also played into the conflict.
The North is predominantly Muslim, while the South is mainly Christian. However, the problem is not one of religion. Religious and ethnic diversities by themselves would not have led to the outbreak of violence. However the westernisation of the South created socio-economic inequality, strengthening ethnic affiliations along religious lines. As a result, other tensions began to be expressed and articulated in religious terms, and eventually main actors of the conflict started to use religion to gain political support.
The South is more resource-rich, particularly endowed with oil reserves, while the North is more agriculturally oriented. Oil accounts for more than 80 percent of the federal government’s revenues. Thus, there has always been competition among different groups in terms of access to these resources. Violence and kidnappings in the oil-rich Niger River Delta in 2006 – when militants demanded a greater share of federal revenue as well as benefits from community development – only prove that the resource distribution problem is far from being solved and will likely trigger more violence in the future.
The incorporation of different ethnicities in an artificial geography makes the regional disparity hard to address. Also, the level of violence is still very high – especially during election periods.
There is a great necessity to address the socio-economic inequalities among different fractions of the society by empowering a faithful democratic ruling class and a strong civil society. It is also crucial that the international community plays a role to remind the official and unofficial authorities in Nigeria of their responsibilities to provide peace and security in the country.
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* Olivia Rammel is pursuing a major in anthropology and a minor in conflict studies at the University of Amsterdam. Funda Ozcelik is a MA student of conflict analysis & resolution at Sabanci University and Doha Samir is pursuing a BA in political science at Cairo University. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service, 15 April 2008, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
5) Double standards and dialogue
Mona Sarkis
Bonn, Germany - Georges Corm is convinced that as long as the West pursues double moral standards and applies international law unequally, its attempts to establish dialogue with the Muslim world cannot be taken seriously. Mona Sarkis, a freelance journalist, spoke to the social scientist and former Lebanese Finance Minister:
Mr. Corm, in your most recent book, Histoire du Moyen Orient (History of the Middle East) you devote a lot of attention to what you refer to as the geographic “arabesque” that historically characterises the Middle East, by which you mean the present Arab territories, the Mashriq, Turkey, and Iran. Why devote so much space to this concept?
Georges Corm: Because talk of “Muslim society” – as if it were one unified ethnic or national body – is out of touch with reality and I just wanted to show the diversity that has existed at the geographical level since ancient times. Persians, Turks and Arabs are not a homogenous group that is held together by religion. It is absurd to view Moroccan and Iranian society as one and the same. This presupposes that Islam is a living, unified being that exists in a precisely defined territory.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, authors like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington have done their best to make the world believe in the existence of mega identity blocks such as “Islam” and “the West” – and unfortunately their efforts have been quite successful – but that is precisely the reason why reality must be quoted again and again.
In fact, Islam is – as scholars of the calibre of Michael Hodgson, Jacques Berque, Maxime Rodinson, or Ernest Gellner have demonstrated – only one aspect of the development of what is referred to as “Muslim societies”. The fact that numerous potentates exploit it in order to preserve their power is not the fault of the religion.
Among these potentates I not only count dictators or emblematic Muslim fundamentalist leaders, but also the successive governments of the United States. In the final stages of the Cold War, a young generation of radical Arab Marxists made the United States worry that the resource-rich region might fall under Soviet control. To prevent this, they encouraged the political Islamic activists, thereby setting in motion a dynamic development that can no longer be stopped.
Yet you disagree with the concept of “re-Islamicisation”…
Corm: Because it underpins the notion that Islam is a monolithic block. Until the 1960s, Iraq, Egypt and Syria all promoted secular nationalism, but they failed altogether with the collapse of pan-Arabism. Pan-Arabism was then replaced by varieties of pan-Islamism that were not uniform, but were shaped by either Shi’ism or Sunnism. The difference between the two was responsible for the devastating eight-year war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s.
This in itself reveals the limitations of Huntington’s concept of a “civilisation” as a coherent political and military unit. Nevertheless, the West continues to address the “Muslim region” with this concept. The United States, for example, classifies Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea as the “axis of evil” despite the radical differences between these very different countries, political regimes, and cultures.
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* Mona Sarkis is a freelance writer based in Berlin. Georges Corm is former Lebanese Finance Minister and the author of Histoire du Moyen Orient (History of the Middle East). This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org . The full article can be found at www.qantara.de .
Source: Qantara.de, 1 April 2008, www.qantara.de
Copyright permission is granted for publication.