Common Ground Newsbulletin: 17-23 November 2009
Dear HumanDHS network friends
Please find below the Common Ground Newsbulletin: 17-23 November 2009.
Kind regards
Brian Ward
Common Ground Newsbulletin
Inside this edition 17 – 23 November 2009
The one you choose to feed
by Louise Diamond
Louise Diamond, founder and director of Global Systems Initiatives, calls for finding ways “to change circumstances that nurture the divisiveness” that could occur in the wake of the Fort Hood tragedy.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 17 November 2009)
Chicago prize to Pakistani education activist
by Naazish YarKhan
Writer and editor Naazish YarKhan examines the work of a famous Pakistani pop star in improving public education in Pakistan.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 17 November 2009)
Media spotlight on Abu Dhabi
by Muhammad Ayish
Muhammad Ayish, Professor of Communications at Sharjah University, considers the regional challenges and opportunities associated with the launch of CNN Abu Dhabi.
(Source: The National, 11 November 2009)
Arab women on the move
by Raouf Ebeid
Raouf Ebeid, editor for Political Islam Online, discusses the way economic, social and religious factors are charting varying courses for women’s progress in different parts of the Middle East.
(Source: Political Islam Online, 1 November 2009)
Cairo’s literary scene
by Susanne Schanda
Freelance journalist Susanne Schanda looks at the burgeoning literary culture in Egypt that was sparked in 2002 with a local dentist’s bestseller.
(Source: Qantara.de, 6 November 2009)
Featured Video
Featured in this week’s video is the musical movement Yallah Underground, which seeks to transcend borders, race and religion in the Arab world and create a cultural identity revolving around peace.
The one you choose to feed
Louise Diamond
Washington, DC – There is a classic Native American story about a grandfather who tells his grandson about the battle between two wolves inside us all–one full of angry, fearful energy and one full of compassionate, benevolent energy.
When the boy asks, “Which wolf wins?” the grandfather replies, “The one you choose to feed.”
With the recent Fort Hood shootings, Americans once again have a choice about which wolf within us to feed. Will we play the recording of “I told you so. Those Muslims are all violent and can’t be trusted,” as some pundits are doing, or will we take the opportunity this time to reach out in curiosity and compassion to our Muslim American friends and seek greater understanding of the stresses some of them might feel living in this country?
One recurrent theme in the reporting of the Fort Hood shootings is that Major Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan wanted out of a military that was fighting his co-religionists in Afghanistan and Iraq. If, in some upside-down world, the United States were ever to go to war with Israel, many of us would find it easier to understand if Jewish soldiers had difficulty fulfilling their duties, and would likely make some accommodation for those who conscientiously objected. Yet Hasan apparently asked repeatedly to leave the service, and was consistently turned down.
Who was paying attention to the building tension he was so clearly feeling between two aspects of his identity, one as an American and one as a Muslim?
Should we be paying attention to other Muslim American soldiers who might face similar challenges, without vilifying them for what is a natural and common phenomenon? After all, we all feel conflict between different elements of our identity–gender, religion, nationality, family, individuality, etc.–to some extent.
One way of understanding the choice between the two wolves is the choice between contraction and expansion. When we are hurt we naturally contract. In this contraction mode our “fight or flight” response is stirred and our body instinctually tells us to fight or flee from a perceived attack. We revert to stereotypical, simplistic thinking. We want revenge or someone to blame.
We cannot even imagine expanding in these moments, expanding to learn more, to embrace differences and celebrate commonalities, to reach out in compassion and curiosity.
Yet by staying contracted, we deny much of what the moment has to teach us, and thereby insure the likelihood of the lesson coming around again, perhaps in a more virulent form.
The Fort Hood shootings give us exactly this opportunity, as did the events of 9/11 on a much larger scale. I continue to believe that at that time we missed a huge open moment that could have been a turning point in human history. Imagine if immediately following the attacks we had called for a sustained global dialogue between Christians, Muslims and Jews in order to understand each other better, to build bridges of shared hopes and concerns, to heal festering historical wounds and to craft a common vision for how to live together peacefully on this planet.
On a local scale, some of that did happen, with civic and church groups reaching out to Muslim American neighbours for interfaith and community dialogues, even as we indiscriminately rounded up Muslim American men and prepared for war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now we see the same thing–both contraction and expansion–only now we have eight years of accumulated experience, feelings and knowledge to wade through, some of which feeds one wolf while some feeds the other.
We have learned a great deal about the power of dialogue over the years. We know, for instance, that it creates human bonds and breaks down stereotypes of “the other”. We also know that unless it is aligned with the political will to act in order to change the circumstances that nurture the divisiveness, it will not ultimately be effective beyond the scale of the individual participants.
The tragic events at Fort Hood are, or should be, a wakeup call to all of us that once again we all have a choice to make: That which divides us can kill–or heal. Which wolf do you choose to feed?
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* Louise Diamond, Ph.D., is President of Global Systems Initiatives, where she brings a systems approach to complex global issues. She is also an author, facilitator and consultant, and has worked in hot spots and cross-cultural settings around the world. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 17 November 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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Chicago prize to Pakistani education activist
Naazish YarKhan
Chicago, Illinois – Behind the news of suicide bombings and displaced groups in Pakistan, people in the country are working to foster a generation of young people equipped to solve the country’s problems.
Shehzad Roy, renowned Pakistani pop star and founder-president of the Zindagi Trust, which works to improve education in Pakistan, was recently awarded the 2009 Patricia Blunt Koldyke Fellowship on Social Entrepreneurship from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an organisation dedicated to promoting dialogue on global issues.
Roy’s goal is to reform the government-run school system in Pakistan. “The discrepancy between rich and poor in Pakistan has always pricked my conscience,” he says. “In my childhood, I remember it was always an exciting ride to the airport in anticipation of my cousins who were visiting from abroad. However, the way back from the airport was anti-climactic, as our cousins would pester us with questions of why the beggar boys at traffic lights weren’t in school.”
In Pakistan, private schools cater to the privileged while the underprivileged masses attend public, sub-standard schools or are forced to work as child labourers. According to Roy, “Quality education is every citizen’s right and the responsibility to provide it lies with the state. A paradigm shift is required in the mindset of state authorities, the people and the education system to save our future generations from rote learning and inadequate literacy.”
This awareness led to the foundation of Zindagi Trust in 2002 and its flagship project, “I am Paid to Learn”. Approximately 10.5 million Pakistani children under the age of 15 work menial jobs to support their families. Using proceeds from Roy’s popular worldwide concerts and private donations, this programme has paid 3,000 children Rs. 20, approximately 24 cents, every day to go to school. This small sum amounts to approximately how much these children would be paid if they were working.
After a few years Roy realised that being paid to learn was only a first step toward improving Pakistan’s public school system. Reforming the country’s schools and their curriculum was essential and soon became the organisation’s mission–to promote quality government-school reform, including improving the curriculum and textbooks, one school at a time.
Working toward this end, Roy sought to obtain a transfer of management from the government for Sindh Madrassa Board (SMB) Fatima Jinnah Girls Government School, which has 2,600 students. Considered as one of the city’s best government schools, its building was nonetheless on the verge of collapse, stray dogs roamed its corridors, its drinking water was contaminated with sewage water, and teacher and student attendance was negligible.
Although being a well-known singer did give him a platform, Roy recalls the government’s resistance, and being asked to come back another time each time he visited them with his proposal to take the school under Zindagi Trust’s management.
Zindagi Trust finally “adopted” SMB Fatima Jinnah Girls School–its first school–in May 2007. The first task dealt with the very basics, such as “relocating” the several stray dogs that lingered around classes while school was in session. A complete makeover of the school’s building, administration and syllabus followed.
With the aim of nurturing a “thinking individual”, the curriculum now embraces individual growth, arts, photography and sports. Thought-provoking, child-friendly textbooks have replaced government ones that were based on a 60-year-old curriculum. A new library, art room, computer lab and audio-visual room have also been added to the school’s facilities.
“Our intention is to find best-practices from around the world,” Roy says. “I was impressed with the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) programme initiated by the Koldykes in Chicago, where teachers train specifically to work with students in high poverty areas, and work with a mentor teacher in each class.”
SMB Fatima Jinnah Girls School is the first and only public school ever in Pakistan whose management has been transferred to a non-government organisation. If negotiations with the Pakistani government prevail, the school could very well become a template for thousands of other public schools in the country, which would serve the country well based on results thus far: within one year of being under Zindagi Trust’s management, SMB students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds were participating and winning art and rowing competitions with students from the most elite private schools in Karachi.
“They’ve dedicated their lives to education. We are very fortunate to have this fellowship go to them,” said Michael Koldyke, husband of Pat Koldyke in whose name the award is given. “The stakes are so high; these are important and dangerous times in Pakistan. Prioritising education in Pakistan is terribly important for them–and the United States.”
As Roy points out, “[This project] reveals how much untapped potential lies in our illiterate and untutored children.” The continuing war against extremism is not enough to foster a peaceful next generation; the right education, culminating in economic independence, will hopefully provide a viable alternative to impressionable minds.
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* Naazish YarKhan is a writer, editor, public speaker and NPR commentator, and was most recently featured on PBS’s Chicago Tonight and NPR’s Speaking of Faith. She blogs at literatihall.com and Huffington Post. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 17 November 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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Media spotlight on Abu Dhabi
Muhammad Ayish
Abu Dhabi – If anyone had any doubts about the emergence of Abu Dhabi as a global media centre, those doubts must surely be gone by now. I was at the Emirates Palace hotel last week for a reception to mark the launch of CNN Abu Dhabi. It was exciting, and it was impressive.
CNN International–launched in 1985, five years after its parent Cable News Network in the United States–has more than 500 million viewers in households and hotel rooms throughout the world. Abu Dhabi now joins its regional production hubs in Atlanta, Hong Kong and London, which will help turn the city into a global household name.
But there is more to the launch of this operation than the international branding of a booming city. This development also brings with it new challenges and an opportunity for the UAE and the wider region to make their mark on international public opinion. To do so, however, the region needs a fuller understanding of what it takes to harness the power of international television in the global battle for hearts and minds.
CNN Abu Dhabi will not just be about breaking news. Three of the network’s high-profile shows–Prism, Marketplace Middle East and Inside the Middle East–will be produced in Abu Dhabi and broadcast worldwide. They should provide a platform for politicians, business leaders and civil society groups to debate some of the region’s enduring cultural, economic and political concerns.
And this is a two-way street. As much as the region seems excited at the prospect of reaching out to global audiences, international media themselves are also keen to tap into the deep well of indigenous voices to sustain their round-the-clock programming. How those mutual expectations play out should define the future of this critical relationship.
CNN has already unveiled its plans to uncover intriguing stories and conduct in-depth interviews with business and cultural leaders from the region, without compromising its professional standards. In this context, the network’s early broadcasts have been revealing.
The first episode of Prism, the new half-hour prime-time news show produced in Abu Dhabi and anchored by the veteran journalist Stan Grant, kicked off with international news, followed by Democracy or Dynasty, a feature that addressed Egypt’s future leadership. And in Inside the Middle East Grant produced a fascinating segment on the Emirati animation show Freej, which depicts traditional life in the UAE.
The Freej feature illustrated how CNN will spotlight the region’s unique cultural peculiarities, while Democracy or Dynasty demonstrated how vulnerable the region is to investigative probing by international media.
The Arab world’s handling of international television networks over the past decade has been poor. Based on my research into media in the post-9/11 era and on first-hand involvement with government officials in broadcast media training, I believe the region has some way to go before it can realise the full potential of international television. The flaws include poor communication, incoherent discourse and shocking ignorance of international professional media standards and practices.
For example, television thrives on debate that is terse, clear and straight to the point, but some people from the region adore long-winded and convoluted arguments, elaborate details and linguistic redundancies, all of which contradict the basic premise of television as a time-sensitive medium.
In addition, the manner in which many Arab political views are presented reveals serious deficiencies: however sound the argument, it cannot be persuasive if it is poorly constructed. One can see this demonstrated quite clearly in the BBC’s Doha Debates, in which some guests and audiences alike are handicapped by foggy vision.
Perhaps the thorniest problem, however, arises from the region’s failure to understand how international broadcasters operate. Too often, we accuse them of inhibiting our political and cultural perspectives. The truth is that what we mistake for censorship–since much of what is said doesn’t make it to the air due to meandering cultural conversation styles–is simply the application of high professional standards.
So accommodating the Middle East in the agendas of international television broadcasters such as CNN and the BBC does present some challenges. But it is also a unique opportunity to voice the region’s political concerns, promote its economic achievements and express its cultural identities.
It is through these international platforms, where the “powers that be” are listening and watching, that the region’s voices are most likely to be heard. Expectations are higher than ever before. Let us hope that we can rise to meet them.
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* Muhammad Ayish is Professor of Communications at the University of Sharjah. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from the author.
Source: The National, 11 November 2009, www.thenational.ae
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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Arab women on the move
Raouf Ebeid
Alexandria, Virginia – Women in the Middle East are on the move, but in decidedly different directions, depending on where you look. In less than 40 years, Cairo has gone from a city of Western fashion to a city in which the majority of women wear the hijab, or headscarf, and even niqab, an outfit that covers the female body, face and hands. Many attribute this trend to mounting Islamic radicalism, influenced by the brand of Salafism imported from Saudi Arabia. Yet, in Saudi Arabia King Abdullah has just inaugurated a new university in which women will study alongside their male counterparts without being forced to wear the hijab.
We turn first to political, scientific and cultural events in the Arabian Peninsula. In Kuwait, two female parliamentarians, Rola Dashti and Asil Al’Awdi, defied a fatwa, a non-binding legal opinion, by a local cleric ordering them to resign from their positions for refusing to cover their heads in accordance with the Islamic law of the country. Both women stated categorically that Kuwait is governed by a civil code and that there is no room in the country’s politics for Islamic dicta. The women viewed Islamic law as not having any authority in the matter and considered the fatwa inconsistent with the constitutional rules governing Parliament. A few weeks ago, the constitutional court ruled that the women could retain their seats in Parliament.
Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, unrelenting in his endeavours for reform, made history by inaugurating the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), an impressive high-tech $10 billion campus, where women students and faculty are not required to cover their heads or faces and will live on campus, studying and mingling with their male counterparts.
In Abu Dhabi this past week, Haifaa Al Mansour, known for championing women’s issues, became the first Saudi female filmmaker to claim the $100,000 Shasha Grant–which provides production funding for the contest winner–for her screenplay Wajda, the story of a free-spirited 11-year-old Saudi girl coming of age in a restrictive society.
These positive events on the Arabian Peninsula involving women in politics, science and the arts stand in stark contrast to events in Egypt during the same period. The people and the parliament of Egypt were irate over recent remarks by the dean of Al Azhar University, Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, who said that women could not cover their faces with the niqab–which he referred to as cultural tradition that has nothing to do with Islam–when attending classes at the university.
When these events like this are juxtaposed with those in the Arabian Peninsula, important questions emerge about the reasons for the trends and countertrends in the Middle East concerning the status of women. Economics, education and leadership seem to be at the centre of the changing trends regarding the status of women in the Gulf countries versus in Egypt.
The inauguration of KAUST leaves no doubt that when the Saudi king decided to propel his country into the 21st century he recognised that education must be a cornerstone of that endeavour. The standard of living in the Gulf is also one of the highest in the world and the benefits of the economic boom are being enjoyed by the younger generation. The slow but steady progress of women in the Gulf countries is unquestionably attributable, at least in part, to economic prosperity and education
Why then, when we see more progressive attitudes about women emerging in the presumably more conservative Gulf countries, do we see the opposite trend in countries like Egypt, whose capital Cairo was once considered “Paris on the Nile”?
Although there is little doubt that wealth, or the lack thereof, is contributing to the diverging trends in the region, it does not fully explain why we do not see the regressive trends in Egypt manifest in other Arab countries like Syria, Jordan or Morocco, which also lack the Gulf’s wealth. The trends in Egypt are in part the result of an inferior educational system, at all levels. For the past 30 years, Egypt has invested little in its education system and managed it poorly through an endemically corrupt and inefficient centralised system.
It is too early to decide if either of these trends on the status of women in the Middle East will continue. What is certain, however, is that the divergent developments we are seeing today are as much a function of economic, educational and social factors as religious ones. It is therefore imperative for the United States and the West in general to understand the changes taking place and to support institutions that encourage further emancipation of women and discourage the counter-trends in countries like Egypt.
The George W. Bush Administration formed a coalition of the willing to wage a war in Iraq. The Barack Obama Administration needs to form a coalition of the willing to wage a war on poverty and ignorance in the Middle East. They should start by reallocating USAID funds to projects that will improve education for all, but particularly for women. Moving funds from the military to the masses will equally engender an appreciation among the population that is the most effective means to combat Islamic extremism.
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* Raouf Ebeid is an editor for Political Islam Online. This abridged article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from the author. The full text can be found at www.pionline.com .
Source: Political Islam Online, 1 November 2009, www.pionline.com
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
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Cairo’s literary scene
Susanne Schanda
Cairo – It all began with the novel The Yacoubian Building. The book by Alaa al-Aswani, published in 2002, marked the start of a new reading boom in Egypt, and topped the Arabic bestseller lists for two years.
It was only after this success that the author was able to publish a work that he had already written in 1990, but which the General Egyptian Book Organization–a government-funded institution that prints, publishes and markets Egyptian books at local, Arab and international levels–had previously rejected.
Speaking in Cairo, the author says it is much easier to publish a book today than it was ten years ago. “We had a reading crisis in Egypt in the 1990s. Hardly anyone was reading fiction,” he says. “As a result, the private publishing houses were cautious about taking on writers, so I tried it through the state book organisation and failed.”
Al-Aswani, who still works as a dentist in spite of his success and gives interviews at his dental practice every Friday, points out the newly opened bookstore on the other side of the street.
“The shop is doing well. But anyone wanting to open a bookstore in the 1990s might just as well have chucked money in the Nile. Now it’s worth getting into this business, and that means people are reading again.”
Many new bookstores have sprung up in recent years, a fact that shows there is a burgeoning market in Egypt. The words “Al-Kotob Khan” (The Book Market) are written in elegantly contoured Arabic characters on the door of a bookstore in Maadi, a district beyond the centre of Cairo which is home to mostly educated members of the upper middle class. Next to the entrance, there is a sign with two bestseller lists – one for Arabic- and the other for English-language books.
The Arabic list is topped by the Arabic Booker Prize-winning novel by Egyptian author Jussuf Ziedan, Azazeel. Topping the English-language bestsellers is the young Egyptian writer Samar Ali with her volume of poetry, Tannoura, ahead of Paulo Coelho, Khaled Hosseini and Barack Obama’s Change We Can Believe In.
Samar Ali is 27 years old, like al-Aswani she earns a living as a dentist, and writes poems in English and short stories in Arabic. Her volume of poetry was published by the recently founded publishing house Malamih, which focuses on young, innovative literature and comics from Egypt and publishes works in both English and Arabic.
“I grew up in Madrid, and my degree course was taught in English, so I’m bilingual”, explains the writer at Café Boursa in downtown Cairo. Together with other young writers and the established author and university professor Sahar el-Mougy, Ali likes to come here to unwind after a creative writing course session.
El-Mougy confirms the impression that the literature scene has been invigorated over the past few years. This is partly due to the relative freedom granted to writers by the state, she says. But the writer is under no illusions: “The government uses us as a fig leaf to show how liberal it is,” she says. “But the moment we start criticising the government, that’s where the freedom stops.”
El-Mougy is a role model for many female students and young writers. She writes columns on social and political issues for the independent newspaper Almasry Alyoum and in her latest novel Noon (the Arabic character “N”) argues not just for spiritual, but also for sexual independence for women.
For a long time, reading in Egypt was regarded as a pastime for intellectuals, university professors and literary critics. Few people read out of curiosity or simply for pleasure. But now, literature is reaching sections of society beyond the traditional elite.
For the writer and publisher Mekkawi Said, the Internet and the blogger scene have had a decisive influence on literature’s sudden enhanced appeal. His novel, Cairo Swan Song, which has just been translated into English, caused few ripples in the literary world when it first appeared in 2007.
“Then numerous bloggers talked about the book and recommended it. This intensive promotion on the Internet finally led to the book being included on the shortlist of last year’s Arabic Booker Prize. Only then did newspaper critics write about it,” says Said.
His novel has already sold 50,000 copies. That is a large number when you consider that the print-run of a book in Arabic is usually limited to between 3,000 and 5,000 copies.
But the new culture of reading is not solely due to the active blogger scene in the Arab world. The increasing popularity of bookstores is a result of catering to all types of people. The Book Market bookstore, which opened three years ago in Maadi, is at once a publishing house and a cultural centre. Karam Youssef says its location outside the city centre is no problem: “Book worms will go to any lengths to seek out the books they want.”
But the established bookstore Diwan is taking no chances. Aside from the well-patronised main store in the district of Zamalek, it has opened branches in four other parts of Cairo. That way, it can ensure it meets the needs of readers in the Egyptian capital.
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* Susanne Schanda is a freelance journalist. This abridged article, translated from German, is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from Qantara.de. The full text can be found at www.qantara.de .
Source: Qantara.de, 6 November 2009, www.qantara.de
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
