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CSID EMAIL BULLETIN – January 12, 2007
FROM CSID:
The Rights of Women and Minorities in Islam and the Muslim World
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Report on the activities of the Amman office During June-December 2006
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CSID Conference Report: Sunni Shii Dialogue in Iraq – 11/29/2006
EVENTS:
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Elections in the Arab World: Progress or Peril? Brookings – Jan. 16.
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The U.S. Premiere of: Glories of Islamic Art. Brookings – Jan. 17.
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Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World: Carnegie Endowment Jan 17.
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American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, CSID, Jan. 30.
ARTICLES:
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Choose Generosity, Not Exclusion (by Congressman Keith Ellison)
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Christian Groups Trade Barbs on their Sources of Funding (by Alan Cooperman)
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Bangladeshi Leader Quits Role, Declares State of Emergency (Assoc. Press)
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U.S. Has Lost Credibility On Rights, Group Asserts (by Nora Boustany)
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Intelligence Chiefs Pessimistic In Assessing Worldwide Threats (by Dafna Linzer)
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Cairo Ignores U.S. Request to Pull Plug on Jihadi TV (by Lawrence Pintak)
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Unveiling the truth behind a life in Niqab (by Vivian Salama)
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY
Call for Paper Proposals
The Rights of Women and Minorities in Islam and the Muslim World
CSIDs Eighth Annual Conference
Friday, April 27, 2007
Muslim-majority societies are broadly perceived in the West as falling short of adhering to universal human rights standards when it comes to women and minorities, particularly religious minorities. Facile explanations are often offered to explain this phenomenon, among them the supposed immutability of the Sharia or the religious law. This conference aims to explore these critical issues in a more rigorous, academic manner from a variety of perspectives and interrogate commonly held assumptions about the rights of women and minorities among both Muslims and non-Muslims. Democracy and civil society after all are rooted in the full equality of its citizens, regardless of gender and ethnic or religious background. What are the prospects for achieving such gender and religious parity for Muslim societies in the near and long-term future? What trends appear to be the most promising and what most discouraging?
We must remember, of course, that the term Muslim societies covers a broad swath of the world which is internally culturally, socially, ethnically and, to an extent, religiously diverse. The eighth annual conference of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy will be devoted to exploring the complexities of this highly important topic today in the context of democracy and democratization in these diverse Muslim-majority societies. Paper proposals are invited from prospective participants on the following five broad topics. Possible topics are not restricted to the ones that follow but proposals must establish their relevance in general to the issues of womens and minority rights and their impact upon democratization processes in the Islamic world.
1. How do traditional views on women and gender roles affect women s participation in the political and economic spheres? How are Islamic and Islamicizing discourses being deployed to empower women in these spheres in some cases and disenfranchise them in others? What are the various perspectives (traditionalist, modernist, reformist, absolutist) on the
2. What are the resources within Islamic religious and intellectual thought and historical practices that may be forefronted today in support of the equality of women and of minorities? How effective will an indigenous Islamic human rights discourse be in undermining patterns of discrimination against women and minorities? How may a universalizing idiom of human rights be derived from the Islamic tradition(s)? How successful will a specifically Islamic feminism be?
3. How do cultural practices intersect with religious beliefs to create a certain hermeneutics of gendered behavior? In other words, how are existing cultural norms which militate against women s equal rights and sense of well-being given a religious veneer in order to justify their continuation? How are women lawyers, scholars, and activists challenging the status quo in some cases and effectively dismantling discriminatory laws and practices (for example, the recent repeal of rape laws in
4. How has the rise of political Islam or Islamism in the twentieth century affected the rights of women and minorities in Muslim majority societies? What has been the predominant view in these movements in the first half of the twentieth century? How have women activists themselves, like Zaynab al-Ghazali, influenced the gender dynamics within these movements?
5. How can moderate Islamist movements be harnessed to promote gender rights and the equality of citizens today? What is the spectrum of views now current among these groups in various parts of the Islamic world? What bearing does this have on the prognosis of future political developments in the region?
Both broad theoretical studies and specific case studies are welcome.
Paper proposals (no more than 400 words) are due by January 25, 2007 and should be sent to:
Prof. Asma Afsaruddin, Chair, Conference Program Committee
.
Tel.: (202) 265-1200. Fax: (202) 265-1222.
E-mail: conference@islam-democracy.org
Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by February 15, 2007 and final papers must be submitted by March 31st, 2007.
CSID Welcomes New Board Members
CSID is pleased to announce the results of the Elections for the New Members of its Board of Directors. The following FOUR Board Members were elected, by the CSID Members, to serve on the Board for a period of 3 years, beginning on 1/1/2007. We are very pleased of the caliber, experience, and expertise that they bring to the Board of CSID, and we are certain that they will provide additional strength, professionalism, and character to CSID.
Dr. Kader a first generation Palestinian-American, the son of Moses and Aishia Kader (Abu Khdeir) of Shufat,
He is a frequent speaker at various international gatherings. He has received award of Honorary Citizen and Good Will Ambassador of the City of
He has authored books and publications in areas of public policy including Islamic Nation: Status and Future of Muslims in the New World Order (1995) and
He has been active in a number of Pakistani, Muslim and interfaith community organizations. Currently, he is a trustee of Pakistan Association of greater
He is a practicing Muslim Democrat and takes pride in struggle for effective citizen participation in governance in all nations including the Islamic nations. In 2006 election campaign, he served as one of the Campaign Co-Chairman for a Democrat Candidate in race for Montgomery County Chief Executive. He is an American of Pakistan origin, living in the
Prof. Schleifer is honorary chairman of the Foreign Press Association in
Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)
–
Report on the activities of the
During June-December 2006
Introduction
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)
This report covers the offices achievements during 7 months. Since early June 2006 (the actual start for the office); till the end of December 2006.
First: Workshops and training courses
The
A. Workshop on effective communication techniques and project implementation
The
B. Workshop on Human Rights and Democracy in cooperation with Queen Zein al-Sharaf Association, Mafraq, 10-11/7/2006
The workshop was organized on 10-11/7/2006, in the Queen Zein al-Sharaf Charity Association in Mafraq (70 km north of
C. Workshop on Human Rights and Democracy, in cooperation with Jordanian Forum for Democratic Culture, Amman, 12-13/7/2006
This workshop was organized on 12-13/7/2006, in the Jordanian Forum for Democratic Culture in
D. Workshop on Human Rights and Democracy, in cooperation with the Association of Working Women, al-Rusayfa, 17-18/7/2006
This workshop was organized on 17-18/7/2006, in the Association of Working Women in al-Rusayfa (15 km north of
E. Workshop on networking skills and working with youth
The office has organized in 2-3/9/2006 in cooperation with the
F. Workshop for the Syrian organizations on human rights
A workshop was organized in 30/9/2006 in
G. Conference on national dialogue in Iraq
Second: Membership at NDAW
During its work, Amman office succeeded in spreading the idea of the Network for Democrats in the Arab World (NDAW) among activists, democrats and human rights workers in the region of the middle east; which is the region covered by the office, where the office could join in during this period (210) male and female activists; (55) members from Jordan, (71) members from Syria and (41) members from Iraq, the rest is distributed on a several countries in the middle east region.
Third: Other activities
A. Office inauguration ceremony
An inauguration ceremony was organized for the CSID-Amman office on 13/8/2006, where a lecture was delivered by Dr. Radwan Masmoudi CSID director. At the lecture, Dr. Masmoudi spoke about the future of democracy in the Arab World in light of the current circumstances. A big number of cultural, intellectual and political personages in
B. Launching the
A special website for the
C. Receiving a delegate from DRL
A delegate from The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor office at The Department of State visited the CSID –
D. Participating in a meeting with the state Assistant Secretary
Mr. Obaida Fares, director of the
F. Participating at the parallel conference of the Forum for the Future
Dr. Radwan Masmoudi CSID president, and Mr. Obaida Fares,
G. Coordination of the Citizen Exchange Project in
CSID Conference Report: Sunni Shii Dialogue in
11/29/2006
Amman – Jordan, Regency hotel
Workshop Proceedings
Dr. Radwan Masmoudi, President of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID), inaugurated the Conference with a welcoming speech. In it, Dr. Masmoudi explained how:
We should put forth more effort toward
In response, a participant explained that there are two main issues when it comes to the United Statess policies in the Arab world: The first being a bias when dealing with
Following Dr. Masmoudis speech, each participant introduced him/herself to the group.
After that, Dr. Radwan Masmoudi who chaired the session asked the participants one by one to explain what they saw as the reason(s) behind the current sectarian tension in
Paticipants Responses:
Hasan Al-Ukaily
I think that what drove the Iraqis into this sectarian conflict we are living now is the Occupation. The present Iraqi situation is sectarian in its basis and this started even before the war in the
I disagree with the point of view that says that the occupiers have performed stupidly. On the contrary, I consider that the whole thing was well planned; from dissolving the army, to opening the borders. Unfortunately, the parties were in harmony with the occupation, and besides, the occupation brought to the forefront the issue of sectarian division.
Some of the other reasons are: the neighboring countries fear that stability in
And I believe this meeting will be a gateway for other meetings to be held in other cities.
Hashem Al-Taei
This meeting could lead us towards discussing key points.
The reasons I see behind the sectarian tension in
¬∑ The consecutive wars, and the aftermath of siege. Those circumstances in turn predispose the country to organized crime. In addition, there are conditions brought about by the state that lead to this organized crime, such as Former President Saddam Hussains release of prisoners accused with serious crimes months before the war took place Рas if there were some sort of agreement between Saddam and the occupiers.
· Legislations that allow killing on the basis of ones ideological orientation.
· The absence of think tanks to conduct research studies and introduce constructive intellectual dialogue. The existing centers are working for the interest of certain parties.
· The USs support for the former regime in its war with
· Relying on the sectarian distribution system in
¬∑ The American administrations reliance on faulty studies Рsuch as the claim that the Iraqi people would greet the occupiers with flowers, or the false statistic which decreased the Iraqi Sunni population to 20%!!
I think that we need to agree on several points before starting the discussion, and they are:
– The sanctity of Iraqi blood.
– The importance of respecting all religions and beliefs.
– The importance of national unity.
– Human rights.
Dr. Nihad Al-Jbouri
I would like to elaborate on what my colleague Dr. Hisham Taei stated. I recall back when I visited the North for the first time after the occupation, we met with a Kurdish delegate who was a minister in the Saddam era, and he told us that: Sunnis were taking control of
Dr. Jawad Kadem
Building on the reasons behind the current sectarian tension, I think that everyone agrees with me that Saddam did not differentiate between the Sunni and the Shiite.
As for the reasons behind the sectarian tension and violence in
– The inflammatory statements made by political leaders (especially in Islamic parties) towards the different parties.
– The release of prisoners shortly before the fall of
Overall, we find the leaders open to dialogue, but the subordinates dont recognize it, and at the end of the day the citizen is the victim.
Mohammad Al-Madani
I will start with this question: Was there sectarian tension and biasing prior to the occupation? And if there were, was it suppressed under the former regime?
My father worked for around seventy years in the governorate of Diala, and Diala is a model for sectarian and tribal heterogeneity in
A riot took place in sixties at the Khales district of the Diala governorate. My father went there and took an oath saying: I swear to God I am Sunni, I swear to God I am Shiite.
I think that the occupation is the main cause for what is taking place in
And I want to present a question: What do the Shiites want? And what do the Sunnis want?
What do the Shiites want? I think that everyone agrees that Saddams oppression was not directed toward a specific sect. Nevertheless, the Shiites feel that they were oppressed more than others; consequently, other parties ought to concede that the Shiites were oppressed in order to end this subject.
As for Sunnis, they want be recognized as an essential component of Iraqi society. Furthermore, I think that the Sunnis need to acquit themselves of Al Qaeda in a very clear and straight forward way.
In my opinion, the reasons for the deterioration of the internal situation in
– The occupation
– The directed media that seek to ignite sectarian riots.
– The agendas of the neighbouring countries.
– Administrative corruption.
– Poverty and the sub-par economic conditions.
Recommendations:
I think that a dialogue should be initiated between different parties to shed light on the controversial issues regarding the Iraqi situation and they are:
– The Constitution and confederation: constitution should be revised, and a resolution could be issued to postpone federation for five years.
–
– Kurdish confederation: All Iraqis are against the separation of
–
Amal Al-Qadi
I will talk about the social structure in
Moreover, Sunnis were subjected to continuous killings during the previous years, while Shiites were subjected to targeted killing cases that were highlighted and focused on by media.
Dr. Abderahman Al-Mashhadani
The sectarian issue emerged one year after the occupation; it arose very clearly after the first Fallouja battle. The Americans have widely ensured this by linking resistance to terrorism, and terrorism to Sunnis.
The social covenant had controlled and dominated relations in Iraqi society during the first year, until the sectarian problem arose for many reasons, some of which are:
– The penetration of the religious institution into the political institution.
– The sectarian media, in
Noorldeen Al-Hiyari
I dont think that Saddam Hussain was sectarian; he was unbiased in his oppression towards everyone, even after the uprising of 1991, his anger wasnt directed at Shiites as much as it was against the areas that rose against his regime.
We have to acknowledge that there is a legal resistance directed against the occupation which established a new army and police force, and that Kurds and Shiites enrolled in this army. And when the American forces were undergoing operations in the Sunni areas in cooperation with this army that they had established, these forces were targeted by the resistance, initiating a kind of sectarian tension in
I think that the reasons behind the Iraqi sectarian tension go back to:
– The dissolving of the Iraqi army that left the country vulnerable in the midst
of a horrible scene. Bremer is responsible for this.
– The States administrative laws which founded and systemized the sectarian
division.
– The federation law, which also contributed to this.
– Militias formed after the occupation became a sort of shadow government;
they contribute to the States administration more than the national army, and
those militias werent dealt with as was dealt with Baathists.
– The unknown future of
Kurdish authorities ought to stop interfering with it).
– Losing the balance of power. Thus far governance is distributed between the
Shiites and Kurds there is no Sunni presence in the different governmental
positions.
– The manipulation of elections that encouraged many different Sunni parties to exit the political process.
– Changing curricula without the presence of a committee comprising the two
parties.
– The control of the Shiite militia on the Sunni mosques. There are 160
mosques in
mosques that have been confiscated by the Shiites.
– The random and arbitrary arrests and pre-mediated accusations (The number
of detainees arrested has reached 36,000).
– Showing the detainees making false confessions on television.
– The systematic torture committed by both the American and Iraqi forces.
– Unemployment, which encourages youth to join militias.
Amal Al-Qadi
My husband was arrested and tortured by electrocution in the prisons of the Ministry of Interior whilst I was a Member of Parliament; the inspector was speaking with an Iranian delegate.
Radwan Masmoudi
I would like to pose some questions: There is a big debate in the
Also, I would like to ask about the role of the media in spreading the culture of dialogue. Is it possible for the discussion presented in this workshop to be introduced through media?
Mohammad Madani
Might the Center be able to convey to the American administration the recommendation that the American forces help stop sectarian propaganda in the Iraqi media? And more specifically, on satellite television?
Faseeh Al-Ani
In order to continue our work,
– Dialogue should continue between different parties.
– Agreements on the fundamentals mentioned should not be broken under any circumstances.
– We must empower different parties.
– We must not reject all laws and institutions inherited from the former regime.
Dr. Asmaa Al-Ani
– Partly to blame for sectarian practices are the political institution responsible for these practices.
– External interference (especially from
Hisham Al-Taei
I visited
I have prepared a proposal that calls for the formation of a legal judiciary committee consisting of Shiites and Sunnis, to prepare for dialogue. In addition,
Abderrahman Al-Mashhadani
I support the ending of occupation as soon as possible. Many politicians may not like this idea, but I believe that the occupation is the main cause for the sectarian conflict.
Hashem Al-Taei
We agree with Dr. Mashhadani, but withdrawal should not take place before a time-table is set, or before an army and honest partners who truly represent all Iraqis are in place.
Amal Al-Qadi
We support the scheduling of a withdrawal, and if the withdrawal of the American forces took place now, rule would go to the side maintaining peace and order – be it in the Sunni or the Shiite street.
If a withdrawal is scheduled, the Resistance will be left with no justification to engage in violence.
Mohammad Al-Madani
A sudden withdrawal of the American forces will lead to the collapse of
Hashem Al-Taei
We should focus on the positive points rather than the negative ones.
Radwan Masmoudi
I believe that through the commentaries we heard during this workshop, we can build a clearer picture of the nature of the sectarian conflict in
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy has for seven years played a critical role in setting out a vision of a Muslim world that would be modern and democratic, in promoting debate about the political development of the
Francis Fukuyama
There is no American Muslim organization that understands Islam and
Omar Kader, PhD
President, Pal-Tech Inc.
In just a few years, CSID has done remarkable work in facilitating the vital discussion about Islam and democracy in the
Neil Hicks, Director
Human Rights Defenders Program
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) plays an absolutely vital role in creating a platform for the voices of democracy and reform throughout the Muslim World. Equally vital is the role they play in bringing a better understanding of the diversity within Islam to the people of
John D. Sullivan, Executive Director
Center for International Private Enterprise
Today, more than ever, we in the
Nayereh Tohidi, Professor & Department Chair
Women’s Studies, CSUN & UCLA
The work the CSID is doing is remarkable. It works in and on one of the most difficult regions of the world with patience, consistency and commitment. CSID is a symbol that Islam and Democracy are not only compatible but can be mutually reinforcing.
Razmik Panossian, Director
CSID was talking about the importance of Muslim democracy as early as 1999, long before it was popular. In this respect and in so many others, it has been that rare organization – ahead of the curve, willing to carve out strong, principled positions, and able to bridge the theoretical with the practical through its programming. Today, when so many are despairing of the possibility that Arab democracy may yet come, CSID remains steadfast in its belief that democracy is not – and cannot be – the purview of only some peoples, cultures, and religions. No, democracy is universal and few have done more to convey this vital point than CSID.
Shadi Hamid, Associate
The Project on
"The CSID’s role is crucial in Muslim societies and in the West. It is instrumental in contextualizing democracy in Muslim societies by underscoring the areas where Islam values and democratic principles meet. The CSID also bridges this arbitrary and unnecessary gap between the Muslim democrats and the secular democrats, an essential step for making the establishment of democracy and effective participatory systems a mainstream quest. Further, the CSID’s role in the
Emad El-Din Shahin, Visiting
Professor,
There are few issues of greater concern to the future of the Muslim world than the prospects for democracy. CSID has pioneered the promotion of democracy at the practical level, and in this regard has provided invaluable service through education and social activism.
Vali Nasr, Professor
Naval
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy is one of the most important institutions in the West helping to bring concepts of political liberalization, democratization and rule of law to states in the Muslim world. It engages in direct and personal outreach to Muslim leaders around the world; indeed, many of the Center’s leaders come from Muslim background themselves and therefore possess an understanding of Muslim culture and an appreciation of how best to promote these ideas within traditional societies. CSID enjoys a reputation of independence, balance and integrity, free of any taint of association with the policies of any administration. Today the Muslim world is in deep crisis, its peoples are frustrated and suffering from lack of any voice over the policies of their own governments. It is only this democratic option– achieved not through foreign intervention but through the work of local activists–that represents the best hope for the future of the region. CSID is at the center of these activities.
Graham E. Fuller
Author of The Future of Political Islam
To read more testimonials, please go to: http://www.csid-online.org/
Symposium hosted by The Saban Center for Middle East Policy
ELECTIONS IN THE ARAB WORLD: PROGRESS OR PERIL?
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
9:00am – 2:00pm
Brookings Institution
9:00 Introductory Remarks: Martin Indyk
Director,
9:15 Elections and Democratic Growth: The Kuwaiti Experience
Speaker: Rola Dashti,
Introduced by: Tamara Cofman Wittes
Director, Project on Arab Democracy and Development,
10:15 Panel 1- What Do Elections Accomplish for Governments and Oppositions?
Panelists:
Ellen Lust-Okar
Assistant Professor of Political Science,
Jarrett Blanc
International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
11:45 BUFFET LUNCH
12:15 Panel 2 Democracy Advocates and Elections: What Is To Be Done?
Panelists:
Sherif Mansour
Fellow, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy
Les Campbell
Senior Associate and Regional Director, Middle East and
Almut Wieland-Karimi
Executive Director,
1:45 Closing Remarks: Tamara Cofman Wittes
Director, Project on Arab Democracy and Development,
Fellow, the Brookings Institution.
THE
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Film Screening: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Discussion: 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Reception: 7:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
The Brookings Institution
Falk Auditorium
As events in the Middle East dominate the attention of
On January 17, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy will host a screening and discussion of noted Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmeds documentary film Glories of Islamic Art. To explain Islams rich history, customs, and beliefs, Ahmed, a Brookings non-resident senior fellow, traveled throughout the Middle East with
Using the historic cities of
After the screening, panelists will take audience questions.
Moderator:
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed
Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies,
Non-resident Senior Fellow,
The Brookings Institution
Panelist:
H.E. Mahmud Ali Durrani
Ambassador to the
Embassy of
RSVP: Please call the Brookings Office of Communications, 202/797-6105 or register online at http://onlinepressroom.net/brookings/
The United Nations Development Programme & The
TOWARDS THE RISE OF WOMEN IN THE ARAB WORLD:
The Arab Human Development Report
The most recent Arab Human Development Report, which was released last month, is the final volume in a four-part series that has made a significant contribution to the debate on the development challenges facing the Arab World. The pioneering first report, issued in 2002, identified three critical development deficitsin the acquisition of knowledge, in political freedoms, and in womens rightsthat have held back human development throughout the Arab region despite considerable natural wealth and great potential for economic and social progress. The second and third reports focused on the deficits in knowledge and freedom, respectively. The latest Arab Human Development Report presents a compelling argument as to why realizing the full potential of Arab women is an indispensable prerequisite for development in all Arab states. It argues that the long hoped-for Arab renaissance cannot and will not be accomplished unless the obstacles preventing women from enjoying their human rights and contributing more fully to development are eliminated and replaced with greater access to the tools of developmentincluding education, health care, and political and economic participation.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Root Room
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
12:00 p.m. 2:00 p.m.
Panelists
Amat Al Alim Alsoswa, UN Assistant Secretary General & UNDP Assistant Administrator, Director of UNDPs Regional Bureau for Arab States
Les Campbell, Senior Associate and Regional Director of Middle East and
Ahmad Dallal, Associate Professor and Chair of Arabic & Islamic Studies,
Shirin Tahir-Kheli, Senior Advisor for Womens Empowerment, Office of the Secretary of State
Host: Kenneth Wollack, President, National Democratic Institute; and Chair of the Board,
Please RSVP by Friday, January 12, by e-mail to wdc.events@undp.org or by fax to (202) 331-9363.
The Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID) cordially invites you to its upcoming Brown Bag Lecture Series:
AMERICAN ISLAM: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF A RELIGION
By Paul M. Barrett
Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007
12:00 Noon 1:30 PM
At the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)
Summary:
Near the end of this fascinating and carefully researched portrait of Islam in contemporary
About the Speaker:
Paul M. Barrett is an Assistant Managing Editor at BusinessWeek, a position he assumed in September 2005. He is responsible for overseeing investigative projects. Prior to joining BusinessWeek, Mr. Barrett was the legal affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He also held the positions of Supreme Court correspondent, page one special projects editor, and page one news editor at the Journal. Prior to that, he was a staff writer and editor for The Washington Monthly. Mr. Barrett is the author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), which is scheduled to be released in January 2007. He is also the author of The Good Black: A True Story of Race in
This event will be available for viewing LIVE on the internet. If you would like to watch the lecture online, please send an e-mail to: Sherif@islam-democracy.org
Space is limited, please RSVP asap, to: Sherif@islam-democracy.org
THE REAL DISASTER
The New York Times
January 11, 2007
President Bush told Americans last night that failure in
Americans needed to hear a clear plan to extricate
Mr. Bush did acknowledge that some of his previous tactics had failed. But even then, the president sounded as if he were an accidental tourist in
In any case, Mr. Bushs excuses were tragically inadequate. The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the
What it certainly did not need were more of Mr. Bushs open-ended threats to
Before Mr. Bush spoke, Americans knew he planned to send more troops to pacify lawless
Instead, he said he had warned the Iraqis that if they didnt come through, they would lose the faith of the American people. Has Mr. Bush really not noticed that the American people long ago lost faith in the Iraqi government and in him as well? Americans know that this Iraqi government is captive to Shiite militias, with no interest in the unity, reconciliation and democracy that Mr. Bush says he wants.
Mr. Bush said yet again that he wanted the Iraqi government to step up to the task of providing its security, and that
Mr. Bush did announce his plan for 20,000 more troops, and the White House trumpeted a $1 billion contribution to reconstruction efforts. Congress will debate these as if they are the real issues. But they are not. Talk of a surge ignores the other 132,000 American troops trapped by a failed strategy.
We have argued that the United States has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq as long as there is a chance to mitigate the damage that a quick withdrawal might cause. We have called for an effort to secure Baghdad, but as part of the sort of comprehensive political solution utterly lacking in Mr. Bushs speech. This war has reached the point that merely prolonging it could make a bad ending even worse. Without a real plan to bring it to a close, there is no point in talking about jobs programs and military offensives. There is nothing ahead but even greater disaster in Iraq.
CHOOSE GENEROSITY, NOT EXCLUSION
Congressman Keith Ellison
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2007/01/
choose_generosity_not_exclusio.html
Somewhere in Minneapolis or Jackson or Baltimore, somewhere in America today, there is a young couple that is feeling vulnerable. Maybe one has been laid off due to outsourcing, and maybe, the other is working for something close to a minimum wage. They probably have no medical benefits. Today real income is lower for the typical family than in 2000, while the incomes of the wealthiest families have grown significantly. Things are tough for working people, but in America, we often turn to our faith in tough times.
When our couple shows up for worship service, probably on a Sunday, there is no doubt that the preacher will tell them of Gods unyielding love. God loves you. But the next thing the preacher tells them is crucial – not only to the young couple, but to us all. The next message from the preacher may help to shape, not only the next election results, but the political landscape of the nation.
Will the preacher tell our young couple, God loves you but only you and people like you? Or will the preacher say God loves you and you must love your neighbors of all colors, cultures, or faiths as yourselves? One message will lead to be a stinginess of spirit, an exclusion of the undeserving, and the other will lead to a generosity of spirit and inclusion of all.
In America today, we are encouraged to believe in the myth of scarcity – that there just isn’t enough – of anything. But in the story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Jesus, who the Muslims call Isa, found himself preaching to 5000 (not including the women by the way) at dinner time, and there didnt appear to be enough food. The disciples said that there were only five barley loaves and two fish. We just have to send them away hungry. We simply don’t have enough. But Jesus took the loaves and the fish and started sharing food. There was enough for everyone. There was more than enough. What was perceived as scarcity was illusory as long as there was sharing, and not hoarding.
The idea here is not that there is a boundless supply of everything. Such an idea leads to waste and dispensability of everything. But the idea is that there is enough.
If scarcity is a myth, then poverty is not necessary. America need not have 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. It is a choice. Hunger is a choice. Exclusion of the stranger, the immigrant, or the darker other is a choice.
We can choose generosity. In America today, we spend more on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet 46 Million people have none. Canada spends half of what we spend and covers everyone. Perfectly? Of course not. But adequately. Thats more than what a lot of people have right now.
We live in a society which says that there is enough for a tax break for the wealthy but not enough for an increase in the minimum wage or for national health care. There is enough for subsidies to oil and coal companies but not for families who are struggling to afford child care or a college education. But it doesnt have to be this way.
We need a politics of generosity based on the reality of abundance as opposed to a politics of not-enough. The richest 1 percent of the nation, on average, owns 190 times as much as a typical household. The child poverty rate in the United States is the highest of 16 other industrialized nations. Employers are shifting health insurance costs onto workers. Not only are fewer employees receiving health insurance through their employers, but those who still do are paying more for it.
Recently, I have become the focus of some criticism for my use of the Qu’ran for my ceremonial swearing in. Let me be clear, I am going to be sworn into office like all members of Congress. I am going to swear to uphold the United States Constitution. We seem to have lost the political vision of our founding document — a vision of inclusion, tolerance and generosity.
I do not blame my critics for subscribing to a politics of scarcity and intolerance. However, I believe we all must project a new politics of generosity and inclusion This is the vision of the diverse coalition in my Congressional district. My constituents in Minnesota elected me to fight for a new politics in which a loving nation guarantees health care for all of its people; a new politics in which executive pay may not skyrocket while workers do not have enough to care for their families. I was elected to articulate a new politics in which no one is cut out of the American dream, not immigrants, not gays, not poor people, not even a Muslim committed to serve his nation.
The author was elected to the House of Representatives from Minnesota’s 5th District in November. He is the first Muslim elected to serve in the U.S. Congress.
BUT IT’S THOMAS JEFFERSON’S KORAN!
By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010300075.html
Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.
Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison’s 5th District, was happy to help.
Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson’s collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn’t the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies — the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.
Ellison will take the official oath of office along with the other incoming members in the House chamber, then use the Koran in his individual, ceremonial oath with new Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers’ belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself," said Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert.
One person unlikely to be swayed by the book’s illustrious history is Goode, who released a letter two weeks ago objecting to Ellison’s use of the Koran. "I believe that the overwhelming majority of voters in my district would prefer the use of the Bible," the Virginia Republican told Fox News, and then went on to warn about what he regards as the dangers of Muslims immigrating to the United States and Muslims gaining elective office.
Yeah, but what about a Koran that belonged to one of the greatest Virginians in history? Goode, who represents Jefferson’s birthplace of Albemarle County, had no comment yesterday.
Interfaith dialogue is not happy hand-holding premised on agreement. It is the kind of encounter we need to build a society that bridges our deepest differences.
By Diana L. Eck | December 24, 2006
Boston Globe
IN "THE MIGHTY AND THE ALMIGHTY," Madeleine Albright writes how she often scribbled on her briefing papers, "Learn more about Islam."
I agree, and that’s not just Islam in the abstract, but Islam as practiced by countless and diverse Muslims all over the world, including here in Boston. In a world and a city of many faiths, learning and working together with people of all religions is no longer the odd specialty of those who practice "interfaith dialogue." Ready or not, as Albright sensed, it is one of the critical skills we need for today’s world.
For most of us, the first step in learning about Islam should be meeting our Muslim neighbors. There are nearly 30 Islamic centers in the Boston area and a dozen university Islamic societies. The opportunities to encounter our neighbors are many and local. In Cambridge, it might be the Daughters of Abraham book group; in Wayland, the regular interfaith visits to Friday prayers at the Islamic Center of Boston.
In Sharon, high school students of the Interfaith Youth Leadership Program are at the forefront of dialogue. This largely Jewish suburb is also home to one of the Boston area’s large Islamic centers and is a living laboratory of small-town interfaith relations. In the Sharon program, students steer straight into the big issues: stereotyping, religious conflict, faith, and prayer. The point is not to agree, not even to find common ground, but rather to learn to listen through their differences. Most important, they build lasting friendships.
In Revere this past October, the Muslim founders of the Boston Dialogue Foundation hosted the first-ever Iftar banquet for dozens of city officials. It was a historic opportunity for Revere citizens to learn more about Islam from their Muslim neighbors as they broke the Ramadan fast with them. As Mayor Thomas Ambrosino put it, "They might be different than we’re used to, but they’re doing good things, right here in Revere."
Still, much work remains. At the heart of Boston in Roxbury Crossing stands the magnificent shell of what will eventually be the Islamic Society of Boston’s landmark mosque, as yet incomplete. Progress is swamped by the well-publicized accusations of the David Project, a Jewish advocacy group, about the mosque’s funding and leadership and the ensuing litigation against the David Project by the Islamic Society of Boston. Meanwhile, Jewish-Muslim relations in Boston have become tense, undermining honest and difficult dialogue at the very time we need it most.
Last month, as I stood under the great dome of the mosque at Roxbury Crossing, I prayed, as a Christian, for its speedy completion. In 2006, it should not surprise us to learn that the so-called "Islamic world" is not somewhere else. Boston is part of the Islamic world. Looking to the future, the vision of an Islamic Center dedicated to interfaith outreach and education at the crossroads of Boston is worth the commitment of Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Interfaith dialogue is not happy hand-holding premised on agreement. It is the kind of encounter we need to understand our deepest differences and build a society that bridges them. Our local efforts to overcome ignorance and fear may not be able to solve the searing conflicts of the wider world, but we can make a big difference in the climate of Boston.
Diana L. Eck is professor of comparative religion at Harvard University, director of the Pluralism Project (pluralism.org), and author of "A New Religious America: How a ‘Christian Country’ Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation" (2001).
CHRISTIAN GROUPS TRADE BARBS ON THEIR SOURCES OF FUNDING
Accusations Fly of Partisan Influence on Left, Right
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 11, 2007; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011002074.html
Two influential Christian nonprofit organizations questioned each other’s finances yesterday, each suggesting that the other is beholden to big donors with partisan political motives.
The clash between the National Council of Churches and the Institute on Religion and Democracy was a rarity in Washington, where liberal and conservative advocacy groups fight fiercely over issues but seldom dig deeply into each other’s funding.
Both groups call themselves nonpartisan and are incorporated as tax-exempt charitable organizations. But the council, a New York-based alliance of 35 Christian denominations, is deeply involved in liberal social causes, such as reducing poverty and making peace; it achieved a long-standing legislative goal yesterday when the House voted to increase the minimum wage.
The institute, a Washington-based think tank, is allied with conservative groups on issues such as same-sex marriage. From its founding in 1981, its primary effort has been to challenge what it calls the "leftist" political positions of mainline Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). It has worked closely with conservatives in those denominations, including Episcopalians who have broken away from their church since it consecrated a gay bishop in 2003.
Yesterday, the institute released a 90-page report, titled "Strange Yokefellows: The National Council of Churches and Its Growing Non-Church Constituency." It argued that the council in recent years has faced diminishing contributions from its member churches and has made up the shortfall with grants from such "left-leaning" groups as the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, the Ford Foundation and the Sierra Club.
In the fiscal year ending June 2005, the council received $1.76 million from secular foundations and non-church groups, surpassing the $1.75 million it received from member churches and "signaling a radical new development in the council’s history," the report said. Noting that the enrolled membership in mainline Protestant denominations has fallen from 17 percent of the U.S. population in 1950 to 7 percent, it said that only six of the council’s top 16 funders today are church groups.
"Several of these [non-church] groups that the NCC has turned to for financial and other forms of support are so blatantly partisan that they can be accurately described as . . . the shadow Democratic Party," the report’s main researcher, John Lomperis, told reporters.
His co-author, Alan Wisdom, added that the council has abandoned the goal for which it was founded in 1950 — fostering "Christian unity" — and does not represent the true views of the 45 million Christians in its member churches, which include several historically black denominations and Orthodox churches.
The first question at the institute’s news conference on the report came from the Rev. Leslie Tune, a staff member of the council, who asked where the institute gets its own funds.
James Tonkowich, the institute’s president, said that about 60 percent of its roughly $1 million in annual revenue comes from individual donors and about 40 percent from conservative foundations, such as the Scaife, Bradley, Coors and Smith Richardson family charities.
Tonkowich also acknowledged that his organization has made public less information about its funders than the NCC has.
In separate interviews, Lomperis and Wisdom said they wrote the report largely in response to earlier criticism of the institute’s funding from the council’s general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania who is also a Methodist minister. In his 2006 book, "Middle Church," Edgar wrote that the institute’s fundraising list "reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary conservatism."
Edgar’s book was the latest of several articles and books by liberal Protestants accusing the institute of fomenting divisions in their churches. In an article posted last year on the Web site of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, the diocese’s spokesman, Jim Naughton, said the IRD has received at least $4.6 million from conservative foundations since 1985, allowing the institute and a "small network" of fellow conservatives "to mount a global campaign that has destabilized the Episcopal Church."
Edgar, 63, who is stepping down as head of the NCC at the end of the year, did not speak at the institute’s news conference. But he stayed afterward to shake hands with the report’s authors and to thank them for recognizing that he has turned around the finances of the council, which was running a $5.9 million deficit when he took over in 2000 and has now balanced its budget for five years in a row.
"I was brought in to do three things: raise money, raise money and raise money," he said. "Thank you for highlighting that secular as well as religious organizations now recognize the importance of the National Council of Churches."
RUSH TO HANG HUSSEIN WAS QUESTIONED
By JOHN F. BURNS and MARC SANTORA
Published: January 1, 2007
BAGHDAD, Dec. 31 With his plain pine coffin strapped into an American military helicopter for a predawn journey across the desert, Saddam Hussein, the executed dictator who built a legend with his defiance of America, completed a turbulent passage into history on Sunday.
Like the helicopter trip, just about everything in the 24 hours that began with Mr. Husseins being taken to his execution from his cell in an American military detention center in the postmidnight chill of Saturday had a surreal and even cinematic quality.
Part of it was that the Americans, who turned him into a pariah and drove him from power, proved to be his unlikely benefactors in the face of Iraqs new Shiite rulers who seemed bent on turning the execution and its aftermath into a new nightmare for the Sunni minority privileged under Mr. Hussein.
The 110-mile journey aboard a Black Hawk helicopter carried Mr. Husseins body to an American military base north of Tikrit, Camp Speicher, named for an American Navy pilot lost over Iraq in the first hours of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. From there, an Iraqi convoy carried him to Awja, the humble town beside the Tigris River that Mr. Hussein, in the chandeliered palaces that became his habitat as ruler, spoke of as emblematic of the miseries of his lonely and impoverished youth.
The American role extended beyond providing the helicopter that carried Mr. Hussein home. Iraqi and American officials who have discussed the intrigue and confusion that preceded the decision late on Friday to rush Mr. Hussein to the gallows have said that it was the Americans who questioned the political wisdom and justice of expediting the execution, in ways that required Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to override constitutional and religious precepts that might have assured Mr. Hussein a more dignified passage to his end.
The Americans concerns seem certain to have been heightened by what happened at the hanging, as evidenced in video recordings made just before Mr. Hussein fell through the gallows trapdoor at 6:10 a.m. on Saturday. A new video that appeared on the Internet late Saturday, apparently made by a witness with a camera cellphone, underscored the unruly, mocking atmosphere in the execution chamber.
This continued, on the video, through the actual hanging itself, with a shout of The tyrant has fallen! May God curse him! as Mr. Hussein hung lifeless, his neck snapped back and his glassy eyes open.
The cacophony from those gathered before the gallows included a shout of Go to hell! as the former ruler stood with the noose around his neck in the final moments, and his riposte, barely audible above the bedlam, which included the words gallows of shame. It continued despite appeals from an official-sounding voice, possibly Munir Haddad, the judge who presided at the hanging, saying, Please no! The man is about to die.
The Shiites who predominated at the hanging began a refrain at one point of Moktada! Moktada! Moktada! the name of a volatile cleric whose private militia has spawned death squads that have made an indiscriminate industry of killing Sunnis appending it to a Muslim imprecation for blessings on the Prophet Muhammad. Moktada, Mr. Hussein replied, smiling contemptuously. Is this how real men behave?
American officials in Iraq have been reluctant to say much publicly about the pell-mell nature of the hanging, apparently fearful of provoking recriminations in Washington, where the Bush administration adopted a hands-off posture, saying the timing of the execution was Iraqs to decide.
While privately incensed at the dead-of-night rush to the gallows, the Americans here have been caught in the double bind that has ensnared them over much else about the Maliki government frustrated at what they call the governments failure to recognize its destructive behavior, but reluctant to speak out, or sometimes to act, for fear of undermining Mr. Maliki and worsening the situation.
But a narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraqs new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday.
A senior Iraqi official said the Americans staked out their ground at a meeting on Thursday, 48 hours after an appeals court had upheld the death sentence passed on Mr. Hussein and two associates. They were convicted in November of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Shiite townspeople of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982. Mr. Hussein, as president, signed a decree to hang 148 men and teenage boys.
Told that Mr. Maliki wanted to carry out the death sentence on Mr. Hussein almost immediately, and not wait further into the 30-day deadline set by the appeals court, American officers at the Thursday meeting said that they would accept any decision but needed assurance that due process had been followed before relinquishing physical custody of Mr. Hussein.
The Americans said that we have no issue in handing him over, but we need everything to be in accordance with the law, the Iraqi official said. We do not want to break the law.
The American pressure sent Mr. Maliki and his aides into a frantic quest for legal workarounds, the Iraqi official said. The Americans told them they needed a decree from President Jalal Talabani, signed jointly by his two vice presidents, upholding the death sentence, and a letter from the chief judge of the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried Mr. Hussein, certifying the verdict. But Mr. Talabani, a Kurd, made it known that he objected to the death penalty on principle.
The Maliki government spent much of Friday working on legal mechanisms to meet the American demands. From Mr. Talabani, they obtained a letter saying that while he would not sign a decree approving the hanging, he had no objections. The Iraqi official said Mr. Talabani first asked the tribunals judges for an opinion on whether the constitutional requirement for presidential approval applied to a death sentence handed down by the tribunal, a special court operating outside Iraqs main judicial system. The judges said the requirement was void.
Mr. Maliki had one major obstacle: the Hussein-era law proscribing executions during the Id holiday. This remained unresolved until late Friday, the Iraqi official said. He said he attended a late-night dinner at the prime ministers office at which American officers and Mr. Malikis officials debated the issue.
One participant described the meeting this way: The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us? The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.
To this, the Iraqis added what has often been their trump card in tricky political situations: they telephoned officials of the marjaiya, the supreme religious body in Iraqi Shiism, composed of ayatollahs in the holy city of Najaf. The ayatollahs approved. Mr. Maliki, at a few minutes before midnight on Friday, then signed a letter to the justice minister, to carry out the hanging until death.
The Maliki letter sent Iraqi and American officials into a frenzy of activity. Fourteen Iraqi officials, including senior members of the Maliki government, were called at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday and told to gather at the prime ministers office. At. 3:30 a.m., they were driven to the helicopter pad beside Mr. Husseins old Republican Palace, and taken to the prison in the northern suburb of Khadimiya where the hanging took place.
At about the same time, American and Iraqi officials said, Mr. Hussein was roused at his Camp Cropper cell 10 miles away, and taken to a Black Hawk helicopter for his journey to Khadimiya.
None of the Iraqi officials were able to explain why Mr. Maliki had been unwilling to allow the execution to wait. Nor would any explain why those who conducted it had allowed it to deteriorate into a sectarian free-for-all that had the effect, on the video recordings, of making Mr. Hussein, a mass murderer, appear dignified and restrained, and his executioners, representing Shiites who were his principal victims, seem like bullying street thugs.
But the explanation may have lain in something that Bassam al-Husseini, a Maliki aide closely involved in arrangements for the hanging, said to the BBC later. Mr. Husseini, who has American citizenship, described the hanging as an Id gift to the Iraqi people.
The weekends final disorderly chapter came with the tensions over Mr. Husseins body. For nearly 18 hours on Saturday, Mr. Malikis officials insisted that his corpse would be kept in secret government custody until circumstances allowed interment without his grave becoming a shrine or a target. Once again, the Americans intervened.
The leader of Mr. Husseins Albu-Nasir tribe, Sheik Ali al-Nida, said that before flying to Baghdad on an American helicopter, he had been so fearful for his safety that he had written a will. Bizarrely, Sheik Nida and others were shown on Iraqi television collecting the coffin from the courtyard in front of Mr. Malikis office, where it sat unceremoniously in a police pickup.
After the helicopter trip to Camp Speicher, the American base outside Tikrit, the coffin was taken in an Iraqi convoy to Awja, and laid to rest in the ornate visitors center that Mr. Hussein ordered built for the townspeople in the 1990s. Local officials and members of Mr. Husseins tribe had broken open the marbled floor in the main reception hall, and cleared what they said would be a temporary burial place until he could be moved to a permanent grave outside Awja where his two sons, Uday and Qusay, are buried.
At the burial, several mourners threw themselves on the closed casket. One, a young man convulsed with sobs, cried: He has not died. I can hear him speaking to me. Another shouted, Saddam is dead! Instead of weeping for him, think of ways we can take revenge on the Iranian enemy, Sunni parlance for the Shiites now in power.
BANGLADESHI POLICE CLASH WITH PROTESTERS
Bangladeshi Police Clash With Protesters Demanding Postponement of Elections
By FARID HOSSAIN
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2777660&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
DHAKA, Bangladesh Jan 8, 2007 (AP) Riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and batons Monday to disperse thousands of stone-throwing protesters in the Bangladeshi capital who are demanding postponement of this month’s elections and electoral reforms, witnesses said.
About 5,000 protesters tried to overrun barbed-wire barricades manned by police in central Dhaka, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Clashes across Dhaka left at least 300 people injured, including several policemen, the United News of Bangladesh news agency reported. Police officials wouldn’t confirm or deny the figures.
Protesters halted trains by squatting on railroads in several places outside the capital Dhaka, railway officials said on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to speak to the media. No attacks on trains were reported.
The violence broke out on the second day of a crippling three-day transportation blockade imposed by a 19-party alliance that opposes the Jan. 22 election.
Scattered buses, three-wheel taxis and rickshaws that defied the blockade were the only means of transport for the capital’s 10 million residents.
Clashes between protesters and police were reported from other parts of Dhaka and its outskirts. Dozens were hurt and police arrested several activists, news reports said.
In the congested old part of the city, protesters blasted small, handmade bombs and police replied with rubber bullets, leaving several injured, local television station Channel I reported. Protesters set a parked bus on fire and damaged several vehicles in Savar, an industrial town outside Dhaka.
At least 100 people, including police, were injured in similar clashes across the capital on Sunday, the first day of protests that cut the city off from rest of the country, Dhaka newspapers reported.
On Sunday, police used batons, tear gas and rubber bullets on stick-wielding, stone-throwing demonstrators.
Schools and businesses remained closed Monday to avoid being caught in the violence.
BANGLADESHI LEADER QUITS ROLE, DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY
Associated Press
Friday, January 12, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011100737.html
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jan. 11 — President Iajuddin Ahmed on Thursday declared a state of emergency, stepped down as leader of Bangladesh’s caretaker government and indefinitely postponed elections scheduled for Jan. 22 following violent protests by a key political alliance that had said it would boycott the vote.
The government also imposed an indefinite overnight curfew on Dhaka, the capital, and 60 other towns and cities. Soldiers, already deployed for election duties, were in place to enforce the curfew.
Ahmed’s dramatic announcement came after a tumultuous few months marked by strife between political camps that has repeatedly paralyzed the South Asian country and left at least 34 people dead since October.
Ahmed did not say when the elections would be held, and fears remained of further turmoil in a country with a history of military rule and violently bitter democratic politics.
Ahmed said he would remain president, a largely ceremonial role, and would name an interim leader in the next couple of days.
Meanwhile, he named an adviser to head the government.
HUGE COST OF IRANIAN BRAIN DRAIN
By Frances Harrison
BBC News, Tehran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6240287.stm
"Today we are going to talk about jobs," says the English language teacher to his class in Tehran.
And it’s better jobs they’re all after.
They’re preparing for what’s known as the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam – a requirement for emigration to many countries like Canada and Australia.
Everyone in the class wants to go abroad.
"The main point for going out of Iran is we have no job security here and there is economic tension," says 32-year-old travel agent, Nazaneen.
The number of educated young Iranians trying to leave the country appears to have increased in the last year since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office judging by the numbers sitting the IELTS exam.
The figures have increased two-and-a-half times this year over the same period last year, according to the Australian administrators of the test.
Student dreams
A year ago, the International Monetary Fund said Iran had the highest rate of brain drain of 90 countries it measured.
"We work from morning till night and still we cannot live off the money we make but over there we can have a better life with less hours of work," said Shabanzade, a hairdresser in Tehran who wants to emigrate.
"There are economic problems and no job security and no freedom," says another student who hopes to go to Australia.
The teacher, who lived in England for many years, says most of his students dream of a better lifestyle abroad.
"They have friends and relatives abroad and they’ve heard lots about it but living abroad is not as easy as they think it’s going to be," warns Mohammad Azadi.
Registering for the exam these students are preparing for is a nightmare in Tehran – let alone passing it.
Hundreds of students start queuing to put their names down more than 12 hours before the kiosk opens.
Best minds
"I came here at 2300 and it was so cold," says Azadeh, who has been standing on the pavement outside the ministry of education building all night.
She wants to study abroad and then find a job. She has no plans to return to Iran.
According to the IMF more than a 150,000 of the best young minds in Iran are leaving every year.
"They want to go abroad to find a decent job, well paid – that’s the main purpose… A minority wants freedom and liberty, but the main point is jobs," explains Siavosh who’s hoping to move to Australia.
It will be months before these students can do their language test. Then they will join the long queues outside foreign embassies in Tehran.
And the cost to Iran of not stemming this brain drain – one government estimate put it at nearly $40bn a year.
It is a terrible indictment of Iran’s economic planning that it is educating millions of its youth, but cannot offer them a future worth staying for.
‘MASS PURGES’ AT IRAN UNIVERSITIES
By Frances Harrison
BBC News, Tehran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6196069.stm
Iranian students say there is a second cultural revolution under way in the universities with scores of professors forcibly retired and politically active students being threatened with expulsion.
Student anger exploded with an unprecedented show of defiance when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went to Tehran’s Amir Kabir University on 12 December.
Pictures shot on a mobile phone showed angry students chanting against the president, accusing him of being a fascist and a puppet of the hardliners.
They held portraits of Mr Ahmadinejad upside down to mock him and then set them on fire.
The day before the president visited, the university was in turmoil with students shouting "Death to the dictator".
Iranian television only showed a few seconds of the disturbance. Later Mr Ahmadinejad put a brave face on it saying the protest showed there was freedom of speech in Iran compared to his student days under the Shah.
‘Harassment and purges’
When Mr Ahmadinejad came to power the universities were quiet.
But by trying to stop students getting involved in politics, the new government has antagonised them.
"They have stepped up the pressure to scare students," says activist Ali Nikoo Nesbati.
"We think they’ve done this on purpose to frighten us; to send a message that if you want to be politically active you will have problems in the future," he says.
According to student activists 181 students have received letters warning them not to get involved in politics, while 47 student publications and 28 student organisations have been closed in the last year.
"They threatened me that if I talked to the media it might make things much worse for me," says Mehdi Aminzadeh, who has been banned from doing a masters in political science because he has been too active in politics.
"But if we keep silent it’s easier for them to do the same things to other people," he says.
‘Three-star students’
Mr Mehdi has twice been arrested and still has court cases pending against him.
He is what is known perversely in Iran as a three-star student. That means he has three bad marks against his name for political activism – enough to be banned from the university.
"We are not working against the system here," says fellow student Mohammad Gharib Sajadi, who has also been banned.
"The constitution has given us this right to education," he says.
"Freedom of speech is being restricted more than before in Iran," says Iran’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.
"They think students should go to their classes, read their books and then go back home and shouldn’t get involved in the social and political issues around them in society – that’s asking a lot!"
But President Ahmadinejad denies that his government is harassing students.
He says it has created an open atmosphere in the universities.
"The ears of the government are open to hear them," he said referring to student demands during a news conference.
Turban incident
It was the president who appointed a cleric for the first time since the revolution to head Tehran University – the country’s most political and prestigious university.
Mr Ahmadinejad told journalists the chancellor should be friendly with the students, moving among them and visiting their dormitories – otherwise he should give up his job to someone else.
The first time the new chancellor entered the university, students protested by knocking off his turban – a sign of extreme disrespect for a cleric.
"If I had not been well protected I would have been suffocated and there was a possibility of a crime like murder being committed," said the chancellor, Ayatollah Amid-Zanjani, after the incident.
However he added that "students have the right to protest".
The chancellor denies student allegations that there have been 17 protests against him inside Tehran University in the last year alone.
He says apart from the turban incident there was only a protest on Iranian Students’ Day on 6 December, which, he said, was attended by at most 40 people.
‘Cleaning the slate’
The photographs of the event showed the crowd was much bigger.
And there is mobile phone footage from a demonstration in the summer at which the posters make it pretty clear what the students think of their new Ayatollah-turned-chancellor.
"This is not a religious seminary – it’s a university," read one poster.
But it is not just students who are angry – professors have also faced problems.
The new chancellor forcibly retired 45 teachers from Tehran University. He said they were past the retirement age, although they were younger than him.
"The majority of the retired teachers couldn’t reach the standard of a full professor after 30 years of teaching at this university. They didn’t manage to do any research to improve their position," Ayatollah Amid-Zanjani said.
"It seems this is the start of a project to clean the slate – to get rid of those intellectuals who are secular opponents of the government," says student activist Abdullah Momeni.
He believes the purge started after President Ahmadinejad spoke about the need to remove secular and liberal thought from the universities.
Students complain the international community is not paying enough attention to the worsening human rights situation in Iran because of the obsession with the nuclear issue.
"The Islamic Republic has managed to focus the international community’s attention on Iran’s nuclear case and the possibility of an Israeli attack. That has diverted attention from the human rights situation in Iran," says Mr Nesbati.
He believes it is possible that one day Iranian officials will solve the nuclear crisis but "in the mean time they will have crushed all their internal critics".
U.S. HAS LOST CREDIBILITY ON RIGHTS, GROUP ASSERTS
By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 12, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101658.html
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch said yesterday that Washington’s once-powerful role as a prime defender of human rights had effectively ended because of arbitrary detentions and reports of torture since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the group urged the European Union to step up as a leader of the cause.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, released the group’s World Report 2007, an assessment of last year’s global human rights practices, by saying that the counterterrorism record of the United States over the past five years has tarnished its credibility as an influential moral voice.
He listed several practices he said were being used by the Bush administration in its fight against terrorism, including torture, arbitrary detentions, allowing CIA interrogators to use coercive techniques and the unsupervised handling of so-called enemy combatants held in other countries.
"This catastrophic path has left the United States effectively incapable of defending some of the most basic rights," Roth said in the report, released on the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Roth said Sudan, where the people of the western Darfur region are subject to mass murder, rape and forcible displacement, finds it easier to resist an international protection force because of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"The trend is bleak, but not irreversible," Roth wrote in an introduction to the report, saying it was up to the new Democratic-led Congress to repudiate past abuses, press for policy change and seek accountability.
The report listed the governments of North Korea, Burma and Turkmenistan as "repressive" and as imposing "enormous cruelty" on their populations. Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam remain closed dictatorships. Russia and Egypt are cracking down on nongovernmental organizations, while Peru and Venezuela are considering the same path. Iran and Ethiopia are silencing dissidents with impunity, the report said.
The report’s introduction lamented the poor performance of the new U.N. Human Rights Council and called it hardly an improvement over its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights. Though the council’s central duty is to pressure highly abusive governments to change, it "has so far failed to criticize any government other than Israel," in "a mockery of the high principles of its founding."
With Washington’s voice diminished, the E.U. should be the strongest and most potent defender of human rights, Roth said, but as the group seeks consensus among its enlarged membership, its impact on the world stage is much less than its potential.
"We are looking for a powerful actor. The Europeans say all the right things, but there is no sense of immersion, no sense of duty," Roth said in an interview Wednesday. "When you have 27 members, how do you decide on common policy?" He also criticized Europe’s role in the rights council as being "too micro-tactical and one of a micromanager worried with changing words here and there rather than being effective."
Roth also said the E.U.’s current system of a six-month rotating presidency hampers the group’s effectiveness.
"Human rights work is about sustained follow-up. You come back and you come back until you get someone or a country to change its behavior," Roth said. "When you have this rotating blur of presidencies . . . it is a recipe for failure. The most reluctant member determines E.U. policy, so the whole is less than the sum of its parts."
INTELLIGENCE CHIEFS PESSIMISTIC IN ASSESSING WORLDWIDE THREATS
Negroponte Cites Resilience of Al-Qaeda, Iraqi Insurgency
By Dafna Linzer and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 12, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011101104.html
Iraq is at a violent and "precarious juncture," while al-Qaeda is significantly expanding its global reach, effectively immune to the loss of leaders in battle, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte told Congress yesterday. He also warned that the Taliban is mounting a vigorous insurgency in Afghanistan, that Pakistan has become a safe haven for top terrorists and that Iran’s growing regional power is threatening Middle East stability.
In their annual worldwide threat assessment before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Negroponte and other top intelligence chiefs provided a bleak assessment of regions and conflicts at the center of President Bush’s foreign policy agenda.
Saddam Hussein was hanged Dec. 30, 2006, after an Iraqi tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity. Get background, photos and video about Hussein’s rise to power and ultimate fall.
One day after Bush unveiled a plan to send more than 21,000 additional troops to work alongside Iraqi troops in an increasingly violent war, the head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said Iraqi forces could not combat the insurgency there.
Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples said Iraqi security forces have been thoroughly infiltrated by Shiite militias and "are presently unable to stand alone against Sunni insurgents, al-Qaeda in Iraq" or the militias themselves. Negroponte, who was ambassador to Iraq in 2004-05, said sectarian violence had become the greatest problem inside the country.
"The struggle among and within Iraqi communities over national identity and the distribution of power has eclipsed attacks by Iraqis against the coalition forces as the greatest impediment to Iraq’s future as a peaceful, democratic and unified state," he said.
The assessments, and Bush’s plan for additional troops, drew fierce criticism from the intelligence panel’s Democratic chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.). Rockefeller said he is "extremely concerned that well-intentioned but misguided policies of the administration have increased the threats facing our nation, and hampered our ability to isolate and defeat al-Qaeda and other terrorists that seek to strike against the United States."
As they have for several years, the intelligence chiefs said al-Qaeda remains the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland. Negroponte claimed four U.S. successes in 2006 in what Bush has called the global war on terrorism, one being the U.S. military’s killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Despite Zarqawi’s death in June, violence in Iraq has increased substantially.
Maples said that al-Qaeda "has consistently recovered from losses of senior leadership," and that its "increasing cooperation with like-minded groups has improved its ability to facilitate, support and direct its objectives." Negroponte said the group’s leaders have found a haven in secure locations in Pakistan.
He said a second major threat stemmed from nuclear weapons in the hands of U.S. enemies, with Iran and North Korea of greatest concern. But, he said, "Iran’s influence is rising in ways that go beyond the menace of its nuclear program."
He said Hezbollah in Lebanon, which receives considerable logistical and financial support from Iran, also poses a significant threat in the region. Despite its 34-day war with Israel last summer, "Hezbollah’s leadership remains unscathed and probably has already replenished its weapons stockpiles with Iranian and Syrian assistance," Maples said.
Negroponte said stability in Iraq will depend in part on persuading Iran and Syria "to stop the flow of militants and munitions across their borders." For the first time, he said, "forty to 70 foreign fighters every month come over the Syrian border." Maples said foreign fighters account for less than 10 percent of insurgents and usually are recruited as suicide bombers.
The officials said Iran is providing Shiite militias with sophisticated anti-armor projectiles capable of penetrating U.S. armored vehicles. Negroponte added that Iran, in the past, supported the idea of a Shiite-dominated stable Iraq. But he now believes Tehran may be shifting to a more aggressive posture.
RICE SEEKS BACKING ABROAD FOR IRAQ PLAN
Trip to Middle East, Europe Also Aims to Revive Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 12, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011102145.html
With President Bush’s plan to boost troops in Iraq facing blistering criticism at home, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice departs today on another difficult sales mission: winning the support of Arabs for the Iraq plan and seeking momentum for a renewed push on Middle East peace.
Rice endured hours of tough questions in both the Senate and House foreign policy panels yesterday over the administration’s strategy for Iraq and its diplomacy toward Iraq’s neighbors, particularly Iran and Syria. She had prepared for the hearings carefully, anticipating some of the toughest questions at several practice sessions known as "murder boards," and so remained unruffled when lawmakers pummeled her with complaints.
The stakes could not be higher on Rice’s week-long trip to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany and Britain. She is trying to knit together her vision of a "new Middle East" from the turmoil and conflict spawned in part by the Iraq war and the rising influence of radical Islamic groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has emerged as a more powerful regional power partly because of U.S. missteps in Iraq. Administration officials say the rise of Iran has to some extent given such historic antagonists as Israel and Saudi Arabia common strategic interests.
Rice has said she sees the turmoil as offering opportunity. "This is a different Middle East," she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. "This Middle East is a Middle East in which there really is a new alignment of forces," pitting "reformers and responsible leaders" in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Palestinian territories against "extremists of every sect and ethnicity who use violence to spread chaos, to undermine democratic governments and to impose agendas of hatred and intolerance."
The glue that is supposed to help link the positive forces is a sustained personal effort by Rice to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, administration officials and diplomats said. Bush has called repeatedly for a "two-state solution" to the conflict, but Arabs and outside analysts have complained that in the past six years the administration has frequently disengaged when the obstacles seemed too great.
Philip D. Zelikow, until earlier this month Rice’s counselor at the State Department, said the new effort has "three big pillars," including a comprehensive effort in the Middle East to win support for the Iraqi government and rallying the region to stand up to the extremism of Iran and al-Qaeda.
"Undergirding the rest is an intensified effort on the next phase of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," Zelikow said, adding that it would include winning greater public backing for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia.
U.S. officials quietly encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently to say something positive about a 2002 Saudi peace plan that included recognition of Israel as a way of breaking the ice between the Jewish state and the kingdom with Islam’s holiest sites. Olmert’s predecessor, Ariel Sharon, had shunned the Saudi plan.
In recent months, Rice has initiated a new forum known as the "GCC plus two," which brings together the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council with Egypt and Jordan. Arab sources say the participants have agreed to the meetings with great reluctance, believing they could not afford to cross Rice. Another meeting is scheduled for Rice’s stop in Kuwait.
A senior administration official acknowledged yesterday there is concern that the forum will be seen as an anti-Iranian alliance but said it has proved to be "quite productive for consultations."
Rice’s aides have tried to lower expectations for this round of diplomacy, saying she was mainly hoping to listen to ideas. The official yesterday denied a report in the upcoming issue of Time magazine that Rice had joined with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in a bid to put aside a previous peace plan known as the "road map" and leap right to final-status talks to bolster Abbas. An Israeli official also denied the report.
Still, diplomats who have met with Rice say they have been impressed with her sense of personal commitment to trying to make a breakthrough this year.
Dennis Ross, a former Middle East envoy who has known Rice since they were both young Soviet specialists in Northern California, said: "I think that Condi is seriously contemplating what she can do. I am not saying she will do it. There is a big difference between contemplating something and doing it."
Indeed, analysts and administration officials acknowledged that the moment is not auspicious for any sort of breakthrough. Abbas is battling against Hamas, which won legislative elections a year ago and refuses to renounce its goal of eliminating Israel. Abbas has suggested he will call elections to end the political crisis, but there is no guarantee that he will win. Meanwhile, Olmert has low approval ratings because of public disapproval of his handling of last summer’s war with Hezbollah.
"The moon, the sun and stars are not in auspicious alignment," said Aaron David Miller, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and longtime peace negotiator through successive administrations. "With due respect to anyone who wants to deal with this, it has ‘loser’ written all over it."
Michael F. Brown
Published 11/1/2007
www.bitterlemons-international.org
There is a misperception in various world locales of Washington’s debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Namely, that substantive debate exists at all. In fact, the debate in the power corridors of Washington is highly constrained, almost non- existent. Should we engage with President Mahmoud Abbas now or require him to leap through several more hoops–including civil war–first? Serious argument on the injustice of Israel’s long -running occupation simply does not take place other than at the margins.
The reason for the silence has become increasingly clear with the publication of President Carter’s courageous book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. CNN’s Glenn Beck labeled the former president a "fathead". The Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman went so far as to call Carter "bigoted" while Martin Peretz of The New Republic maintains that history will recall Carter "as a Jew hater". This is extraordinarily vicious language to direct at a former president who brokered Israeli- Egyptian peace.
In this climate, few Americans are prepared to say what they think. Why be denounced (falsely) as an anti-Semite when you can keep your mouth shut or work on other concerns? Religious communities in the United States are frequently unprepared to handle this divisive matter and instead resort to tiptoeing around the issue. Critical interfaith work is thought to be at risk if Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories were to become a matter of serious dispute.
Tremendous grassroots work–as done here by the African National Congress regarding apartheid South Africa–is the greatest necessity in expanding the debate parameters. Any substantive change in approach to the conflict will certainly not be initiated by Congress.
The shortcomings of the Democratic Party on Middle East issues will soon be exposed as the party retakes leadership of the House and Senate. Debate will permit Democrats to challenge President Bush on his disastrous foray into Iraq. Yet in doing so, many Democrats will feel compelled to cover their national security flanks by directing inflammatory rhetoric at Iran. As for Israel-Palestine, Democrats will likely urge more talks to distinguish themselves from Bush. Yet this will be more about "peace process" process than substance. Democrats are no more apt than Republicans to denounce the Maskiot settlement or apartheid practices in the West Bank.
Indeed, with Rep. Tom Lantos assuming chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee there is no reason to expect better of House Democrats. Lantos has long been an apologist for oppressive Israeli actions directed at Palestinians. Last month, I saw him at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC just moments before Israeli Minister of Strategic Issues Avigdor Lieberman was to address the Saban Forum audience. I quietly urged Lantos to challenge Lieberman on his racism. He walked away from me without saying a word. His silence spoke volumes.
There are, however, signs of an improving atmosphere in which the most optimistic can place some small hope. Muslim- and Arab-American organizations are slowly gaining a much-needed foothold in Washington in spite of lingering bigotry directed at them. Furthermore, Carter’s book and the Mearsheimer-Walt piece on the "Israel lobby" have sent a jolt through American understanding of the conflict. A growing number of Christians and Jews are with painstaking slowness finding their voices.
Nonetheless, AIPAC appears virtually unshaken even while forced to manage a potentially explosive scandal related to classified documents and recently fired employees. Politicians do not seem to be distancing themselves, certainly not on policy grounds. Too many are either intimidated or perfectly content to follow AIPAC’s legislative lead despite the obvious downward spiral in both the region and American regional standing.
Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, spoke to AIPAC in 2005. Her statement then makes clear just how little will change in Washington with Democrats retaking the House and Senate. "There are those who contend that the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist." Her emphasis is squarely on Israel’s existential concerns; the blinders remain regarding Palestinian suffering under the occupation.
Two years remain to President Bush in office. With the Iraq Study Group and Democrats ascendant, he may feel obliged to push for Israeli-Palestinian talks. They will be strictly limited. Abbas will be told that if he wants to remain relevant he must play ball. Enormous political and economic pressure will be brought to bear on Abbas and the Palestinians to accept a truncated Palestinian state as Bush seeks one Middle East legacy free of the violence in Iraq he will bequeath his successor.
One thing is for certain: The limited parameters of debate in Washington will feed directly into the highly restrictive boundaries pushed by the Bush administration for the envisioned Palestinian Bantustan.
Michael F. Brown is a fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center. Previously, he was executive director of Partners for Peace and Washington correspondent for Middle East International. He is on the board of Interfaith Peace-Builders.
CAIRO IGNORES U.S. REQUEST TO PULL PLUG ON JIHADI TV IN IRAQ
Lawrence Pintak
http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/cairo_ignores_us_request_to_pu.php
Sunni-Shia power politics and U.S.-Egyptian relations are at the center of a dispute over a satellite television station that is the latest weapon in the arsenal of Iraq’s insurgents.
Al-Zawraa, an Iraq-based television version of the jihadi Web sites, is being broadcast across the Arab world by Nilesat, a satellite provider answerable to the Egyptian government. Al-Zawraa features non-stop footage of U.S. troops being picked off by snipers, blown up by roadside bombs and targeted by missiles. "We find the channel utterly offensive," said one U.S. diplomat in Cairo. Getting the Egyptians to pull the plug is "at the top of our agenda."
But the Egyptian government insists it’s all just business. "For us, it means nothing," the Egyptian Information Minister, Anas el-Fiki, told me. "It is a channel that reserved an allocation on Nilesat. They had a contract, paid the fees. There is nothing political for Nilesat. It’s pure business. We have no concern what the channel is doing."
But, as is often the case in the Middle East, much more is going on beneath the surface. The diplomatic tug-of-war over the station comes as Sunni Arab governments in the region, increasingly worried about a resurgent Iran, are more overtly lining up behind Iraq’s Sunni minority. A little over a month ago, Nawaf Obaid, an adviser to the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., wrote in the Washington Post that Saudi Arabia would take steps "to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis."
Those militias have something in common with the U.S. and Iraqi governments — they, too, want the Egyptians to pull the plug on Al-Zawraa, which laces its anti-American programming with attacks on the Shiites. In one montage, the Iranian flag is superimposed over the faces of Iraqi Shiite leaders — including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Graphic crawls at the bottom of the screen contain such messages as, "The natural place for criminals and thieves is with the mafia of Muqtada Al Sadr," the militant Shiite militia leader.
El-Fiki says Egypt received "a warning from certain Iraqis" that if it doesn’t stop broadcasting Al-Zawraa, the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Baghdad will be attacked. "We don’t accept this type of warning," El-Fiki insists.
I asked the information minister if that meant that his government wouldn’t shut the channel down, even it wanted to, because it would look like it was backing down in the face of a threat.
"Exactly," he said.
Despite Egyptian protestations that there is nothing political about its involvement, Cairo is doing more than just re-transmitting Al-Zawraa’s signal. In early November, around the time Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, the station shifted from simply pushing a hard-line Sunni political message to airing non-stop jihadi videos supplied by the Islamic Army of Iraq, said to be dominated by former Baathists. Using a mobile transmitter, it began playing a cat-and-mouse game with Iraqi and U.S. military authorities, which apparently ended in mid-December when, according to Salah Hamza, who runs Nilesat, the transmission from Iraq went dead. "It seems, at last, they’ve stopped them completely," he said.
Up to that point, the Egyptian satellite company had been uplinking the television signal from Iraq to the Nilesat satellite, so it could be seen across the region. Since the signal went dead, Hamza explained, Nilesat has had no signal to uplink, so it has been re-running the same few hours of tape at the request of Al-Zawraa officials. "They asked us, please when we don’t send, loop for us what you have." Technically, this means that rather than just up-linking a signal originating in Iraq, Nilesat is actually transmitting Al-Zawraa from Cairo.
It’s a subtle, but very important distinction: An arm of the anti-American Iraqi insurgency transmitting from the capital of one of America’s strongest Arab allies. The implications are not lost on Hamza. Asked whether Nilesat would uplink new tapes if Al-Zawraa officials delivered them in Cairo, the Nilesat chief replied, "Yes and no," indicating that it depends on how one interprets the contract provision that calls for Nilesat to transmit material "from Iraq."
The failure of U.S. officials to get the Egyptians to pull the plug on Al-Zawraa underlines the complicated nature of the U.S.-Egyptian relationship and the limits of American influence in the new regional equation. It is also another example of the emerging cold war between Iran and Sunni Arab powers in the region.
The Egyptian information minister has appointed a team to monitor the channel and provide him with a report, but, he says, the government can only take action if the channel has violated "the major codes of ethics of the pan-Arab media" and it receives a formal request from the Arab League, which, not incidentally, is seen by Iran as a tool of Sunni Arab power.
Having failed to convince the Egyptians to act — el-Fiki claims he was approached "in a friendly way" by the U.S. ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone, but has received no formal request — the Americans had hoped Iraqi President Jalal Talabani would raise the issue with President Hosni Mubarak, but the Iraqi leader’s December visit was cancelled. However, the man said to be the station’s founder, Mishan al-Jabouri, a former member of Iraq’s parliament, was recently in Cairo.
So for now, the insurgents have their televised voice and the Middle East has yet another of its countless contradictions: The U.S., which is demanding freedom and democracy in the Arab world, wants a TV station muzzled; while Egypt, whose prisons are crowded with home-grown Islamists and whose own media is tightly controlled, is defending the insurgents’ right to their electronic pulpit.
Lawrence Pintak is director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo and author of Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas. Email: lpintak@aucegypt.edu.
UNVEILING THE TRUTH BEHIND A LIFE IN NIQAB
by: Vivian Salama
First Published in the Daily Star Egypt
http://www.commongroundnews.org/current_sp.php?mode=1&sid=0&special=1#3048
CAIRO – There are many names for it depending where you are in the world, but the objective is the same. Whether you call it niqab, burga, purdah, abaya or whatever, the face veil to those who believe in it represents the ultimate act of superficial modesty as written in the Qur’an.
My interest first began when I was politely asked to leave an upscale Cairo restaurant because I was accompanied by a friend of mine – a young, educated, elegant, outgoing journalist who happens to wear higab (head scarf). In a country where the majority of women cover their hair out of religious or cultural obligation, it struck me as absurd that any place would abide by such a restriction. The reason, they told us, was that her presence may irritate the other patrons. After a heated debate, they let us stay, but moved us to a dark corner. If women wearing higab experience such inequality, I wondered, than how can anyone do anything wearing niqab?
I tried it. I purchased a niqab from a Cairo department store and wore it. I was afraid. I worried that I would be discovered that people would interpret my actions as a mockery, not research. The experience, however, revealed to me a new Cairo where taxis snub you; men harass you, think the worst of you; people call you the most offensive names; and waiters refuse to serve you.
As the Arab world struggles to maintain its authenticity amid the overpowering reaches of globalization, how can anyone sustain this unwavering commitment to their faith when they are treated unequally even in their own country?
"People call us ninjas. They always say to us ‘what beautiful eyes you have,’" tells Sarah El-Meshad, 24, a graduate of the American University in Cairo (AUC) who wears niqab. "The hard part was dealing with acquaintances. They treat you like crap even though they know who you are and they’ve known you for a long time."
El-Meshad and friends, Ebada Mostafa and Rola Sameh sat with me to discuss a range of subjects, from freedom of choice, to religious obligation, employment and education. The three were educated in American schools and are university graduates. Their parents are professionals. None of their mothers wear niqab. The three believe niqab, according to the Qur’an, is a sun’na, or "extra credit," as they called it, as opposed to practices that are fard, or obligatory.
As we talked, waiters stared and pointed probably because it struck them as unusual that a western-dressed woman with no veil would sit chatting in English with three women in niqab. Sameh would eventually call them out on their stares.
"Is there a problem?" she said firmly but politely. The waiters scattered. She laughed and continued. "Sometimes I feel that a girl who wears the niqab is at war war with her family, war with her friends," she says. "People refuse you, they mock you. We are religious people who chose this extra something we want to do for our religion and it’s nobody’s business."
Historians argue, the desert-dwelling Bedouins covered their faces as a social practice long before the advent of Islam. Even European noblewomen were often depicted shielded their faces as an act of humility, particularly when mingling with lower classes. The practice of covering the face first grew popular in the Muslim world through the teachings of the Wahabbi and Salafi sects of the Arab Gulf. Viewed by those people as the ultimate act of modesty, niqab is viewed as a woman’s obligation as written in the Qur’an, equal to its teachings that men are obligated to "lower their gaze."
"Before, whenever I saw Sandra Bullock or Brittney Spears wearing a certain style, I’d run out and buy the exact same style," recalls Mostafa, 23, a bubbly graduate of communications from the school of Modern Science and Arts (MSA). "It occurred to me after a while that all we are doing is copying foreigners. Well, what’s the problem is I copy my ancestors? I am imitating the Prophet’s wife."
All three women confess their burning desire to work. They acknowledge, however, that they have made a major sacrifice for this religious commitment since no jobs in Egypt are willing to hire niqab women. It is not illegal for niqab women to work, however, most employers, particularly those in the private sector, confess openly that a woman covering her face exudes an uninviting air and that is bad for business.
"I haven’t seen a case of a professional covering her face seeking employment in the private sector," says Sherif Samy, chairman of Skill-Link, an internet-based job search and career advice provider. "You would find them in some government offices because usually government offices attract a lower caliber of professionals, less ambitious than those who work in private sector. As for those who don’t choose to hire, it’s very personal. It’s never written, and people have the right. I can’t blame them for it."
"I am dying to work of course but only if they genuinely respected our ideas and our abilities," says Mostafa. "But they think we can’t talk and we are introverted. Many people don’t even want to give us a chance because of what we wear."
"The issue is non-verbal expression," explains Mushira El-Bardai, executive director for Human Resources at AUC. "Non-verbal communication is important too. I can’t communicate with you non-verbally if I can’t see your face. That’s in the workplace or classroom."
Education, particularly at liberal, private institutions such as AUC has been a subject of on-going debate as many believe a ruling banning niqab women from taking classes stifles religious freedoms. In 2001, the university issued a formal prohibition on students wearing niqab. Administrators cited a 1994 decree issued by then-Minister of Education Hussein Kamal Bahaaeddin banning the face-veil in schools, saying the matter violates security standards set by the institution. Dozens of schoolgirls have been suspended since the decree was issued, though in most cases, the courts overrule the decision and permit the girls to return to class.
Sameh was in her last year at Cairo University when, as she describes, she showed up one day suddenly dressed in niqab.
"They freaked out," she recalls, laughing. "I was the only person in niqab in all four grades. No one knew how to handle it."
"People have this very negative image of women in niqab – that they are low class and uneducated," adds El-Meshad. "One of the reasons why I wore it was the people take a better idea of the niqab. To me it was like, I am educated, I know how to talk, I am social, and I wear niqab. I make it a point to go and talk to people for that reason."
Above all other preconceptions regarding niqab women, these young women all of whom are married, two of them, already mothers want to make one thing clear to the outside world. Their decision to wear niqab, they say, was in no way influenced by any man in their life, be it their husbands or fathers.
"I use to sit with my husband, before we got married, without the niqab," admits Sameh. "Some people yell at me and say ‘no, that’s not right, you are niqab.’ It’s none of their business. I am free to do whatever I want. It’s my right, and the right of the man I was going to marry that we get use to each other and he gets to know me without the niqab."
"When I wore the niqab, I had been engaged for 6 months," recalls El-Meshad. "My parents were afraid that my husband influenced me. But it wasn’t like that at all. The first thing I did before I wore it is I asked my mom and dad. My mom said, ‘I can’t tell you not to do something that is good for you.’ My dad actually got me my first niqab. So, you see, I chose this."
* Vivian Salama spent three years as a journalist in the Middle East, recently returning to New York to pursue a degree in Middle East Studies at Columbia University. Her articles have appeared in Newsweek, USA Today, The International Herald Tribune, The Daily Star and the Jerusalem Post. Prior to working in the Middle East, Salama was a producer for The Today in New York Show on NBC in New York. Source: Daily Star-Egypt, 26 February 2006, www.dailystaregypt.com
by KHWAJA KHUSRO TARIQ
Bellmore, USA
DARFUR is a glaring example of the malignant hypocrisy eating the Muslim world from within. While we wax eloquent about the horrors being visited upon Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya and Palestine, nary a whisper is heard about the holocaust in Darfur. When it comes to Muslim killing Muslim, we appear to be deaf, blind and mute. At least 300,000 people have died and over two million have been driven from their homes and live in constant fear of rape and pillage.
The Darfur conflict is complex and has never been put in proper perspective. Western governments have portrayed it as genocide of the natives of Darfur by camel-herding Arabs backed by the Sudanese government while the Sudanese government claims there are no mass killings taking place and that the violence is caused by rebels backed by Chad and is beyond their control. The truth lies somewhere in between: starting with Muammar Qadhafis espousal of Arab supremacy in the 1960s and 70s and Arab and native African hostility gradually developed. Many conflicts were born out of this illogical rivalry, the latest being in Darfur.
With the start of the Second Sudanese Civil War and the failure of the May Agreement between the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Sudanese government, the rebels started using new tactics and won several big battles with the Sudanese army. Chad and Eritrea, who have long eyed Sudanese oil resources began funding and arming more rebel recruits. To counter this, the Sudanese government began arming the Janjaweed camel-herding Arabs. The janjaweed fought and defeated the Sudanese rebels and even the Chad army in several skirmishes. With rebel support coming from within Darfur as well, the wrath of the Janjaweed began to turn towards Darfurians as well and unfortunately the violence became more and more indiscriminate and more and more brutal.
The need of the hour is that the OIC urge all the players in this conflict the Sudanese government, the Sudanese rebels, Chad and Eritrea to cease hostilities and start negotiations. The OIC should involve the African Union as well and the situation must be treated as an emergency.
If the Muslim world fails the Muslims of Darfur and leaves the responsibility that is theirs to America or NATO, they will have no right to criticize apathy and cruelty anywhere else and neither will they have any right to bemoan western interference in their own countries as they themselves invite it by their impotence and inaction.
OFFICE SPACE AVAILABLE FOR SUBLEASE AT CSID
FURNISHED office space available for sublease at CSID office in DOWNTOWN WASHINGTON DC (1625 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 601,Washington DC). Space available ranges from 1 to 4 office rooms (fully furnished) and rent is between $1,500 and $4,000 per month. Rent includes use of board and conference rooms (from 10 to 80 people). Flexible lease: 3 to 12 months (renewable).
EXCELLENT LOCATION – next to Johns Hopkins, SAIS, Brookings, Carnegie Endowment, and USIP. Close to DuPont Circle metro.
For further information, please contact Sami Bawalsa at (202) 265-1200.
2007 STANFORD SUMMER FELLOWS ON DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT
The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies invites policymakers and activists from countries undergoing political, economic, and social transitions to participate in its third annual Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development program.
The 2007 program will be held from July 30 – August 17, 2007 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
The Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program
(SSFDD) is a three-week executive education program that is run annually on the Stanford campus by an interdisciplinary team of leading Stanford faculty. The program brings together a group of approximately 30 civic, political, and economic leaders from transitioning countries. Stanford Summer Fellows are former prime ministers and presidential advisers, senators and attorneys general, journalists and civic activists, academics and members of the international development community. Since the program was introduced in 2005, we have typically received more than 800 applications each year.
This program is aimed at early to mid-career policymakers, academics, and leaders of civil society organizations (such as representatives of trade unions, nongovernmental organizations, the media, business and professional associations) who will play important roles in their country’s democratic, economic, and social development. We anticipate recruiting a group of 30 individuals dedicated to democracy and development promotion within their home countries (particularly in, but not limited to, the regions of the Middle East, Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and other parts of the former Soviet Union).
Successful applicants will be proficient in spoken and written English and will have academic and practical credentials necessary to benefit fully from the course and actively contribute to programmatic discussions. The ideal course participant will have extraordinary motivation, at least three to five years of experience in a relevant field of democratic development, and a keen interest in learning and sharing knowledge and experiences in transforming his or her country.
To learn more about the program, past participants and curriculum, and to apply, go to http://cddrl.stanford.edu/fellowships/summerfellows/
The International Institute for Political and Economic Studies (IIPES)
ABOUT IIPES
IIPES 2007: JULY 13- AUGUST 7, 2007
http://www.tfasinternational.org/iipes/about/
The International Institute for Political and Economic Studies (IIPES) is an academic program that explores major political, economic and cultural issues important to the Eastern Mediterranean region. Students from a wide range of nationalities, religions and ethnicities have a chance to interact, learn and share their experiences in ways that can benefit their educational and professional development. Greece in a unique environment with more than 80 university students from 20 countries.
Students attend courses in political economy, history, philosophy, and conflict management. In addition to classes, students participate in dialogue designed to promote international exchange.
For three weeks, students will attend classes, listen to prominent speakers, and attend special events designed to engage them in an educational, cultural and social exchange. This combination of activities leads to life-long friendships and ideas that cannot be gained elsewhere.
Apply Online: https://app.applyyourself.com/?id=tfas
Download a proper CV/resume format (PDF): http://www.tfasinternational.org/sample_resume.pdf
Scholarship Resources: http://www.tfasinternational.org/iipes/admissions/addl.asp
DEMOCRATIC VALUES IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Moataz A. Fattah
http://www.rienner.com/viewbook.cfm?BOOKID=1535&search=fattah
Is Islam compatible with democracy? Despite the seemingly endless debate on this issue, Moataz Fattah’s study is a rare investigation of actual Muslim beliefs about democracy across numerous and diverse Islamic societies.
Fattah’s survey analysis of more than 31,000 Muslims in 34 countries (including 3 countries in which Muslims live as minorities), enhanced by focus group discussions, offers a nuanced portrait of the link between Islam and democracy. His work advances discussion on this critical topic to a new, more sophisticated level.
Moataz A. Fattah is assistant professor of political science at Cairo University and Central Michigan University.
"What do citizens of Muslim countries think of democratic values? Do they hold values that enhance or degrade prospects for democratization in their societies? These and similar questions are examined empirically in this timely, sophisticated, yet accessible book…. Highly recommended."Choice
"Though Muslims constitute more than one-fifth of the world population, the few publications investigating their beliefs on religion and democracy have offered only hazy and contradictory conclusions. With this book, no more. Fattah’s dissection of the political culture of 33 Muslim societies provides a coherent view of their beliefs, while avoiding the trap of overgeneralization. Indispensable reading, even for the nonspecialist."Bahgat Korany, The American University in Cairo
"Fattah offers a scientific, credible answer to many of the thorny questions that divide policymakers, academics, and public opinion in general…. This is a must read for anyone concerned about democracy in Muslim countries."Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, Cairo University
"A very fine book … careful and balanced, and based on unusually rich and varied empirical data."Bruce Rutherford, Colgate University
By Neil MacFarquhar
Published: January 4, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/04/features/bookfri.php
Nonfiction. American Islam. The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion. By Paul M. Barrett. 304 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.
Late last year a conference of accomplished Muslim women gathered at the Westin Hotel near Times Square in New York City to debate how women might exert greater influence on the interpretation of Islamic Scriptures. During a panel discussion, an Iranian- born anthropologist from Britain said she seconded the position taken by the Labor politician Jack Straw that the full facial veils worn by some Muslims have no place in Western society because they erase a woman’s humanity.
The conference room seemed to sunder in two. Half the roughly 200 women present erupted in energetic applause, while many of the rest made catcalls, heckling the speaker.
In the post-9/11 world Muslims have frequently been stereotyped as monolithically murderous, all 1.3 billion worldwide lumped together as extremists bent on destroying the West. The heated debates among Muslims themselves about violence committed under the banner of Islam are often drowned out in the fray.
Paul M. Barrett’s timely and engaging new book, "American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion," brings some of those voices in the United States to life.
The book, a series of seven profiles, draws partly from Barrett’s reporting for The Wall Street Journal about Islam in America after the 2001 attacks. (He now works for Business Week.) He sketches a varied cast with a pronounced skew toward outspoken moderates to try to illustrate the diversity among American Muslims.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian- born law professor and Islamic scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, tries to live the moderation he teaches: adopting stray dogs, for example, although many Muslims believe that Scripture condemns dogs as unclean.
There is Osama Siblani, a secular Lebanese Shiite in his early 50s who publishes a weekly newspaper in Dearborn, Michigan. "Since 9/11 I have felt choked," he tells Barrett, a common sentiment among Muslims, who often find themselves in the contradictory position of loving the freedom offered by the United States while abhorring the way the government treats Muslims in the country and abroad.
To describe the African-American Muslim perspective, Barrett spent time with Siraj Wahhaj, a prayer leader who made the rather typical transition from the radicalized Nation of Islam toward more mainstream Sunni Islam. Wahhaj espouses polygamy and refuses to blame Osama bin Laden for the 2001 attacks; African-American Islam, Barrett writes, "lacks fully developed leaders."
"American Islam" mentions in passing, but does not analyze, the pronounced rift between immigrant Muslims and African-Americans, who make up as much as 40 percent of the estimated six million Muslims in the United States. Many African-Americans maintain that Arab and Asian immigrants disdain them as insufficiently orthodox, failing to appreciate the inroads they made for Islam.
"American Islam" lacks figures to represent the conservative or the extremist viewpoint one difficulty in relying on a series of profiles to illustrate the faith and the format doesn’t allow for an in-depth assessment of Islamic radicalism in the United States.
Barrett refers to a hot debate over the degree to which the creed of the Wahhabis, the puritanical Saudi Arabian sect hostile to non-Muslims, exists here. But aside from a few swipes by Wahhaj at democracy, we hear only from critics of extremism.
It might have been a problem of access: American Muslims are extremely wary of reporters. They feel they were vilified after 9/11, being considered somehow less than loyal Americans.
"American Islam" is perhaps reassuring in noting that Muslims in the United States are more prosperous, better educated and more politically active than immigrants elsewhere in the West. And Barrett’s cast implies that there are vigilant Muslims determined to uproot extremists should they try to plant themselves in the United States.
SCHOLAR RESCUE FUND FELLOWSHIPS
The Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund provides fellowships for scholars whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. These fellowships permit scholars to find temporary refuge at universities and colleges anywhere in the world, enabling them to pursue their academic work and to continue to share their knowledge with students, colleagues, and the community at large. When conditions improve, these scholars will return home to help rebuild universities and societies ravaged by fear, conflict and repression.
How the Scholar Rescue Fund Works:
* Academics, researchers and independent scholars from any country, field or discipline may qualify. Preference is given to scholars with a Ph.D. or other highest degree in their field; who have extensive teaching or research experience at a university, college or other institution of higher learning; who demonstrate superior academic accomplishment or promise; and whose selection is likely to benefit the academic community in the home and/or host country or region. Applications from female scholars and under-represented groups are strongly encouraged.
* Fellowship recipients are expected to resume their teaching, lecturing, research, writing and publishing at an academic institution outside the region of threat.
* Fellowships are awarded for visiting academic positions ranging from 3 months to one calendar year. The maximum award is US $20,000.
* Fellowships are disbursed through host academic institutions for direct support of scholar-grantees. In most cases, host campuses are asked to match the SRF fellowship award through partial salary/stipend support, research materials, medical insurance, and other in-kind assistance.
* Applications are accepted at any time. Emergency applications receive urgent consideration. Non-emergency applications will be considered according to the following schedule:
Winter 2007: Applications received by January 23; decision by March 1.
Spring 2007: Application received by April 1; decision by June 1.
To apply, please download the information and application materials from: http://www.iie.org/programs/srf/apply.htm
For universities and colleges interested in hosting an SRF scholar, please visit:
http://www.iie.org/programs/srf/host.htm
IIE Scholar Rescue Fund Fellowships
809 U.N. Plaza, Second Floor
Tel: (
Fax: (USA) 1-212-984-5353
E-mail: SRF@iie.org
Web: www.iie.org/SRF
DISCLAIMER:
The articles in this bulletin do NOT necessarily reflect the opinions of CSID, or its board of directors. They are included in the CSID bulletin to encourage and facilitate diversity of opinions, discussions, and debates about democracy in the Arab/Muslim world, and how best to strengthen and promote it.
