http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=1672
It's about time...
More than two years ago now, high school kids in Jordan started a tutoring program where they themselves taught Iraqi kids after their own school day. Another school in East Amman was started by Christian missionaries from the states, where the kids were kept off the streets, but where the education was substandard and they got no formal certificates. A thirteen year old girl I met attended the classes for women held at a community center in Sweileh because she hadn't been to school in years. It's really about time these kids were integrated into the public system. And it's about time the US stepped up...
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
my letter to asra nomani
Dear Asra,
I just finished Standing Alone, and wanted to thank you. I have spent the past year in Jordan studying, and though I am not Muslim, I feel a personal connection with your words and was inspired by them.
Seeing and learning of oppression and control of women in some poignant instances in Jordan, I've struggled with the internal conflict of whether it was my place to speak of oppressions in Islamic society- my last wish is to deepen the divide, perpetuating a negative view of Islam in the West, and providing fuel for those who view women's rights as Western infiltration and corruption of Islam. You will appreciate that at the same community center in Amman where I learned of many of these oppressions, they have a weekly class with a sheikh who instructs women of their rights under Islam. Here, Islam plays a crucial role in empowering women who find themselves in abusive relationships, enabling them to demand their rights with support and education.
I've personally chafed against strict gender separation and unequal access to Ramadan activities and classes at the Islamic Arabic school called Qasid I attended where, ironically, the American Muslims who ran the place used "cultural sensitivity" to justify their requirement of the hijab for non-muslim students even well outside the physical boundaries of the school. As you know, Jordan is a multi-religious society where no one dress code is enforced anywhere, and Jordanians were unanimously offended when we told them of the school's rules. I compromised by throwing a scarf over my head in the street before the gate of the school, and then fixing it properly inside, but not in front of a taxi driver or in my own neighborhood where it would have offended people, and where I would have felt I was misrepresenting myself as well as detracting from the choice of other women who consciously take up the hijab.
In Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine I've been allowed to enter many mesjids as a guest to appreciate their beauty, and historic, cultural and societal value. In the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, I experienced gender segregation as something that allowed me equal access to view a relic when guards instructed men in the designated women's section to move out of our way. That mesjid is a place where families relax together in the sun, and children run and play in the open area. In Tripoli, Lebanon, just an hour from where my great-grandparents hail, a very rude man in his twenties barred my and my friends' access to enter and view a Byzantine church-turned-mesjid, though we were wearing hijab and long-ish coats, and our male Muslim Iraqi-American friend tried unsuccessfully to negotiate our entry.
The experience that has stayed with me most intensely is the time I finally entered the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem. I'd been to Jerusalem several times, but had never been allowed, as a non-Muslim, to enter the Haram outside of the short tourist hours, even if I covered respectfully. Once, I went with a Muslim American friend who felt horrible entering without me, but I sat and had a nice chat with the Israeli Druze soldier who stopped me from entering and simultaneously apologized for doing so. A second time, however, I went with another friend, also a Muslim American. This Israeli soldier, upon seeing our hijabs and after I let on that I spoke Arabic, became increasingly hostile and physically threatening. My friend was saying that despite my name, I was a Muslim. The soldier yelled at us saying we needed to bring an ID saying I was a Muslim. After looking at my name, he patronizingly informed me that "We know who you are." I informed him that in the US we do not have our religion on our ID cards. My friend now engaged him in the ideological battle of whether all of her (actual) Muslim friends with non-Muslim names would receive the same treatment from him simply because of their names. This was the door for Muslims. The soldier tried to separate us, telling my friend to enter here and me to go around to the tourists door, and when we both walked away, threatened to arrest us both if he saw us inside the Haram.
His hostility was truly enough to make you shrivel inside. At one point he yelled at me, ordering me to remove my hijab. "Ishlahi! Ishlahi hay!" Take that off! How dare he, I thought. He did not know truly whether I was Muslim or not. I could easily have been any of the white Muslims I knew. I had bristled in Amman at having the hijab imposed upon me to study, and now here I am trying to be respectful in a holy place as I was in all the other Islamic holy places I'd visited, and this soldier who did not know me was ordering me to remove an article of clothing. I didn't even have the nerve to answer him back. My friend was doing that for me. I just looked at him.
We left, removed our hijabs in a private area, and entered through the tourist door, whose hours we had just caught. Inside we redonned hijab and proceeded to be grilled at the entrance to Al-Aqsa as to whether I could recite the Fatiha, this time by Palestinians. My friend told them I was a Muslim, but when I failed to get past the first few lines of the Fatiha, they told her she shouldn't lie. She stalked past them into the mesjid. They later told her we should have split up and viewed our own religious places separately. But she protested that she had enjoyed seeing the churches! When she was finished, we went up to the Dome. This time I told the truth to a kinder Palestinian man who offered to be our guide, and he asked me to wait outside and told me not to worry about the Israeli soldier. (We were nervously looking over our shoulders, fearing we'd have to call our mothers to say we were arrested.)
While I was disappointed I could not see inside, I understand the limitations imposed by the political situation. I believe tourists were allowed inside the Dome and Al-Aqsa before Sharon took his walk that incited the Second Intifada. While I waited outside the Dome for my friend, a young boy asked me if I was Muslim. When I said no, he ran to bring me a chair in the shade. Then he asked if I wanted to see the rock, and led me to the windows to peer inside with him. He led me around the compound, explaining the relics and the views. He gave me an experience of hospitality and kindness, and at first refused money when I tried to pay him as a guide.
If all of this seems horribly mixed up, I apologize. I suppose it's because I'm trying to make sense out of all of it and don't want to censor or edit out any parts to draw either a wholly friendly or hostile picture. I've experienced extremes of both sentiments entering Islamic holy places, sometimes at the same time.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the experience of reading your book and the ways it has encouraged me to think.
Respectfully and sincerely.
I just finished Standing Alone, and wanted to thank you. I have spent the past year in Jordan studying, and though I am not Muslim, I feel a personal connection with your words and was inspired by them.
Seeing and learning of oppression and control of women in some poignant instances in Jordan, I've struggled with the internal conflict of whether it was my place to speak of oppressions in Islamic society- my last wish is to deepen the divide, perpetuating a negative view of Islam in the West, and providing fuel for those who view women's rights as Western infiltration and corruption of Islam. You will appreciate that at the same community center in Amman where I learned of many of these oppressions, they have a weekly class with a sheikh who instructs women of their rights under Islam. Here, Islam plays a crucial role in empowering women who find themselves in abusive relationships, enabling them to demand their rights with support and education.
I've personally chafed against strict gender separation and unequal access to Ramadan activities and classes at the Islamic Arabic school called Qasid I attended where, ironically, the American Muslims who ran the place used "cultural sensitivity" to justify their requirement of the hijab for non-muslim students even well outside the physical boundaries of the school. As you know, Jordan is a multi-religious society where no one dress code is enforced anywhere, and Jordanians were unanimously offended when we told them of the school's rules. I compromised by throwing a scarf over my head in the street before the gate of the school, and then fixing it properly inside, but not in front of a taxi driver or in my own neighborhood where it would have offended people, and where I would have felt I was misrepresenting myself as well as detracting from the choice of other women who consciously take up the hijab.
In Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine I've been allowed to enter many mesjids as a guest to appreciate their beauty, and historic, cultural and societal value. In the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, I experienced gender segregation as something that allowed me equal access to view a relic when guards instructed men in the designated women's section to move out of our way. That mesjid is a place where families relax together in the sun, and children run and play in the open area. In Tripoli, Lebanon, just an hour from where my great-grandparents hail, a very rude man in his twenties barred my and my friends' access to enter and view a Byzantine church-turned-mesjid, though we were wearing hijab and long-ish coats, and our male Muslim Iraqi-American friend tried unsuccessfully to negotiate our entry.
The experience that has stayed with me most intensely is the time I finally entered the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem. I'd been to Jerusalem several times, but had never been allowed, as a non-Muslim, to enter the Haram outside of the short tourist hours, even if I covered respectfully. Once, I went with a Muslim American friend who felt horrible entering without me, but I sat and had a nice chat with the Israeli Druze soldier who stopped me from entering and simultaneously apologized for doing so. A second time, however, I went with another friend, also a Muslim American. This Israeli soldier, upon seeing our hijabs and after I let on that I spoke Arabic, became increasingly hostile and physically threatening. My friend was saying that despite my name, I was a Muslim. The soldier yelled at us saying we needed to bring an ID saying I was a Muslim. After looking at my name, he patronizingly informed me that "We know who you are." I informed him that in the US we do not have our religion on our ID cards. My friend now engaged him in the ideological battle of whether all of her (actual) Muslim friends with non-Muslim names would receive the same treatment from him simply because of their names. This was the door for Muslims. The soldier tried to separate us, telling my friend to enter here and me to go around to the tourists door, and when we both walked away, threatened to arrest us both if he saw us inside the Haram.
His hostility was truly enough to make you shrivel inside. At one point he yelled at me, ordering me to remove my hijab. "Ishlahi! Ishlahi hay!" Take that off! How dare he, I thought. He did not know truly whether I was Muslim or not. I could easily have been any of the white Muslims I knew. I had bristled in Amman at having the hijab imposed upon me to study, and now here I am trying to be respectful in a holy place as I was in all the other Islamic holy places I'd visited, and this soldier who did not know me was ordering me to remove an article of clothing. I didn't even have the nerve to answer him back. My friend was doing that for me. I just looked at him.
We left, removed our hijabs in a private area, and entered through the tourist door, whose hours we had just caught. Inside we redonned hijab and proceeded to be grilled at the entrance to Al-Aqsa as to whether I could recite the Fatiha, this time by Palestinians. My friend told them I was a Muslim, but when I failed to get past the first few lines of the Fatiha, they told her she shouldn't lie. She stalked past them into the mesjid. They later told her we should have split up and viewed our own religious places separately. But she protested that she had enjoyed seeing the churches! When she was finished, we went up to the Dome. This time I told the truth to a kinder Palestinian man who offered to be our guide, and he asked me to wait outside and told me not to worry about the Israeli soldier. (We were nervously looking over our shoulders, fearing we'd have to call our mothers to say we were arrested.)
While I was disappointed I could not see inside, I understand the limitations imposed by the political situation. I believe tourists were allowed inside the Dome and Al-Aqsa before Sharon took his walk that incited the Second Intifada. While I waited outside the Dome for my friend, a young boy asked me if I was Muslim. When I said no, he ran to bring me a chair in the shade. Then he asked if I wanted to see the rock, and led me to the windows to peer inside with him. He led me around the compound, explaining the relics and the views. He gave me an experience of hospitality and kindness, and at first refused money when I tried to pay him as a guide.
If all of this seems horribly mixed up, I apologize. I suppose it's because I'm trying to make sense out of all of it and don't want to censor or edit out any parts to draw either a wholly friendly or hostile picture. I've experienced extremes of both sentiments entering Islamic holy places, sometimes at the same time.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the experience of reading your book and the ways it has encouraged me to think.
Respectfully and sincerely.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Hedges and Al-Arian article in The Nation
"Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.
Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished."
read here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges
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