"Long Road to Heaven": who's up for the chalenge?
CGNews-PiH Jakarta
Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
for constructive & vibrant Muslim-Western relations
28 February - 06 March 2007
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Inside this edition
1) Let Arab Americans help by Rebecca Abou-Chedid
In this fifth article in our series on diaspora communities and Muslim-
Western relations, Rebecca Abou Chedid, director of government
relations at the Arab American Institute, explains why the treatment
of Arab Americans in the United States significantly impacts the
perception of America in the Arab world. Based on this premise, she
offers several novel ways that "Arab Americans can offer a
representation of America that Arabs can trust, recognise and identify
with."
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 February 2007)
2) "Long Road to Heaven": who's up for the challenge? by Nuruddin
Asyhadie
Nuruddin Asyhadie, an Indonesian poet, playwright, and literary and
philosophy commentator, reviews the movie "Long Road to Heaven" which
centres on the 2002 Bali Bombings. Cognisant of the ethical dilemma of
depicting a tragedy through a vehicle that is often both artistic and
entertaining, he explains how this movie goes beyond portraying a
"paradise lost" to provide lessons which could lead to a "paradise
regained".
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 February 2007)
3) Democracy and the majority Muslim states by Mohammed Al Garf and
Nicholas Iovino
Mohammed Al Garf, a student at the American University in Cairo, and
Nicholas Iovino, a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University,
consider what both Muslim and Western scholars have to say on the
compatibility of democracy and Islam. Acknowledging a difference of
opinion between various streams of thought, they suggest divorcing the
concepts of "secularism" and "democracy" and paint a picture of how
this might look.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 February 2007)
4) Arab blogs give youth venting space by Mona Eltahawy
Mona Eltahawy, New York-based commentator and international lecturer
on Arab and Muslim issues, gives concrete examples of the power of
blogs in the Arab world, online "web logs" written in journal style
which provide youth with a "new-found ability to communicate after
years of being ignored". Many of these young bloggers face huge risks,
sometimes even arrest or worse, further demonstrating their might and
influence: "one man plus one website equals one very angry dictator."
(Source: Bitterlemons-international.org, 15 February 2007)
5) Love squares off against hatred on Valentine's Day by Ibrahim Al-
Marashi
Ibrahim Al-Marashi, an international policy fellow at the Center for
Policy Studies in Turkey, looks at how both hate and, perhaps more
surprisingly, love can become "a commodity in international relations"
used by politicians and countries to justify their policies and even
lead to fanaticism. He suggests that it's the "struggle for love",
rather than a blind love, that we need to in our quest for peace and
tranquillity.
(Source: Daily Star, 16 February 2007)
1) Let Arab Americans help
Rebecca Abou-Chedid
Washington, DC - Throughout much of America's history, racial and
ethnic minorities have faced hardships which have highlighted both the
best and worst tendencies of our nation. The successes of the civil
rights era are felt not just by African Americans but by all of our
country's minority communities. Similarly, during World War II,
Japanese Americans suffered internment but have since been at the
forefront of protecting other communities suffering racial or ethnic
prejudice. In the aftermath of 9/11, the responsibility of leading the
struggle to protect civil liberties, keeping our nation secure and
bridging the growing gap between the United States and the Arab world
falls on Arab Americans.
As the daughter of a Lebanese immigrant, I have always had an interest
in the status of the Arab American community as well as the
relationship between the Unites States and the Arab world. After
graduating from college, I moved to Lebanon to work as a teacher for
AMIDEAST. My students included Lebanese from many of the country's
diverse religious and ethnic communities preparing to begin their
university studies.
Interacting with these students afforded me the invaluable opportunity
to learn how young Arabs viewed my country. Through our discussions, I
came to realise that the treatment of Arab Americans was a major
contributor to their impressions of America: when Arab Americans
suffer hate crimes or discrimination, Arabs also feel pain;
alternatively, the acceptance and success of our community in the
United States shows Arabs abroad that their culture, religion and
history are respected.
Since 2002, the Arab American Institute has commissioned an annual
survey in six Arab countries (Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) to determine impressions of
America and the key factors involved in forming those opinions. The
polls, conducted by Zogby International, show that while Arabs
generally view American culture and people positively (although even
these numbers have experienced a downward trend), attitudes towards
American foreign policy are so negative that they drive overall
favourability numbers to alarmingly low levels.
The good news is that large majorities in most countries (e.g. over
70% in Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon) say that they would like to know
an American, and a plurality of those who have travelled to the United
States had a positive impression of their visit. Unfortunately, not
many Arabs have actually had the opportunity to meet an American - the
range is from only 14% in Saudi Arabia to 41% in Jordan - and even
fewer have travelled to the US-from a high of 22% of Emiratis to only
9% of Moroccans.
This is where Arab Americans play a vital role. During this summer's
war in Lebanon and the ensuing evacuation of American citizens, many
Americans were surprised to learn that over 25,000 of their
compatriots regularly spend their summers in Lebanon. This was not,
however, a surprise to Arab Americans who have always maintained a
tradition of visiting their countries of origin and remain dedicated
to building positive relationships between their country and that of
their ancestors. At the same time, for the majority of Americans who
will never travel to the Arab world, their Arab American neighbours
have embraced the opportunity to share with them the generosity and
hospitality that characterise Arab culture.
Arab Americans serve as ambassadors not only at the individual level,
but can, and should, be engaged by their government. The Iraq Study
Group reported recently that of the 1,000 employees in the American
Embassy in Iraq, only 33 speak Arabic, 6 of them fluently. While it is
true that not all Arab Americans speak Arabic, there is a cultural
intimacy and religious respect that Arab Americans-including Christian
Arab Americans-possess which is invaluable to U.S. efforts to
understand and act responsibly in the region in a manner that benefits
both Americans and Arabs.
Moreover, both Arabs and Americans care deeply about family and
education and large numbers in both societies reserve a significant
role for religion in daily life. Why not emphasise these shared values
rather than focus on the issues on which we differ? If, for example,
the United States decides to aid in Lebanon's reconstruction by
building a school in the southern village of Bint Jbeil, why not send
Arab Americans whose parents came from that very village to dedicate
the school as a gift from their government? The impact that a
delegation of Arab Americans empowered and respected by their
government would have throughout the Arab world should not be
underestimated.
The relationship between the United States and the Arab world is in
crisis and American credibility is at an all-time low. What we need is
to build a different relationship. This entails not only a change in
foreign policy, but creating different attitudes on both sides. Arab
Americans can offer a representation of America that Arabs can trust,
recognise and identify with. Let us help.
###
* Rebecca Abou-Chedid is the director of government relations at the
Arab American Institute. This article is part of a series on diaspora
communities and Muslim-Western relations distributed by the Common
Ground News Service (CGNews), and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 February 2007,
www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
2) "Long Road to Heaven": who's up for the challenge?
Nuruddin Asyhadie
Jakarta - "What do you want? Why do you keep killing us? What good can
possibly come of this?" Hannah Catrelle, an American surfer, bombarded
Haji Ismail, a prominent Balinese Muslim, with these questions when
they met at a hospital in Bali on the night of the first Bali
Bombings, 12 October 2002.
Hannah couldn't accept that a place that felt like paradise was being
affected by the same type of tragic events that stole her boy friend's
life during the 9/11 tragedy. And like many Westerners she had trouble
separating all Muslims from terrorists.
"The people who do these terrible things have no understanding of
Islam. Of how great it is ...They think that by doing this, they will
get a short-cut to heaven. But there are no short-cuts to heaven. It
is a long road," answered Haji Ismail.
This exchange is a scene from the movie Long Road to Heaven (LRtH),
directed by well-known Indonesian director Enison Sinaro and produced
by the American-company TeleProduction International together with
Kalyana Shira Films in Indonesia. It was released in Indonesia
recently and will be submitted to international film festivals and
markets.
The movie, written by Singaporeans Andy Logam Tan and Wong Wai Leng,
calls militant jihad into question while trying to provide some
insight into how the concept of heaven stirs the history of man. The
effort to reach it often results in violence and torment which are
contrary to the image of heaven itself.
With the 2002 Bali Bombings tragedy as background, LRtH weaves four
stories about the complexity of the search for heaven into a truly
intricate plot. While each story takes place during a different
period, all four run concurrently in the film, interspersed with each
other.
The first story takes place one year before the 2002 Bali Bombings,
the moment the top leaders of the two organisations responsible for
the bombings, Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and Mantiqi 1, were plotting the
operation. This story focuses on Mukhlas, JI's head of operations,
persuading Hambali, Al-Qaeda's highest ranking non-Arab member, to
choose Bali as a target for bombings because of a past encounter when
a caucasian male wearing a t-shirt inscribed with the words "I love
Bali" refused to share a lift with him.
The second story takes place about one month before the Bali bombings
and shows Ali Imron and the other conspirators executing their plan,
focusing on the rivalry between them and their hidden or ulterior
motivations.
The third story takes place minutes after the bombings while
volunteers and professionals work to rescue the wounded and identify
the dead. Here, Hannah, in her interaction with Haji Ismail, confronts
her prejudices and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims.
The last story takes place one year after the bombings, when
Australian journalist, Liz Thompson, visits Bali to get a story.
Accompanied by Wayan Diya, a Balinese taxi driver that she has hired,
Liz goes around interviewing the Balinese about their feelings
regarding the tragedy and the bombers. She fails in her attempts to
find newsworthy statements. The constant reply is, "Life will get
better." From Wayan, she learns that the Balinese believe life is
about keeping things in balance, therefore they forgive the evil and
even see it as a punishment from the gods for their sins.
Although aiming primarily to portray the tragedy, the movie can't
escape from ethical controversies. On the one hand it shows
condolence, attention, concern. On the other its artistic intention
and the pleasure that it offers show insensitivity to the grief of the
victims and/or their family.
"That is unavoidable. But we are not exploiting it. There are many
lessons we can learn from the tragedy," Director Enison said.
Enison is right. One of these lessons is illustrated through the words
of wisdom spoken by Haji Ismail's during his conversation with Hannah:
"All [the bombers] see are the little things. They can't break free
from the past. They can't see beyond their own pain."
While these words are aimed at the bombers, they also serve as an
answer to the ethical discourse above, demonstrating that the movie
isn't only a "paradise lost" narration but also a "paradise regained".
Hearing them, Hannah also realises how her own prejudices, stemming
from anger over her lost paradise and grief over the death of her
boyfriend in the 9/11 attacks, could lead her to feel a blind hatred -
the very emotion that drove the bombers, though to a different end.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the movie can be seen as a
message to viewers that we need more than understanding to stop
terrorism or violence. We must first reconcile with ourselves, and
step away from our own egos. Only then we can go meet "the other"
without any conditions.
These aren't easy tasks, but the road to heaven is a long one, as
Ismail's character points out. Who's up for the challenge?
###
* Nuruddin Asyhadie is an Indonesian poet, playwright, script writer,
and literary and philosophy commentator. He is also co-founder of F,
an Indonesian movie magazine. His books include "Hampiran Hamparan
Gramatologi Derrida" (Of of Grammatology [sic], 2004) and "Beatniks,
dan puisi-puisi lainnya" (Beatniks, and other poems, 2001). This
article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and
can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 February 2007,
www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
3) Democracy and the majority Muslim states
Mohammed Al Garf and Nicholas Iovino
Cairo/Richmond, Virginia - As the West continues to push for
democratisation in the Middle East, it is important we ask the
question: is democracy compatible with Muslim values? Seeking this
answer is essential for both policy-makers and citizens to better
understand the political cultures of the West and predominantly Muslim
states.
Democracy is defined as government by the people, in which supreme
authority for governing is vested and exercised directly by them or
through their elected representatives. And as such, many scholars
claim that Islam and democracy are in fact consistent, but perhaps not
the Western style of democracy currently being pushed on the Middle
East.
Fahmi Hewadi, an esteemed scholar in the Arab world, claims in his
book Islam and Democracy that there are seven pillars for an Islamic
state. Among these seven components, the most important is the Umma,
the community responsible for upholding freedom, justice, and
equality. As in Western conceptions of democracy, power is thought of
as deriving from the Umma, and the community is responsible for
choosing their Imam (spiritual leader), who can only continue to hold
such a position with their accord.
Another important factor that supports the possibility of an Islamic
democracy is the principle of free will. In Islam, it is understood
that Allah has established a set of rules for his people but does not
actively enforce them. All Muslims have the choice to follow them or
not, and thus basic freedoms must be part of any Muslim democracy.
>From this idea, Muslims scholars have also argued that in a majority-
Muslim state, Muslims must respect the beliefs of non-Muslims, and
that equality between people of all faiths would also be a founding
principle.
Hewadi further emphasises the importance of shura (a process by which
everyone states their opinion and consensus is reached by deliberation
and decision-making as a group) as a rule that Allah has set for
political decision-making. He states that shura has to encompass
everyone in the community: men, women, Muslims and non-Muslims. He
also stresses that shura is based on freedom of speech because if
people weren't free to state their opinion, then ipso facto no shura
could be considered to exist.
Dr. Azizah Y. al-Hibri, President and Founder of Karamah: Muslim Women
Lawyers for Human Rights, likewise argues that a state must meet
certain conditions to be a democratic Islamic state, specifically
"bay'ah (elections) and shura (broad deliberation)." Likewise, she
sees ijtihad, jurisprudence based on interpretation of Islamic law, as
key since interpretation requires freedom of speech.
However, though Muslim scholars such as these interpret Islam to be
consistent with certain democratic principles, Muslim fundamentalists
are strident in their arguments that democracy is anti-Islamic.
Egyptian thinker Sayyed Qtub, often considered the intellectual father
of Islamic fundamentalism, argued that Western cultural modernity -
and especially its focus on the individual as the locus of decision-
making and politics - destroys spirituality. Qtub opposed the Western
doctrines of the sovereign state and inalienable rights of the
individual, insisting that human institutions have no sovereignty and
that Allah alone, the perfect sovereign, rules.
Likewise, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, although a long time ally of the
West, and one of the Middle East's major powers, also asserts the
illegitimacy of democracy in the Muslim world: "The election system
has no place in the Islamic creed, which calls for a government of
advice and consultation and for the shepherd's openness to his flock,
and holds the ruler fully responsible before his people."
Some Western thinkers agree, and argue that Islamic states are
inherently undemocratic. Other scholars argue that secular democracy
is derived from the Christian principle of giving to Caesar what is
owed to Caesar and to God what is owed to God, a distinction Muhammad
never made.
This argument raises perhaps the most important question in discussing
democracy in majority-Muslim countries: must state governments be
secular in order to be democratic? Some counter the only difference
between secular and religious governments is the source of their laws.
Even in religious states, while the source of law may be a religious
text, this does not make the state a theocracy.
Still, another rankle is that while this may be true of most Sunnis,
Shiite Muslims and some Sunnis do recognise that ecclesiastical
authority can be linked with political authority through imams. Imams
can interpret and reinterpret the Qur'an and are viewed as almost
infallible leaders in all spheres of life, including politics. For
these reasons, the consensus among the Muslim academic community
maintains that Western-style secular democracy is not suitable for the
Muslim World.
Although a non-secular democracy derives its laws from scripture, the
democratic and Islamic ideals of freedom, justice, and equality are
still upheld. In order to better understand and promote democracy in
the Muslim world, Americans and Muslims may need to divorce the
concepts of secularism and democracy, which are often seen as
inseparable. While giving up this core principle may be difficult for
organisations and governments interested in strengthening democracy in
the Middle East, it may allow the West and Muslim communities to open
up new avenues of dialogue and debate about democracy and its
implementation and principles.
###
* Mohammed Al Garf is an Egyptian student at the American University
in Cairo studying psychology and mass communication. Nicholas Iovino
is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University studying mass
communications and political science. They participated in the Soliya
American-Arab intercultural dialogue program. This article is
distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be
accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 February 2007,
www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
4) Arab blogs give youth venting space
Mona Eltahawy
New York, New York - To appreciate the power of blogs in the Arab
world, ponder for a moment a recent triple whammy--or hat trick, to
use soccer parlance--scored by Egyptian blogs:
One: the exposure by blogs of sexual assaults on women in downtown
Cairo by gangs of men during a religious holiday in Cairo in October
2006. Bloggers forced the issue onto the national agenda, turning it
into headlines from satellite television channels to the Associated
Press.
Two: the detention in December 2006 of a police officer accused of
sexually assaulting a prisoner. A month earlier, Egyptian blogs had
circulated a video of the act, creating enough public outrage to
prompt this response, even though the police officer was later
acquitted.
Three: the ongoing trial of 22-year-old blogger Abdul-Kareem Nabil,
also known as Kareem Amer, after posting articles critical of Islam on
his blog. He is charged, among other things, with insulting the
president.
When the security services of President Hosni Mubarak, in power for a
quarter of a century, arrest and put on trial a blogger, then surely
the phrase "David and Goliath" cannot even begin to explain it. So
what is it about the bloggers that can so threaten a regime?
It is the power of youth and their new-found ability to communicate
after years of being ignored. Al-Jazeera and its ilk might have pulled
the rug out from under state-owned media, but it was one old man
challenging another. The bloggers are mostly the young and the
excluded and it matters little to them who stands on that rug and who
pulls it. One young Egyptian told me he started a blog because he felt
he was going to explode if he didn't tell the world how he felt.
In June 2005, there were around 280 blogs in Egypt. By the end of
2006, that number had more than tripled to 1,000. Egyptian blogs were
the epicentre of a little earthquake I first felt a couple of time
zones to the east at the start of 2005. Bahraini and Saudi blogs were
my first heady introductions into the world of online agitprop. The
Saudi blogs were particularly sweet for me personally because of six
miserable years spent as a teenager in Jeddah. One, simply called
Saudigirl, felt like the grown-up version of my latent teen-angst from
those years.
At a conference on Arab media at the National Press Club in Washington
DC in 2005, I quoted Saudigirl describing herself as "young. Saudi
chick. unveiled, unconservatised" who had never voted but who hoped
one day "to walk in on a ballot box in jeans, t-shirt, and flip-flops
so that everyone can see my pretty toes while I express my freedom." I
lost track of her blog for a while until, on a whim, I googled her
earlier this year to see how Saudigirl was doing. And to my shock it
turned out "she" had been a "he" all along. It was a case of
"rhetorical transvestism" confessed Ali K, the man who invented and
maintained Alia K.
What a bittersweet twist on the gender play of those writers of yore,
those George Sands, George Eliots and others who adopted male names,
persona and wardrobes to splinter taboos. Here was a Saudi man
pretending to be a woman.
According to a recent Washington Post story on Saudi blogs, young
women make up half the bloggers in that kingdom today. There are
around 2,000 blogs in Saudi Arabia. Saudigirl has left the blogosphere
in good hands.
Bahraini bloggers didn't co-opt gender politics so much as the
politics of fear that had given birth to the colour-coded alert system
in place of the one in the US that uses colour to describe the
"national threat level". When the Bahraini authorities arrested three
internet forum moderators in 2005, bloggers launched an appeal on
their behalf, posted the times and locations of demonstrations calling
for their release and maintained an alert system that used colour to
describe how close to freedom the men were.
To appreciate such subversity is to appreciate the wonder of blogs.
No words on blogs and no discussion of how effective they are must
ever take place without remembering the proto-blogger and cyber-
dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui who died at the young age of 36 in March
2005. Back in July 2001, Zouhair founded the website TUNeZINE using
the pseudonym "Ettounsi," which means Tunisian in Arabic. He used the
online newspaper not just to write about Tunisia's dismal human rights
record but also posted opposition statements on the site.
After his arrest in an internet cafe in 2002, he was sentenced to two
years in prison, and actually served 16 months, for "disseminating
inaccurate news"--a police state's euphemism for the truth. It is not
difficult to imagine that his early demise was precipitated by the
torture he was subjected to during interrogation.
Again, one man plus one website equals one very angry dictator.
No matter how many eyes and ears the blogs have, who can doubt the
power of the internet?
###
* Mona Eltahawy is a New York-based commentator and international
lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. This article is distributed by the
Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at
www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Bitterlemons-international.org, 15 February 2007,
www.bitterlemons-international.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
5) Love squares off against hatred on Valentine's Day
Ibrahim Al-Marashi
Istanbul - St. Valentine, a martyred Christian saint in ancient Rome,
could have never imagined how love would evolve into a force in
international politics. He probably only knew love for God and for his
fellow human beings. The notion of love for a nation, or love for the
leader of a nation, would have been peculiar to him, since there were
no nations in his day.
While love can become a commodity on St. Valentine's Day, which was
celebrated on Wednesday, it can also be a commodity in international
relations - often delivered, ironically, through the media. Media,
when reporting on international politics, deal with binary oppositions
- war versus peace, justice versus injustice, love versus hatred. Two
events that demonstrate this relationship between politics, the media,
and the theme of love and hatred were the execution of Saddam Hussein
and its intensification of Sunni-Shiite animosity; and the
assassination of Rafik Hariri, and its exacerbation of Lebanon's
internecine conflicts.
As I completed a year-long project on the themes of hatred and
conflict in the Iraqi media, I noticed how various Iraqi and regional
media reported on the intense love that existed for Saddam Hussein,
and the intense hatred. This reality showed that love, and
unfortunately hatred, can be used by politicians and countries to
justify their policies.
Even Saddam wrote about love in his final letter before his execution.
He told his supporters "follow love, pardon, forgiveness, and
coexistence." After Saddam's execution, the outlawed Ba'ath Party
released a statement that called upon the factions fighting in Iraq to
"love one another" and unite in fighting the United States. In this
way, they promised, "Iraq would return as the country of wellbeing and
love."
This love for Saddam was even expressed by a taxi driver in Egypt, who
said: "We love Saddam because he was a courageous man who stood up
before the tyrannical Americans and did not surrender," a view
expressed by a good number of people in the Muslim world. Yet even
Saddam's opponents used love to justify his execution. An Iraqi
parliamentarian declared that "all those who loved Saddam will join
him on judgment day." Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari
said that after Saddam's death, "happiness, joy, and love would
prevail in Iraq."
After I finished my doctorate at Oxford, there were two countries I
thought of moving to in order to teach: Turkey and Lebanon. In my
heart I wanted to move to Lebanon. It is the country of my maternal
grandmother - a Christian who died before I was born. When I was in
Lebanon, I felt as if I could walk on the same earth as she did, drink
from the same water, and feel her spirit. However, as much as I wanted
to move to Lebanon, I knew deep in my heart that my grandmother's
country was never destined to enjoy peace and tranquillity.
On Hizbullah's Al-Manar television station, a guest, Anis al-Naqqash
(who spent time in a French prison for his participation in the
attempted assassination of the former Iranian prime minister, Shapour
Bakhtiar), argued that the roots of these current battles are love -
but a love that leads to obsession and fanaticism. "It's normal to
love your family, your people, and your nation," he said. "Fanaticism
is when you see the bad people of your group as if they were good
people, and the good people of the other group as if they were bad
people. This is fanaticism." In other words, he was arguing that there
was no battle between Sunnis and Shiites, Muslims and Christians; only
between fanatics.
Recently, a friend in Turkey, the country I've made my home for the
past six years, asked me: "Why are you, an Iraqi-American, living in
Turkey?" I answered: "I love this country." She asked: "How can you
love Turkey when you come from California, which is much nicer?" I
realised that my friend was taught to love her country from the time
she was born. My love for Turkey was not. It was something learned. I
love it like an elusive woman, always hoping that one day she will
love me. But this love also continues to be a struggle, even as I
never take it for granted.
And perhaps that way of thinking is the solution to the Iraqi conflict
and the Lebanese crisis. I spent this week's Valentine's Day thinking
about a relative of mine in Iraq who was killed last week while buying
vegetables in a market. As an Iraqi Shiite, it would be easy for me to
hate the Iraqi Sunnis, some of whom were blamed for taking part in
that attack. But I don't. I struggle to remind myself of what unites
the Iraqis as a people. I struggle to remind myself of the love I have
for the Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds who have married into my extended
family. I struggle to remind myself of my love of Lebanon, the land of
my Lebanese Christian grandmother.
My only wish on this year's Valentine's Day was that Iraqis and
Lebanese could learn to struggle in love.
###
* Ibrahim al-Marashi is an international policy fellow at the Center
for Policy Studies in Turkey. He is working on a study of the Iraqi
media. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service
(CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Daily Star, 16 February 2007, www.dailystar.com.lb
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
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