Monday, April 30, 2012

Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers


 

“Love thy neighbor” is preached from many a pulpit. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.
Study finds highly religious people are less motivated by compassion to show generosity than are non-believers
In three experiments, social scientists found that compassion consistently drove less religious people to be more generous. For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were, according to the findings which are published in the most recent online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious.
“Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not,” said UC Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, a co-author of the study. “The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns.”
Compassion is defined in the study as an emotion felt when people see the suffering of others which then motivates them to help, often at a personal risk or cost.
While the study examined the link between religion, compassion and generosity, it did not directly examine the reasons for why highly religious people are less compelled by compassion to help others. However, researchers hypothesize that deeply religious people may be more strongly guided by a sense of moral obligation than their more non-religious counterparts.
“We hypothesized that religion would change how compassion impacts generous behavior,” said study lead author Laura Saslow, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.
Saslow, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at UC San Francisco, said she was inspired to examine this question after an altruistic, nonreligious friend lamented that he had only donated to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti after watching an emotionally stirring video of a woman being saved from the rubble, not because of a logical understanding that help was needed.
“I was interested to find that this experience – an atheist being strongly influenced by his emotions to show generosity to strangers – was replicated in three large, systematic studies,” Saslow said.
In the first experiment, researchers analyzed data from a 2004 national survey of more than 1,300 American adults. Those who agreed with such statements as “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them” were also more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as loaning out belongings and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train, researchers found.
When they looked into how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in such ways as giving money or food to a homeless person, non-believers and those who rated low in religiosity came out ahead: “These findings indicate that although compassion is associated with pro-sociality among both less religious and more religious individuals, this relationship is particularly robust for less religious individuals,” the study found.
In the second experiment, 101 American adults watched one of two brief videos, a neutral video or a heartrending one, which showed portraits of children afflicted by poverty. Next, they were each given 10 “lab dollars” and directed to give any amount of that money to a stranger. The least religious participants appeared to be motivated by the emotionally charged video to give more of their money to a stranger.
“The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity,” Willer said. “But it did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants.”
In the final experiment, more than 200 college students were asked to report how compassionate they felt at that moment. They then played “economic trust games” in which they were given money to share – or not – with a stranger. In one round, they were told that another person playing the game had given a portion of their money to them, and that they were free to reward them by giving back some of the money, which had since doubled in amount.
Those who scored low on the religiosity scale, and high on momentary compassion, were more inclined to share their winnings with strangers than other participants in the study.
“Overall, this research suggests that although less religious people tend to be less trusted in the U.S., when feeling compassionate, they may actually be more inclined to help their fellow citizens than more religious people,” Willer said.
In addition to Saslow and Willer, other co-authors of the study are UC Berkeley psychologists Dacher Keltner, Matthew Feinberg and Paul Piff; Katharine Clark at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sarina Saturn at Oregon State University.
The study was funded by grants from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley’s Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging, and the Metanexus Institute.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Human Rights Watch Bulletin-Singapore


U.S.-Islamic World Forums



The Brookings Institution


U.S.-Islamic World Forums

Doha, Qatar, and Washington, D.C.

The 2012 U.S.-Islamic World Forum will take place in Doha, Qatar, on May 29-31. The emphasis for this year’s forum is the challenge of change, and it will feature plenaries on social, political, and strategic transformations in the Muslim world. Policy makers and officials, thought leaders and activists, and entrepreneurs and journalists will meet during sessions to facilitate productive dialogue concerning problems faced in U.S. relations with the Islamic world. Webcasts of sessions during the forum can be found here, along with new information on speakers and forum events. Please follow us on TwitterFacebook, and Youtube for further updates.

The U.S.-Islamic World Forum is designed to bring together leaders in the realms of politics, business, media, academia, and civil society from across the Islamic world (including Muslim communities in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East) and the United States. The forum seeks to serve as both a convening body and catalyst for positive action. Therefore, its focus is not on dialogue just for dialogue's sake, but on developing actionable agendas for government, civil society, and the private sector.

The forum was launched in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Its goal was the development of research and outreach programs designed to improve U.S. relations with Muslim states and communities. A particular challenge in that moment of tension and frustration was the virtual absence of dialogue between leaders of the United States and the Muslim world. With the generous support of the Government of Qatar, the Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World launched the first U.S.-Islamic World Forum in 2004. The purpose was to promote a better understanding of the problems involved in U.S. relations with the Islamic world, through the creation of an ongoing and collaborative dialogue between Muslim and American leaders.

The forum’s renown has grown in the intervening years. Today it is recognized as the premier annual conference of its kind. Past participants have included President Bill Clinton; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan of Turkey; Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan; Commander of the U.S. Central Command David Petraeus; the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina Dr. Mustafa Ceric; Secretary General of ASEAN Surin Pitsuwan; and Secretary General of the OIC Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. 


Thursday, April 26, 2012

Iran Sends Positive Signals For Nuclear Talks


   
By: Laura Rozen posted          Apr 26, 2012
ALMONITOR

Something unusual has happened in the wake of the recent Iran nuclear talks in Istanbul: Iran hardliners have taken to the Iranian media and Friday prayers to put a positive gloss on the talks and signal interest in a compromise.

Summary:

Something unusual has happened in the wake of the recent Iran nuclear talks in Istanbul: Iran hardliners have taken to the media and Friday prayers to put a positive gloss on the talks and signal interest in a compromise. Laura Rozen on reading the Tehran tea leaves.

Key figures from the Iranian regime—including the seldom-seen top foreign policy advisor to the Supreme Leader and the head of Iran's Guardian Council—have been strikingly upbeat in public pronouncements on the April 14th talks with the six nations that make up the so-called P5+1 group—the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany. Iran watchers say those comments from a series of regime notables seem to form something of an orchestrated campaign, and could be a sign that Tehran is interested in striking a near-term compromise over curbing aspects of its nuclear work in exchange for averting new sanctions.

"There have been some indications recently that Iran is open to compromise," Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corporation, told Al-Monitor Wednesday. "It makes sense for Iran to make some sort of compromise, such as shipping out the 20 percent enriched uranium, especially if the regime can claim victory by continuing enrichment at lower levels. So there is  a slight glimmer of hope."

"I think Iran wants a deal," Hossein Shahbazi, an Iran expert and academic in Washington, DC. , told Al-Monitor in an interview, adding that he thinks the regime is taking care to try to not undermine the relatively constructive atmosphere established at the Istanbul talks.

Notable among the upbeat spin from Tehran: Ali Akbar Velayati, the éminence grise and top advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing as a "positive step" the return to the negotiating table. “This was a positive step by the 5+1 group, and they finally returned to the negotiation table after many months and, in effect, they have reached the conclusion that the Islamic Republic will not accept the language of threats," Velayati told Iran's Central News Agency on April 17, Radio Zamaneh reported.

That was followed by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of Iran's Guardian Council, using the occasion of Iran's Friday prayers to call the recent talks a "good achievement." The West "accepted that uranium enrichment is Iran’s right" Jannati said, Press TV reported, citing Iran's semi-official IRNA news agency. “The West must lift sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran so that the Iranian nation believes they do not seek to continue their enmity....If they insist on sanctions and then say they will negotiate with Iran, it is clear that such negotiations will be called off."

Iran's envoy to Moscow added more signals to the mix this week, telling Western journalists that Iran is studying a Russian compromise proposal. Under the Russian plan, Iran would reportedly freeze aspects of its nuclear program and possibly ratify a U.N. atomic energy agency protocol in exchange for a freeze in European oil sanctions set to go into effect in July. ["We need to study this proposal and to establish on what basis it has been made,” Iran’s ambassador Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi told Bloomberg News April 23.]

The State Department, for its part, downplayed the Iranian envoy's comments, saying the venue for negotiations is not the press but the next round of nuclear talks scheduled for Baghdad May 23. "Frankly, these issues have to be negotiated at the table that we have now created and restarted with the P-5+1 process," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told journalists at the State Department Wednesday.

Iran analysts said the flurry of positive signals from Tehran is, however, striking—albeit, as always when dealing with the Islamic Republic—read with a healthy dose of caution. In the near term, "both Iran and the United States need time in order to stop a potential military confrontation, and for the Iranian regime, to stop the European oil embargo," Nader said.

Still, he cautioned, negotiating even an intermediate deal is going to involve some diplomatic heavy lifting, given the tremendous mistrust and strategic rivalry between the two sides. And he remained skeptical of the prospects for broader rapprochement anytime soon. "Getting to the initial compromise may be hard, but what comes after could prove even more difficult," he said.

Western officials, meantime, offered additional grounds for caution in reading the Tehran tea leaves, saying Iran's charm offensive may be a play to divide up the members of the P5+1 group—a familiar negotiating tactic from past Western encounters with Iran.

But other observers note that Washington has given Iran something of an opening to try to split off Russia and China from its approach. In particular, Moscow and Beijing have expressed opposition to recently passed U.S. unilateral sanctions targeting foreign entities that do transactions with Iran's Central Bank. President Obama this month exempted Europe and Japan from the sanctions—set to go into effect in June—but not P5+1 partners Moscow and Beijing. Western officials have also sought in recent days to ratchet down expectations for a near-term agreement coming out of the next round of talks in Baghdad, suggesting that even if Iran is prepared to make a compromise on its nuclear program, a deal would probably take some further talks.

Laura Rozen reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C. She has written for Yahoo! News, Politico and Foreign Policy. Follow her on Twitter @LRozen.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Civil Society in Egypt

Thomas Friedman: Without vibrant civil society groups, there will never be a sustainable democratic transition in Egypt.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis, now in his 90s, says he opposed the war in Iraq.


April 22, 2012
Chronicle Review

'Osama bin Laden Made Me Famous'


By Evan R. Goldstein

Bernard Lewis left Princeton Univer­sity in 1986, forced out at the then-mandatory retirement age of 70. At his farewell party, Charles Issawi, who was also retiring from the department of Near Eastern studies, delivered some remarks. "There are five ages of professors," he said, "tireless, tiring, tiresome, tired, and retired; but for people like Bernard and me, retirement means a new set of tires and full speed ahead."

Issawi was right: Lewis isn't the retiring type. He has spent the years since then producing 16 books and countless articles, carried on his decades-long spat with Edward Said over the direction of scholarship on the Middle East, helped found a learned society to challenge "intellectual conformism" in the Middle East Studies Association, coined the idea of a "clash of civilizations," became an informal adviser to the George W. Bush administration, and according to some observers, provided the intellectual firepower for the war in Iraq. Oh, and not least: At the age of 80, Lewis fell in love again.

Next month Viking Press will publish Lewis's 32nd book, a memoir titled Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian. It was written with the help of his companion, Buntzie Ellis Churchill, a former president of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

"I wasn't happy," Lewis says about his retirement. We're sitting in his two-bedroom apartment at a senior living facility in Haverford, Pa. "I was still active and energetic and could have gone on." He leans forward in his rocking chair. "But these days nobody retires"—he shakes his head—"and they go on until they're senile idiots."

He is a few weeks shy of 96. His British-accented voice is gruff, his shoulders stooped, his hearing diminished, his stamina not what it once was. But Lewis, arguably the most prominent living scholar of the Middle East, seems spry and buoyant, greeting me with a firm handshake and news of a recent acquisition: "I just got some excellent Scotch."

When Lewis began teaching at the University of London, in the late 1930s, fewer than 100 people in all of Britain knew Arabic, he says. But languages came easily to him. He learned Latin and French in grade school, picked up Hebrew from a tutor, and taught himself Italian and Spanish. As an undergraduate, he met a cute Soviet refugee named Ada who insisted that he learn Yiddish. So he did. "Now I can understand the punch lines of Jewish jokes," he writes. In graduate school, he studied Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and dabbled in Russian.

During World War II, British intelligence put the polyglot professor to work. Lewis is sketchy on the details but allows that he spent time in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, and Jerusalem. After the war, he set off for Istanbul and became one of the first non-Turks to explore the Ottoman archives, research that established him as a leading authority on Islamic and Ottoman history.

Lewis, however, has never been a reclusive archive dweller. Indeed, he seems to have known everyone and been everywhere. In Notes on a Century, he trades gossip with Golda Meir; cracks wise about the Marx Brothers with the shah of Iran; stays up late chatting with King Hussein of Jordan; spends time in a tent with Qaddafi; speaks on "friendly, personal terms" with Pope John Paul II; counsels secretaries of state, and on and on.

But it is Lewis's relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney that will most intrigue readers. And on that score, Lewis drops a small bombshell. The war in Iraq, Lewis writes midway through the book's last chapter, is "sometimes ascribed to my influence with Vice President Cheney. But the reverse is true. I did not recommend it. On the contrary, I opposed it."

So, wait: The man who more than any other scholar is credited with shaping the Bush administration's view of the Middle East, who wrote widely read op-eds with titles like "Time for Toppling" in the lead-up to the war, in fact, opposed it?

Let us back up here.

It may not be exactly true that Osama bin Laden made Lewis famous, but it's not much of an exaggeration. On September 11, 2001, Lewis was putting the final touches on What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press), an account of how the Muslim world fell into "a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression." It was an instant best seller, and according to Ian Buruma, of Bard College, it was received "in some circles as a kind of handbook in the war against Islamic terrorism." Another best seller, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (Modern Library), soon followed.

Both books echoed themes that Lewis had been striking since the mid-1970s, when he first warned about a surge of religious passion in the Muslim world. Then, in 1979, the Iranian revolution swept the shah out of power. "My historical studies suddenly became relevant, and I was called to Washington more frequently," Lewis writes. Islam had moved "from the realm of musty archives and academic conferences to the evening news."

In 1990, Lewis's Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities was adapted by The Atlantic, which ran it on the cover under the headline "The Roots of Muslim Rage." "We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them," he famously declared, adding: "This is no less than a clash of civilizations." The magazine hit the newsstands just as Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Lewis was summoned to meet then-Secretary of Defense Cheney. It was the beginning of a long relationship.

After 9/11, Lewis became an occasional visitor to the vice president's home and office, and on the eve of the war Cheney went on Meet the Press and name-checked the professor. "I firmly believe, along with men like Bernard Lewis, who is one of the great students of that part of the world, that strong, firm U.S. response to terror and to threats to the United States would go a long way, frankly, toward calming things in that part of the world."

Lewis's reported influence in Washington reached an apotheosis in February 2004, when The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about how Lewis's "diagnosis of the Muslim world's malaise, and his call for a U.S. military invasion to seed democracy in the Mideast, have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years."

In his living room, Lewis seems uninterested in rehashing recent history. He listens patiently, stone-faced. His disagreement with the Bush administration, he explains with a sigh, was not over the goal (regime change), but the tactic (full-scale invasion). Lewis says he argued for recognizing the leadership in northern Iraq as the country's legitimate government and arming those forces if necessary. In the decade since the first Persian Gulf war, he says, Kurds and Arabs had managed to build a nascent democracy under the protection of the no-fly zone.

"That was the way to do it," he says. "Simply to invade was the wrong way to do it, and I thought so and said so at the time." Why didn't he speak out before the invasion? "I didn't feel at that crucial moment that it was right to take a public stance against the war."

Private advice is difficult to verify, of course. But in Notes on a Century, Lewis tries to build a case, reprinting long excerpts from e-mails he sent to then-National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in 2006. They suggest that Lewis was at that time more concerned about Iran than Iraq. "My job was not to offer policy suggestions but to provide background," Lewis recalls in the book, emphasizing that his "role in policy making was, at most, minimal." Furthermore, he says, his name appears only once, in passing, in Cheney's memoir, In My Time. (Notes on a Century incorrectly states that Lewis does not appear at all in Cheney's memoir.) Asked if he was relieved when he read Cheney's book, Lewis mumbles something unintelligible and smiles.

Age has not mellowed Lewis, especially on the topic of the late Edward Said, whose 1978 polemic, Orientalism, upended Middle East studies and placed Lewis in the position of having to defend his scholarship against charges of racism and imperialism. Lewis vividly remembers reading Orientalism for the first time. "Apart from Said's ill will," he says, "I was appalled by his ignorance."

He had never heard of Said, and it didn't occur to him that the Columbia English professor's ideas would get much traction. In 1982, however, Lewis responded at length in The New York Review of Books, highlighting what he saw as numerous factual errors in Orientalism. Said punched back, and their exchange remains one of the great intellectual donnybrooks of recent decades.

Lewis and Said met only once, in 1986, for a debate at the annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association. Dubbed the "shoot-out at the MESA corral," the event drew 3,000 spectators. Whether or not Lewis thinks he won that day's battle, however, he seems to be under no illusion that he lost the war.

"Middle Eastern studies in this country is dominated by the Saidians," he says, his voice rising in indignation. "The situation is very bad. Saidianism has become an orthodoxy that is enforced with a rigor unknown in the Western world since the Middle Ages." This groupthink, he says, taints everything: jobs, promotions, book reviews. "If you buck the Saidian orthodoxy, you're making life very difficult for yourself."

In 2007, Lewis and some like-minded scholars, including Fouad Ajami, of the Johns Hopkins University, founded the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. The idea, Lewis says, was to create space for opinions that deviate from the MESA mainstream, "to maintain an independent academic integrity in Middle Eastern studies." Lewis continues to serve as chairman.

As dinner approaches—Lewis eats at 6 p.m. sharp—he offers a tour of his apartment. He leads me to a small bookshelf in the living room. It's a far cry from the 15,000-volume library he maintained at his home and office in Princeton. When he moved here, last year, he donated those books to the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, where he has for many years been a visiting scholar.

Lewis pulls a Russian book off the shelf and slowly reads his name, in Cyrillic, on the cover. He smiles. His books have been translated into 29 languages. The Middle East and the West, published in 1964, was even translated into Arabic by the Muslim Brotherhood. Lewis is particularly fond of that edition's preface: "I don't know who this person is," the translator wrote, "but one thing is clear. He is, from our point of view, either a candid friend or an honest enemy, and in any case one who disdains to distort the truth." Lewis chuckles at that.

In the second bedroom, which he uses as an office, is a large desk, on which rests a small black-and-white photograph of Lewis on his first visit to the Middle East, in 1937. He's dressed in a long dishdasha. On that journey, he has said, he felt "like a Muslim bridegroom first seeing his bride, with whom he is to spend the rest of his life."

He can't get to the Middle East much these days. And even if he could, he says, it wouldn't do much good. "No one will tell you anything in the Middle East unless you have personal contacts. Otherwise it's too dangerous." He stares down at the photograph. "I used to have excellent personal contacts, but with very, very few exceptions, they're all dead."

The conversation turns to his legacy. Does he worry that his wading into current affairs has tarnished his reputation as a scholar? "No," he says flatly. "My scholarship is evaluated for what it's worth. People agree with me and people disagree with me, but that's on scholarly grounds." What about his standing as a public intellectual? Lewis flashes a smile. "Oh, that's easy," he says. "For some, I'm the towering genius. For others, I'm the devil incarnate."



Bernard Lewis
Bahman Baktiari

A Balancing Act: Ennahda's Struggle with Salafis

 APRIL 19, 2012 Erik Churchill, Aaron Zelin
sada (صدى)




On a day when organizers had called for a peaceful protest to honor the Qur’an, most Tunisians will remember the images of young protesters who climbed a clock tower at Tunis’s main intersection to raise a black and white flag inscribed with the shahada, the Muslim testament of faith: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.” On that day, March 25, a small group of protesters also attacked and harassed a troupe performing in front of the city’s municipal theater. These controversial and heavily covered events raise questions over how the Tunisian government, led by the Islamist party Ennahda, will handle growing conservative movements. 
While much of the Tunisian and Western press has focused on the debate between Ennahda and the secular opposition, Tunisia’s ruling party has also faced criticism both from within its own party and from more conservative Salafi groups. Ennahda’s approach to instilling Islamic values in society contrasts sharply with that of Salafi trends: while the party believes that society should gradually, and through democratic institutions, adopt the principles it once lost under colonialism and secular dictatorships, many Salafis assert that democracy infringes on God’s sovereignty by establishing humans as legislators. This intra-Islamist debate may prove to be the true battleground in the ongoing transition. 
Though it is difficult to gauge their popular support, Salafi organizations have certainly become more vocal. Many, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (Ettahrir), began mobilizing in early January while the demonstrations against the Ben Ali regime were still going on. Others did not rally until their leaders were released from prison in the March 2011 prisoner amnesty. And while Salafi groups did not contest the Constituent Assembly elections this past October, they did attempt a show of strength outside of the ballot box a few weeks prior in demonstrations against the Nessma TV broadcast of the 2007 French-American filmPersepolis which included depictions of God in human form—considered blasphemy by many religious Sunni Muslims. Tunisia’s government is also concerned with the rise in militant discourse and activity, expressed most prominently in clashes in Sfax in February with an armed group seeking to establish an “Islamic emirate.” 
Ennahda’s leadership has remained sanguine thus far and chosen to condemn the actions of “rogue elements” within Salafi groups rather than the groups’ ideology on whole—while also publicly expressing its willingness to dialogue with Salafi groups that use legal, non-violent methods. This policy appears based on both its history in the opposition and the practical considerations of governing an ideologically polarized country. Many of Ennahda’s top leaders, including Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali and Interior Minister Ali Laarayedh, spent much of their lives in Tunisian jails; the movement does not want to repeat the mistakes of the former regime by cracking down harshly.
Ennahda has supported Salafi groups’ legalization. While Ettahrir has not yet been formally authorized as a political party, it was allowed to hold an international conference last March outside of Tunis. Ennahda has even endeavored to dialogue with Salafi strains sympathetic to an al-Qaeda worldview—though most in the Tunisian context like Abu Ayyad al-Tunisi, leader of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST), seem satisfied with da‘wa (missionary work). 
In addition to such outreach, however, Ennahda has also taken action to curb the influence of Salafis in public discourse. In an attempt to present himself as the true steward of Tunisian conservatism and connect with Salafi-sympathetic voters, Ghannouchi announced that he himself was a Salafi, insofar as the term referred to a Muslim that believed one should return to Islam as founded on the Quran and the Sunna. More importantly, key institutions are taking a lead role in molding public religious discourse. For example, in response to reports that as many as 400 mosques across the country have been “taken over” by radical preachers, Minister of Religious Affairs Nourredine Khadmi has spoken out on the need for imams to be approved by the ministry before their installation at the local level. The decision to reopen Tunisia’s oldest and most revered religious school, Zeituna University (closed by Bourguiba), can also be interpreted in this context. 
Taken together, these recent actions demonstrate that Ennahda recognizes the dangers implicit in allowing Salafi groups to operate with full freedom, but avoids the risky crackdowns that might result in deeper or more widespread radicalization. Already heavily criticized for a perceived inaction on the economy, Ennahda is keen to avoid ideological confrontations.
However, this position opens the door for secular groups to criticize the government—groups that receive considerable support from a society still very much fearful of extremists and that fears increasing conservatism, especially regarding women’s rights. From their perspective, the ruling party’s actions are evidence of a double discourse—conservative in private and moderate in public—rather than a practical one. While secular parties appear poised to capitalize on what they call Ennahda’s mismanagement of a serious threat to modern Tunisia, they remain fractured. Liberal parties have split apart and reformed into coalitions, only to disintegrate once more—allowing for the rise of so-called “Destourian” parties composed of segments of the Ben Ali and Bourguiba eras. Led by transitional Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, these groups have garnered support by calling for a new era of national unity based on security and modernism. A lack of organization (for the liberals) and doubts about their intentions to clean up government (among the Destourians) have limited the popularity of both groups, neither of which seem capable of challenging Ennahda at this time. However, the media, still largely a secular bastion, will continue to pressure the government to act against extremism.
But if the recent public protests by Salafis are any indication, Ennahda isn’t quite comfortable taking sides just yet. Rather, its approach has been to demonstrate its moderation by criticizing both sides. Following the attack on the theater troupe in Tunis, the government closed Bourguiba Avenue to all protests—later causing even more bad publicity after itviolently cracked down on secular protests the following week. The recent sentencing of two atheists to seven years in prison for posting anti-Islamic material on their Facebook pages—a decision widely supported by the conservative wing within Ennahda and among Salafi groups—was met with the “hands-off” statement that the government could not interfere in the judicial process. Ennahda’s critics are quick to see in this officially neutral position a hidden complicity with the judgment itself.  
There are some issues on which Ennahda must take a stand, however. On March 26, the party’s decision to exclude a provision for sharia as “the sole source of legislation” in its draft constitution provoked outrage among hardline conservatives—Salafis denounced Rached Ghannouchi as a traitor when he stated that the original first clause in the constitution was sufficient for a Muslim country: “Tunisia is a free, independent, and sovereign state. Its religion is Islam, its language is Arabic, and its type of government is the Republic.” Ghannouchi also observed that over 90 percent of Tunisian law derives from sharia already without constitutional provisions. Though debate officially ended with the announcement, the party was deeply divided during the course of discussion. 
The controversy over sharia is but one area where large numbers of Ennahda’s members have dissented from the party’s official line. As the party gears up toward next year’s elections, these internal debates may intensify, particularly as Ennahda meets over the summer to decide its official platform. The next few months will be critical for Ghannouchi to gauge whether the moderate stance of the group’s leaders will continue to hold sway over its rank and file—particularly as those in the Constituent Assembly look more and more at their re-election prospects. 
Aaron Y. Zelin is a research associate in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University. He maintains the website Jihadology.net and co-edits the blog al-Wasat. Erik Churchill is an analyst and development consultant based in Tunisia. He blogs about Tunisian politics atKefteji.








Bahman Baktiari

Friday, April 20, 2012

In Oman, the Muslim-Christian Equation: Understanding is greater than Tolerance


 

http://www.stateofformation.org/2012/04/in-oman-the-muslim-christian-equation-understanding-is-greater-than-tolerance/
April 20, 2012
April 18th, 2012 | Filed under AcademicChallengesCommunityFeaturedInterfaithLeadershipLearningSocial IssuesTheologyUncategorized
Tagged with A Common WordChristian-Muslim relationsCommon goodIbadismInterfaith dialogueInterfaith education,KnowledgeOmanUnderstanding

Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque walkway
On most days, if we’re realistic, the idea of religious tolerance serves only to usher a person just inside the other’s front door. It might, in the end, provide a sort-of, kind-of knowledge, but it still leaves something more palpable to be desired in the hungry or thirsty spirit. For this reason, in Oman, Dr. AbdulRahman al-Salimi decided to re-name his academic journal.

In the modern and still modernizing Sultanate of Oman, the al-Salimi name is a venerable religious brand. Nur al-Din al-Salimi (d. 1914) was a distinguished Muslim scholar in the Ibadi tradition, the prevailing expression of Islam in Oman. The current Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs is His Excellency Sheikh Abdullah al-Salimi. And the minister’s nephew, AbdulRahman, a tall man with warm eyes whom I met in Muscat in January, serves as editor of the influential Al Tafahom (“Understanding”).

In his office at the Ministry, AbdulRahman explained that the journal’s former name, Al Tasamoh (“Tolerance”), did not take inter-religious dialogue or interfaith education far enough. Or close enough, from his perspective. With tolerance, he said, “There is still a distance.” With understanding—here he leaned in to pour me yet another cup of Omani coffee—we come closer.
Only two days earlier, on my journey from Frankfurt to Muscat, I had landed in Riyadh on December 31st. As the plane touched down, I remember absorbing a serene dusk from the partial vision of the plane’s windows. It was—indeed—the last evening of the year, according to the Western calendar, and the last evening this American evangelical could say: I have not come close enough to the Arab Muslim world.

This Arabian moment marked a first trip for me to the Peninsula—into the cradle of Islam, which, it is recounted, the Kings of Oman accepted peacefully in 629. With the blessing of Virginia Baptists, whose executive director is also serving a term as president of the Baptist World Alliance, I was embarking on a two-week graduate-level travel seminar through Hartford Seminary’s partnership with Al Amana Centre, a Christian ecumenical center in Muscat fostering "understanding, acceptance, trust and peace between Christian and Muslim communities in Oman, the Persian Gulf and the world."

Tolerance is, of course, an ideological flashpoint for some evangelical Christians along the cultural landscape where I work—Virginia Commonwealth University. A stunningly diverse university, with over 32,000 students representing over 100 nationalities, it is mostly true: it can be deemed an unforgivable sin to sound, or to smell, even the slightest bit intolerant. It is also true that many Baptists or evangelical variations eschew the term “tolerance” as deriving from, at best, an imposed liberalism surfacing as political correctness, or, at worst, an outright devilish scheme automatically opposing Jesus Christ himself.

While I don’t entirely share my clansmen’s trumped-up edginess about the word or ideology, I do share AbdulRahman’s emboldened pragmatism, a much-observed Ibadi characteristic. I agree with him: as it is presented and often prescribed in the multicultural milieu, tolerance lacks a real potency or sustained capacity to relieve some of the greatest human distances. For all its academic bluster and university buzz, it cannot necessarily get us on the inside—where understanding tends to arrive alongside knowledge that is most crucially coming via proximity.

On one highly memorable day in Oman, proximity begged for my attention in the most unique way. In the morning it came in the form of a guided tour of Sur Al-Lawatia, the historic walled Shia quarter in Mutrah near old Muscat; in the evening it showed itself happily at a village wedding near Samail.
In Mutrah we walked leisurely through the Shia community tucked behind Al-Rasul Al-Aadam Mosque. The somberness was striking: Shias were marking the liturgical days of mourning for Husayn’s martyrdom in 680. A large, black drape was hung over the backside of the mosque, symbolizing the cascading spiritual mood. Small sections of cloth representing individual prayers for healing were tied to a pole, which asserted itself at one intersection of the maze-like neighborhood. And the shoes of elderly women rested in the walkway outside a husayniyah, a small room unable to contain the chanted laments.
Near Samail, in contrast, the joy was irrepressible. As guests of a friend of the groom, we had been invited into someone else’s grand celebration—which turned out to be an outdoor multi-family wedding in which several different grooms were engaging the traditional religious and cultural rites. Standing in a typical village in the interior of Oman, the sunset came and went as we waited in a receiving line with approximately 200 Arab men. We shook hands with the grooms and offered our blessings in broken Arabic. We observed the proper protocol where each groom receives a set of terms from his bride (mediated by officiates). We ate with our right hands as we sat in small groups on the covered ground, encircling a platter of beef and rice. Later, we accepted the intimate hospitality of an exuberant father: fruits, halwa and coffee, out on his terrace and under the moon.

Eboo Patel, who directs the Interfaith Youth Core, persistently envisions a world where interfaith cooperation is the normative value. He calls the leadership of faith communities to move us beyond the fear, the ignorance and a plethora of other barriers. InActs of Faith he passionately champions “a deep religious pluralism”—“neither mere coexistence nor forced consensus”—that embraces differences even as people of strong faith attempt to achieve a common life.

In Oman, it was exactly these close-up experiences-in-difference, in Mutrah and Samail, which for this particular American evangelical contributed much in the way of envisioning and achieving a common life for Muslims and Christians. Not to mention the flourishing of that common life. In A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor, Miroslav Volf urges us: "When Christians and Muslims commit themselves to practicing the dual command of love, they are not satisfying some private religious fancy. They are making possible the constructive collaboration of people of different faiths in the common public space and for the common good."

Ultimately, as Al Amana Centre's director Doug Leonard says, “Experiential and relational interfaith education is what it will take to transform people’s understanding of the other.”
In the assertive imagination of AbdulRahman: with understanding, we come closer. Anything less, well, we might as well call it tolerance from a distance.

Photo: A walkway within the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman
(Nathan Elmore)