Swat Pakistan- Students depict peace and pluralism

Artful learning: Students depict peace, pluralism through art

http://tribune.com.pk/story/300337/artful-learning-students-depict-peace-pluralism-through-art/

SWAT:

With an aim of exploring the concepts of peace and pluralism, students of various institutions from the area turned into artists for a day. Engaged in activities like creating cards, handkerchiefs, fabrics and hand paintings, they thoughtfully conveyed the message of non-violence and harmony.

Organised by the Peace Foundation Development in collaboration with Save the Children on Wednesday, “A Peace Day was celebrated in 60 educational institutions of the area”.

Zainab Fazal, a ninth grader from Government Girls’ High School Mingora told The Express Tribune that she and other students knew the importance of peace and valued it. “We will all strive for stability in the region and that should be the only day forward,” she said.

Art here served as medium for the students to express themselves without fear of consequences. The young artists were successful in giving words to their feelings on the issue.

Muhammad Asim, a student at the Government High School Haji Baba who stood third in the competition, said, “I participated in this activity so that I could help other people understand peace through the world of colours.” His piece depicted religious tolerance towards other religions.

Activities mainly focused on altering violent behaviour patterns and reducing the risk of young children falling prey to extremist ideologies. Some 300 students were also trained.

“It is really important to highlight the importance of peace in schools along with the regular syllabus,” said District Executive Education Officer Sultan Mahmood. “The training was beneficial in helping us realise how to educate students on peace and avoiding violence,” he added.

Mahmood was of the view that promoting peace-driven activities for students were as important as studying the Quran and theology subjects since they helped in understanding its underlying message. “I appreciate such positive activities held by educational institutes and expect fruitful results from them,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2011.

Iran - What would the prophet do?

May 10, 2009
Christian Science Monitor.

We have to demonstrate and act peace and quit talking about it. I gave a lecture to an interfaith group few months ago - Muhammad the Peacemaker; ten models of peacemaking. I hope to concretize the other 9 items as Asma has done with the Hudaibiya treaty. The silent majority of Muslims are with the author and this article is an expression of them. We need to get them to speak over the voices of a few fanatics amongst us.

Mike Ghouse
# # #

A stark question for Iran: What would the Prophet do?
By Asma Afsaruddin Mon Apr 6, 5:00 am ET

South Bend, Ind. – If Iranian leaders do not come to grips with reality soon, they will have missed an historic opportunity to make a deal for peace with the United States. It takes courage and considerable moral integrity to reach out to an entrenched adversary; both attributes were amply displayed by President Barack Obama in his recent overture to the Iranians, which incurred the censure of right-wing US hawks.

Regrettably, the Iranian response has been unreflective, pugnacious – and most important – unIslamic.

A verse in the Koran states: "If they [the unbelievers] incline to peace, you should also incline to peace." Because believing Muslims revere the Koran as sacred scripture containing the very words of God, it is not unreasonable to expect that professed Muslims should take these words to heart.

Inclining to peace should manifest itself in a willingness to negotiate through diplomacy, especially when the an adversary indicates a preference for it. When the pagan Meccans sought arbitration with the Prophet Muhammad and his followers in 628, he concluded the treaty of Hudaybiyya with them. The treaty included provisions not entirely favorable to the Muslims, but the Prophet did not waver in his resolve to sign this agreement. Some of his companions grumbled about the unequal treatment of Muslims in this accord and a few were even opposed to the whole idea of peacemaking.

The arguments were familiar – the Meccans had driven the Muslims out of their homes, looted their belongings, and persecuted them for their beliefs. As far as one could tell, the Meccans remained committed to destroying the nascent faith and its adherents. How could one sit down with such trenchant enemies, whose intentions were suspect? The Koran answers those objections in the very next verse: "And if they intend to deceive you – then surely God is sufficient for you." Scripture had made it clear that Muslims should take a risk for peace, and if the opposing side should desist from hostilities, Muslims should reciprocate in kind.

The treaty was signed and was meant to guarantee 10 years of peace. As it turned out, the worst fears of Muhammad's followers proved to be true. The Meccans soon violated the agreement and fighting loomed. Further negotiations, however, brought about the peaceful surrender of Mecca and a general amnesty for the previous enemies of the Muslims.

Muhammad and his immediate successors implemented a principle known as "the joining of hearts," according to which the erstwhile enemies of Islam were to become reconciled with Muslims through charity and inclusion within the new community. The fact that Muslims throughout time have not always implemented these principles in no way makes them less normative for contemporary Muslims.

Both Sunnis and Shiites read the same Koran and both agree that its ideals were perfectly realized by their prophet. Thus Iran, a predominantly Shiite nation, is just as obligated to follow Koranic teaching as any other Muslim-majority country with a commitment to Islamic principles.

After eight years of relentlessly hawkish US policies toward the Middle East (and some would argue toward the Muslim world in general) under President Bush, Mr. Obama has clearly set a new course. He has expressed resolute good will toward the majority of Muslims in the world who also desperately – and audaciously – hope for change for the better, as global surveys and polls have repeatedly shown.

Why then has Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a religious man by all accounts, spurned Obama's outreach and rejected negotiations. He certainly cannot claim a scriptural imperative for his behavior.

From a realpolitik perspective, risking political capital for peace may appear to be a foolhardy venture and Mr. Khamenei will certainly be criticized by Iran's hawks for talking to "the Great Satan."

But morally speaking, he and other Iranian leaders owe it to their people and to the world to sit down at the negotiating table in view of the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a principal actor in some of the major conflicts of our time.

It is not enough for Muslims to repeatedly affirm that Islam stands for peace; they need to demonstrate that Islam means peace. When valuable opportunities for peacemaking occur and it is Muslim leaders who fritter them away, they should expect scorn to be directed at them and at their hollow rhetoric.

In the popular American imagination, Muslims after Sept. 11 have become tarred by the brush of violence. Now we can add to this image an unholy lack of moral courage and intransigence in the face of a singular opportunity to put an end to a nuclear standoff that could engulf the whole world.

If Iranian leaders adhere to the faith for which they claim to have launched a revolution 30 years ago, they will put aside bellicose rhetoric and take up the work of peace.

Asma Afsaruddin is a professor of Arabic & Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame and is the author of "The First Muslims: History and Memory."

Jewish Arabs and Arabia

Jewish Arabs and a New Middle East

I noticed in various texts and articles that Jews from the Middle East, who often originated from Spain/Al-Andalus, were referred to by scholars not only as Sephardim but as Arab Jews, says Marc Gopin.

WASHINGTON - In 1998, Prince Hassan of Jordan appeared on video at the University of Notre Dame, marking one of the first academic conferences in the field of religion and conflict resolution. As he spoke via teleconference, he quoted at length and with great love from the writings of Moses Maimonides—the world-famous medieval Jewish philosopher who had been a chief conduit between Arab neo-Aristotelian philosophy and the Christian world.

It was already a thrilling moment for me – the conference was the first that I attended as an academic speaker – but Maimonides was part and parcel of my sequestered religious childhood. I went to school for 13 years as a child at a place called Maimonides School, and prayed there on Sundays and Saturdays. For Prince Hassan, a major figure of the Arab world, to be embracing Maimonides felt like an extraordinary inter-cultural and inter-religious gesture. I was so moved that I had to say something to the plenary meeting.

Then I got a shock.
When I shared my feelings of gratitude publicly, someone from the audience of scholars responded quite forcefully, "But he is our Maimonides, one of the great Arab philosophers of history." I think that if I were brought up with more Jewish wounds than I had ('Jewishness' could be defined by how many and how deep your wounds are), I might have taken offense. But I did not, and was instead stunned, intrigued, and amused at the playful re-orientation of identities afoot in the room.
That was one of those life-changing moments for me. In that instant I realized the truth of Gandhi's words when he claimed that, the more fluid and multiple our identities, the easier peace and coexistence can flourish at a very profound level. I noticed later in various texts and articles that Jews from the Middle East, who often originated from Spain/Al-Andalus, were referred to by scholars not only as Sephardim but as Arab Jews.

One decade later, Prince Turki, Saudi Arabia's current National Security Adviser and former Ambassador to America, said it was time for Israel to respond to the Arab League's 2002 offer to integrate into the Middle East. After fully withdrawing to the 1967 borders, after realizing a just two-state solution with the Palestinians—then, he added crucially, Israelis could become Arab Jews of the Middle East.

This went unnoticed by most of the enlightened press, presumably because Al Qaeda was not mentioned and no blood of Arabs or Jews was spilled. But at a deeper level, blood was very involved: this former head of intelligence – from a country from which so much of the extremism of the Middle East had emerged – was now utterly redefining identity, family, tribe and clan in terms of ethical relationships, in terms of peace and justice.

In the pages of The Forward, a centrist Jewish journal, some people reacted to Prince Turki's offer as insulting. They assumed that it was an offer from the majority group of the Middle East for a minority to attain some subsumed and subjugated status. But after working with Prince Turki for years at the World Economic Forum, I saw that he embraced the interfaith moment as a moment of absolute equality. He was suggesting, from within the most conservative religious environment in the Middle East, that "Arab" was an ethical term of belonging and community, not a racial or tribal term. It would be like the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Israel saying that if Palestinians can live in peace with us then they will be our Jewish brothers. I have never heard anyone, no matter how progressive, say this.

Prince Turki went to the heart of the matter, to the question of how the definition of identity can drive us away from hatred, fear, and war, toward the peaceful embrace of the other, or, alternatively, how much identity can stand in the way of all rational negotiation. He has placed a challenge before every Jew and Arab as to who they really are, and who they will be in the future of the Middle East.

Marc Gopin is the James Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Washington D.C. He can be reached at mgopin@gmu.edu.

This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service and can be accessed at GCNews.

Pope Benedict

Two articles on the subject follow my comments;

1. Christian Rage and Muslim Moderation
2. Don't turn faith into a hollow competition of numbers

I have been writing and re-writing the definition of a peace maker. "A peace maker constantly seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for peaceful co-existence. His or Her words and actions do not make things worse, but bring some sense and understanding to the situation. God wants us to live in peace and harmony with his creation; indeed that is the purpose religion." Indeed, peace making is the duty of a religious person.

Did Pope's conversion event on Easter, mitigate or aggravate the conflict? With all due respect to his holiness, his words have not been that of a peace maker. There have been three incidents where his non-action or silence would have been better. The revival of comments made by the Emperor Constantine he delivered in Germany irritated his counterparts in Muslim world, then revising the prayer that was not kosher and now this. What was the need to make the conversion on Easter? Provoke?

His holiness Pope Benedict knew darn well, that Muslims will jump up and down and scream to his reactions. As a holy man, was that necessary? What is the gain? What is the need to ruffle the feathers? It is a shame that those Muslims react so wildly towards his words, they need to get in control of themselves and not let the Pope make them dance. If the Pope had not said the things he said, not done the things he did, would there have been a crisis?

Continue: http://wisdomofreligion.blogspot.com/2008/03/pope-benedict-bin-laden.html