Responding to Media Bombardments

[Yaaluwa]

How does one maintain one’s cool in the face of the 24/7 bombardments such as this?

We need a psychological and group process model that does not seem to be available among Muslims.


http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World- ... By_Stoning


http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/ ... 15355.html

[Jamal]

The first story is a truly bizarre example of American and European orgiastic efforts to pounce on anything that fits their stereotypical view of Muslim society, especially in the case of Iran. The story is that a woman was convicted of adultery with two men who murdered her husband. It's basically a murder accomplice conviction. Somehow all Western news sources seem to leave out the murder part of the story. As for the stoning part of it, I think the last time I looked there was maybe one Middle Eastern country that carried out a stoning sentence in the last 20 years. I don't know the details off hand, but it's extremely rare. The idea that somehow Western "media pressure" played a role in the "reversal" is completely off the wall. Iranian judges almost definitely don't subscribe to Twitter.

As for the Pakistani situation. What can you say? All this violence seems to have started during Bush's presidency and has escalated greatly during Obama's policies. I know people get mad when I dis Obama, but certainly he has not turned out to be the great savior that people were propping him up to be.

If you want me to be part of your group process, I'm always here. I have nothing but disdain for current US policies and Western media portrayals of Muslim issues. I think the great fear of neocons is actually how stable the Middle East and Muslim countries would be without US intervention. That's ultimately what they're afraid of.

[Yaaluwa]

There is some relief in reading different takes on the news, reflecting different perceptions, e.g. what Jamal has written about the Iran story. The sharing and mutuality involved is healthy. The difficulty is in having to process the immediate impact by oneself.

Some people respond by just not reading the news. But I can’t do that.

When I said group process, I meant a process that involves face-to –face meetings over a period of time. I have experience of this in an interfaith setting, and have found it to be quite healthy. But there were conflicts which eventually ended the process.

Re: written out forms of self-expression about such conflicts, such as in an Internet Forum:

The multi-sensory input of a real group process is not there. The communication is of a different sort. There would be other techniques to master. However, the self-expression opportunity is there.

The focus on one or two issues would also seem to be necessary. The violence vs. non-violence discussion may be such a focus.

US policies and leadership may be a factor in the suicide bombings. But the local politicians and leadership, political and religious, over there, must have something to do with it also.

It bothers me that it is impossible to engage Pakistanis who are here, with whom I have many other conversations, in this discussion. Why aren’t there more Pakistanis in mtz.?

[Baal Citun]

Reading most news makes me feel weird, almost like hearing a gossip. And it feels very different when a person actually presents the situation in the "round", there is no that agitated feeling, you just truly understand the situation. You know what I mean?

[Yaaluwa]

I think I know what you mean, Baal Cituun.

That is what I meant by "multisensory input".

Salaam.

[Jamal]

Why aren’t there more Pakistanis in mtz.?

One thing I've found is that a lot of people shy away from the multi-faith aspect of mtz. It's not just Pakistanis, but pretty much most people.

[grahame]

I must admit I don't know much about the woman sentenced to stoning. But I read that the issue was that she has protested her innocence to the charge and so has her son. Personally I think it is a barbaric penalty. It actually comes from the Old Testament. It didn't originate from Islam. The woman, or man as the case may be is buried waist deep in the earth in a pit and big rocks are thrown at the victim until they expire. Another Old Testament penalty was strangling. Where again the victim is buried waist deep in manure this time and a rope held by two groups of people each side of the victim and is placed around the victim's neck. Two two sides are then pulled tight by the two groups of people.
I must admit I have always struggled with such scriptures. I believe that humankind should endeavour to evolve from such inhumane practices.

On another issue concerning another woman in another country. Saudi Arabia where a woman was sentenced to flogging and imprisonment for adultery. A verdict that apparently was upheld only by the husban'd sayso, whilst it has since been established that it was he was the one who had committed adultery, but falsified evidence in order to get possession of the children. But still the charge was upheld by the courts and the woman's appeal rejected. She was until revently forbidden to see her children. She is still not allowed to have custody in spite of the husbands guilt and purgery. I have heard several similar stories, not through the western press, but by certain women's groups inside Saudi.

[Yaaluwa]

Jamal wrote

a lot of people shy away from the multi-faith aspect of mtz. It's not just Pakistanis, but pretty much most people.

There is quite possibly some reality to this. Not everybody is comfortable with multi-faith discussions.

I once presented a paper at a South Asia Studies meeting in which, as part of explaining my involvement in certain inter and multi faith activities in the US during the 1990s, I recounted the story, from the 17th century, of an English woman who had converted to the Quaker faith. She suffered much persecution because of her conversion. She and two other Quaker companions later arrived in the New England of that time. There they were accused of witchcraft and thrown into prison. Later she returned to England and decided to go out on a journey across Europe, to convert the Sultan of Turkey. M. M. Pickthall has more details of this story, based on a 1912 British newspaper account, in his chapter on Tolerance in “Cultural side of Islam”.

The woman eventually met the Sultan Bayazid in Adrionople. The account continues with how well she was received by the Sultan and was given all the honours of an ambassador etc., some of which she refused. In the lecture, Pickthall’s point was to argue for the greater tolerance and acceptance that Muslims have of peoples of the Christian faith. The Sultan told the visiting woman “with a message from Almighty God” that all of what she was saying was “the truth” which he and his attentive courtiers also believed.

There was a Pakistani woman historian in the Panel I was participating in. Her private question to me later was, how I expected to raise funds for what I wanted to do, if I take a multi-faith stance. Muslims will only fund activities which are aimed at converting people of other faiths – not at listening to them or aiming to establish cordial relations and dialogue. This certainly seems to be the case in the attitude of many Pakistanis, as well as of many others. There are various variations of this, among the subtler of which are the Islamic funding agencies which aim to convert other Muslims to their particular “brand”, so to speak, of Islam.

I have also been told that some of the Pakistani non-participation in these kinds of things, comes from a very superficial, but strongly held, and intolerant, kind of religious belief. All of this poses big challenges to MTZ.

We cannot generalize about all Pakistanis, however. I know of one intellectual Pakistani who is very active in interfaith dialogue, with his own program for it.

I mentioned Pakistanis in my earlier post only because the news of that day concerned an event in Pakistan. In my view there has been too much of this kind of “dark side of Islam” news coming from Pakistan, for many years now. There may be more dangerous times for that nation in the years to come.

[ootii]

There was a Pakistani woman historian in the Panel I was participating in. Her private question to me later was, how I expected to raise funds for what I wanted to do, if I take a multi-faith stance. Muslims will only fund activities which are aimed at converting people of other faiths – not at listening to them or aiming to establish cordial relations and dialogue.

This is an interesting question. I expect the answer lies in the purpose of the dialog. Many Muslims assume that the goal of interfaith dialog is conversion and for this reason often refuse to participate in these initiatives. It may be possible to garner support for this if it is clearly presented as an effort at mutual understanding and from this many benefits can accrue to both sides. This should be even more clear to us now, in the light of our experience over the past 10 years.

Muslims have a genuine interest in being better understood by Christian communities in the West.

Attitudes among Muslims vary widely. Last week, in Egypt, I talked to a teenager who was interested in learning Spanish for "dawa". I told him that most Spanish speaking people were Catholics and that if he wanted to talk to them about Islam he had best learn something about their religion. He was not much interested in this idea and told me that his father could tell him everything he needed to know about Christians. His father is a friend of mine and does not know much about this topic that goes beyond a long polemic written by a Pakistani scholar in the early 20th century.

Salaam,

Omar

[grahame]

Attitudes among Muslims vary widely. Last week, in Egypt, I talked to a teenager who was interested in learning Spanish for "dawa". I told him that most Spanish speaking people were Catholics and that if he wanted to talk to them about Islam he had best learn something about their religion. He was not much interested in this idea and told me that his father could tell him everything he needed to know about Christians. His father is a friend of mine and does not know much about this topic that goes beyond a long polemic written by a Pakistani scholar in the early 20th century.

I know Christians who think mthey know about Islam because they have been on the internet reading websites like "answering-islam" and profess they know everything there is to know about the subject. I know it may not seem like it, but since I have been on sites like MWU and this forum I have learned quite a lot about Islam. Which of course is really very little. But the most important thing that I have gained is a respect for Islam and Muslims that I did not have before.