image via Flickr (aavarnum)
The Common Ground Awards are coming up (November 11) and if you’d like to come, get your tickets now!
This week we are showcasing Just Vision, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that “[connects] local nonviolent peace workers to audiences in the Middle East and North America” by “creating documentary films about their work, and in-depth educational materials highlighting Palestinian and Israeli individuals…who are working for peace in the region through nonviolent means.” By producing thought-provoking, non-partisan media that heralds the power of civilians to contribute to lasting peace, Just Vision helps to reframe the conflict for both local and global audiences. Their feature-length, award-winning documentaries Encounter Point and Budrus have garnered criticalpraise around the world and “created a global platform for [their] subjects.”
Ronit Avni and Julia Bacha are the driving forces behind Just Vision’s groundbreaking look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. read more…
Human Family
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I’ve sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I’ve seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I’ve not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England’s moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we’re the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
Maya Angelou b 1928
Peace, Human Rights and The Nobel Peace Prize
(from reuters.com)
Today the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, 54, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for “his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights.”
Liu’s first political arrest came in 1989 for his participation in the Tiananmen Square protests. Since then he has been repeatedly arrested for his outspoken critiques of China’s communist regime. In December 2009, He was sentenced to (and is currently serving) 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power. This arrest was due to his role in drafting Charter 08, which calls for human rights and democratic reforms in China. Because he is forbidden from speaking about current affairs with visitors in prison, it is unlikely that he even knows he won the award.
“There is a close connection between human rights and peace,” the committee said. They also spoke admirably about China’s growth in recent decades, but lamented that political freedoms had not grown equivalently. Liu’s own struggle had been emblematic of the connection between peace and human rights as he has long been an advocate of peaceful political change rather than violent confrontation.
The prize is has enraged the Chinese government which had warned the Nobel committee that honoring a “criminal” would sour Chinese-Norwegian relations.
What do you think about the choice? And the connection between peace and human rights? It would, in fact, be quite easy to have peace—so far as it means the absence of violence and unrest—without substantial human rights. But would that be sustainable? China claims there are no dissidents in China, just people who break the law.
The Guardian has a great video of the announcement. Check it out!
Eboo Patel was recently featured on a 20/20 special on Islam. Here’s a great clip of him speaking about his experience of being a Muslim in America, as well as featuring moderate voices that many Americans feel don’t often get heard.
(from bbc.co.uk)
A new quiz on religious literacy by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has found that Americans don’t know much about the world’s religions, including their own. Atheists and Agnostics performed the best on the quiz with Jews and Mormons following.
The quiz is perhaps particularly relevant now, with the firestorm surrounding Park 51. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that many Americans know very little about Islam outside of what they see in media–hardly an exhaustive medium.
What the Pew study shows if that they may not know much more about other religions either.
What do you think: would more information about Islam and other religions lead to greater understanding and more tolerance?
Test your own knowledge with questions from the quiz here.
You can listen to the findings in more detail at this PRI podcast.
A while back we wrote about the Muslim-inspired comic series “The 99” by Dr. Naif al-Mutawa.
It’s a really interesting way of using a popular medium to speak about real issues in a way that doesn’t feel heavy-handed.
Eboo Patel has also written about Naif’s venture and this passage in particular stands out:
“The fact that even Muslims were starting to believe that Islam was ugly was brought home to Naif in a lecture that he gave to students in Kuwait. He handed out two stories of religious extremism from the New York Times, blanking out the names of the religions and the places. One was a story of a group of thugs who violently shut down Valentine’s Day festivities, the other a story of a religious community oppressing its own women.
“Who did these ugly acts?” Naif asked. All of the students agreed the perpetrators must be Muslim. There was some disagreement over whether the acts took place in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.
The actual communities were a Hindu group in India and a Jewish group in New York, respectively. But Naif was astonished. So deep was the belief that Islam violently destroys fun and oppresses women in these young people’s minds that when they saw such ugliness, the image of the perpetrator was Muslim.”
Read the rest of his article on the Huffington Post.
