A group of Jews and Muslims come together to pray for sulha (reconciliation) at the Tomb of Abraham in Hebron.
By Leah Germain
Andrew Kromah of the Independent Radio Network
I first meet Andrew Kromah at the Independent Radio Network (IRN) headquarters in Freetown, where I’ve been assigned.
“Welcome, welcome,” he says reaching for my hand and giving it a firm shake. He invites me to take a seat in a wicker chair placed in the corner of his second floor office.
As he takes his seat he inquires about my name.
“Ahh, Leah,” he says. “Do you know the origin of that name?”
I do. As a young girl I looked it up in Webster’s dictionary and learned that Leah was the third wife of Jacob in the Bible. As I relay the information to Mr. Kromah, he throws his head back and laughs a booming laugh that fills every corner of his office. He goes on to regale me with all the reasons why Leah was one of his favorite characters.
Our conversation then turns to the work of the Independent Radio Network and the crucial role it has played in rebuilding Sierra Leone’s civil society after the country was torn apart by an 11-year civil war.
IRN was established in 2002 as a collective for just a few community and independent radio stations. Eight years later, IRN has a network of 23 radio stations throughout the country; Mr. Kromah points out several of them on the brightly colored map next to his desk.
Even though the network has made substantial progress since 2002, it continues to experience numerous setbacks. In addition to lacking proper equipment, many of the radio stations are short-staffed and seriously under-funded. Part of my role is helping IRN towards their long-term goal of becoming an independently financed media organization.
To many, this may seem like a lofty goal for a network that still relies heavily on foreign aid, but after talking with Mr. Kromah for 20 minutes, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
Providing the citizens of Sierra Leone with fair and unbiased media was a challenge Mr. Kromah took on long before IRN was established. He begins to tell me the story of when he launched KISS FM, a station in Bo, the country’s second largest city. The launch came towards the war’s end, when conflict had forced many to flee their city and country.
But Mr. Kromah stayed. And while so much was being destroyed, he created. With help from Voice of America, he was able to furbish a radio station with the necessary equipment and begin broadcasting.
When the American chopper carrying the radio equipment landed in Bo, most of the city showed up to see what was going on.
“They all thought ‘The Americans are here! The Americans are here,’” he says. While not a military intervention, the chopper represented a different kind of salvation for the city and its residents.
The arrival of the chopper gave people hope, enough hope to stay in Bo and not run from the threat of a potential rebel attack, says Mr. Kromah.
Heading back to Talking Drum Studio, I can’t help but be inspired by Mr. Kromah’s story. It is the perfect metaphor for Sierra Leone: even though there is an uncertainty surrounding the country’s future, the media is giving people hope and that alone allows the residents of this country to believe in the promise of a better tomorrow.
"Inspired by Muhammad" campaign
June 22, 2010
by Fiyaz Mughal
Seville, Spain – The “Inspired by Muhammad” campaign was launched a few weeks ago to highlight British Muslims who are contributing to UK society. The campaign, sponsored by the UK-based Exploring Islam Foundation – which publishes creative resources and materials on Islam, aims to break down misconceptions by showing Muslims as campaigners for social justice, gender equality and the environment.
The movement consists of posters and a website (www.inspiredbymuhammad.com) that feature positive images and stories which provide alternatives to the corrosive narratives about Islam and Muslims spewed out on an almost daily basis by certain national newspapers in the United Kingdom.
As I sit in the ancient Jewish quarter of Seville, the poignancy of this campaign hits me, especially having just visited the Alcázar, a royal palace in Spain that was formerly a fort built by the Moors in 1360. The Alcázar, along with other sites of this great city that were often used by different religious groups during different periods, gives substance and meaning to the term “co-existence” between the three Abrahamic faiths.
As a Londoner who has lived most of his life in a diverse city, I was taken aback by the results of the recent UK-based research organisation’s poll of over 2,000 people. YouGov found that one-third of respondents perceive Islam as a religion of violence. Less than one in five believe that Islam has a positive impact on the country, while 68 per cent of respondents believe that it is a repressive religion. Sadly, the person most commonly associated with Islam after the Prophet Muhammad is Osama Bin Laden.
Such results highlight the gulf of misconceptions and stereotypes growing between Muslims and non-Muslims.
This gulf did not start post-9/11 but after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that Salman Rushdie’s 1988 book The Satanic Verses was “blasphemous”, after the 1986 political and military confrontation between the United States and Libya’s leader Muammar Qaddafi, the First Gulf War in 1990 and many other crises, all of which have shown Muslims in the worst possible light.
Yet, if we are honest, most of these international incidents had little, if anything, to do with the vast majority of Muslims – or Islam.
The figures from the YouGov poll are disconcerting because they show that a concerted effort is needed to ensure that there is a balanced perception of Islam and Muslims in the United Kingdom. In addition to the “Inspired by Muhammad” campaign, which shows human faces and perspectives of Muslims supporting much needed social work in the country, programmes that deconstruct the perceived attachment between Islam and violence also need to be developed.
The “Inspired by Muhammad” campaign is particularly interesting since it attempts to place Muslims into the context of local communities and humanise their stories.
For example, the campaign portrays Muslims who campaign for the environment, uphold English law and create positive social change through social work. Though these images feature Muslims engaged in what appears to be normal activities, they have an impact when so many media portrayals of Muslims show them as as inherently violent.
The very core of Islam stands contrary to violence, which is only sanctioned in specific circumstances to stop murder or genocide, or to defend oneself. So associating violence with Islam is not only inaccurate, it assumes that the Osama Bin Ladens of this world are exemplars of Muslims and Islam when, in truth, their cynical manipulation of the religion is clearly contrary to what Islam and its scholars say.
In addition to the portrayal of hundreds of thousands of Muslim doctors, dentists, hospital porters, social workers, engineers, military personnel, project managers, investment bankers, nurses, pharmacists, civil servants and other socially significant actors highlighted by such campaigns, there is also a need to share the stories of those Muslims engaged in the protection of the United Kingdom.
Here lies the answer to countering the prejudices and ignorance that feed social division and misunderstanding. If those interviewed by the YouGov poll fear Islam or Muslims, then show them that we are actively working to protect the safety of all people in the United Kingdom, a country dear to all of us who live here.
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Fiyaz Mughal is the Founder and Director of Faith Matters (www.faith-matters.org), an organisation that works to resolve conflict and create community cohesion through collaboration between faith communities in the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
Read the original article on the Common Ground News Service.
Election Excitement Builds in Guinea
Guinean voter showing off her voter registration card (from usaid.gov/gn)
Guinea’s historic election is only a few days away. 24 candidates will be running for the Presidency in what are set to be Guinea’s first truly democratic elections in over 50 years.
Excitement is in the streets of Conakry and throughout the country as citizens prepare to exercise their civic rights. A fair and transparent election in Guinea may become an example for other countries in the region who also have upcoming elections.
The Carter Center launched an election observation mission to Guinea and reported that they are “encouraged by the positive tone of the electoral campaign in Guinea, including candidates’ messages promoting reconciliation and transcending ethnic boundaries, and by the National Electoral Commission’s (CENI) commitment to inclusive elections.”
Search for Common Ground is also involved in making this electoral process a positive one. Today SFCG Guinea launched our radio synergy project! The ceremony was attended by two ambassadors from the US and France and lead by the president of the national counsel of the transition. Search sent 86 journalists from independent radio stations across the country to observe the elections. The synergy radio station, FM GUINEE 2010, will connect 17 radio stations on Election Day for a special program.
Great article in the Huffington Post about the elections by Robert Amsterdam.
Look for more to follow the Monday election!
The right investment: The International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace
(tripadvisor.com)
By Daniel Moss
From the Common Ground News Service
JERUSALEM – What turns out to have long-term impact doesn’t always make the headlines at first. This past month I was part of an ALLMEP (Alliance for Middle East Peace) delegation. As an umbrella for over seventy member organisations, ALLMEP advocates for a wide range of people-to-people peace building efforts that encourage meaningful contact between Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews. Recent meetings were held in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Amman. The objective: to gather international support for the creation of an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Combined with a tenacious peace process at the official levels, this initiative contains the potential to shift the realities of the Middle East.
A solid majority of Palestinians and Israelis say that they support peace. However, most do not believe that peace will come. Solid majorities believe that there is “no partner” on “the other side”.
How could they think otherwise when their conceptions are formed by what they see on their televisions, what they hear around their dinner tables, in their schools, on their streets? Although they share the same landscape, Palestinians and Israelis inhabit different planets, receive different streams of information, hold different assumptions and worldviews.
When Palestinians and Israelis have the opportunity to engage with one another in a substantial way, they don’t put up their hands and say, “Oh, you are right after all”. Instead, they learn that as John Wallach, the founder of Seeds of Peace used to put it, “the enemy has a face”. Disagreements remain ferocious. But sustained and meaningful interaction between Palestinians and Israelis and their respective supporters builds mutual respect, trust, and understanding. With fundamental disagreements intact, people figure out ways to approach the needs of the other, ways to share that small patch of earth known as the “Holy Land”. This is how public opinion changes, one individual at a time.
The recent ALLMEP delegation met with high-level officials, including the Palestinian prime minister, the Israeli prime minister’s office, the chief of the Jordanian Royal Court, the American and European ambassadors in Israel, and a representative from George Mitchell’s team. ALLMEP is the first significant attempt by participating organisations to cooperate on strategy, to coordinate our common work, to multiply our impact. There is broad support at the highest official levels for what ALLMEP represents and for significantly increasing work on the grassroots level to build a constituency for peace. The responsibility for supporting such efforts must be shared by the United States, and Arab and European countries.
The American military budget currently stands at $549 billion, not including the cost of the Iraqi and Afghan wars, which add another $159 billion. This year the House Armed Services subcommittee designated more money to the Defence Department than the secretary of defence requested. Among other things, the additional money includes $50 million for what the New York Times describes as “an airborne laser that experts agree doesn’t work”.
The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Fund promoted by ALLMEP proposes two hundred million dollars for the first year. We ask the United States to contribute $50 million, the cost of that airborne laser; we request equal amounts from the Europeans, the Arabs, and a combination of Asian countries and private donors.
During the successful Northern Ireland peace process, diplomatic efforts worked in tandem with people-to-people initiatives supported by an international fund. People-to-people diplomacy in Northern Ireland touched approximately one-sixth of the population, at the cost of roughly $650 million.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is arguably the single most inflammatory issue in the world today: The status quo is unbearable. Ordinary people have tremendous potential power on the world stage, as the example of the Gaza flotilla shows. But the kind of confrontation that took place on the flotilla leads to further conflict. It is not an example of what can lead to positive change. The cameras roll. “The other side” becomes a cartoon. “They” are this. “They” are that. Tempers flare. Hatred grows.
The real challenge of people to people initiatives is to give the participants the opportunity to root themselves in a more complex and humane reality. The challenge is to inspire a people-to-people movement that reduces conflict, while increasing mutual respect and hope.
To reach the same proportion of Israelis and Palestinians that was reached in Northern Ireland would require billions of dollars. Considering the stakes involved, this peace fund proposal is a good start—and the right investment to make.
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Daniel Noah Moses, Ph.D., formerly a lecturer on social studies at Harvard University, is currently Director of the Delegation Leaders Program at Seeds of Peace. He recently published his first book, The Promise of Progress: The Life and Work of Lewis Henry Morgan. He lives in Jerusalem. Read this article and other at the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Monday, June 21, 2010
By Saadia Khalid
Islamabad – In a landmark development in Pakistan’s expansive media landscape, over 50 FM radio stations from across the country have established a formal community of peace on air and pledged to use the airwaves in the service of promoting peace, development and social empowerment of communities.
The establishment of ‘The Radio Partnership for Peace,’ the first of its kind in Asia, was announced by the largest summit ever of FM radio stations in Pakistan’s history held in Islamabad over the weekend.
In the first phase, the Radio Partnership of Peace will include 60 FM radio stations, of which 51 were represented by their senior management present at the summit, and in the coming months will be joined by all the 130 FM stations currently on air in Pakistan.
The first National Summit of FM Radio Stations in Pakistan included independent radio stations, government-run FM stations, university campus stations and other community stations such as the FM stations run by the Islamabad Traffic Police. The summit was conducted by Intermedia, an independent Pakistani media support organization specializing in advocacy, research and training on media issues.
Stations from all regions of Pakistan were represented in the summit including Balochistan, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Sindh and federal capital Islamabad. This was the first time that stations from all regions of the country had gathered in one place to share their rich experiences and to develop ideas to improve professional standards of the burgeoning sector. In a joint declaration adopted by the summit, over 50 FM radio stations pledged: “We the FM Radio Stations in Pakistan emphasize that we have a key role to play in the development of Pakistan by promoting peace in the local communities. We support the initiative of a collective effort to raise the profile of FM radio sector in Pakistan as the People’s Medium. We pledge to promote empowerment of communities by being a voice of peace, education and development.”
The summit discussed at length the positive role of FM radio in community service across Pakistan in recent years and discussed various ways to strengthen this role and raise the profile nationally and internationally of this still-largely undocumented positive phenomenon. The summit also formally launched the project “Radio For Peace Building” which is supported by Search For Common Ground (SFCG) and will be implemented by Intermedia and Uks Research Centre.
Under the project, among other things, a web portal will be established to showcase the richness and diversity of the FM radio sector in Pakistan to principally serve as a platform to share the success stories, various radio programs, ideas and various developments in the sector.
The project will also include promoting Radio Partnership of Peace to become a united voice of peace and development in local communities across Pakistan through training, coaching and technical assistance for the members of the new alliance of FM radio stations of the country. Representatives of all 50 radio stations present at the summit also signed a Memorandum of Understanding under which, acceding to the demand and support of the summit, Intermedia and Uks will offer a range of services, facilitation, training and technical assistance to all the current and future members of Radio Partnership For Peace.
Read the original article in The International News here.
