Dove's Eye View

Holding on to Hope

The Dove told her husband when she first started this blog that all hell could break loose. She's seen other bloggers, mostly women, begin blogs devoted to sunshine and flowers, and then the heavens split open and Jove or whomever sears their hair with lightening bolts.

Seems that the situation in Palestine only gets worse. Perhaps by trying to find signs of hope every day, the Dove is forced to look around more, and thus sees more trouble?

The vision of the solution is still the only way out. Whether it's the Geneva Accord, or the new idea about a one state, democratic solution, only a vision of what peace would look like can lead us out of this dark place.

Groups doing the painful work on the ground of building for the future are the best sign of hope we have. Rebuilding Homes is one such group (nepotism alert - my mom works for them).

Aron Trauring's Israel Peace Weblog has a section called Solutions (look on the right side, a third of the way down the page). I'm going to go there right now and read a little.

The point of this blog is to focus on a vision for peace. Concentrating on the solution is the only way to bring that about.

Israeli Pilot Speaks Out

(DV) Shapira: We Refuse to Take Part in the Occupation. Read his chilling analysis.

The Dove watched Israeli pilots bomb Ain-el-Helweh refugee camp when she was 12. There was no way for the pilots to know who they killed. In those days, when the Dove talked about it back in America with her Jewish American friends, they repeated what their parents told them: "Palestinian terrorists hide in the skirts of their women."

The pilot Yonathan Shapira: "The fact that buses explode here, does not justify Sharon, Mofaz and Air Force Chief Dan Halutz decision to ‘unintentionally’ kill nine children in their sleep, and to sow terror in a population of millions who live under a reign of closures, curfews and checkpoints. A population enclosed by walls and camps, under the guns of an enormous and frightening army, equipped to the teeth with jet-planes which shake the skies, and attack-helicopters who time and again send rockets into cars and into the windows of houses, in crowded and destitute cities.

It's a sign of hope when IDF pilots can speak like this.

Thanks to Aron Trauring for this link.

Strong Arab Women Writers

Not my title - this is Rania Masri's list on Amazon of Strong Arab Women Writers. Rania Masri is a peace activist (and environmentalist, I believe) who has been around the internet forever. If she recommends it, it's worth reading. I've already read about a quarter of the list and own a few titles.

The list includes memoirs, novels, essays and poetry. Go check it out!

Amazon's reviews, user lists, and other features are much more valuable than I'd realized. I hate to give them much credit because I love local bookstores, BUT I am awed at the power of their software. I especially like that function that recommends books related to the one you've found.

Women in the Middle East

As'ad Abu-Khalil, a political scientist at CSU Stanislaus, wrote this article about Women in the Middle East, which appeared in "Foreign Policy In Focus" (Volume 5, n. 30, September 2000).

He makes the case, which you may know already, that the status of women in the Middle East is not uniformly that of women in Saudi Arabia. He also traces some of the history of women in the Middle East and Islam. I like this quote:

"Ironically, in medieval times, Islam was actually attacked by Christian polemicists for being too permissive and tolerant in social and sexual matters."

He includes in his bibliography the memoir of my friend Afaf (Faye) Kanafani, (Nadia Captive of Hope) as well as Fatima Mernissi's book Beyond the Veil. (by the way, if you want to read the Kanafani book, I think she still has copies available for the usual paperback price, not the outrageous $78.00 listed on Amazon. Email me at leilasab at yahoo for information)

Read Professor Abu-Khalil's article for an introduction to this subject. And if this topic interests you and you're in San Francisco, try to audit Minoo Moallem's class at SF State U. on "Women in Islam". She teaches it every other year in the spring. (I haven't checked, maybe they're running it more often, one hopes?)

History News Network

I found the History News Network while surfing. Great site for historians' views of breaking news.

Benny Morris's Shocking Interview

Baruch Kimmerling, sociologist at Hebrew University, analyzes Benny Morris.

But hatred toward the Arabs, their society and culture crush any logic in Morris’s thought. The Palestinians are "the barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks… At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers." After thirty five years of oppression, colonization of their land, expropriation of their water, ignoring almost all of their freedoms, administrative detention of tens of thousands of Palestinians, systematic destruction of their social and material infrastructure, it is more than ironic to talk about the Palestinians as barbarians and a sick society. If the Palestinian society is sick, who is responsible for this sickness and which society is sicker and an institutionalized serial killer?

The Dove sees signs of hope in Israeli critique of Benny Morris' ideas.

Amalek and jihad

The Head Heeb: Amalek and jihad thoughtfully and at length discusses warrior texts in Judaism and Islam. He draws parallels between amalek and jihad, and also traces how different religious philosophies interpret the two concepts. In the case of jihad, more liberal Muslims like to interpret it as a personal, internal struggle, while far right fundamentalists have twisted the concept to include suicide bombings. The Jewish concept of amalek is completely new to me, and I'm grateful to Head Heeb for defining it, as well as describing its various interpretations.

Billmon on Weblogs

Billmon goes to Davos, attends a session on blogs.

Excerpt:

...communications technology may be moving in a great historical cycle. The invention of the printing press -- followed by radio and then television -- created a progressively more capital-intensive media industry, with an increasing division of labor among reporters, editors, printers, advertising whores, um, I mean, salesmen, etc. The invention of the Internet, however, has shifted the balance back towards the individual writer/publisher, doing his/her own thing, reporting or commenting on events they find through their own research, either on the web or off.

The difference, of course, is that what was once limited to a small literate elite in the 18th century is available to millions of people the world over in the 21st. This is a revolution by anybody's definition, and could even, in time, spell the end of the mainstream media as we know it. Or, as Rosen put it: "The age of the mass media is just that -- an age. It doesn't have to last forever."

...snip...blogs are doing more than just about any other modern institution (if institution is the right word for something as anarchistic as the blogosphere) to recreate a common communication space, and encourage maximum public participation.

Go read the whole article, even if you're new to all this blogging stuff. It's not just self-referential web geek chatter. This new form of communication is affecting our primary elections, the anti-war movement, and politics in general.

Islam's New Voices

Progressive Muslims reach the SF Chronicle.

Why does this matter?

If you believe faith is a fraud, then it doesn't.

If you believe God is real but religion is a fraud, then it doesn't.

If you believe that only one religion is real and the others are frauds, then it doesn't.

The Dove, however, believes that a silver stream of truth flows underneath all faiths.

The Dove also believes that every religion is a living, breathing entity which changes and grows as its adherents grow and change.

Christianity and Judaism both have progressive reformist movements. You can read about current progressives in Sojourners and Tikkun, among other places.

I posted earlier about Muslim Wake Up!, a terrific group in Los Angeles devoted to a progressive critique of Islam, with emphasis on justice and peace issues.

In its early centuries, Islam flowered. It was a vital force in many areas of human thought: math, the sciences, philosophy, history, the plastic arts, poetry. Islam was diverse, tolerant, and elastic, encompassing sophisticated cultures from India in the East to the Maghreb and Spain in the West.

The Dove doesn't have her history books at hand, but she remembers learning that there came a moment somewhere in the 13th or 14th century when the mullahs decreed that all knowledge had been attained, and further inquiry would be apostasy. The decline of Islam began in that era. Meanwhile, Christianity went through the wrenching, bloody revolution of the Protestant Reformation. The Dove's college humanities professors all agree that the Reformation led to the Renaissance and the scientific revolution.

Look for an upcoming post about Fatima Mernissi, a feminist interpreter of Islam. In the meantime, the Dove says progressive criticism of any religion is a true sign of hope.

The Shalom Center

Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the The Shalom Center puts his body on the line for peace. Visit his site to learn more about his Shalom Center.