Woman as Citizen

About two weeks ago, President Nicolas Sarkozy banned the burqa from French society, which - let's face it - was a long time coming. France has always struggled to grant rights for ethnic minorities without compromising France's sense of civil society and equality, and for Sarkozy, the burqa challenges these values: "The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women."

As a woman and Muslim who doesn't agree with the burqa (read: burqa, different from niqab or hijab), I agree with Sarkozy's assessment of the problem. But in this case, his solution limits the freedom of a citizen under the very state system that is supposed to protect her rights.

Mona Eltahawy's take on Sarkozy's position was surprising - she agreed with him. "The best way to support Muslim women would be to say we oppose both racist Islamophobes and the burqa. We’ve been silent on too many things out of fear we’ll arm the right wing," she writes in an op-ed. She continues to say that the burqa is not Islamic, cleverly pointing out that it causes veiled women to get caught up in a perverted logic through which they perceive themselves as "candy."

Yet as much as I want to agree with Eltahawy, I am hesitant to agree that the best solution is to allow a democratic state to force its citizens to dress in a certain way. How would France, then, compare to Egypt that does not allow covered women to serve in the government or on national TV?

Another country that tried to impose dress rules upon its citizens was Pakistan, when Jinnah pronounced the national dress on the country's citizens. That was 70 years ago. Turn to any newspaper these days and notice how identity crisis remains one of Pakistan's worst problems.

When it comes to covering, we've been beating a dead horse with two arguments: ban the burqa and be considered intolerant and Islamophobes; or keep the burqa and struggle with the limitations a man subjugates on a Muslim woman by keeping her covered. This discussion has been almost parallel to the debate of Muslims' rights in western societies after 9/11. But hardly has the conversation really turned towards a woman's relation to the state.

This is exactly the discussion that Sarkozy's ban poses and the one we're not having. As a citizen, a Muslim woman should have the same rights as any other citizen living in that country - that is, after all, what the equality of law allows them. Which means that like other citizens, she should be able to dress as she pleases. But in this debate, either Islam in the name of man imposes rules on a woman, or the state does.

Perhaps it comes down to the fact that I'm old-fashioned but I still think there is something to be said of old-school development tactics - that is, empowering women through education and free thought so ultimately they decide what rights to fight for. This should be a woman's movement after all, and it will succeed, even if it's in the coming generations that we bear witness to this success.

Elie Wiesel's speech

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel delivered this speech on Friday, June 5, at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He spoke with no notes.

As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave -- but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will -- in America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you, Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure. Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place, where people will stop waging war -- every war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.

But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned -- that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart.

Thoughts on Obama's speech in Cairo

Obama's speech to the "Muslim world" in Cairo this past week was nothing less than exhilarating, at least for those in the U.S. who have been waiting restlessly for more honest dialogue about main concerns that Muslim countries have with the U.S. Obviously criticisms have been raised in the media that Obama was (predictably) a bit too vague, a bit too ideological, a bit too contradictory. Perhaps, but Obama also spoke more directly about Israel-Palestine, misconceptions from both the U.S. and Muslim countries, and threat of U.S. imperialism than any other government leader.

Still, I am a bit curious about the decision to make a speech in Cairo. Does where a speech is given matter as much as what is said? It does in diplomatic circles - it presents a certain context, it sets a particular but unspoken background. And at times not so unspoken. Today, Obama spoke at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, to make a particular statement. Obama spoke in Turkey earlier this year for precisely a particular reason as well - as he said, because Turkey precariously teeters between Europe and the Middle East. And now, Egypt, which has been a center for Islamic progress for centuries.

And yet curiously enough, Obama has chosen to speak to the Muslim world in countries that are essentially in the periphery of the region the government, and I suspect the larger U.S., considers to be threatening and unstable. I bring this up because Obama not only dealt with issues concerning Islam, religion and humanity. He spoke of problems concerning political development, democracy, women's rights, and Israel-Palestine. Thus he was not speaking to the Muslim world, but to an unstable region.

To distinguish a Middle East identity - geographically or ideologically - is simplistic and exclusive. And yet, to state that Egypt and Turkey are in the periphery of this amalgmation of a region requires some sort of explanation of what this core is - for which I admit I have none (we might as well mix Afghanistan and Pakistan into the mix, further blurring geographic boundaries). But it is no secret that Turkey has actively tried to remove itself from a largely Middle Eastern identity; and Egypt is shunned by many states in the region precisely because of its close ties to the U.S. and Israel.

So what precisely has been the impact of Obama's speech in the Muslim world? What would the impact have been if he had delivered the speech in Palestine, or Pakistan, or Iraq? What are we dealing with here - states or religion? I'm afraid the solution is getting as murky as the problem.

Pearls Before Breakfast

This article is two years old but still incredible and fascinating. Thanks to Stobo for sending it. (Take time to watch the videos).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Bilo

Bilo plodded back into the living room, his hacking cough announcing his arrival. One arm was carefully wrapped around a folder of dress sketches, dating from the 1960s to 2000. Just a handful remained now of the thousands of sketches he had burned before returning to Egypt.

After landing in Cairo in 1997, Nabil Jamal, lovingly known as Bilo, went straight to a small hotel in Zamelek and never left. The hotel was owned by a good friend, and living there at no cost, Bilo had no desire to look for his own house. Without any savings, Bilo resigned himself to spending his retirement in Cairo after decades in Paris and New York. His few sketches and pictures remained the only material evidence of his past lives, for even Egypt had changed under years of post-revolution.

“It was like I had walked out of a beautiful house and came back and found it all beaten up and tattered. The streets have gone dirty. Look at the traffic. We didn’t have 1/10 of the cars we have now,” Bilo said.

The Cairo that Bilo remembered was of dressing the Queen and actresses. Nightly parties, ballets, and the English theater company were regular rituals, and at the Opera House, he would stand alongside his friends when the national anthem played to honor King Farouk’s entrance.
Bilo pulled out a carefully preserved black and white photograph, as if presenting evidence. A young group of seven smiled back in the midst of a party, and in front sat an Arab James Dean, fully aware of his good looks. The face across from me had now turned wrinkled and spotted, hoisting up thick glasses.

The hostess’s husband, Bilo told me nonchalantly, had disappeared suddenly. Ahmed Kamal had been politically active, and had spoken against Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser. He left his house in Al-Maadi one day in 1956 and never returned.

But Bilo had grown impatient with the conversation. After all, the topic at hand was the Cairo of his youth, filled with theater, parties, and…

“Finola O’Shannon!” he said the name with excitement and careful enunciation as he discovered a photograph.

He spent every night in the club with the actress while she was visiting Cairo. The last time he saw her was when he had surprised her in London after leaving Egypt in 1963. She died from cancer a few years later.

Finola was one of Bilo’s two loves. Both brief, and both lost. “The one girl I wanted to marry was so much in love with me that she said ‘I’ll marry you when your father gets your money back.’ That’s what her love was like.” His bitter tone lingered in the silence as he glanced away from me.

Bilo’s father had come to Egypt in 1923 from Palestine, where he had met Bilo’s Lebanese mother. Although living in Egypt, he had refused to sell the land in Palestine that he owned with his two brothers. When Israel was formed in 1948, the Jamal brothers lost all their properties.
It was the only time that Bilo’s father’s history intertwined with his own. Otherwise, he never questioned his father about Palestine, and his father never spoke of it.

War had shaped Bilo’s entire life: wars that were personal and never spoken of, wars that raged outside his front door, and wars that were seemingly far, but that still left damage in their wake.

During World War II, Bilo’s father closed down his travel agency since his only client was a German company. “And the Germans that came in came without a visa,” Bilo said with a laugh. “They came in with their guns and their tanks and their airplanes. They came into Alexandria, because there were a lot of Egyptians who were very Nazi and they had pictures of Hitler in their apartments. In fact, even the King was pro-Hitler.”

But it would not be long before the King himself was ousted from power. King Farouk’s downfall, the revolution and subsequent Nasserism, while changing Egypt, had changed the course of Bilo’s life as well. There was no more royalty to dress. “All the millionaires were trying to sell their stuff to live on, especially the royal family. [Nasser] was giving them pennies to live on.”

Unemployment took Bilo to London where his friends found him work, then to a chance job as a fashion designer in Paris for 17 years, and finally to New York City for 16 years until he no longer had a job or money. He returned to Cairo after having spent his savings over the years on cashmere sweaters, Parisian theater and travels with friends. And when he came back, he found Cairo worse than it had been after the revolution. There was no money left, no jobs for the youth, and no way to get out.

From the hotel in Zamelek now, Bilo hears the call to prayer five times a day. “I think they’ve come to a point where they are desperate,” he said quietly. “They think by praying, they are going to go straight upstairs. They pray and pray and pray…”

Was he not religious, having grown up in a devout Christian household and living in a country where every hour was a reminder of God? “I don’t go to church, but I have to pray every single night,” Bilo said. “I pray for the souls of my parents, and mostly for the friends that passed away, and some of them passed away pretty young.”

His remaining friends visit him at the hotel as they pass through Egypt, bringing him beer that inevitably offend the Muslim receptionist, or shirts that he refuses to wear for lack of good fashion sense. His weeks are booked with dinners with relatives of once good friends - prominent families in Zamelek, younger generations of the Sadat family and former royalty who now reside in Alexandria. But he returns, always, to his room at the hotel to watch the world affairs that once bored him. Egypt. Lebanon. Gaza.

As he stood up, he looked down at his swollen feet peeking from his black sweat pants. “This is the only thing I inherited from my father,” he said with a quiet laugh. “I refused to take insulin until 6 years ago. Now I can hardly walk. Look at me. I walk like a penguin.” He waited for no answer as he plodded down the hallway to his room.

Imprisonment and Freedom

In stead of bending and unbending in prayers for a God dwelling cozily in the seventh heaven I learned to be an insignificant meek person who for the entire world would not take a whit worth of dirty money. I learned that I am the creator and the created. I learned that the salvation is not achieved by wandering through the primrose path of sticking to the dogmas and the preordained codes. But it is in having faith in the dignity, nobility and liberty of the human beings. I learned that humans are not a bunch of weak slaves or debilitated beings, but they are commanding and free agents who can create whatever they wish. I learned that I have to learn in order to set myself free. I learned to unlearn whatever I had learned earlier in my life and found my thoughts on a firm and correct base from the scratch. I learned I had been moving on the wrong track for 20 years. I learned I could be born again in any way I'd want to.

-- Written by blogger Omidresa Mirsayafi in 2006, about the 20 days he spent in Evin Prison in Iran in 2000. He was arrested again last year and passed away March 21, 2009 while in imprisonment.

The Gitmo guard who converted to Islam

http://www.newsweek.com/id/190357/page/1

The Guard Who Found Islam

Terry Holdbrooks stood watch over prisoners at Gitmo. What he saw made him adopt their faith.

Dan Ephron

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Mar 30, 2009

Army specialist Terry Holdbrooks had been a guard at Guantánamo for about six months the night he had his life-altering conversation with detainee 590, a Moroccan also known as "the General." This was early 2004, about halfway through Holdbrooks's stint at Guantánamo with the 463rd Military Police Company. Until then, he'd spent most of his day shifts just doing his duty. He'd escort prisoners to interrogations or walk up and down the cellblock making sure they weren't passing notes. But the midnight shifts were slow. "The only thing you really had to do was mop the center floor," he says. So Holdbrooks began spending part of the night sitting cross-legged on the ground, talking to detainees through the metal mesh of their cell doors.

He developed a strong relationship with the General, whose real name is Ahmed Errachidi. Their late-night conversations led Holdbrooks to be more skeptical about the prison, he says, and made him think harder about his own life. Soon, Holdbrooks was ordering books on Arabic and Islam. During an evening talk with Errachidi in early 2004, the conversation turned to the shahada, the one-line statement of faith that marks the single requirement for converting to Islam ("There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet"). Holdbrooks pushed a pen and an index card through the mesh, and asked Errachidi to write out the shahada in English and transliterated Arabic. He then uttered the words aloud and, there on the floor of Guantánamo's Camp Delta, became a Muslim.

When historians look back on Guantánamo, the harsh treatment of detainees and the trampling of due process will likely dominate the narrative. Holdbrooks, who left the military in 2005, saw his share. In interviews over recent weeks, he and another former guard told NEWSWEEK about degrading and sometimes sadistic acts against prisoners committed by soldiers, medics and interrogators who wanted revenge for the 9/11 attacks on America. But as the fog of secrecy slowly lifts from Guantánamo, other scenes are starting to emerge as well, including surprising interactions between guards and detainees on subjects like politics, religion and even music. The exchanges reveal curiosity on both sides—sometimes even empathy. "The detainees used to have conversations with the guards who showed some common respect toward them," says Errachidi, who spent five years in Guantánamo and was released in 2007. "We talked about everything, normal things, and things [we had] in common," he wrote to NEWSWEEK in an e-mail from his home in Morocco.

Holdbrooks's level of identification with the other side was exceptional. No other guard has volunteered that he embraced Islam at the prison (though Errachidi says others expressed interest). His experience runs counter to academic studies, which show that guards and inmates at ordinary prisons tend to develop mutual hostility. But then, Holdbrooks is a contrarian by nature. He can also be conspiratorial. When his company visited the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York, Holdbrooks remembers thinking there had to be a broader explanation, and that the Bush administration must have colluded somehow in the plot.

But his misgivings about Guantánamo—including doubts that the detainees were the "worst of the worst"—were shared by other guards as early as 2002. A few such guards are coming forward for the first time. Specialist Brandon Neely, who was at Guantánamo when the first detainees arrived that year, says his enthusiasm for the mission soured quickly. "There were a couple of us guards who asked ourselves why these guys are being treated so badly and if they're actually terrorists at all," he told NEWSWEEK. Neely remembers having long conversations with detainee Ruhal Ahmed, who loved Eminem and James Bond and would often rap or sing to the other prisoners. Another former guard, Christopher Arendt, went on a speaking tour with former detainees in Europe earlier this year to talk critically about the prison.

Holdbrooks says growing up hard in Phoenix—his parents were junkies and he himself was a heavy drinker before joining the military in 2002—helps explain what he calls his "anti-everything views." He has holes the size of quarters in both earlobes, stretched-out piercings that he plugs with wooden discs. At his Phoenix apartment, bedecked with horror-film memorabilia, he rolls up both sleeves to reveal wrist-to-shoulder tattoos. He describes the ink work as a narrative of his mistakes and addictions. They include religious symbols and Nazi SS bolts, track marks and, in large letters, the words BY DEMONS BE DRIVEN. He says the line, from a heavy-metal song, reminds him to be a better person.

Holdbrooks—TJ to his friends—says he joined the military to avoid winding up like his parents. He was an impulsive young man searching for stability. On his first home leave, he got engaged to a woman he'd known for just eight days and married her three months later. With little prior exposure to religion, Holdbrooks was struck at Gitmo by the devotion detainees showed to their faith. "A lot of Americans have abandoned God, but even in this place, [the detainees] were determined to pray," he says.

Holdbrooks was also taken by the prisoners' resourcefulness. He says detainees would pluck individual threads from their jumpsuits or prayer mats and spin them into long stretches of twine, which they would use to pass notes from cell to cell. He noticed that one detainee with a bad skin rash would smear peanut butter on his windowsill until the oil separated from the paste, then would use the oil on his rash.

Errachidi's detention seemed particularly suspect to Holdbrooks. The Moroccan detainee had worked as a chef in Britain for almost 18 years and spoke fluent English. He told Holdbrooks he had traveled to Pakistan on a business venture in late September 2001 to help pay for his son's surgery. When he crossed into Afghanistan, he said, he was picked up by the Northern Alliance and sold to American troops for $5,000. At Guantánamo, Errachidi was accused of attending a Qaeda training camp. But a 2007 investigation by the London Times newspaper appears to have corroborated his story; it eventually helped lead to his release.

In prison, Errachidi was an agitator. "Because I spoke English, I was always in the face of the soldiers," he wrote NEWSWEEK in an e-mail. Errachidi said an American colonel at Guantánamo gave him his nickname, and warned him that generals "get hurt" if they don't cooperate. He said his defiance cost him 23 days of abuse, including sleep deprivation, exposure to very cold temperatures and being shackled in stress positions. "I always believed the soldiers were doing illegal stuff and I was not ready to keep quiet." (Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said in response: "Detainees have often made claims of abuse that are simply not supported by the facts.") The Moroccan spent four of his five years at Gitmo in the punishment block, where detainees were denied "comfort items" like paper and prayer beads along with access to the recreation yard and the library.

Errachidi says he does not remember details of the night Holdbrooks converted. Over the years, he says, he discussed a range of religious topics with guards: "I spoke to them about subjects like Father Christmas and Ishac and Ibrahim [Isaac and Abraham] and the sacrifice. About Jesus." Holdbrooks recalls that when he announced he wanted to embrace Islam, Errachidi warned him that converting would be a serious undertaking and, at Guantánamo, a messy affair. "He wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into." Holdbrooks later told his two roommates about the conversion, and no one else.

But other guards noticed changes in him. They heard detainees calling him Mustapha, and saw that Holdbrooks was studying Arabic openly. (At his Phoenix apartment, he displays the books he had amassed. They include a leather-bound, six-volume set of Muslim sacred texts and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam.") One night his squad leader took him to a yard behind his living quarters, where five guards were waiting to stage a kind of intervention. "They started yelling at me," he recalls, "asking if I was a traitor, if I was switching sides." At one point a squad leader pulled back his fist and the two men traded blows, Holdbrooks says.

Holdbrooks spent the rest of his time at Guantánamo mainly keeping to himself, and nobody bothered him further. Another Muslim who served there around the same time had a different experience. Capt. James Yee, a Gitmo chaplain for much of 2003, was arrested in September of that year on suspicion of aiding the enemy and other crimes—charges that were eventually dropped. Yee had become a Muslim years earlier. He says the Muslims on staff at Gitmo—mainly translators—often felt beleaguered. "There was an overall atmosphere by the command to vilify Islam." (Commander Gordon's response: "We strongly disagree with the assertions made by Chaplain Yee").

At Holdbrooks's next station, in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., he says things began to unravel. The only place to kill time within miles of the base was a Wal-Mart and two strip clubs—Big Daddy's and Big Louie's. "I've never been a fan of strip clubs, so I hung out at Wal-Mart," he says. Within months, Holdbrooks was released from the military—two years before the end of his commitment. The Army gave him an honorable discharge with no explanation, but the events at Gitmo seemed to loom over the decision. The Army said it would not comment on the matter.

Back in Phoenix, Holdbrooks returned to drinking, in part to suppress what he describes as the anger that consumed him. (Neely, the other ex-guard who spoke to NEWSWEEK, said Guantánamo had made him so depressed he spent up to $60 a day on alcohol during a monthlong leave from the detention center in 2002.) Holdbrooks divorced his wife and spiraled further. Eventually his addictions landed him in the hospital. He suffered a series of seizures, as well as a fall that resulted in a bad skull fracture and the insertion of a titanium plate in his head.

Recently, Holdbrooks has been back in touch with Errachidi, who has suffered his own ordeal since leaving the detention center. Errachidi told NEWSWEEK he had trouble adjusting to his freedom, "trying to learn how to walk without shackles and trying to sleep at night with the lights off." He signed each of the dozen e-mails he sent to NEWSWEEK with the impersonal ID that his captors had given him: Ahmed 590.

Holdbrooks, now 25, says he quit drinking three months ago and began attending regular prayers at the Tempe Islamic Center, a mosque near the University of Phoenix, where he works as an enrollment counselor. The long scar on his head is now mostly hidden under the lace of his Muslim kufi cap. When the imam at Tempe introduced Holdbrooks to the congregation and explained he'd converted at Guantánamo, a few dozen worshipers rushed over to shake his hand. "I would have thought they had the most savage soldiers serving there," says the imam, Amr Elsamny, an Egyptian. "I never thought it would be someone like TJ."