The Tharwa Review

GIRLS DENIED EDUCATION

Parents concerned about militia violence are pulling their daughters out of school.
By Samah Samad in Kirkuk

Thirteen-year-old Huda Ahmed’s world was turned upside down when her classmate was kidnapped two years ago.

The girl was snatched by armed men on her way to school in Kirkuk, and was only released three days later when her family paid 40,000 US dollars in ransom.

Fearing harm may come to their only daughter, Huda’s parents pulled her out of school. Often depressed, she now spends her days cleaning the house and watching television when there’s electricity.

Huda envies her classmates and two brothers, who still attend school, and says she is deeply conflicted about her parents’ decision. She calls it "an ugly crime perpetrated against me", although in the next breath, says she understands her parents’ logic.

"I’ll go back to school the first chance I get, but for the time being I will respect my parents’ decision," said Huda.

A survey released earlier this year by NGO Women for Women International found that Iraqi girls are being removed from school at an alarming rate. Three-quarters of the 1,510 women surveyed said girls in their families were being denied an education, and just over half said the trend began following the US-led invasion in 2003.

US professor shares Israeli prize with Palestinians

Barbara Ferguson

WASHINGTON—Here's a story of a man with guts... and a big heart. The recipient of one of Israel's most prestigious prizes donated his $33,333 portion of the shared award yesterday to a Palestinian university and an Israeli human rights group that tries to ease Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinian students.

US mathematician David Mumford, a professor at Brown University's Applied Mathematics Division, was co-winner of the Wolf Prize on Sunday for his groundbreaking theoretical work in algebraic geometry. Mumford announced yesterday he would donate his prize money to Bir-Zeit University in the West Bank and to Gisha, an Israeli lobby that works to help Palestinian students travel to their places of study.

He received the award at a ceremony on Sunday from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the Knesset in recognition of his groundbreaking theoretical work "on algebraic surfaces; on geometric invariant theory; and for laying the foundations of the modern algebraic theory of the moduli space of curves and theta functions."

"Mathematics in Israel flourishes today on this high international plane. Its lifeblood is the free exchange of ideas with scholars visiting, teaching, learning from each other, travelling everywhere in the world," Mumford, professor emeritus at Brown University and Harvard University, said in a statement. "But this is not so in occupied Palestine where education struggles to continue and travel is greatly limited."

Don't forget African American Muslims

Aminah Beverly McCloud

Chicago, Illinois - That there needs to be a conduit between America and the Muslim world for better communication is an understatement given the tensions between the two cultures. The American Muslim community is composed of two distinct groups – indigenous Americans and their children, and immigrants and their children.

There is a feeling among the indigenous Muslims that they have been mostly overlooked, omitted and ignored in the role of building such a bridge. On one side, immigrant Muslims and their children refuse to recognise the existence of American Muslims as representatives of American Islam, just as Americans refuse to recognise their presence as Muslims. However, as the largest single ethnic group of indigenous Muslims, African American Muslims seem the best-equipped and well-placed to bridge the widening gap between America and the Muslim world.

African American Muslims have roots in America that are centuries old, and more importantly, a history of social and political participation in the 20th and 21st centuries through their families and the general black community. They have participated and sometimes even led organisations and movements during the Civil Rights Era, such as voter registration drives, Feed the Children campaigns and inner city programmes for the poor. Some of the current elected and appointed officials across the nation come from African American Muslim families.

Though the American government has rarely considered African Americans worthy of having a say on foreign policy, when appointed, they have proven to be up to the task. The arena of African American work has largely been on the domestic scene, with normal cycles of success and failure.

Muslim youth feel the communication gap

Kaleem Hussain

Birmingham, England - There is a marked language gap between the discourse used by religious community leaders and that used by Muslim youth in western societies. This communication gap is why many Muslim youth are becoming increasingly divorced from the key tenets of the Islamic tradition – respect for teachers, elders, moral virtue, and high ethical values – and are following a path radically different from that of their parents.

Although the language of the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad is uniformly Arabic, the Qur'an teaches us that God has created human beings in various colours, speaking a variety of languages. Furthermore, Muslims are reminded how the prophets, sent to propagate the faith, conversed in the language of the communities in which they lived. It is therefore imperative to speak to people in a language they can understand.

Unfortunately in England, many of the religious leaders who have immigrated here cannot speak English, leaving British Muslim youth disenfranchised from the true message of Islam based on humanitarian ideals and respecting the laws of the land.

While these leaders converse in languages like Urdu, Punjabi, Arabic, Swahili and other continental dialects that strike a cord with certain segments of the older, first-generation immigrants, these languages may not be commonly or easily understood by the youth of the host country whose main language is English.

~Youth Views~ Western students exceed Lebanese expectations

Beirut - Despite the political and economic turmoil that Lebanon has endured for many years – which culminated in violence weeks before the recent Doha accord – I recently noticed that the number of international students around the American University of Beirut (AUB) campus has grown. One only has to attend a course on Middle Eastern studies to notice the diversity of nationalities, with students coming from the United States and throughout Europe.

In addition to their obvious interest in learning more about Middle Eastern culture through studying abroad, most foreign students have very openly embraced and adapted to life in Beirut.

I must admit that I was surprised why anyone would voluntarily choose to come and live in Beirut, especially given Lebanon's seemingly constant conflict and the fact that some of the best universities in the world exist in Europe and the United States. But when I asked students what was so attractive about Lebanon I received a recurrent and rather simplistic answer.

Kevin describes his story succinctly: "I came here in 2006 for a short visit, and I loved it. It's so vibrant. As soon as I graduated from college in the United States, I decided to return to Beirut, so I applied to AUB for my masters, got accepted, and moved here."

Most international students live close to the university in the Hamra area, and become familiar with the rhythm of the city within months of arriving. Surprisingly, they do not need help getting around and know places that we Lebanese are not even aware of.

Nathalie Nahas

The photographer from Kabul

Bonn, Germany - Photographers occasionally share the same lot as literary translators – people know their work, but not their names. Massoud Hossaini, for instance, has had his photos emblazoned across the front pages of international newspapers in Hong Kong, New York, and Germany. The 28-year-old Kabul native works in the Afghan capital as photographer for the AFP news agency.

The path he has taken has been anything but simple. Photography was forbidden under the Taliban, and college-level courses in photography were not – nor are they now – offered in Afghanistan. Only with the arrival of aid organisations after the fall of the Taliban did the situation change.

Massoud Hossaini completed a two-year training programme in photojournalism offered by the AINA Media Initiative. In 2003, much of Afghanistan lay in ruins, recalls his teacher. "We then gathered together old 35 mm cameras, even odd parts, whenever they fell into our hands. This way we were able to repair broken cameras. Some of the youngest course participants weren't even 18 yet."

His first hands-on experience with a camera was in Iran, where Massoud Hossaini and his family spent almost 20 years in exile because of war and then civil war in Afghanistan.

"At first, I would walk for hours through fields of rubble. I found children playing there and I tried to depict everything that I saw with my own colours," says Hossaini, remembering the months following his return. "Despite all the destruction, Kabul at twilight has its own special light and dust, creating a unique beauty and aesthetic," he explains.

Martin Gerner

KRG PRESS LAW PROPOSALS CAUSE CONCERN

Legislative changes ensure journalists won’t be jailed, but restrict reporting on sensitive issues.
By Wrya Hama-Tahir in Sulaimaniyah

Journalists in Kurdistan fear that proposed changes to legislation currently being drafted in parliament will prevent them from reporting on a slew of important subjects.

A Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG, parliamentary committee is drafting amendments to a controversial press law approved by KRG lawmakers last year.

Chairman of the KRG parliament’s legal committee Kareem Bahri told IWPR that while the committee has proposed changes protecting journalists from imprisonment, it is also trying to make it illegal for them to write articles that insult religious beliefs and public customs or threaten national security.

Other changes being considered by the committee include prohibiting newspapers from publishing articles on prominent figures "unless the article is in the public interest", said Bahri, adding that the legislation was still being drafted and could yet be changed.

While media rights activists welcome reforms that protect reporters and editors from prison, they remain concerned about the proposed restrictions on reporting.

"Removing the clause [from the original law] that puts journalists in prison and reducing the fines [levied on them] are really important for us," said Aland Mahwi, a reporter with Rozhnama newspaper in Sulaimaniyah.

KURDISTAN ISLAMIC PARTY INSTITUTES REFORM

Analysts say party’s efforts to become more democratic will not strengthen support for it.
By Wrya Hama-Tahir in Sulaimaniyah

The Kurdistan Islamic Union, KIU, has broken with tradition in Kurdish politics by reducing the party leader’s power and electing new members to senior posts.

The party made the changes in an attempt to modernise and attract voters frustrated with the two dominant parties in Iraqi Kurdistan –the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK.

However, analysts say the restructuring is unlikely to increase popular support for the Islamic party – which bases its ideology based on religious principles –or to shift political power in a region dominated by secular politicians.

In early May, the KIU elected 13 new members to its 35-member leadership committee and decentralised power by reassigning many of the leader’s powers to lower-level officials.

"We are asking for power to rotate in the [Kurdish] government and in other political parties, so there must also be a rotation of power within our own party," explained Abu Bakir Haladni, one of the newly-elected party leaders.

At 38, Haladni is the youngest member of the new leadership committee. He said the changes were part of the party's strategy to attract more members and to enable more people to serve in leading positions.

Iraqi Israeli, Arab Jew or Mizrahi Jew?

Vered Lee

TEL AVIV—A violin wailed in one of the auditoriums on the Tel Aviv University campus. Violinist Yair Dalal was demonstrating the creative powers of Salah and Daoud al-Kuwaiti, two brothers considered to be among Iraq's greatest musicians. With immense skill and delicacy, Dalal mastered the notes, careful not to bring the emotional audience to tears.

His appearance was part of a conference on Iraqi Jews at Tel Aviv University this month. "This is a community that immigrated to Israel in the 1950s, which then numbered 130,000 people. The time has come to study how the members of that community have integrated into Israeli society and to look at their cultural roots and their identity," says Dr. Uri Cohen of Tel Aviv University's Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel.

Scholars from a variety of fields – including sociology, history and literature – were invited to attend.

"Undoubtedly, this is the first time that academe is looking at the works of Iraqi Jews written in Arabic and Hebrew with the same kind of serious interest and depth it displays toward, for instance, something written by Amos Oz," says Prof. Sasson Somekh.

The conference sessions were well-attended by people whose Iraqi Arabic was peppered with Hebrew words and who very much enjoyed the lectures. It was obvious that most of the audience, like most of the lecturers, were themselves Iraqi Jews.

HELMAND FARMERS FIGHT TO DEFEND OPIUM CROP

Rather than watch their poppy fields being destroyed, growers take up arms alongside the Taleban.
By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand

Until recently, the Marja area of Helmand province, close to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, enjoyed relative peace. The main occupation here is farming, albeit with a specific twist –opium poppies take up almost all the arable land.

The calm ended last month when the Afghan government decided to send "eradication teams" into Marja to destroy the crop.

Local residents say the tougher new line yielded little other than angering and radicalising the farmers.

"Marja used to be a very calm district, but when the [eradication] campaign personnel came here, it turned all the farmers into Taleban fighters," said Janan, who lives in the Wansi Block area of Marja.

"They all got guns and now they’re fighting alongside the Taleban."

According to Janan, the fighters successfully held off the eradication teams, sent in by the interior ministry in Kabul and consisting mostly of Afghan National Police officers. The result was that almost none of the crop was destroyed.