Friends for a Non-Violent World
January 13, 2011
In This Email Blast
Share Office Space with FNVW
Can the USA embrace nonviolence?
Ways of Peace II: April 9, 2011
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Looking for Office Space? Check out FNVW

Friends for a Non-Violent World is looking to share our spacious offices with a compatible community organization or non-profit.

 

          Space at 1050 Selby Ave, St Paul  55104

          $800/mo for 800 sq. feet

          Plus shared full kitchen & bathroom

          Street-level office space

          Access to a large conference room

          Sharing high-speed internet and printer/copier is negotiable

          Utilities not included; charged on prorated basis


FNVW is looking to share our office space with an organization or individual who honors our mission:

FNVW is a Quaker-inspired organization of people who affirm the dignity inherent in each human being. We share a commitment to advancing non-violence as an ethic for honoring human dignity and a strategy for achieving peace and justice. 


For more information, please call Ava at the FNVW office, 651-917-0383 or email to [email protected].

Peaceable-Kingdon



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Can a Nation of Warriors Embrace Nonviolence?
(this headline also the subject line for e-blast)
Erika Thorne, FNVW director


Everyone at FNVW is grieved and deeply disturbed about the shootings in Tucson last Saturday. Our sympathy and the strength of our prayers go out to the wounded, the dead and their families, friends and community.   

Much has been written and broadcast since the shooting concerning the escalating climate of hate and violence in the U.S.   Many have argued persuasively that the shootings are connected to that climate and specifically to right-wing rhetoric.  Others claim that it was just one deranged man.

No matter the cause of this single event, we are concerned about our nation as a whole that seems to embrace violence coming and going: from our own revolution, to military recruiters in high schools, to torture in our bursting prisons - both military and civilian.   It appears that we have become inured to violence in media, entertainment, and politics. This is in itself part of the tragedy.

However, we are a nation that also has participated in the great narrative of non-violent resistance.  We all know of the work of the Civil Rights Movement here in the U.S., and there are numerous other examples, such as the important international work of the Nonviolent Peace Force. It is these actions by courageous women and men that give us hope and the will to keep working, despite terrible tragedies such as last week's in Tucson.

Islamic Champion of Non-violence
Many of us here at FNVW are learning about Badshah Kahn, who organized a non-violent force of 100,000 for India's non-violent revolution against British rule in the 1930s, leading the Muslim counterpart of Gandhi's effort in pre-partition India. The vast
 

majority in his force were Muslims, most from the Pashtun region, characterized then and now as a region of people who had an established warrior culture. .

Badshah Kahn, a devout Muslim and a Pashtun, had a different vision for his nation.   His utter embrace of nonviolence as spiritual practice, devotional life journey, and singular pathway out of cycles of oppression and inter-tribal retribution was powerful.   Pashtuns responded.   Gandhi called it a miracle.  Badsha Khan himself wrote:  
"There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the prophet all the time he was in Mecca, and it has since been followed by all those who wanted to throw off an oppressor's yoke. But we had so far forgotten it that when Gandhiji placed it before us, we thought he was sponsoring a novel creed."

FNVW is profoundly inspired by Badshah Kahn, and invites you to join us in discovering his story and applying it here in the U.S. in 2011. We will be premiering a movie about Badsha Khan at the April 9 conference: Ways of Peace II: Non-Violence in the Islamic Traditions (link), please make plans to attend.

Can We Do It Here?
Suppose that a critical mass of U.S. residents embraced non-violence.  Can this nation of people acculturated to militarism do it?

We've seen it done before, to greater and lesser degrees, in social change movements for abolition, African-American and women's suffrage,  labor rights, civil rights, anti-war, and second-wave feminism.    

Here in the twenty-first century, will this nation steeped in violence embrace non-violence?  We can. We know we can because many of us do already.  At FNVW we're devoting all of 2011 to it. Let's deepen our own non-violent practices, learn from abundant past examples, build the movement and join with the non-violent movements burgeoning worldwide. Together, the people of this globe have the power.

Ways of Peace II: Non-Violence in the Islamic Traditions
April 9, 2011 at University of St Thomas, St Paul, MN
 
There is exciting progress confirming a terrific program for Ways of Peace II, the second in a series organized by FNVW. The series is exploring the roots, history and practice of nonviolence in various faith and secular traditions, and for this one we are teaming up with University of St. Thomas' Muslim Christian Dialogue Center (MCDC).
 
We have four top-notch presenters confirmed, with more to come:   Dr. Adil Ozdemir, co-director of MCDC; Ms. Afra Jalabi, an Arab-Canadian journalist, peace advocate, and WISE Shura Council member;
Dr. Fatma Reda, a physician and Qur'anic scholar in local Muslim communities; and Dr. Yahya Michot, professor of Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary.

We are delighted that Representative Keith Ellison will speak if his schedule allows, and we are negotiating to screen The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Kahn, A Torch for Peace, a film by Terri McCluhan.

The Ways of Peace II Conference aims to bring  local Muslims and non-Muslims together to address misperceptions, anti-Muslim sentiment and the honest questions people have, by lifting up the non-violent traditions within Islam.


For example, followers of the Islamic faiths exceed one billion people, yet Muslims have often come to be represented in the media by the violent groups with political agendas that comprise a tiny sliver of the Muslim population.  While there is much focus on religiously charged conflict and violence, there has been little attention paid to non-violent beliefs and approaches in the Islamic traditions. 


As in other mainstream religious traditions, there are also Islamic proponents and practitioners who have and are challenging the dominant orthodoxy and are advocating alternative ways of approaching human conflicts and achieving peace and reconciliation.

 

FNVW supports the civil rights of all individuals, and wishes to promote a deeper understanding of Islam's use of and contribution to non-violent theory and practice because it is crucial to resolving local and global conflicts in the 21st century. 
 
Ways of Peace is co-sponsored by the University of St. Thomas Muslim Christian Dialogue Center, its Justice and Peace Studies Department, and FNVW.
Way of Peace II
Erika Thorne, Director
Friends for a Non-Violent World
 
1050 Selby Avenue
Saint Paul, MN 55104
651-917-0383
www.fnvw.org