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Dear Friends and Colleagues:
The CSID 11th Annual Conference was a huge success. Over 250 people and 32 speakers - experts, policymakers, and activists - from 15 countries participated in the conference. A detailed report will be sent soon, but you can now view photos of the conference here and here, and you may view video recordings of each session here. Thanks to all who attended and participated in this very successful gathering. Let us continue to work together for better relations between the U.S. and the Muslim World, and for peace, democracy, and development in our global village.
The CSID Weekly E-mail Bulletin is sent once a week to 27,500 activists, scholars, experts, politicians, and religious leaders all over the world. Please forward it to all your friends, and ask them to subscribe. It is FREE, and it will keep you and them informed of major developments in the struggle for freedom, human rights, and democracy.
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Cautious Optimism One Year After The Cairo Speech By Mohamed Elshinnawi | Voice of America
Farah Pandith Speaking at the CSID 11th Annual Conference  | Opinion polls have shown that President Barack Obama's widely-publicized speech in Cairo last June calling for improved U.S. relations with the Muslim world raised public expectations for such an outcome. But nearly one year after the speech, those public hopes could turn into disappointment - especially with regard to Middle East peace - unless the Obama Administration begins delivering on some of its Cairo promises.
That's the view of scholars at a recent symposium at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, D.C. The center's symposium was called U.S. Relations with the Muslim World: One Year after Cairo. Its goal was to evaluate the current state of that relationship, and discuss the most effective ways President Obama can fulfill his Cairo promises.
Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, noted there has been some improvement in how Muslims view the U.S. since President Obama took office. But he said there is still a lot of anger towards America, especially regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Chloe Berwind-Dart, director-general of the Nigerian development group Cherish Foundation, says the Israel-Palestine conflict represents an open wound for the Muslim majority in Nigeria. Chloe Berwind-Dart is director-general of the Nigerian development group Cherish Foundation.
"So long as that crisis continues to burn and we have not yet reached the two-state solution with self determination for everyone involved, that will continue to be a huge point of tension."
As the U.S. State Department's Special Representative to Muslim Communities, Farah Pandith has spoken with Muslims around the world. In virtually all those conversations, she told the conference, people called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict their primary concern. While she acknowledged the difficulty of reaching a two-state solution to that long-running divide, Pandith said that has been a priority for the Obama administration from the very beginning.
Read Full ArticleHear the VOA audio segment |
Obama fighting Muslim 'otherization'
By Josh Gerstein | Politico
Rashad Hussain Speaking at the CSID 11th Annual Conference  | President Barack Obama's aggressive outreach to the Muslim American community is reducing its sense of isolation, President Barack Obama's envoy to the Muslim world told a conference in Washington Wednesday evening.
"We've really started to knock down that sense of otherization," said Rashad Hussain, a White House lawyer who also serves as liaison to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Hussain defined the rather esoteric term "otherization" as a sense that many Muslims had during the Bush years that their value or danger to society was viewed solely through the prism of terrorism.
"Muslims ... sometimes feel like they don't have as much of a stake or a role in the future of the country," Hussain told the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy conference. "That's something that all of the engagement that the United States has done on these issues both internationally and domestically has helped to counter."
Congressman Keith Ellison Speaking at the CSID Keynote Luncheon  | In many ways, the most remarkable thing about Hussain's speech was the context in which it took place: a conference that featured explicitly "Islamist" political leaders from Algeria, Bahrain and Morocco, as well as a provocative Oxford scholar whom the Bush administration effectively banned from the U.S., Tariq Ramadan. Many Republicans, such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, continue to use the term "Islamist" to describe enemies of the U.S. The GOP politicians also fault Obama for failing to recognize the threat such an ideology poses to the U.S.
Giuliani's view is pretty much 180 degrees from the prevailing sentiment at Wednesday's conference. "There doesn't really seem to be much of a debate about whether engagement with Islamists should happen," professor Peter Mandeville of George Mason University declared. "There really is no other alternative. The question now is about the nature of that engagement ... rather than the question of whether this is something the United States should do."
In response to a question about the U.S. willingness to deal with Taliban members who are prepared to renounce violence, Hussain said, "The U.S. will engage those groups that are lawfully elected and are lawfully part of the political process and don't engage in violence, and that is a commitment that is demonstrated over a set period of time."
Pressed by a questioner urging U.S. action against Israel over its refusal to end settlement-building activity, Hussain didn't offer much to satisfy the pro-Palestinian audience. "The best way to address that issue is to get negotiations between the parties back on track again. ... It's not something that you will see this administration walk away from," he said.
Read Full ArticleSee Rashad Hussain Speech at CSID Back to top |
The Franklin Graham anti-Islamic Crusade
By David Waters | NEWSWEEK.WASHINGTONPOST.COM
 Has Franklin Graham decided that if he can't be the Billy Graham, he can be the next Pat Robertson? Graham's pattern of hostility toward Islam was the reason the Pentagon disinvited him from a religious event the government shouldn't even be hosting in the first place.
Graham's remarks against Islam were "not appropriate," said Col. Thomas Collins, spokesman for the U.S. Army. "We're an all-inclusive military. We honor all faiths . . . Our message to our service and civilian work force is about the need for diversity and appreciation of all faiths."
Graham, who has repeatedly called Islam an "evil and wicked religion," is president of the Christian humanitarian organization Samaritan's Purse, a name based on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story Jesus told to instruct his followers on how to "love thy neighbor as thyself."
Samaritan's Purse has shown a lot of love for its neighbors, including its Muslim neighbors. The ministry has established humanitarian relief efforts in such predominantly Muslim countries as Somalia, Sudan, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq -- drawing much praise but also some criticism for requiring people to sit through Christian prayer meetings or talks before receiving aid.
And what about Bush? During his presidency he repeatedly characterized Islam as "a religion of peace" that "brings hope and comfort to millions of people in my country, and to more than a billion people worldwide." He also repeatedly condemned attempts to demonize Islam.
"America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others," Bush said in April 2002.
Graham's disinvitation has prompted a Republican congressman from Georgia to call for a congressional investigation into possible "clerical censorship" by the Pentagon, Religion News Service is reporting.
In a letter to the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Jack Kingston cited recent incidents involving Graham as well as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "It appears the Pentagon is systematically weeding out preachers and leaders of the clergy who give messages and sermons that might ruffle feathers," Kingston said in a statement.
If by ruffle he means demonize, and if by feathers he means people of other faiths, then I suppose he has a point.
David Corn of Politics Daily saw this coming:
"Imagine if a leading American imam decried Christianity as an "evil" religion and then was invited to participate at a National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon. How would conservative pundits, shouting heads, bloggers and politicians react? There would be denunciations, calls for rescinding the invitation, demands for explanations from the Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and questions hurled at the Obama White House," Corn wrote last week. "But if a prominent Christian evangelist described Islam as an "evil" religion and subsequently received a similar invitation, would the same thing happen?"
Well, as a matter of fact, yes.
Read Full Article Back to top |
Why Islam does (not) ban images of the Prophet
By Omid Safi | newsweek.washingtonpost.com
Prof. Omid Safi  | When a pair of adolescent and anonymous Muslim bloggers ("Muslim Revolution") threatened the producers of South Park for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit in an April 2010 episode, pundits responded by saying that the "Muslim Revolution" folks were extremist idiots (true) and that they were offended because Islam bans the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad (not true).
When the Danish cartoon controversies broke out in 2005, many pundits--and some Muslims--stated that Muslims were offended because Muslims have never physically depicted the Prophet.
That is actually not the case, and marks yet another example of what is at worst an acute sense of religious amnesia, and at best a distortion of the actual history of Islamic practices: Over the last thousand years, Muslims in India, Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and Turkey did have a rich courtly tradition of depicting the various prophets, including Prophet Muhammad, in miniatures.
Prophet Muhammad ascending through the heavens, accompanied by angels.  | The most iconic images of the Prophet deal with the Prophet's journey from the Ka'ba in Mecca to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. This scene became one of the favorites of Muslim artists, who often depicted Muhammad riding what can only be described as an angel-horse (buraq). Some of the extraordinary miniatures even depict Muhammad's face. More widespread are the versions in which his face and whole visage are engulfed in a halo of light and flame. Here is an example (from the British Library) of one of the classic images of the Prophet Muhammad's Heavenly Ascension (Mi'raj).
The production of the images of the Prophet was not a Sunni/Shi'i divide. Historically, the bulk of the images were produced by Sunni artists, though today one finds them more common in Shi'i Iran and Sunni Turkey. For reasons that are hard to explain, in the Arab context there was never a rich tradition of produced pictorial representations of the Prophet. Instead, the creative energy of Muslims in that context was channeled toward a rich poetic tradition in praise of the Prophet.
In my recent biography of the Prophet, titled "Memories of Muhammad: Why The Prophet Matters," I have taken care to produce about 20 of the pietistic and sacred images produced by Muslim artists over the centuries. These are as far from the Danish cartoon images as one can get: they are works of devotion, illuminated by faith, and imbued with a deep sense of love. There are other options available to Muslims than either accepting the Danish Cartoonist caricatures of the Prophet, or responding in pure anger and hatred. One such answer is a return to the rich pietistic Islamic tradition of depicting the Prophet who was sent, according to the Qur'an, as a mercy to all the Universe.
Omid Safi is Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of "Memories of Muhammad: Why The Prophet Matters".
Read full article Back to Top
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What Does China Have to Do with Islam and Democracy?
By Haroon Moghul | The HuffingtonPost.com
Uighur crisis in China  | In the most recent The American Interest, Charles Horner and Eric Brown discuss how and why Communist China is fearful of Muslims ("Beijing's Islamic Complex"). Inside China, the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang, or Turkestan, who came onto many people's radars for the first time after last summer's riots in Urumqi, might be a threat to the People's Republic, though I cannot imagine so tiny a minority challenging so giant a state. More plausibly, the authors argue that global Muslim awareness of Uighur oppression jeopardizes China's outreach to the Islamic world. And China may need Islam to become a true superpower: "The Xinjiang episode drew somewhat less harsh comment from Washington, Tokyo and Sydney, but it engaged official and popular interest in predominantly Muslim countries in an unprecedented way."
I've previously written on how the Uighur crisis became a means by which "the next Islamists" challenge political orthodoxy in their countries of residence. In taking up this angle from a Chinese perspective, the authors provide a deep insight into how identity politics, colonialism, and modern narratives of history can collide. Unfortunately, the authors also make two mistakes. The first is forgivable, but the second is of much deeper concern.
Given that, why is it that so many authors paint the Muslim world as undemocratic, whether in theory or practice? Speaking on April 28th at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy's annual conference, author Reza Aslan noted that, for years now, huge majorities of Muslims the world over have endorsed democracy as a political ideal -- one moreover that they want right now. I cannot presume to know Horner and Brown's intentions, and I do not desire to impute what might not have been aimed for in an otherwise intriguing essay. Still, let me say this: the demographics contradict their words, and the global distribution of Muslim-majority democracies, from Southeast Asia to West Africa, proves fictional any allergy between Islam and democracy. That in the end could be the foundation of Chinese and Muslim solidarity, or it could repel Muslim populations, tired of the dictatorships in their midst, from more of the same.
Read full article Back to Top
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Mohamed Elbaradei could spark political upheaval in Egypt
By Christian Fraser | BBC News, Cairo
President Hosni Mubarak has been in power since 1981  | With presidential elections on Egypt's horizon, those opposed to the government run by President Hosni Mubarak since 1981 want change. They are pinning their hopes on the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel Peace prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.
A small band of student protesters had gathered outside the offices of the al-Ghad opposition party in downtown Cairo, intending to hold a peaceful rally at which they would call for democratic change.
But waiting for them were several lines of heavily armed riot police, among them the plain clothes thugs which the Egyptian government often uses to carry out its dirty work.
Even before the march had begun its intended journey to the nearby parliament, the police batons were unleashed.
The protesters were beaten and the journalists there to cover the event were beaten. Photographers were manhandled and cameras confiscated.
Demonstration by Kefaya women in Cairo  | "I'm determined to carry on pushing until the situation changes," said one young woman, who then removed her scarf to show me where she had been hit on the head.
Before the emergence of Mr ElBaradei, President Mubarak had spent years trying to convince popular opinion in the West that without the suffocating controls, the Islamists would inevitably win a popular vote.
This is the reason why his youngest son Gamal Mubarak is often introduced to the West as his most likely and safest successor.
Mr Elbaradei has hardly shied away from the Islamist question. He has already met senior members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters currently control 20% of Egypt's parliament.
They are the Islamists with the biggest grassroots support but they have not yet said how far they are prepared to travel with Mr Elbaradei. They support some of his principles but not necessarily his candidacy for the presidency.
And so in the run up to the 2011 presidential elections, Egyptian politics is entering a new tantalizing phase with far-reaching implications.
Read full article Back to Top
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Tunisia: U.S. Should Press Tunis on Rights
Clinton Meeting With Foreign Minister a Chance to Seek End to Abuses
by Human Rights Watch
Hillary Clinton with Tunisian Foreign Minister Kamel Morjane  | Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton should send a clear message to Tunisia's foreign minister, Kamel Morjane, when they meet on April 28, 2010, in Washington, DC, that his government should respect human rights, Human Rights Watch said today.
Morjane is in Washington this week for a series of high-level meetings with US officials, also including James L. Jones, the national security adviser, and Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor.
Tunisia shows intolerance for nearly all forms of peaceful dissent, despite repeated declarations by President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali that human rights are a central concern of his government. Since his re-election to a fifth term last October, there have been new instances of repression. Courts have sentenced two journalists to prison, and omnipresent plainclothes police block most public gatherings organized by opposition and human rights groups.
In addition to bringing criminal charges against journalists who upset the government with their reporting, the Tunisian authorities prevent human rights organizations from operating freely. Only two independent human rights organizations have legal status in Tunisia, but their activities are hampered by police harassment, including breaking up meetings, preventing members from reaching their offices, and tight surveillance.
The US has had longstanding good relations with Tunisia and gives it about $20 million in aid annually, most of it military. Washington has at the same time openly urged Tunisia to ease its repressive conduct, with President George W. Bush publicly expressing to Ben Ali during a state visit in Washington in January 2004 a wish to see a press that is "vibrant and free" and a political process that is "open."
"The Obama administration should continue the tradition of both private and public diplomacy in support of the right of Tunisian citizens to speak and associate peacefully and to access the internet and their e-mail freely," Whitson said.
Read full HRW report Back to top
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Obama and the Muslim World: Nearly a year after Cairo
By Abdallah Schleifer | Daily News Egypt
Abdallah Schleifer - CSID Board member  | More than three decades ago Jacques Ellul, the French moral philosopher
and sociologist argued that the development and impact of mass media
revolutionizes politics in a negative sense, because of the flood of
indiscriminate information and discontinuous facts overwhelming any
sense of historic context.
Nowhere is that more demonstrative
these days than in our perceptions and concerns about President Obama -
about his understanding and his intentions - towards the Muslim world
in general and the Israeli-Palestinian impasse in particular.
And
nowhere is that more immediately demonstrative than the puzzle of how
could Obama suddenly hint in his inaugural speech and his first
Presidential TV interview (with an Arab satellite news channel) and
then dramatically confirm all of that when he spoke last June in Cairo
after seemingly catering to APAIC during the elections.
Then suddenly again, seemingly out
of nowhere, for Obama's spokesmen - in particular Secretary of State
Clinton (who also spoke the unspeakable at this year's AIPAC) - to take
such high offense in the Bidon-in-Jerusalem- humiliation culminating
in the most calculated Netanyahu-in-Washington-Counter-Humiliation in which Obama played the major role.
These concerns have
inspired a major conference in Washington DC this coming Wednesday -
"U.S. Relations with the Muslim World: One year After Cairo" -organized
by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and which will
feature the White House and State Department as well as the usual D.C.
think tank and scholarly suspects.
Palestinians Look to Obama for Help  | That same pragmatism underlies the most significant
public acknowledgement by Obama at a news conference last week of what
has already been described, as "a far-reaching shift in how the US
views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict".
Obama acknowledged that shift as "a vital
national security interest of the United States." This was an allusion,
well understood finally by US media, to the incredibly important
remarks made last month by top US military commander General David
Patraeus who said that "lack of progress in ending the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict creates a hostile environment for the
United States," and he suggested (although Petraeus now says he didn't
put it quite that way) that growing hostility because of this lack of
progress endangers the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
So begins increasing if not yet confirmed
references in the American press, to an American final issues peace
plan that will be put into play - a polite phrase for a plan that will
be, however discreetly, be imposed. Perhaps it is now time (if it is to
be pragmatically imposed) for a new speech by Obama - a Tel Aviv Speech.
Read full article Back to top
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Can Obama erase 'Bush nostalgia' in the Middle East?
Obama
has reverted to Clinton-era policies in the Middle East. But Arab
reformers are nostalgic for something more like Bush's "freedom
agenda," which helped usher in a promising moment for Arab reform.
By Shadi Hamid | The Christian Science Monitor
Shadi Hamid  | U.S. policy continues to be anchored by a cynical bargain with Arab autocrats: If they faithfully support US regional objectives, the US turns a blind eye to their suppression of domestic dissent. It's business as usual.
For all its singularly destructive actions, the Bush administration might very well be the only administration to have ever challenged the fundamental premises of US policy in the Middle East.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, liberals complained that Republicans failed to grasp the root causes of terror. But in their own way they did. Republicans offered an intuitive, if overdue, interpretation: Without democracy, Arab citizens lacked peaceful means to express their grievances and were therefore more likely to resort to violence. Thus, in order to rid the region of extremism and political violence, an ambitious, transformative vision of promoting democracy became not only necessary but urgent.
For liberals long disillusioned with the narrowness of US-Mideast policy, it may be worth recalling that the "Arab spring" - when a number of Arab countries experienced democratic opportunities - was not a figment of the conservative mind. It was real.
I remember the weekend of Dec. 12, 2004, when 30 of us participated in a workshop for Arab reformers in Amman, Jordan. At the end, one of the organizers, Radwan Masmoudi, gathered the group and told us there was now an unprecedented window of opportunity to push for democracy. If we let it pass, he warned, it may not come again.
After Islamist groups registered electoral victories across the region, the Bush administration quickly reversed course and buried its "freedom agenda." The year 2005 became America's lost moment in the Middle East. But that it was lost is different from not happening at all; something remarkable had, in fact, occurred. Discussing the Bush administration's pro-democracy efforts in Egypt, leading Islamist reformer Abdel Monem Abul Futouh explained to me, "Everyone knows it ... we benefited, everyone benefited, and the Egyptian people benefited."
Obama had the misfortune of inheriting the Middle East Bush left him. More troubling, the one interesting, original idea the Bush administration left behind - that political freedom was key to the future of the region - was the one idea that Democrats seemed most uncomfortable with. It sounded too aggressive and ideological, ringing of the missionary zeal that had doomed neoconservatives.
To be sure, the Obama administration's Middle East policy is a welcome respite from the anger and acrimony that dominated Bush's final years. On Israel-Palestine, Obama appears personally committed to seeing through a resolution to the conflict. On Iran, he appears personally committed to not invading another foreign country.
A sensible Middle East policy, however, is different from a great one. What we need is not only better instincts and greater empathy - Obama is perhaps the first president to grasp the role of grievance in Arab life - but a coherent strategy and a bold vision. Obama needs to back creative policymaking that takes necessary risks.
If Obama is becoming a visionary at home, one hopes he reserves some of that strength and ingenuity to fashion a more imaginative policy in the Middle East.
Read full article Back to top
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Sleepless is Gaza...and
Jerusalem
CSID Board Member Prof. Abdallah Schleifer
is the executive producer of "Sleepless in Gaza...and Jerusalem" an
exciting English-language video diary about young Palestinian women, Muslim and
Christian, living in Gaza, occupied Arab Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
Sleepless in Gaza... and Jerusalem  | 70 films roughly 28 minutes long have been produced, non-stop, no scripts and no interventions, shot, edited, in some cases
and subtitled persons on screen break into Arabic or Hebrew.
The idea here is to show viewers the real
life of Palestinians through the daily activities of the Sleepless Girls! Schleifer says the intention of this
series is neither rant nor rhetoric. It is rather an opportunity for those who
do not live in Palestine to grasp how real people live out their daily lives,
precisely because their lives are stories that journalists are too often told
by their editors to think of almost dismissively as human interest and almost
necessarily conflict driven.
"Sleepless is Gaza...and
Jerusalem" documents how --as human beings -- Palestinians can also
experience moments of personal and community achievement, and the warmth of
friends and family that in real life is possible even in the most difficult
circumstances of siege and occupation. The siege and the occupation does
intrude in their lives: at checkpoints, as when one of the Sleepless Girls is
prevented along with other Palestinian Christians by Israeli security from reaching
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Another Sleepless Girl in a different episode is tear gassed during her
work as a news anchor and reporter for a Palestine TV channel , attempting to
reach Al Aqsa mosque in the Haram al Sharif during the recent troubles in
Jerusalem.
The series can be viewed on the Sleepless YouTube Channel
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About CSID
By supporting CSID, you help to: - Create a better future for our children so they can have more opportunities for improving their lives and realizing their dreams.
- Educate and inform Americans about Islam's true values of tolerance, peace, and good will towards mankind, including peoples of other faiths.
- Improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world by supporting popular movements rather than oppressive tyrannies and corrupt regimes.
- Replace the feelings of hopelessness, despair, and anger in many parts of the Muslim world, especially among the youth, with a more positive and hopeful outlook for the future.
- Encourage young Muslim Americans, and Muslims everywhere, to participate in the political process and to reject calls for destructive violence and extremism.
- Build a network of Muslim democrats around the globe who can share knowledge and experience about how to build and strengthen democratic institutions and traditions in the Muslim countries.
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The Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy is a non-profit think tank, based in Washington DC - dedicated to promoting a better understanding of democracy in the Muslim world, and a better understanding of Islam in America. To achieve its objectives, the Center organizes meetings, conferences, and publishes several reports and periodicals. CSID engages Muslim groups, parties, and governments - both secularist and moderate Islamist - in public debates on how to reconcile Muslims' interpretation of Islam and democracy. CSID is committed to providing democracy education to ordinary citizens, civil society, religious and political leaders in the Muslim world, and has organized meetings, workshops, and conferences in over 25 countries, including Nigeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Iran, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, etc.
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