Muslim activist puts his faith to work in Chicago's troubled Southside

By David Lepeska
Cover story in May 20, 2011 Review, The National




On a cool, grey April morning on Chicago's South Side, Rami Nashashibi walked purposefully into the conference room of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (Iman) and sat at the head of a rectangular table, where four of his charges awaited instruction.

"I can't explain how much you have on your shoulders," Nashashibi, wearing loose-fitting jeans, a knitted skullcap and a comfortable sweater, told his men. "What we have right now is a little seed, and if we want that seed to become a great forest, we've got to cultivate it."

Nashashibi has been cultivating Iman for nearly 15 years. Today the organisation provides just about everything to those in need in Chicago Lawn, a predominantly African-American neighbourhood with a mix of Latinos and Palestinians. Its free clinic serves the sick from across the city. A computer lab offers technical training. Tens of thousands of people go to its annual concert benefit, Takin' It to the Streets, while its bimonthly music and arts gatherings are well attended. One project supports healthier eating alternatives for the area; another reduces gang violence. A new initiative, Green Reentry, builds eco-friendly houses for Muslims recently released from prison.

Iman's work has earned plaudits for its leader. In 2007, Islamica magazine placed Nashashibi among the 10 Young Muslim Visionaries Shaping Islam in America. The next year he was named one of the world's 500 most influential Muslims by Georgetown University and described as "the most impressive young Muslim of my generation" by Eboo Patel, chairman of President Barack Obama's interfaith task force. Last autumn, the US state department sent Nashashibi on a diplomatic speaking tour of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this year, Iman received another honour: Imam Habib Umar, the director of Dar Al Mustafa, based in Yemen's Hadhramaut Valley, and among the world's top institutions of Islamic education, spent an afternoon in Chicago Lawn as part of his first North American tour. He visited the organisation's Transitional House, where Muslim men recently released from prison stay until they can get on their feet, and delivered a speech on spirituality and community accountability. "The most beloved of God's creatures are those who are most beneficial to others," Umar had said, thanking Iman members for "fulfilling a communal obligation upon all Muslims".

Nashashibi balances a commitment to Islam, an intellectual rigour and an unstinting morality with the style and mannerisms of the street. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he teaches, and has worked in high-security prisons and some of the city's roughest neighbourhoods. On the South Side, he is friendly with shopkeepers, businesspeople and political and religious leaders and trusted enough by school administrators to be called in to mediate student disputes.

"We must serve humanity by serving the creator in the most humble way possible," Nashashibi advises the men in the conference room. "What we do on all levels continues to represent the larger project. You're being watched now by Habib Umar. People around the city, around the country, around the world, are hearing about our work."

***

Nashashibi was born in Amman, Jordan, where his father, Ali Maher Nashashibi, produced a show for a local radio station. His mother - born as her family fled Palestine in the Nakba of May 1948 - grew up in Chicago, the eldest daughter of one of the first Palestinian families on the South Side. She met Ali Maher at university. The couple soon married and moved to Jordan.

Shortly after Nashashibi's birth, Ali Maher became a Jordanian diplomat and moved the family again, this time to Romania. The couple had a second son but divorced when Nashashibi was nine years old. He lived in Spain, Saudi Arabia and Italy with his mother and stepfather during his teenage years, until moving, at 19, to Chicago. Yet he remains connected to Jerusalem, where his family name has been highly regarded since at least 1469, when Sultan Qatbay of the Memluk sultanate appointed Naser el-Deen Mohammed al-Nashashibi to guard Palestine's two holiest mosques, Al Aqsa in Jerusalem and Al Haram Al Ibrahimi in Hebron. A general in the Memluk army, Naser al-Deen is said to have built an arcade in the Al Aqsa courtyard that still stands today.

About a century ago, Uthman and Raghib al-Nashashibi, second cousins of Rami Nashashibi's grandfather, represented Jerusalem in the Ottoman parliament. In 1920, the British governor appointed Raghib as mayor of Jerusalem - a post that threw his Palestinian nationalism into doubt. He fled to Egypt amid assassination attempts in 1938. But in December 1948, shortly after Israel had become a state, Jordan's King Abdullah named Raghib his first governor of the West Bank.

After graduating from Chicago's DePaul University in 1995, Nashashibi went to Birzeit, just outside Ramallah, to work with local youth for a year. His visit was illuminating and inspiring, but Nashashibi knew what he wanted to do and returned to Chicago.

His work on the South Side had begun two years prior, soon after he met Abdul-Malik Ryan, another DePaul undergraduate. Originally an Irish Catholic from suburban Oak Park, Ryan was studying African-American history and had recently converted to Islam. "From the very beginning Rami was very charismatic," says Ryan, now DePaul's Muslim chaplain. Nashashibi asked him to help out at the Arab-American community centre in Chicago Lawn.

They started working there, providing odd jobs for teenagers and daycare for younger children. "From there it was a step to have our own organisation, identified as Muslim," says Ryan, who co-founded Iman with Nashashibi.

Iman's reputation grew quickly. Its inaugural Takin' It to the Streets concert, held in Marquette Park in 1997, raised $15,000. "We thought we were millionaires and started nine programmes, with only one staff member," Nashashibi recalls.

"When we first started we were all young, we didn't know that much," adds Ryan. "We were kind of basing it all on enthusiasm."

Nevertheless, they began to make an impact on the neighbourhood, although, even today Chicago Lawn is no urban oasis. In early May, a 17-year-old Iman intern was shot in the back just a few streets away from the organisation's office. "We're not working in Disneyland," says Nashashibi. "This place, it'll test your mettle."

***

Metropolitan Chicago, with a population of nearly 10 million, has long been one of the US's most racially sensitive cities. In the so-called Great Migration, from the early to mid-20th century, millions of black Americans moved from the South into northern cities.

By the Sixties, organised white opposition groups viewed these new arrivals as competition for jobs and residential areas and barred them from some communities, worsening racial tensions across the city. The neighbourhoods around Marquette Park - at that time, a patchwork of Polish, Irish and Italians alongside newly arrived blacks and some Palestinians - were a tinderbox. In 1966, Martin Luther King led a peaceful march through the area as part of an effort to integrate the city's neighbourhoods. Counter-protesters threw bottles, rocks and bricks, one of which hit King on the head.

A few decades earlier, a young Chicagoan born of Russian Jewish immigrants named Saul Alinsky had begun working to improve living conditions in the city's slums and ghettos. Starting in the 1930s, Alinsky organised community movements in Back-of-the-Yards, a rough and tumble district that served as the setting for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Over the years Alinsky developed a set of rules, which ultimately became the principles of modern community organising. Today they read like an instruction manual from Otpor, the Serbian-run pro-revolutionary movement that has informed many of the Arab Spring protesters: hide your numbers to look larger; focus on what you know; remind your opponent of their own rules and claims; use ridicule, which is infuriating and hard to counterattack; remember that a good tactic should be enjoyable; identify a responsible individual, attack him and ignore attempts to shift the blame; maintain the pressure.

"In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organisations to seize power and give it to the people," Alinsky wrote in his 1971 manifesto, Rules for Radicals, "to realise the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace."

Barack Obama never met Alinsky, who died in 1972, but as a community organiser in Chicago's Altgeld Gardens he worked under an Alinsky protégé. On his first day organising, in 1986, Obama's boss handed him a long list of Gardens' residents to interview.

"Find out their self-interest, he said," Obama writes in Dreams from My Father. "That's why people become involved in organising - because they think they'll get something out of it. Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power."

A quarter of a century later, in a cramped second-floor office a few blocks from Marquette Park, Nashashibi met with the leaders of local Christian and Jewish organisations looking to generate the power of cooperative action for an issue gripping the neighbourhood: foreclosures.

According to one estimate, Chicago house prices dropped almost 30 per cent between 2006 and 2010, close to the national average. But over the same period, median home prices in Chicago Lawn plummeted by 70 per cent, from $220,000 to $63,000. The area surrounding Marquette Park has seen 8,700 foreclosures in the past three years.

Not far from Iman's offices, a one-block stretch of Washtenaw Avenue underscored how abandoned homes led to increased drug use, gang violence and neighbourhood instability. The organisation owns two previously abandoned homes here: one is its Transitional House, the other its first Green Reentry home. Work on the latter began in 2010. Ma'alem Abdullah, the tall, soft-spoken head of Iman's Green Reentry, expected his first tenant later this month and hoped to have six to eight men - all Muslims just released from prison, who must undergo a screening process - living in the house by the end of the year.

On a recent morning, two young men loitered on the pavement just up the road from the retrofit house. "See these guys down the street selling drugs?" asked Abdullah, shaking his head.

He pointed out two other abandoned homes nearby, one of which no longer had a front door. "This is an insult to the work we're trying to do, a slap in the face," Abdullah said, strolling in and finding a soiled living room carpet and scattered trash.

The trio of leaders at the foreclosures' meeting hoped to devise a plan to reclaim abandoned homes and turn them into housing for troubled local families. Their first target was an abandoned two-storey house on Fairfield Avenue. In early April, the front door and windows were boarded up. Iman hopes to legally acquire the home and put a family on the second floor, an office on the first, and perhaps house another family in the basement.

On July 28, a district court judge will decide whether to award Iman custody of the home. Meanwhile, Iman planned a demonstration event in front of the house with a diverse group of community leaders in late May. "We're testing the law," says Nashashibi. "It may be a bit of civil disobedience."

It's a familiar subject for him. In Theorising the Global Ghetto, the course he teaches at the University of Chicago, Nashashibi links urban underclasses in cities around the globe. During a recent class he told his students how, in the 1990s, rap music, hip-hop style and protests against authority became "the cultural export of the ghetto" and, ultimately, "vehicles for solidarity and emancipatory practices".

In his own life, he discovered a straight line from urban oppression to protest, to the religion of his ancestors. As he worked with inner-city communities he learnt more about the African-American narrative, which led to meetings with black nationalists and civil rights activists and finally to Islam.

"I wasn't brought up in any way a conscious Muslim. I don't think I even walked into a mosque until I was around 19," says Nashashibi. "Then I started meeting brothers who had become Muslim and who then started challenging me about where I was spiritually. The first time I opened the Quran was to debate these people, trying to disprove them ... That was my first real engagement with Islam and I think somewhere along the line I just came to a point where I had to accept a really profound spiritual shift. It was very much a conversion-type process, and like an early convert there were moments when I was hard to be around, I had that zealotry ... I was just blown away, discovering this new world."

Combining that zealotry with his years spent studying urban culture and working with ex-convicts has earned Nashashibi undeniable street cred. His interest in gang violence, urban social history and the language and motivations of hip-hop is no stylistic pose, but a major part of his life and work.

Take Rafi Peterson, who stole drugs and ran with gang members as a teen. He was convicted of first degree murder in 1985 and sent to prison. By the time of his release, in 1997, he had converted to Islam. A year later he met Nashashibi and the two began visiting Chicago area prisons to talk about religion. They noticed that many prisoners had difficulty reintegrating into society when they were released. The duo launched Project Restore in 2005, which helped write a bill that sought to divert non-violent drug offenders towards treatment and away from the downward spiral of reoffending. After much wrangling, it was passed by the Illinois legislature in April 2007. [Today Peterson also sits on the Iman board and runs CeaseFire, a highly successful anti-gang violence programme, independent from Iman.

That same year, Project Restore started welcoming tenants to its Transitional House in a renovated Chicago Lawn home. Green Reentry goes one step further, looking to help rehabilitate and reintegrate former prisoners, address the housing crisis and create sustainable urban living spaces


***

In March, after a year of widespread controversy over several major mosque proposals and more than a dozen anti-Sharia bills across the country, US congressional hearings into radicalisation among American Muslim communities began. Led by New York Representative Peter King, a Republican, the hearings are seen by many progressives and Muslim leaders as something of a witch hunt.

"Muslims now are being held up to intense scrutiny, and it's unfortunate," says Nashashibi. "More than ever, we've got to be proactive. It's gonna get ugly, with the King hearings, the 10th anniversary of September 11, and the 2012 election coming up. We have to continue to demonstrate how we are working for good, working for change and creating facts on the ground that speak louder than any attack."

A December study from the World Organization for Resource Development and Education, a Washington-based think-tank, found that building a strong national network of moderate Muslim leaders could help counter radicalisation. Further, the report argues that strong Muslim leaders who work to discourage violence and promote pluralism offer a positive alternative for Muslim youth, one the government would be wise to promote.

This might explain the increased interest in Iman from the highest office in the land. In April, Nashashibi and an Iman team met with officials from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to discuss a possible collaboration.

Nashashibi is always on the lookout for bridge-building opportunities, in part because Iman measures its effectiveness through the community connections it helps foster. When news of the killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces broke, for example, many US residents celebrated openly. Yet in a Twitter post the next day, Nashashibi cited an opinion piece written by a rabbi, who referred to Moses leading his people in celebrating the death of the pharaoh and his army. "The rabbi recalled God scolding the angels after they too began to dance and sing. "'We must not rejoice at their deaths!'"

***

"Rami is like a synergy," says Rabbi Capers Funnye, who runs a synagogue a short distance from Iman, and who has known Nashashibi for seven years. "He really is able to bring people together from diverse backgrounds, diverse needs, and show people how their needs relate to others and relate to the work of others."

This might sound like the recipe for a successful politician. Indeed, the parallels between Nashashibi and the US president are striking: Obama's father and grandfather were tribal chieftains, while Nashashibi comes from a long line of prominent Palestinians; their parents divorced at an early age; both moved around a lot and struggled with identity before working as community organisers on Chicago's South Side in their twenties and teaching civil rights-related courses at the University of Chicago in their thirties.

"There's a lot of familiar territory," says Nashashibi. Though he has supported a few city council candidates in the neighbourhood, he doesn't see himself running for office. "People have brought it up, but I don't think so."

Nashashibi prefers to do more of what he's doing now. Iman recently bought a 15,000-square-foot space across the road from its headquarters, and hopes to turn it into a clinic, arts centre, garden and classrooms. After organising events in New York and Washington, Iman also plans to establish a network of affiliates.

"Iman has kind of chartered a new model, a new course for Muslims working in urban America, addressing critical needs in the community," says Amir al-Islam, a history professor at Abu Dhabi's Zayed University and chairman of Iman's board of directors. "Young people are most vulnerable to the ideas of radicalisation, most prone to being recruited. We think we have something that young people can engage in and capture their imagination, get involved in civic engagement - and it's a way to manifest their faith that serves humanity."

International engagement may be next. Nashashibi has twice visited Abu Dhabi to meet with officials from the Tabah Foundation, which advises the government on Islam-inflected civil society projects, to discuss the possiblity of an Iman affiliate in the UAE. He has also met officials from Msheireb Properties (formerly named Dohaland), which is overseeing the construction of a new downtown for Doha, and the Doha International Centre for Inter-faith Dialogue.

Nashashibi argues in his University of Chicago course that the denizens of today's densely populated, low-income areas of Chicago, Chongqing, Cairo, Mumbai, Nairobi and Rio de Janeiro are linked by common concerns and shared responses. And their numbers are growing. A recent report from McKinsey estimated that the world's urban population is increasing by more than one million people every week - and the majority of that expansion occurs in slums and ghettos.

Saskia Sassen, the Robert S Lynd professor of sociology at Columbia University in New York, says the DNA of cities is not conflict, but commerce and civics. Two decades ago she popularised the term "global city," to refer to metropolitan areas creating and responding to the trends of globalisation. Now, she sees the rise of "a global network of all kinds of weak actors, but very interdependent nowadays, that can actually raise hell, if you want, and contest what is happening".

Sassen, who has sat on conference panels with Nashashibi and is familiar with his ideas, thinks he is ideally placed to take a lead role in this network. "Powerlessness can become complex," she writes in an e-mail. "Rami's capturing of ... a strategic encounter in what is a devalued space for the larger society, the ghetto ... is for me akin at some deep structural level to Tahrir Square and Benghazi."


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http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/muslim-activist-puts-his-faith-to-work-in-troubled-chicago

Fighting the Syrian Regime from a Chicago Office

By David Lepeska
nytimes.com

Yaser Tabbara may live half a world away from Syria, where he grew up. But as the uprising there continues, the Chicago lawyer has mounted a one-man legal and diplomatic assault against the Syrian regime to highlight the brutality of its response and help depose President Bashar al-Assad.

In recent weeks, Mr. Tabbara, 35, attended opposition conferences in Turkey and Belgium, and spoke at policy forums in Qatar and Washington. He also built a case for the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to charge the Syrian government with crimes against humanity, and he helped draft a letter to the United Nations Security Council calling for urgent action — all while communicating with protesters inside Syria and occasionally representing his law firm’s clients in Chicago courts.

Few people would seem better qualified to lend external support to the uprising. A human rights lawyer born in Chicago and raised in Damascus, Mr. Tabbara has a long history of activism and is practiced in Western justice as well as in the ways of international courts and Syrian politics.

Since mid-March, Mr. Assad has turned his security and military forces loose on the protesters; activists say some 1,400 Syrians have been killed. Watching from afar, Mr. Tabbara said he had been motivated by “a very objective sense of outrage and a sense of responsibility that this country cannot be led by this Mafia-esque gang.”

Such views represent a shift for a man who last year worked with an international organization to improve Syria’s judicial and legal systems. Just months ago, he had been scheduled to meet with Asma al-Assad, the president’s wife, to discuss the creation of a Syrian version of Teach for America, which trains prospective teachers who commit to spending two years in classrooms in cities and rural communities.

That meeting was canceled after the protests began, and Mr. Tabbara said he had changed his mind about trying to reform the system after he saw Syrian security forces shoot peaceful protesters and listened to the “insulting, conspiracy-minded” speeches of Mr. Assad.

“I’ve always been a firm believer that democracy doesn’t happen overnight,” Mr. Tabbara said. But the uprising in Syria, coming on the heels of the more peaceful regime-toppling revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, has convinced him that the process can be expedited.

“A lot of these gradual reforms, which had never been fulfilled, now have a chance,” he said.

Ammar Bayrakdar, a Syrian physician who moved to the United States in 1990 and has been active in the sizable Chicago-area Syrian community, approves of the shift.

“Now he’s trying to organize the opposition effort, and we support him,” Dr. Bayrakdar said. “He’s very knowledgeable and eloquent, and a sincere individual.”

Local Syrian groups have organized forums, protests and rallies, and have backed e-mail campaigns to the White House, the Syrian ambassador and representatives in Congress.

Such activism is old hat for Mr. Tabbara, who moved back to the United States to attend college in the mid-’90s. After earning his law degree from DePaul University, he provided legal representation to Chicago-area Muslim and Arab communities after 9/11. He also spent a year teaching international human rights law at the University of Kalamoon in Damascus and working with local organizations to improve education in Syria.

Back in Chicago, in 2008, Mr. Tabbara was a founder of Zarzour, Khalil & Tabbara, a law firm started with fellow DePaul alumni that mainly assists nonprofit organizations and immigrants with legal issues. Last year he rolled out Project Mobilize, an organization that supports Muslim political candidates in the Chicago area.

Since the antigovernment protest began in Syria on March 15, the movement has spread across the country and has faced increasingly bloody suppression. Mr. Tabbara said he had been in regular contact with the leaders of groups organizing protests, as well as with friends, family and former students. Some among the latter three groups have been wary about supporting the movement, in part because many middle-class families have long relied on the regime for their welfare.

But that may be changing. “These groups will join the movement in large numbers soon,” Mr. Tabbara predicted. “I know people that belong to that class who have been working very hard trying to mobilize people.”

Some analysts believe that with dwindling financial resources and increasing international pressure, the Assad regime may be teetering.

At a news conference on Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “It is absolutely clear that the Syrian government is running out of time.”

Mr. Tabbara said he is confident the rebels will succeed. “These are not people willing to back down,” he said. “They will not accept anything but a complete regime change.”

He added that he is unsure of the impact he and others have had on the movement for change in Syria but that the effort is nonetheless worthwhile.

“I’d like to think we are raising awareness, spreading correct information about the revolution, informing governments and officials about what’s taking place on the ground,” Mr. Tabbara said. “It definitely counters the diplomatic activism the regime has been engaged in.”


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ran in July 3, 2011 NY Times, in partnership with the Chicago News Cooperative.

Locust Souffle, Anyone? It's a Start

by David Lepeska
nytimes.com

Grasshopper fajitas, mealworm fried rice, Bee-LT’s and similar delicacies will be on the menu for a public tasting buffet in October at the University of Chicago. The insect-dominated bill of fare is the idea of Matthew Krisiloff, a sophomore from California who last year founded Entom Foods, a start-up that seeks to make bugs a staple of the American diet.

“I really want to establish a dialogue about insects as a serious food possibility,” said Mr. Krisiloff, 19, who runs the company with four classmates. “We want to show that these are very acceptable flavors and tastes.”

The idea, Mr. Krisiloff said, came to him last fall in a course on contemporary global issues when he learned that by 2050 the world’s population is expected to reach nine billion, doubling the demand for meat.

“I remembered reading an obscure fact when I was younger that insects are extremely resource-efficient, and that they are eaten by many populations all over the world,” he said.

Some 80 percent of humanity eats insects, and raising them would cost the environment a fraction of what it does to raise pigs or cattle. Ten grams of feed produces one gram of beef or three pounds of pork, but it can yield nine grams of edible insect meat, according to Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who has been studying entomophagy, or insect consumption, since the mid-90’s.

Ten times less methane and 300 times less nitrous oxide are emitted in the breeding of many edible insects compared with livestock, Mr. van Huis said. Nutritionally, most insect meat has about the same amount of protein, iron and vitamins as beef, but less fat.

Insects can be legally raised for human consumption because the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act categorizes insects as food, if that is their intended use.

“I’m seeing a lot of people getting onto this bandwagon of eating bugs, as the environmental aspect has given it another boost,” said David George Gordon, author of “The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook,” who has advocated edible insects for 15 years.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has begun promoting edible insects around the globe and categorizes 1,700 species of them. A company near Amsterdam sells pesto-flavored bug nuggets in Dutch grocery stores, and grasshoppers and other insects, usually ground, appear in appetizers and specialty cocktails in a handful of American restaurants.

For now, Entom Foods is looking to develop insect-based animal feeds, particularly for aquaponics. But Mr. Krisiloff’s primary goal remains getting processed insect meat cutlets, or a similar product, into American grocery stores.

Mr. Gordon said: “I think there would be a small segment of the American public that would be interested in such a product, largely because of the environmental benefits. If Entom can build a case for why it’s good for you, they could find some success.”


--- ran in the Aug 21, 2011, NY Times, in partnership with the Chicago News Cooperative

Negative Image Aside, Asian Carp Are a Boon

By David Lepeska
nytimes.com

When federal and state environmental regulators spent a few days at Lake Calumet in Chicago earlier this month fishing for Asian carp with stun guns and half-mile-wide nets, their hunt seemed to underscore the carp’s status as the Midwest’s ecological enemy No. 1.

The subject of endless debate over the best control strategies, Asian carp, an invasive species, have earned a place of dread in local lore. None, however, were found in the Lake Calumet search, and some scientists say the ecological concerns may be overblown.

For many people, Asian carp are proving more boon than bane. Bolstered by government support, the Asian carp harvest has leapt thirtyfold in the past decade, creating a new industry, attracting fishermen and entrepreneurs, and feeding people all over the world.

“We’ve been ramping up for years,” said Mike Schafer, owner of Schafer Fisheries.

In 2010, the company sold some 20 million pounds of Asian carp to clients as far-flung as Turkey and Indonesia, up from two million pounds in 2006. “We’re out in front,” Mr. Schafer said, “and it’s going to get bigger.”

In the last year, Illinois has handed out nearly $6 million to increase the catch of Asian carp in the Illinois River, including a $2 million grant to the Big River Fish Corporation, of downstate Pearl, to expand operations and ship up to 50 million pounds a year to China.

A separate $3 million state program aims to further increase the harvest of bighead and silver carp, the two Asian carp species that have infested the Mississippi, Illinois and Ohio Rivers and are nearing the Great Lakes. Both species reproduce quickly, gorge on plankton, a key food for native American fishes, and grow up to 100 pounds.

Kirby Marsden, former president of the Illinois Commercial Fishermen’s Association and a part-time consultant for Big River Fish, estimates that the carp harvest, less than half a million pounds in 2000, could grow to an annual catch of 100 million pounds that creates up to 200 new jobs in the next few years.

“It’s a chance to get rid of this invasive fish, boost the local economy and increase employment in this area,” Mr. Marsden said.

Imported in the 1970’s by fish farmers and government agencies to keep Southern fish ponds clean, bighead and silver carp escaped their enclosures during flooding and migrated to the Mississippi River, then on to the Illinois and Ohio River basins.

Though they now represent 8 out of every 10 fish in some stretches of the Illinois River, said Greg Sass, director of the Illinois River Biological Survey at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, scientific research has yet to establish a direct connection between the Asian carp proliferation and the decline of any native species.

While scientists debate whether Asian carp could spawn in the Great Lakes and imperil the lakes’ $7 billion fishing industries, environmental groups and politicians from six states have called for re-separating Chicago area waterways from the Mississippi River.

The Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, a task force of more than 20 state, federal and regional officials, is exploring a less drastic measure: increasing the harvest on the Illinois River in sufficient quantities to slow the carp’s advance toward Lake Michigan.

“It’s no panacea,” said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “But in the short run it makes sense. Getting those fish out of the water reduces that northward pressure on Lake Michigan and buys us some time to come up with a permanent solution.”

Jim Garvey, director of the Fisheries and Illinois Aquaculture Center at Southern Illinois University, runs the $3 million state program to increase the carp harvest and develop commercial markets. He says Asian carp, though a hard sell for human appetites in the United States, are among the most widely consumed fish in the world, with China the biggest market.

“It would be silly for our country to have us spend taxpayer dollars to eradicate these things and throw them in a landfill,” Mr. Garvey said. “We might as well make some money out of them.”

Orion Briney, a third-generation Illinois River fisherman, agrees. While Mr. Briney hauls in up to 20,000 pounds of Asian carp six days a week, the fish industry has shrunk from a few decades ago, when hundreds of commercial fishermen fished the Illinois. Today, maybe a couple dozen fishermen work full-time.

Mr. Garvey and his team are hoping to double that number with a pilot program set to begin next month. After as many as 25 fishermen are trained to properly catch and handle Asian carp, the state will pay cash awards to those who haul in a certain amount.

A few hundred yards from the Mississippi River, in Thomson, Ill., Schafer Fisheries had dealt solely in catfish for most of its 55 years. Now, Asian carp represent 80 percent of the company’s business, Mr. Schafer said.

Schafer ships frozen, filleted, and minced carp mostly to international markets and Asian communities in the United States. It also offers Asian carp jerky, hot dogs and bouillabaisse, and converts waste material into liquid organic fertilizer.

One of Mr. Schafer’s main competitors, Stoller Fisheries of Spirit Lake, Iowa, ships about two million pounds of Asian carp each year. The owner, Larry Stoller, says he hopes to increase that number by half next year.

Inland Processing, a start-up in Grafton, Ill., is pitching the state and investors on plans for a plant to process up to 15 million pounds of Asian carp a year.

Big River Fish, meanwhile, is using its state grant to build an 80,000-square-foot plant to open this fall and increase its processing capacity to 2.5 million pounds a month by 2013 from the current 180,000 pounds a month.

Competitors have questioned the state award to Big River Fish because the company’s director of international marketing, Ross Harano, was state director of trade from 2003 to 2005. A state official said Mr. Harano’s background with the state did not influence the grant decision.

Select Logistics Network of Clinton, Ill., recently won its own state contract: $1 million to remove about three million pounds of Asian carp from the Illinois River and process it into fish meal. Heartland Processing, a start-up in Havana, Ill., is looking to turn carp waste into Omega 3-rich fish oil.

Demand and processing capacity are growing so fast that the Asian carp industry may be working toward its own demise. A state-backed study, to be published at year’s end, should reveal whether the increased harvest is reducing carp numbers.

“We want to crash the population,” said Kevin Irons, aquaculture and aquatic nuisance manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “We’re not trying to find a sustainable yield.”



--- ran in the Aug 12, 2011, NY Times, in partnership with the Chicago News Cooperative.

Return of Islamic College Raises Questions

By David Lepeska
nytimes.com

The American Islamic College, closed since 2004 when the state revoked its operating authority, is expected early next month to win approval to reopen.

Supporters see the opening of the Chicago college, founded in 1981 in the Lakeview neighborhood, as an important step for Islamic instruction in the United States. But its detractors point to the college’s ties to a secretive and far-reaching international movement that has been accused of Islamism in some countries and of an overuse of non-immigrant work visas to hire foreign teachers in its schools in the United States.

The movement, led by Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish religious leader living in self-imposed exile in rural Pennsylvania, supports scores of charter schools that have gained a reputation for academic achievement and a commitment to spreading Turkish language and culture.

Yet the Gulen schools have caused widespread concern about possible manipulation of immigration laws and misallocation of taxpayer dollars. Mr. Gulen, an extremely wealthy and well-connected Turkish spiritual and political leader, fled Turkey amid charges of plotting to overthrow the secular government. He was acquitted of all charges in 2006.

The college would become the second Islamic educational institution in the country to offer college-level credit. For Muslims in the area, it would be a rejoinder to those who depict followers of Islam as prone to extremism.

“It looks like a resurrection of the college, which is great,” said Zaher Sahloul, head of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago. “It’s very important to have an institution of higher learning run by the Muslim community.”

Top officials at American Islamic College have been linked to Mr. Gulen’s movement. In a cable obtained by Wikileaks, the United States’ former ambassador to Turkey characterized the Gulen movement as a potentially destabilizing influence in Turkey that more secular Turks see as an effort to bring about an Islamic state.

The Gulen movement, called Hizmet (a Turkish word meaning “service”), promotes public service and education and oversees research institutes, universities, media outlets and one of Turkey’s largest banks. The movement seeks to spread Gulen’s influence internationally through an informal network of 1,000 schools in 130 countries.

Hizmet operates more than 120 publicly financed charter schools in 25 states, in addition to a handful of private schools, like the Science Academy of Chicago, run by Niagara Educational Services, a Mount Prospect firm associated with the Gulen movement. Like many of the movement’s American schools, the Science Academy focuses on math and science.

Administrators of the schools often deny any official connection to the movement, which has no formal organization or official membership but operates through a network of followers, according to Hakan Yavuz, a political science professor at the University of Utah and co-editor of a 2003 book on the organization.

“It’s safe to assume that A.I.C. will be influenced by the Gulen movement,” mainly through the selection of the college’s instructors and administrative staff, Mr. Yavuz said.

“It makes sense for them to hire people from the Gulen community,” he said, “as they have much more knowledge and experience in the American education system.”

According to recent news reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Departments of Labor and Education are investigating accusations that as many as 100 of the movement’s American schools have used taxpayer money to pay for the immigration of teachers’ families from Turkey and provide other financial support for the Gulen movement.

Federal officials declined to comment.

Ali Yurtsever, head of the executive committee setting up the American Islamic College, denied any connection with Gulen. The school will have to generate its own income, unlike Gulen schools in the United States that are supported by the movement, he said.

Mr. Yurtsever has long been a follower of Mr. Gulen and serves as administrator of Niagara Educational Services. He previously was president of the Gulen-backed Rumi Forum, a Washington research institute whose honorary president is Mr. Gulen.

Attempts to contact Mr. Gulen through his Web site and through Mr. Yurtsever were unsuccessful.

School officials say the college will present what Mr. Gulen has long stood for: a more moderate form of Islam than the extremist version that has often dominated public debate in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. The school plans to offer more than a dozen courses in the fall and hopes to attract up to 400 local and international students in the next few years.

The college was established 30 years ago by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a Saudi Arabia-based association of more than 50 predominantly Muslim countries. In 2004, the Illinois Board of Higher Education revoked its operating authority, citing a failure to comply with state regulations.

Now, after spending $500,000 from the Islamic Conference to renovate its library, dorms, mosque, and 1,000-seat auditorium, the college is reopening under new management. It is led by Mr. Yurtsever, a mathematician with a Ph.D. from Ege University in Turkey who taught at Georgetown University.

College officials expect to receive authority to offer for-credit courses from the Illinois Board of Higher Education on June 7. The college has applied for full accreditation, which would allow it to confer four-year degrees.

Mr. Gulen, 70, has lived in the United States since 1999, when he left Turkey. In a widely circulated video from that time, he advised his followers to “move within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers.”

In the United States, Gulen schools often import Turkish teachers using H-1B visas, which allow American employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty jobs.

The federal government places a strict limit on the number of H1-B visas it issues, and corporations often complain the cap restrains their ability to transfer highly qualified workers from foreign countries. Yet Gulen-backed schools received 839 H-1B visas in 2010, a 65 percent increase from 2007, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Teachers unions and education reform groups in several states have spoken out against the spike in foreign-born teachers at Gulen schools. “There is no reason to bring teachers in from other countries under the guise of lack of staffing,” said Jenni White, president of Restore Oklahoma Public Education.

Mr. Yavuz, the political scientist, said he did not see the movement as a danger, “but I don’t see it as productive. “

“I think their main goal is to improve the image of Islam in the U.S.,” he said, “but even there, I don’t know if they can be successful.”




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originally ran in May 29, 2011 NY Times, with Chicago News Coop

Farrakhan Using Libya Crisis to Bolster his Nation of Islam

by David Lepeska
nytimes.com

Chicago, IL: When Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam, staunchly defended Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi recently, he seized headlines for an organization that has made little news in recent years.

In an often-fiery speech on March 31 at Mosque Maryam, the group’s South Side headquarters, Mr. Farrakhan recalled the decades of friendship and millions of dollars Colonel Qaddafi had lent the Nation of Islam over the years.

“What kind of brother would I be if a man has been that way to me, and to us, and when he’s in trouble I refuse to raise my voice in his defense?” Mr. Farrakhan said to cheers and applause from hundreds of the faithful gathered at the mosque.

Mr. Farrakhan, 77, sounded sincere in his efforts to come to the aid of the embattled Libyan leader. But amid a significant drop in Nation of Islam membership, waning popular interest in the movement he leads and growing concerns over succession, Mr. Farrakhan may also be using the conflict in Libya as an effort to return to relevance.

Nation of Islam membership has fallen by as much as half from its estimated peak of 100,000 in 1995, when Mr. Farrakhan rallied nearly a million men, most of them black, to the Million Man March in Washington, according to Lawrence H. Mamiya, professor of religion and Africana studies at Vassar College. (The Nation of Islam does not give out membership numbers.)

Over the past decade, Mr. Farrakhan’s calls for slavery reparations and his denunciations of the Iraq war and President George W. Bush have gained little attention. In the post-Sept. 11 world, the American news media have focused instead on other Muslim groups led by immigrants to the United States. And in January 2007, Mr. Farrakhan had abdominal surgery to correct damage caused by treatment for prostate cancer, which raised concerns over his succession. He appears to have recovered.

The Nation of Islam in recent years seems to have lost appeal even among black Americans with an interest in Islam. Most who already embrace Islam are likely to join traditional sects led by Arab and South Asian immigrants. Some 35 percent of the American Muslim population of six million to seven million are black Americans, according to a Gallup poll from 2010.

To a core group of supporters, though, Mr. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam still resonate.

“He does not need to get back into the spotlight,” said Edward E. Curtis IV, professor of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and author of “Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam.” “He has never left it in black America.”

Nation of Islam officials did not respond to phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

The Nation of Islam, which was founded in Detroit in 1930 by W. D. Fard, is both a black separatist movement and a unique religion. Its theology spurns traditional Islam, and its organizational goals — compiled by Elijah Muhammad, its leader from the mid-’30s — include freedom, equality and a separate nation for blacks.

That message struck a chord during the civil rights era, and celebrity converts like Malcolm X, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali further raised the group’s profile.

Chief among its beliefs is that Mr. Fard was an incarnation of God and that Elijah Muhammad was his prophet. The foundation of the Muslim faith is the incantation, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger.”

“The theology of the Nation contradicts the basic tenets of Islam,” said Ihsan Bagby, a professor of Islam at the University of Kentucky.

The Nation of Islam under Mr. Farrakhan has other practices that set it apart. It does not follow sharia law, the sacred rules of Islam based on the Koran and the Sunnah, or sayings of the Prophet. Further, it teaches that black scientists created the universe and the Koran, that Earth is over 76 trillion years old and that a great U.F.O. called the Mother Plane will come to destroy the United States.

Those teachings continue to put the group outside mainstream Islam, said Zaher Sahloul, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago.

Mr. Farrakhan’s re-emergence since the fighting erupted in Libya is a reminder that in the public domain he is seen as a nationalist leader as much as a religious one, Professor Mamiya said.

“Farrakhan has a different claim on the black community,” Mr. Mamiya said. “He’s never been beholden to the broader Muslim community.”

Mr. Farrakhan’s goal has long been “black liberation,” a choice of words that mirrors Colonel Qadaffi’s pan-African vision. The Nation has been aligned with the colonel for decades, since it received a $3 million loan from him in 1972 to remake a Greek Orthodox church on the South Side into Mosque Maryam, the group’s current headquarters.

The rebellion against Colonel Qaddafi has given Mr. Farrakhan a chance to bring his own agenda back into public debate. During the speech in which he defended the colonel, Mr. Farrakhan also expressed his hope for “a state or territory of our own.”

The speech was a reminder of Mr. Farrakhan’s continued appeal. At the group’s annual conference in 2009, the rapper Snoop Dogg praised Mr. Farrakhan’s speeches and all but converted. “People are still attracted to the charisma,” Mr. Mamiya said.

The question facing the group now is whether Mr. Farrakhan has laid adequate plans for succession. He has mandated that official control of the organization will shift to the Council of Leaders after he departs or dies, but there is no single leader who seems capable of matching the charismatic leadership of Mr. Farrakhan and his predecessors.

Ishmael Muhammad, a council member and son of Elijah Muhammad, is sometimes considered the most likely successor.

“The Nation has always been attracted to charismatic figures,” Mr. Mamiya said. “Whether it’s going to hold or another leader will emerge from the council is a big question.”

That question has become a matter of interest to the federal government. In December 2009, the Justice Department revealed that the Department of Homeland Security monitored the Nation of Islam in 2007, and that its Office of Intelligence and Analysis had prepared a document, “Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risk.”

Charles E. Allen, who was then the under secretary for intelligence and analysis at the department, later softened this view. “The organization — despite its highly volatile and extreme rhetoric — has neither advocated violence nor engaged in violence,” Mr. Allen wrote in 2008. “Moreover, we have no indications that it will change goals and priorities, even if there is a near-term change in the Nation’s leadership.”

Professor Curtis said he believed that in the long term the Nation of Islam would become more about black empowerment and less about Islam.

“Even if parts of its unique theology are abandoned,” he said, “its emphasis on self-help, black pride, economic independence and political self-determination are likely to be incorporated in whatever denominational forms emerge from the Nation of Islam movement.”

Most congregants declined to comment as they left Mosque Maryam on Stony Island Avenue after a recent meeting. But Maurice Mohammad, a longtime member, responded when asked what he thought of the defense of Colonel Qaddafi. “I agree with what our leader says,” he said.

Then a Nation of Islam representative approached, and escorted him away.


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originally ran in the NY Times, 10 April, 2011

Muslim Cultural Center Appears Near Approval

By David Lepeska, for New York Times, 3/18/2011

A long battle over a proposed mosque in DuPage County is approaching a turning point, and although anti-Muslim sentiment and resistance to mosques in the Chicago area are hardly going away, Muslims appear to be winning this time.

The Muslim Educational and Cultural Center of America, or Mecca, wants to construct a 47,000-square-foot building in Willowbrook, one that includes a school, a recreational center and a 600-person prayer hall. The plan has been scaled back since a county committee rejected an earlier proposal in January, and the smaller building is considered likely to be approved by the DuPage County Board, which has the final say.

The Mecca proposal is one of four mosque-related plans to come before the DuPage Board in recent years as the Chicago-area Muslim community has grown significantly. The rhetoric that has followed has highlighted tensions about development of the rural and suburban county and has exposed anti-Muslim sentiment.

More than 400,000 Muslims live in the Chicago area, the majority of them in the suburbs. Zaher Sahloul, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, an advocacy group, said many Muslims had to drive 40 minutes or more to attend Friday prayers at one of 120 mosques in the area. “There is a real need to accommodate this growing community,” he said.

In DuPage County, the battle over the proposals underscores a broader demographic shift. The DuPage Federation on Human Services Reform, a collaboration between government and community groups, said the number of foreign-born residents in the county had increased to 171,000 in 2009, from 71,000 in 1990. Foreign-born residents now make up more than 17 percent of the population of nearly a million in an area long dominated by Caucasian, mostly rural residents.

Accommodation has been hard to come by. In the past year, the DuPage Zoning Board of Appeals has taken advisory votes against the Mecca proposal and another from the Islamic Center of Western Suburbs. The DuPage County Board has rejected a mosque plan from the Irshad Learning Center.

The tensions in DuPage reflect wide-ranging antagonism toward Muslim-Americans. Last year, local residents battled mosque proposals in Tennessee, Wisconsin, California and other states. There was a contentious nationwide debate over a proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

Rhetoric intensified last week at a congressional hearing, led by Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, into the radicalization of some American Muslims. Mr. King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has put forward unsubstantiated claims that more than 80 percent of American mosques are run by radical clerics.

“Negative views of Muslims have been increasing in the last 10 years, and the King hearings will likely add to that,” said Mr. Sahloul. “But putting a lot of limitations on where mosques can be built is against our values as Americans.”

In the Chicago area, residents in south suburban Bridgeview voiced opposition over the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation’s expansion of its mosque, partly because of concerns about the presence of radicals within the mosque leadership. Last year, the City of Chicago rejected a plan to build a mosque on the site of a vacant hot dog restaurant in Rogers Park.

The DuPage mosque proposals can be seen as litmus tests — with uncertain results so far. Although the Irshad Learning Center was rejected last year, Mecca appears to be headed for approval of its plan to build on a five-acre wooded plot near 91st Street and Highway 83 in unincorporated Willowbrook. Mecca leaders have cut the size of their plan several times, added underground containment tanks to address flooding concerns and expanded parking space.

“It’s clear that Mecca has gone above and beyond what’s been requested by the board and by their neighbors,” said Amy Lawless Ayala, lead organizer of DuPage United, an umbrella group of local churches, mosques and community associations that backs the proposal.

Mark Daniel, the lawyer for Mecca, said he was optimistic the board would approve the proposal. “At this point there is no legal basis for denial,” he said.

Some Muslims see a proposed DuPage ban on new places of assembly in unincorporated residential areas as a further anti-Muslim act. But one board member, Grant Eckhoff, described it as an attempt to preserve the county’s rural character.

People who live near the Mecca site say they would oppose the plan even if an Ikea store were being proposed. “No one on this block has expressed any worries about religion that I know of,” said William Gerow, 64. “This is a rural neighborhood and that’s an urban development. We have a clash of lifestyles here.”

Constance Gavras, who heads the Kane County chapter of Act! for America, a group known for its anti-Muslim protests, has rallied opposition to DuPage mosque proposals for two years. “A lot of these mosques are directly connected to terrorist organizations,”she said.

When Irshad’s proposal for a three-acre mosque site near Naperville was before the county board last year, Ms. Gavras distributed I.R.S. documents showing that the Alavi Foundation, a New York nonprofit and the subject of an F.B.I. investigation into its ties to the Iranian government-run Bank Melli, contributed $450,000 to Irshad in 2007.

Mahmood Ghassemi, Irshad’s chairman, confirmed the Alavi donation and said Irshad was still repaying an additional $300,000 loan. “We applied for the money and received the money at a time when Alavi was not under investigation,” Mr. Ghassemi said. They were perfectly legal.”

The county board rejected Irshad’s proposal last year even after the group amended it to address community concerns about traffic, hours of operation and parking.

Anti-Muslim activists are “vocal and powerful, and we feel they were the driving force for the county to reject our application,” said Mr. Ghassemi. “We fulfilled all the requirements, so I don’t see any other reason besides being Muslim.”

Still, Mr. Ghassemi said, he has seen very little religious bias during his 13 years living in DuPage.

The Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim support group, filed a federal lawsuit against the DuPage Board over the Irshad rejection, alleging discrimination and violation of constitutional rights. According to the filing, a board member, John Hakim, asked at one hearing if “animal sacrifices” would be part of the services. The board has moved to dismiss the case. Mr. Hakim did not return a call for comment.

“We think there is a bias against the Muslim institutions,” said Kevin Vodak, the lawyer for CAIR-Chicago. He noted that the board rejected the Irshad proposal without explanation, which is highly unusual, and that last fall the county took up an amendment to prohibit any new religious institutions in residential areas. “Most of the new proposals are from Muslims,” Mr. Vodak said.

Unusual Suspects

Indian-Americans, hailed as a ‘model minority’ in the US, are all over the news for a variety of wrongdoings. Is Indian culture to blame?

By David Lepeska, for Open magazine, 3/18/2011

NEW YORK - The news early this month hit the Indian-American community like a thunderbolt: Rajat Gupta—iconic, trailblazing executive; philanthropist friend of Bono, Bill Gates and Bill Clinton—had been charged in connection with the biggest case of insider trading in US history.

“One is shocked to learn about Rajat Gupta,” says Sunil Adam, editor of Desi Talk, the leading English-language weekly for South Asians in the US. “He made it big in a sector that is not really known for Indian genius, which makes this all the more tragic.”

The reputation of Gupta and so many other Indian-Americans has long been one of hard work, intelligence and high-profile success, primarily as doctors, engineers, executives and journalists. Picture CNN commentator Dr Sanjay Gupta, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, filmmaker M Night Shyamalan, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri or Time magazine editor-in-chief Fareed Zakaria, and you begin to get an idea of how most Americans see their smarter, browner, wealthier and often better-looking compatriots.

Now that legacy may be tarnished. A rash of news-making criminal activity, from theft to embezzlement and financial and journalistic fraud, has Indian-Americans seeming more human, more fallible, than ever before. No tale hits harder than Gupta’s.

Born in Calcutta in 1948, Gupta earned his mechanical engineering degree from IIT Delhi, then an MBA from Harvard Business School. He rose swiftly through the ranks at McKinsey & Co, and in 1994, aged 45, became the prestigious consulting firm’s first foreign-born managing director—and the first India-born CEO of a global US corporation, paving the way for current Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and PepsiCo Chief Indra Nooyi.

Advising powerful executives and inspiring ambitious Indians worldwide, Gupta held the post as the world’s leading business consultant until his retirement in 2003. Today, he chairs the boards of Harvard Business School, the American India Foundation, Gates Foundation’s Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, which he helped found in 2001.

But on 1 March, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US stockmarket watchdog, filed a civil complaint against Gupta, alleging that he passed confidential financial information about Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble to his friend and business associate Raj Rajaratnam while he sat on the boards of those two firms. Gupta’s lawyer has denied any wrongdoing. “It seems very strange for a man of this stature to fall into this way of getting into trouble,” says Adam. “If it’s true, it has something to do with the almighty hubris that seems to have infected Wall Street.”

The SEC has charged more than 40 defendants in the case, which centres around Galleon, Rajaratnam’s multibillion dollar New York hedge fund. Rajaratnam, a 53-year-old Sri Lankan-American, was arrested in October 2009 and his trial for securities fraud and conspiracy began recently. At least four others involved in the Galleon case are also of Indian heritage. Rajiv Goel, formerly a director at Intel capital, and Anil Kumar, formerly of McKinsey, have both pleaded guilty to insider-trading. Sunil Bhalla, senior vice-president at the billion-dollar tech firm Polycom, has been charged with the same offence. And Samir Barai, head of the now-defunct Barai Capital, has been charged with conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.

But the recent bout of Indian-American malfeasance goes well beyond the financial sector. Calcutta-born Anjan Dutta-Gupta, 58, has been charged with paying $10 million in bribes over a 12-year period to secure US naval contracts for his Georgia-based technology firm.

Military engineer Noshir Gowadia, 66, was convicted last year of selling secrets to China about a US stealth fighter jet and sentenced to 32 years in prison. Allegations of suspect bank deals have trailed Sant Singh Chatwal, a well-connected Indian-American hotelier, for more than a decade. And just last month, two Indian-American jewellers in New York City were charged with carrying out a fake heist inspired by the 2001 film Snatch. Authorities say that in December 2008, Atul Shah and Mahaveer Kankariya hired gunmen to dress up as Hasidic Jews and pretend to steal from their safe in an attempt to claim $7 million in insurance money and stave off bankruptcy.

This rash of tabloid-friendly transgressions arrives a year after a promising young Indian journalist in New York, Mona Sarika, was found to have plagiarised large portions of stories she wrote for The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy and The Huffington Post.

It’s mostly unfamiliar territory for a community that Forbes magazine dubbed ‘The New Model Minority’ in 2009. Although America’s 2.6 million Indian-Americans constitute just 1 per cent of the population, they represent 3 per cent of the country’s engineers, 7 per cent of its infotech workers and 8 per cent of its doctors, not to mention an outsized portion of its media personalities.

Median household income among Indian-Americans is more than $97,000, highest among all major US immigrant groups, and more than 40 per cent have a Master’s degree or better—five times the national average.

So, why have these intelligent, successful professionals been committing such lapses in judgement? Some, as Adam suggests, are acts of desperation linked to the Great Recession that began in 2008.

Yet, critics also point to ethnicity-related issues such as the absence of an all-eyes-watching village culture from back home, or, conversely, the lingering influence of India’s infamous culture of corruption. Amy Bhatt analyses the South Asian diaspora as a PhD candidate at the University of Washington who has done field work in India. She’s not buying either of these reasons. First, says Bhatt, sizeable family networks have been re-created in the US in large part because familial re-unification is the primary driver for Indian immigration. Second, most of the businesses involved in these cases were started in the US.

“I don’t know if that culture of corruption could be translated across international borders,” says Bhatt, who was among the victims of Sarika’s plagiarism. “The recourse to culture as an explanation does a bit of harm.”

But another Indian-American observer disagrees. “Maybe there is a certain cultural component to this,” says Adam. For most Indian-Americans, “this Western business culture is relatively new, business ethics are still relatively new,” he elaborates. “In India, the private sector is as corrupt as the state sector—it’s all hand in glove, that is the culture that they come from.”

Adam acknowledges that only a minuscule percentage of the community engages in such crimes, and to stereotype them would be a mistake. But as more Indian-Americans achieve success, there are going to be a few bad apples.

And it’s not the first time. In 2000, Alpna Patel, a Maryland dentist, was convicted of killing her husband in Baltimore, while Kamal Lal, a property owner from Fresno, California, was accused of trading sex with homeless women for discounts on rent.

Today, Indian-Americans have achieved the kind of prominence that draws national media attention. They may be victims of their own success more than of a culture that’s seen to tolerate corruption. “I think the reason these crimes are getting attention is the strong affiliation with the model minority myth,” says Bhatt.

Either way, Indian-Americans, or for that matter anyone ever tempted to manipulate her job to get ahead illegally, might be wise to recall what Gupta, in a 1994 interview, called the fundamental philosophy of India: “Worship work and do it for its own sake.”

Osama and the Arab Spring

By David Lepeska
thenational.ae

In recent months, many observers have viewed the wave of protest sweeping the Middle East as indicative of an increasing drive toward democracy and a repudiation of religious extremism. Not former US intelligence analyst Michael Scheuer -- who is convinced that al Qa'eda and other radical Islamist groups plan to fill the vacuums of power left behind.

"Get rid of the tyranny and take advantage of the aftermath," says Scheuer, referring to Egypt in particular. "I think that's what the Muslim Brotherhood is going to do, and that's what al Qa'eda will try to do. I think it's a situation that benefits them enormously."

Contrarian, Cassandra, or a bit of both, Scheuer seems most comfortable going against the grain. In recent weeks he has been promoting his new book, Osama bin Laden, which argues that Washington's misunderstanding of the al Qa'eda leader has the US fighting the wrong war, the wrong way. The Financial Times called it "a needed corrective to most of the airy generalisations about bin Laden and his followers".

The 59-year-old led the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, then advised his successor from September 2001 until the November 2004 publication of Imperial Hubris. Published anonymously, the book critiqued US counter-terrorism policies and became a bestseller. Found to be its author, Scheuer was thrust into the spotlight and relieved of his CIA duties.

He has since become an equal opportunity offender: denouncing neoconservative nation-building, the invasion of Iraq and the US-Israeli relationship; blaming the Clinton administration for repeated failures to neutralise bin Laden; and criticising fellow authors such as Steve Coll (Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens) and Lawrence Wright, (the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower) for inexpert analyses of Islamic societies.


Sitting in a Chicago hotel, bespectacled and grinning through his grey beard, Scheuer seemed more jolly uncle than monkish analyst. Then he turns to the war on terror. "We're clearly losing," he says. "And it's been through American and western obtuseness, primarily … It's almost like the Marx Brothers are in charge, but the Marx Brothers are smarter - they always win in the end."

For Scheuer, the bungling begins with bin Laden. Most observers believe the al Qa'eda leader and his second-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri, are hiding in the badlands along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Yet continued search efforts have yielded minimal results.

Scheuer offers a litany of reasons. After 25 years in hiding, bin Laden has become an expert fugitive. It also helps that he is pious, generous, patient, deliberate - and highly successful. "There's no one in the last 50 years who has affected American life more negatively than Osama bin Laden," Scheuer adds.

Yet the CIA closed its bin Laden unit in 2005. This office had previously brought the agency's antiterrorism work under one roof, allowing an agent studying al Qa'eda in the Far East to regularly confer with a colleague looking at the Islamic Maghreb. "Now they're across the hall or in another building," Scheuer explains.

He also believes that inadequate troop numbers further undermine Western efforts to snuff out al Qa'eda. In a country bigger than France, the US's 100,000 soldiers "have to keep Karzai in power, help build a democracy, develop the economy, create a transportation and communications infrastructure from scratch, defeat the Taliban, eradicate heroin and go after Osama in their spare time".

Yet since September 11, al Qa'eda's platform has spread from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and North Africa. Western forces have reportedly killed thousands of al Qa'eda militants over the years, but these casualties have been replaced by fresh, young fighters. According to Scheuer, insurgencies by their very definition are always pitted against a more powerful enemy. Thus, they place tremendous emphasis on succession.

"The next generation of al Qa'eda is likely to be a little bit more religiously extreme, certainly better educated, more savvy with the tools of modernity and perhaps a little bit more bloody-minded … And we're seeing increasing inroads among young Muslim males, especially in English speaking countries, of al Qa'eda's propaganda."

Scheuer blames two key areas of American foreign policy for continuing to inspire anti-western sentiment. "To say that Israel is a terrible burden and a costly ally for us in the Muslim world is not an opinion, it's a fact," he said.

Controversial in some circles, this view is nothing new for Scheuer. In an April 2009 episode of the Doha Debates, he blamed the Iraq War on "the American fifth column that supports Israel". His opponent, the lawyer and commentator Alan Dershowitz, called him a bigot.

He is also extremely sceptical about America's dependency on foreign oil imports, which he believes compromises the nation's relationship with Saudi Arabia.

"I don't think we can break the status quo of our policies in the Middle East until we do something about energy," adds Scheuer. However, he considers that Obama is unlikely to make that shift with elections looming next year. "In my old age I'm beginning to fear that the only thing that brings change in America is calamity."

His other fear is that this change of policy might come soon. The number of terror plots in the US has increased exponentially. Only last month the FBI arrested a Saudi citizen studying in Texas for plotting to bomb the home of George W Bush). "We're really going to be surprised how many Muslim men in the West turn to violence," says Scheuer.

As for the millions of Arabs turning to nonviolent protest, the received wisdom is that in barely two months they have offered dissatisfied Muslim youth a new path and successfully marginalised al Qa'eda. The leading terrorism analyst and Harvard professor Peter Bergen believes "al Qa'eda is irrelevant" to recent events on Arab streets. The French scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu has said that, for al Qa'eda, "it's not just a defeat, it's a catastrophe."


Yet, Scheuer notes, elections and upheaval across the region have often led to a stronger presence for Islam. Islamists won Algeria's 1991 elections (only to be blocked from taking power by the military). Hamas and Hizbollah gained strength through elections in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, respectively, while Iraq's governing coalition also has Islamist leanings. And of course the 1979 revolution in Iran resulted in an unbending theocracy.

Scheuer sees Islamism again creeping across the region. Already in post-Ben Ali Tunisia, violence has returned to the streets and a political party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood has begun to regroup. Support for the Islamic Action Front, the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, has increased considerably in recent weeks. In Yemen, where a bloody al Qa'eda affiliate has put down roots, the radical cleric and former bin Laden mentor Abdul Majid al Zindani called last week for the departure of the nation's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

And a recent Pew poll found 95 per cent of Egyptians believed Islam should play a large role in politics, while 85 per cent thought it had positive impact. Add to that, Scheuer contends, the Muslim Brotherhood's experience, deep roots and better organisation than any of the political parties forming in Mubarak's wake and the future appears to be set.

"Do you think 80 million Egyptians, mostly Muslim, in a time of violence, turmoil and chaos, are going to reach for an alien ideology like secular democracy?" asks Scheuer.



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appeared in the 18 March 2011 The National, www.thenational.ae

A Quest to Add Sophistication to Beer's Appeal

By David Lepeska
nytimes.com


Like soaring architecture, wily crooks and hard-hitting sports, a good beer is something Chicagoans love. Ray Daniels has gone one further: He wants to know exactly what makes a good beer good and use that knowledge to improve the beer-drinking experience.

Mr. Daniels, 53, is on a quest to set up universal standards with the goal of instilling a greater respect for the taste and dining possibilities of beer. His effort has earned raves from brewers, critics and chefs.

“Trying to set some standards for beer sommeliers is a wonderful thing for enhancing the reputation of beer in fine dining and in America in general,” Karen Page, the James Beard Award-winning co-author of “What to Drink With What You Eat,” said of Mr. Daniels’s work. “Beer’s definitely being taken more seriously.”

Since falling in love with craft beers in the 1980s, Mr. Daniels has studied beer-making at the century-old Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago; worked as an editor for the Brewers Association, the country’s largest beer trade group; and wrote several books on brewing, including the highly regarded “Designing Great Beers” (Brewers Publications, 2000).

As he watched the production and popularity of artisanal microbrews grow over the past decade, Mr. Daniels noticed that most bars were simply adding new draft beers to their offerings with little concern for presentation or taste. Seeking “a better-tasting beer and a better beer experience,” he devised standards for beer knowledge and presentation. In January 2008, he began offering certification exams.

Today, his organization, the Craft Beer Institute, offers three different tests: certified beer server, certified cicerone and master cicerone, in ascending level of difficulty. Mr. Daniels wants to make a cicerone — literally, a guide for sightseers — the beer equivalent of a sommelier. The certified beer server exam costs $69 and can be taken online (at cicerone.org). The certified cicerone exam costs $345 and focuses on the history, production, serving, styles and tastes of beer from around the world.

“He is one of the most credible people in the beer industry,” said Julia Herz, head of craft beer at the Breweries Association, which represents craft brewers. “He’s the perfect one to spearhead this.”

Test takers might be asked to name a Belgian-style ale flavored with Curaçao, orange peel and grains of paradise, or to describe a salad and a beer that make a good pairing and the specifics of why they work together.

Though Mr. Daniels is trying to equate his certifications with those for wine, he is put off by stuffiness.

“In the wine world, people get all snobby about their knowledge,” said Mr. Daniels, who lives on the North Side. “We’re trying to avoid that. I want the cicerones to be guides, not gods.”

About 3,500 people have passed the beer server exam, and 200 have become certified cicerones, Mr. Daniels said. Small brewers like Sierra Nevada and Lagunitas support his program; Samuel Adams weaves cicerone standards into its internal sales training.

More than a dozen restaurants and pubs in the Chicago area have a cicerone-certified bartender or manager on staff, including the Bristol, a chic bistro in the trendy Bucktown neighborhood.

On a recent Friday there, Erin Phillips, the front-of-house manager, recommended the braised pig tail and a Belgian-style brown ale to a customer looking for a hearty food-beer pairing.

“The Rochefort 8 would stand up to the richness of the sauce and pull down the spiciness of the pork broth,” said Ms. Phillips, who is cicerone-certified. “And there’s a lot of earthy notes to the beer that I think would play off the pickled mustard greens as well.”

Chris Pandel, the Bristol’s executive chef who was named Rising Chef of the Year in the 2010 Jean Banchet Awards, Chicago’s highest culinary honors, said he appreciated Ms. Phillips’s knowledge.

“Her ability to take the nuances of what a beer could do and pair it with food, as you’d do with wine, is outstanding,“ he said.

The Bristol offers about 60 beers and the same number of wines, and Mr. Pandel thinks the two deserve equal billing.

“They really have the same purpose in the meal,” he said. “Beer’s not just for guzzling anymore.”


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Originally appeared in Feb 20, 2011, New York Times, www.nytimes.com

Qaradawi toes a more radical line in Qatar

By David Lepeska
ft.com

Doha// During a recent Friday sermon, Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi, arguably the world’s leading scholar of Sunni Islam, uttered a few lines that drew little notice internationally but could have big implications for future relations between Christians and Muslims.

“I was for the possibility of bridging the gap between the east and the west but recently I have changed my mind on this issue, especially since the west wants to impose its values and traditions on us,” Mr Qaradawi told his congregation at Doha’s Omar bin Al Khattab Mosque in a televised sermon in October.

“West is west and east is east. They do not recognise or follow our traditions and customs, so we should not follow theirs,” Mr Qaradawi said, echoing Rudyard Kipling, the British author.

Mr Qaradawi, 84, emigrated to Qatar in 1961 to avoid persecution in his native Egypt. His many fatwas, or religious decisions, are passed on to millions of Muslims worldwide via his long-running Al Jazeera talk show and Islam Online, a website. In 2008, Foreign Policy magazine ranked him the world’s third most influential intellectual.

In his first book, published in 1960, Mr Qaradawi instructed Muslims on how to maintain their religion while living in the US. But he has subsequently denounced secularism, capitalism and Zionism, and these statements mark a further hardening of attitude, observers say.

“He has never been one to build bridges with the west but this marks a great change,” says Bettina Gräf, author of Global Mufti, a 2009 book on Mr Qaradawi. “It is highly significant ... because it makes a difference if a very popular figure calls for divisions between Islam and the west and therefore manifests a dichotomy which is not there in reality. He considers himself a moderate in the many different meanings of the word, but being moderate would – in my opinion – include not to call for such divisions these days.”

As Qatar looks to burnish its Islamic credentials, the views of Mr Qaradawi are also increasingly at odds with the emirate’s growing reputation for progressiveness and engagement.

Aside from diplomatic initiatives in Lebanon and Darfur, Qatar is home to the US al-Udaid airbase and has hosted an Israeli trade mission.

“This sort of thing could begin to eat away at the carefully constructed brand that Qatar has been forging in recent years,” says David Roberts, who is writing a dissertation on Qatari foreign policy. “Qatar certainly wouldn’t want any kind of ‘Islamist’ stigma.”

To enhance its status as an international centre, the Qatar Foundation, which is run by the emir’s wife Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Misned, manages a campus on the outskirts of Doha that hosts branches of six US universities.

Last year, the foundation opened the Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal at an Islamic graduate school on the same campus. And this autumn the foundation brought in Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim intellectual based in Europe, to teach a course on civil society and democracy in Islam.

Prof Ramadan, 48, is perhaps more in keeping with the image that Qatar is trying to build. He was raised in Switzerland and came to prominence thanks to his writing on Islam and the west and an Oxford professorship.

“This will enhance Qatar’s role as a leading centre of Muslim discussion and knowledge,” says Mr Roberts. Qatar may also be trying to gain on its neighbour Saudi Arabia, home to the two holiest mosques in Islam, he says. “Reaching for Islamic legitimacy is a tactic that has a long history in the Middle East.”

But even Prof Ramadan has not escaped controversy. From 2004 to 2010, he was not allowed to travel to the US on “ideological grounds”, according to the US State Department.

Today, his books focus on how to be Muslim in western society. “We need to shift the mindset of what we can do,” Prof Ramadan said in a talk in Doha to promote his latest book, Radical Reform. “We should be critical while remaining faithful.”

He has called for a new international economic system and in a televised 2003 debate with the then future French president Nicolas Sarkozy he called for a moratorium on stoning in order to debate the merits of the punishment.

Such sentiments are unlikely to appeal to Mr Qaradawi. This year, Islam Online, the website with which he is associated, took a more conservative turn. Its Qatar-based management dismissed most of its Egyptian employees, who had gone on strike. Observers say that latterly Mr Qaradawi had little hand in day-to-day operations.

Where Mr Qaradawi has particularly riled his critics is in ruling that suicide bombing is acceptable for Palestinians because, he says, all Israelis are soldiers. A few weeks ago, he boycotted a Doha interfaith conference because he opposes discourse with Jews. As a result of his views on suicide bombing, Mr Qaradawi is barred from travelling to the US and the UK.

But he can also be pragmatic. He has said Islam supports democracy and last week called for more women in politics. Shortly after September 11 2001, he declared it legal for Muslims serving in the US army to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Yet if Qaradawi repeated his “west is west” statements on his weekly Al Jazeera show they would reach up to 40m people. Many millions more would get the message by word-of-mouth, online video and other means.

Ms Gräf says Mr Qaradawi’s new perspective could have a significant impact on young Muslims in Europe. “The majority would be more reflective,” she says. “But, of course, there is a minority that may become more radical.”


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originally ran in the Dec 2 Financial Times,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/01d19166-fd65-11df-a049-00144feab49a.html#axzz16xVjoFAO

Gag Time in Cairo: Interview with Egyptian Journalist Ibrahim Eissa

By David Lepeska
Columbia Journalism Review, Oct 2010

Few leaders stay in power for thirty years without occasionally embracing their inner gangster. So it is that the aging, possibly ailing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, facing the end of his reign, has again all but eliminated the space for free expression in the run-up to this month’s parliamentary polls and next year’s presidential vote.

In the past few months, authorities shuttered nearly twenty satellite TV channels, a top judicial council banned media coverage of court cases, outspoken columnists Hamdi Qandeel and Alaa Aswany suddenly stopped writing, and the state began monitoring mass text messages and curbed the independence of NGOs. Nobel Peace Prize winner and possible presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei has spoken of the “culture of fear that the regime has created.”

Last month’s firing of Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of Egypt’s leading Arabic language opposition daily, Al Destour, has been the most high-profile gag action. Eissa was forced out of his post shortly after the arrival of new ownership led by Sayed al Badawi, president of the opposition Wadf party. Most observers believe Badawi and his partner purchased Destour and dismissed Eissa as part of a deal with Mubarak, who presumably promised more parliamentary seats for Wafd in return.

The ouster is nothing new for Eissa. Over the past couple decades the forty-five-year-old has regularly tangled with the Egyptian government, including a seven-year stint as a media outcast after authorities shuttered the original incarnation of Destour in 1998. On a recent Saturday at his home on the outskirts of Cairo he spoke amiably about his dismissal, the wiliness of the Mubarak regime, and policy differences between Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Why were you fired?

Destour is the only newspaper in Egypt that is owned by a publisher. Others are owned by businessmen and are part of conglomerates that are involved in industry, oil, and other concerns. For this reason the government could not control us, so they had a few options. The first was to threaten me; there have been sixty-five lawsuits against the newspapers where I’ve worked, four times I was put in jail, once I was given a presidential pardon. That did not work, so they threatened my publishers with 12 million pounds in taxes. That did not work either, so they got their pet opposition party to buy the newspaper for 20 million pounds. After one month the ownership transfer was complete, they had taken charge, and they immediately changed the editors.

And so this is the end of Al Destour. The Destour that is being published now is phony, it’s a voice of the government, it’s a pet newspaper.

Was there an agreement between Wafd and the government?

Absolutely, I’m confident there was a deal. I have no proof, but I know. Everybody now knows the real Wafd party, the real Badawi, they know they’re not good for the people. You can see that on Facebook and on Twitter everybody is now saying that the Wafd party is not an honest party.

After a period of restraint, it seems the Mubarak regime is again suffocating the media.

The growth in satellite channels and greater freedom in newspapers began shortly after George W. Bush started pushing Mubarak to liberate the media in Egypt, maybe around 2002, 2003. So people started writing more openly, broadcasting more satellite channels and stuff like that. This created a political movement and woke up the people and gave them more courage, and people started to stand up for their rights and protests. Now the Egyptian government seems to have gotten the green light from the Obama administration to go back to the way they were before. As a result, we are now collecting the corpse of the Egyptian media.

You feel Obama is not supporting the opposition in Egypt?

Obama is not pressuring Mubarak at all, and I think the intelligence of Obama is overrated. He thinks that by petting the alligators, the Arab dictators, he can win their friendship and their love. But he’s not realizing that society is going to implode on itself and destroy those regimes.

Is the media crackdown here harsher this time around?

The sad thing is that we are going backwards—that is the real loss. People like us should fight for their right to speak, because this is our right. Years back it seemed like a Christmas gift given to us by Mubarak, and now he’s taking it back. That’s what people see. But the truth is that freedom of speech is not a gift but a right.

In a column published just before you were fired you wrote that as part of this crackdown, “understandings will be arrived at with representatives of the western media in Egypt.” What did you mean?

What I meant is that even CNN, BBC and those stations are going to have a hard time covering these elections, because they will probably not be allowed to shoot at polling stations and all the papers will be governmental or semi-governmental. They just won’t have access. And what’s more, this is an experiment for the big event next year. If this experience with the parliamentary elections works, the regime will continue with the same strategy for the presidential elections.

What’s the objective of this experiment?

The satellite channels and the newspapers have taken on the role of the opposition parties in Egypt, because the opposition parties here do not speak out. So they’re trying to shut us up for these coming elections. My sense is there’s going to be a lot of fraud.

The regime said they were shutting down the satellite channels because of religious violations.

It doesn’t matter what reason they give. They closed those satellite channels for two reasons: to gag the press and to put fear in the channels that were not closed. Plus, since a lot of them have relations with Muslim Brotherhood, this is an attempt to close off an avenue of campaigning for candidates from the Muslim Brotherhood.

What are Egyptians going to miss in their media coverage?

A lot. They won’t know what happens in the presidential palace, what’s behind political agreements between the regime and the opposition, the backgrounds of the people that make decisions, the stories behind companies that include politicians, government, and businessmen.

How well have foreign journalists covered these issues?

A lot of their reports are translated into our newspapers, and they often offer deep insight into events here and the Egyptian regime. But I will say that the foreign reporters that just come for a few days or a week and leave write better than the ones that stay here in Egypt. It’s because living in Egypt they become used to the garbage piles, the corruption, and these things begin to seem more normal.

Would you say that Egyptians are apathetic?

When you’re talking about Egyptians you’re talking about people that fifty-eight years ago, just a couple generations ago, lived under a military system. And Mubarak has been running emergency rule for thirty years now. So it’s understandable that it’s a society with ideas and ideologies different from the U.S. and other places. But the people thirst for change. They read newspapers, they go online and make it known that they want change. So, the people want change, and the media calls for change, but we are missing the key third part: politicians who are fighting for change. This is why Mohammed ElBaradei has stirred great hope.

Hosni Mubarak used to tell foreign governments, ‘If I go away, the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take charge.’ Now they are scared, because ElBaradei gives us an option for a leader that is neither Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood. The regime realizes this and is trying to shut down all variety of media before the elections. ElBaradei is a man with the knowledge, with experience, with the people behind him.

What’s the chance he will run for president next year?

You can’t say. Elections can happen any time and the rules would have to change for him to run. But I’m confident ElBaradei is going to be the one that makes this change happen.

You’ve been working for change for a long time. Is that why you and this government don’t seem to get along.

(Laughs) It’s because I represent the true opposition. I do not feel this pressure, I don’t fear people. The government is what it is. Mubarak is Mubarak, I am a journalist. When the regime changes I will change.

Do you write whatever you want?

I don’t censor myself ever. I’m the only one who wrote about Mubarak’s health and who told him he was going to die eventually. This is my job.

You say you’re the true opposition. How large is this true opposition?

There are many: Alaa al-Aswany, Mohammed ElBaradei, Ayman Nour, the kiffeyeh movement, people protesting on Facebook and other places. These are the true opposition and they are the ones who are keeping me going.

So what’s next for you?

I am going to sit in my garden (laughs). No, I’m not going to give up, I’m used to this regime. Whenever we have a disagreement they close the fire exits on me, but I can take it. I was just talking a few minutes ago on Skype with a friend about launching a new newspaper.

Being a journalist in Egypt, has it been what you’d hoped?

You are here in my home, you see it’s a nice place, it’s comfortable. I have my kids, I have my family. There’s nothing that I regret. Whatever the sacrifices, it’s always worth it.



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originally appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review,
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/gag_time_in_cairo.php

Qatar begins to buzz

By David Lepeska
The National, Oct 25, 2010

Performers prepared their jokes, audience members tossed red squishy-balls and a film crew jostled through the jam-packed upstairs room of the Colombiano Coffee House last Sunday as the pre-show chatter reached fever pitch.

"This is amazing," said Mahmoud El-Achi, 27, crouching in his chair amid the hubbub of the Doha Tweet-Ups' comedy night. A Lebanese telecoms manager, he was born and raised in Doha. "There's almost nothing to do here, compared to Beirut," he added. "So I wasn't expecting this kind of turn-out and energy."

A small, roiling sea of students, artists, academics and professionals had successfully injected the event with that most rare and precious quality in Qatar: buzz.

Maybe it's a sign of things to come.

"The scene is young, but it's maturing," said Tariq al Jaidah, a Qatari entrepreneur and the founder of Doha's first private gallery, Waqif Art Center. "The Arab Capital designation has been a good inspiration and put Qatar on the map for these activities."

Doha is the UN-backed Arab Capital of Culture for 2010. But as recently as a few years ago this city had no major museum and hosted only the occasional small art exhibition. Now, a government vision that views cultural development as integral to national growth has begun to take root.

In 2007, a couple of small galleries opened in Souk Waqif, the faux traditional Arab market in downtown Doha. Late 2008 saw the debuts of IM Pei's Museum of Islamic Art, a cubist masterpiece regarded as an arts anchor, and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra. And last year the inaugural Doha Tribeca Film Festival put Qatar on the international movie map.

In addition to the second edition of the film festival, which kicks off this week, consumers of culture should have a full plate over Doha's final months as the cultural capital, including an Oriental music festival, a major musical production, an exhibition of Ottoman art, a series of national cultural weeks and the launch of the much-anticipated Arab Museum of Modern Art, called Mathaf.

Opening on December 30, Mathaf will house a collection of 60,000 works spanning 170 years. The Qatar Museums Authority has been promoting the museum on a regional road show. Antonia Carver, the director of Art Dubai, was among the speakers at a recent stop in Beirut. She believes it will be the world's largest public collection of modern Arab art.

"There's been a major shift of international attention towards the Arab world over the past 10 years, and it's been a phenomenon, really," Carver said during a recent interview. She appreciated how Mathaf officials had amassed their collection methodically and incorporated an educational aspect.

"What's really exciting is to be able to trace back through history and find those threads that pull out on the whole development of the Arab world and the Gulf and the connection between the two," she said.

Al Jaidah was also looking forward to Mathaf. "The new museum will change art in the Middle East because it will change the perspective and take Arab art to another dimension," he said.

Mathaf's opening is among the more promising events of an autumn schedule that, since the end of Eid, has seemed relentless. Qatar's National Theatre has hosted a steady stream of cultural weeks involving dancers, musicians and singers from countries such as India, Syria and Sudan. Still to come are Venezuela, Lebanon, Iran, Tunisia and the UAE.

In Souk Waqif, Al Markhiya Gallery is hosting the Lebanese artist Ginou Choueiri's solo show, For Your Eyes Only, a series of paintings exploring the veil and the women behind it. It's part of the gallery's ongoing survey of Arab artists under 40 years old.

As of last Wednesday, four new galleries at the Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani Museum began showcasing Islamic art and works of Qatari heritage. On that same day, the gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University-Qatar launched New York Chronicles, a month-long exhibition featuring eight Arab artists' creative responses to New York City.

Christie's, the leading London-based auctioneer, recently hosted a two-day exhibit of paintings from the collection of the Egyptian collector Dr Mohammad Said Farsi at Doha's Four Seasons Hotel. At the opening gala, the director of Christie's Middle East, Isabelle de la Bruyere, said the Middle East art market was the world's fastest growing.

The show, called Journey Through Modern Art, included works by modern Egyptian, Iranian and Lebanese artists worth up to $400,000 (Dh1.5million). "People in Qatar are starting now to see art as a symbol of status," al Jaidah said.

The Museum of Islamic Art remains the defining symbol of Doha's cultural status. This autumn, MIA is hosting a series of arts and historical lectures. In December, Bruce Lawrence, MIA's scholar-in-residence, will speak about Ibn Khaldun, the father of sociology.

The Orientalist Museum, which has no physical home and no plans for one, is launching an exhibition of Ottoman art there on Friday. Most works are from its own collection, but several are from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and private collections. The show will conclude with a two-day international conference at which scholars from around the world will discuss the exchange between Ottoman and European cultures.

New cultural education developments include Doha Kalakshetra, a secondary school for Indian classical music and art that opened this month. It will instruct students in dance forms including Kathakali and Bharatnatyam, and in musical instruments such as guitar, tabla, piano and flute.

And the Qatar Foundation is set to open the Qatar Music Academy in January. It will focus on Arab music, highlighting links to American jazz and European composition.

This year's DTFF will, naturally, shine a spotlight on Arab film, and it's not alone in Doha. The $200 million Al Noor Film Fund is one of the region's largest film production firms. The executive director Raja Sharif says the fund has received hundreds of film ideas and plans to make several movies each year.

The Doha Film Institute, which aims to build a sustainable film industry in Qatar, launched this May. DFI has been helping a handful of local filmmakers make 10-minute films that are likely to be shown at DTFF. DFI also manages the Doha Film Fund, which will provide financial backing to up to 10 films per year.

DFI's camera crews are regularly seen at events around Doha, including last week's Tweet-Up comedy night, where Mohammad Kamal, a Qatari student at Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar, made light of his compatriots' foibles. "The first thing a Qatari says in a fight: I cancel your visa!" he said to a burst of laughter.

Hannadi Hassan, another Qatari student, explained how she could always tell a Khaleeji in London. "They wear their jeans too high," she said to titters.

Still, the road to cultural prominence is not always smooth. Earlier this year, Qatari officials promoted the Qatar Marine Festival at press conferences and in newspapers. A programme was announced and a website set up. Suddenly, the event fell off the radar, never to be heard of again.

"They promoted it and then it was just cancelled," said George Ayache, general manager of International Fairs and Promotions' Qatar, which organises conferences and exhibitions. He expressed disappointment in the number of events this year. "There's really nothing major here, in terms of cultural exhibitions."

Optimists call for patience. "This is a very young country, with very young minds," said al Jaidah. "They cannot immediately jump and make themselves equal with major players, there needs to be time to progress, and it is happening."

Next year will see the completion of five new theatres, according to cultural minister Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kuwari. The highlight will be the Cultural Village, or Katara, which is hosting DTFF during its forthcoming soft opening. When completed, the 100-hectare arts compound is expected to include an opera house, an enormous state-of-the-art amphitheatre, a cinema/theatre, souk, bookshop and beachfront, in addition to the offices of theatre, music and fine arts organisations.

QMA is to begin construction on the Jean Nouvel-designed Qatar National Museum this autumn, aiming for a 2013 opening. With 40,000 square-metres of exhibition space, it will be larger than the MIA. Also next year, production is set to begin on Al Noor Film Fund's $150m epic on the life of the Prophet Mohammad.

For now, though, Doha residents and visitors are focusing on other films, as they dust off their tuxedos and ready themselves for the red carpet.



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originally ran in 25 Oct 2010, The National, www.thenational.ae

Reality TV show spotlights Arab science stars

DOHA // The pan-Arab reality show Stars of Science named its 16 second-season finalists on Sunday night, setting the stage for a six-week battle for hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money and a spot among the top young innovators in the region.

The finalists hail from Algeria, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar and beyond. They tinker with diesel engines and robot joints, motorised trolleys and air-conditioned clothes, devising new approaches to common yet complex problems and hoping to make their names and inspire others.

Fouad Mrad, a long-time engineering professor at the American University of Beirut and one of the show's two permanent jurors, said: "This is a lifetime opportunity and these innovators are very anxious, hoping to prove to the world that their idea is valid, is scientifically sound and can be packaged into something useful to society. As long as they work hard, stay on track and are committed to their goal, we should see an exciting competition."

The Qatar Foundation-produced Stars of Science is shown in 15 countries and aims to promote education and interest in science and technology in the Arab region. An initiative of Sheikha Mozah bin Nasser Al Misnad, the wife of the Qatari emir, the show is filmed in Qatar Science and Technology Park and receives support from the universities of Education City.

The winner receives US$300,000 (Dh1.1million), second place $150,000, third place $100,000 and fourth $50,000. The first season, which ran in the spring 2009, was won by Bassam Jalgha, a Lebanese mechanical engineer who created "Dozan", an automated tuning device for stringed instruments.


The current season began on October 3 and will end with on November 28. During its first few weeks, the show went from Tunis to Cairo to Jeddah to Doha, whittling 7,000 applicants, including Eric Suleiman, whose project involved simplifying cable installation, down to 125 semi-finalists and then to 16.

In the coming episodes they will be judged on proof-of-concept, engineering, design and marketing as their numbers drop to four for the live 90-minute finale. Starting October 25, the show will also broadcast daily 30-minute episodes from Monday to Saturday, following the progress of each project.

Some of the innovators from the first season are already reaping rewards. One of last year's finalists, the Algerian computer engineer Wahiba Chair developed a calorie-counting software for the iPhone that scans barcodes and retrieves health information. Her application CarrotLines launched in June. Ms Chair says the show helped her improve the design and gave her the confidence and credibility to pursue her idea.

Mazen Salah from Jordan, also a finalist last season, developed Staticap, a non-rotating hubcap for cars that can display a team logo, flag, or whatever the owner would like. "In today's world the need for uniqueness and related self-expression has never been stronger," he said. "StatiCap fulfills this need."

Mr Salah received his patent earlier this year, launched his company in August and aims to exhibit at the Riyadh Motor Show in December.

This year's finalists include Abdullah Abou Zeid, of Egypt, who co-invented a new robot rotational joint; Ahmad al Khater, a Qatari who devised a means to harness magnetic energy to use as power; and Maha al Amro of Saudi Arabia, who developed an air-conditioning vest for outdoor workers.

This season Stars of Science added guest jury members from each of the countries visited during the tour for contestants. Suaad al Shamsi served as a juror at the Al Ain stop. She said: "I was looking for projects that don't exist on the market, creative ideas and the ability to implement the idea during the programme period."

Though no Emiratis are among this season's finalists, Ms al Shamsi sees an increase in scientific inquiry in the UAE, thanks to the country's of new universities, Masdar City, and the Sheikh Rashed and Al Owais scientific awards.

For Mr Mrad, the show is a beacon of light. He said he has long been "disappointed in what we do with our research, who we do research for, who uses our outcomes".

"When I saw the opportunity, this vision of QF [Qatar Foundation], I felt, 'My God, this is a vehicle I'd like to be a part of.' And I'd like to drive, not just be a passenger, and have a say in how it goes," he said.

Arab countries mostly lack the technology networks and hubs that foster progressive thinking and innovation, according to Mr Mrad. This is crucial, he said, because technology is key to developing a civilisation.

"I don't believe any such programme by itself is going to be able to change the economics or the cycle," he said.

"But all of these viewers will see and believe, 'Yes, we can take our ideas and transform them into useful products, and we can apply what we learn in school.'"




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originally ran in the National, www.thenational.ae

Prison Time in Iran

By David Lepeska
The National's weekly Review magazine, Oct 2010

Most of us can’t imagine what it’s like to be Shane Bauer or Josh Fattal, the American hikers stuck for more than a year in Iran’s notorious Evin prison.

But for Roxana Saberi the experience is all too real. An Iranian- American journalist, she’d been living in Tehran six years when Iranian intelligence agents burst into her apartment on January 31, 2009.

They threw her into a car and, after hours of questioning, drove her to Evin and deposited her into a 7’ X 9’ cell with blankets for a bed and the screams of unseen prison-mates for company. During all-day interrogation sessions, her questioners pushed her to “cooperate,” or rather, admit she’d been working as a spy.

“They’re threatening you with the death penalty, life in prison, or finding and harming your family,” she said. “When you’re in that situation every threat is very real. They make you believe they have complete power of your life. Nobody knows where you are, and you know the history of Evin prison.”

She spent 100 days there, but during a recent interview at Doha’s Grand Hyatt hotel, looked none the worse for wear. Elegant and poised, the 33-year-old Saberi retains the ivory skin and mile-high cheekbones of a beauty queen (a former Miss North Dakota, she was among ten finalists in the 1998 Miss America pageant).

After earning two master’s degrees, including one from Cambridge, she moved to her father’s homeland in 2003. She’d carved out a good life in Tehran – freelancing for the BBC and National Public Radio, writing a book about modern Iran and dating a highly regarded Iranian Kurd filmmaker – before the trip to Evin. Her book about the experience, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran, has received mostly positive notices since it was released in March.

Saberi’s Doha visit was organised by her alma mater, Northwestern University, to meet journalism students at NU-Qatar and deliver a lecture about human rights and Iran. On her first trip back to the region, she felt safe because she was “being looked after.” Sitting in the Hyatt's spacious atrium, she spoke openly and comfortably about her ordeal.

“I gave in pretty early,” Saberi admitted with a sheepish grin. After two days at Evin she confessed, falsely, to spying for the CIA. “I was so ashamed. I thought why couldn’t I at least put up more of a fight.”

Transferred to another cell, Saberi met Silva Harotonian, an Iranian-Armenian health worker who had refused to fold for her interrogators. Saberi became disgusted with herself and decided to speak the truth. “‘What kind of life do I want to live?’” she recalled asking herself at the time. “‘The life in which I know what I did is right.’”

She recanted her confession and later defied her bazju, or lead interrogator, but not before being allowed a phone call to her parents. She told her father she’d been detained for possessing alcohol, as directed by her keepers. Suspicious, he contacted the press, and within days Saberi became a minor international cause celebre: supportive stories appeared on the BBC, The New York Times and elsewhere; the president of the European Union requested proper treatment; the US State Department called for her release. Yet at the end of a classic Iranian “show trial,” she was convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison. It was just the push she needed.

Saberi, realising she would never get justice, found a new sense of purpose. She appealed her sentence and began a hunger strike. After nine days without meals, she stopped adding sugar to her water.

“Mentally everything’s a little shady and you can’t concentrate and you just wait for the days to pass by,” she said of her two weeks without food. On May 11 her sentence was suspended and she was released, frail and 15 pounds lighter. “What helped me was the feeling of defiance.”

That feeling motivates her work today, as a campaigner for human rights and media freedom. She’s confident the media coverage played a key role in her eventual release, just as international support led to the suspension, last month, of the stoning sentence for Iranian widow Sakineh Mohammadi.

“Even if the international outcry-- governments, organisations, also individuals – doesn’t always lead to the release of prisoners,” she said, “it does at least raise awareness about what is happening and empowers those people in prison and helps them tolerate the harsh conditions.”

Due to her severe treatment, Saberi understood the anger and frustration of the protesters that filled the streets of Tehran a month after her release, in the wake of the contested presidential election.

“I think that the people in power have lost a lot of legitimacy for much of the population,” she said. Because of Iran’s armies of informed, tech-savvy youth and the leadership’s internal bickering, Saberi sees change as “inevitable.” “I think the majority want a democratic government that respects human rights.”

Yet the regime is said to regularly deny those rights. Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of cases of sexual assault, beatings, torture and other forms of abuse in Iran’s prisons. Reporters without Borders recently expressed concern that Iranian prosecutors will request the death penalty for two leading Irani- an bloggers who have been in Evin prison for two years.

And then there’s Fattal and Bauer. The third American hiker, Sarah Shourd, was released from Evin last month after the sultan of Oman took care of her $500,000 bail. Shourd maintains she’s only “one-third free” because her fiancé and friend remain in Evin.

“She is in a very sensitive position because the Iranian authorities are paying attention to what she says,”
said Saberi, who directed the interested to visit www.freethehikers.org.

With the right kind of international support, Fattal and Bauer, like Saberi, might soon be able to appreciate the everyday freedoms most of us take for granted. “To make a phone call when I want,” said Saberi, thinking of things that feel new and precious to her post-Evin, “to eat when I want, to eat what I want, to put my head on a pillow, to turn off the lights at night, to write an email, to surf the internet, to read what I want, to go jogging in the streets, to talk about what happened to me and what’s happened to so many others.”


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an edited version appeared in The National's Review, on Oct 1, 2010, www.thenational.ae