Doha// Muneera Al Qahtani spent most of high school socializing and enjoying herself. She was a “screw-up,” she says, and her teachers told her she was unlikely to amount to much.
But she summoned the will to graduate, zipped through a preparatory program and now earns top marks in engineering at Texas A&M University-Qatar. When she has time, the 20-year-old visits Doha secondary schools, using her turn-around as inspiration.
“You may not be a great student in high school, but you can change and do well in university if you work for it,” she told the students of Al Bayan Independent School for Girls this week. “Basically if you plant a seed it will grow.”
Nearly a decade old, Education City recruitment efforts are starting to bear fruit – sparking greater local interest, drawing young women into engineering and shaping Qatari success stories.
Over-achievement may be in Ms Al Qahtani's blood. Her father, Saad Saeed Al-Qahtani, grew up in a Bedouin community outside Doha and worked as a shepherd for years. When learning the alphabet, he used charcoal for a pen and stones for paper.
At 25, he started attending night school at the sixth grade-level. He graduated at the top of his class, received a government scholarship and earned his law degree at age 38, in 1993. Today Mr Al Qahtani is chief prosecutor in the government Office of Public Prosecution and the father of 13 children.
One of Ms Al-Qahtani's older brothers is a judge, while two others have law degrees. Two sisters have engineering degrees and work for RasGas.
Yet Muneera appeared to be the black sheep. Throughout primary and secondary school she rarely opened a book. “I saw school as a place where I go and play and see my friends,” she said. “It was like a picnic all day long.”
The shift began toward the end of her junior year, when she chose science as her future major. Her teachers advised her against it because it might too difficult for her. “That is the moment that told me there is no one who can say what I can and cannot do,” she said.
Around that time came another push. “My father told me, 'Either you choose a pencil or a broom,' which is basically you go study or you become a maid,” she recalled. “He said if you want respect you should finish, and I wanted that respect.”
She graduated and went into Qatar Foundation's Academic Bridge Program, which prepares students to attend Education City universities. She asked questions in class, visited her professors during office hours and dedicated herself to learning English.
“I started rebuilding myself, letting go of my childish ways,” she said. She scored so well on her English as a Foreign Language exam that Texas A&M invited her to attend a special engineering course for top students.
Last month, she completed the second year of a four-year program in electrical and computer engineering, a major she chose because she likes math and physics and wants to build something that helps people communicate.
She has become so committed to her field of study that she watches Japanese anime to steep herself in the culture of the world leader in electronics.
“She's quite enthusiastic, very interested and everything is done on time,” said Dr Hussein Al Nuwiri. The head of the electrical and computer engineering program, he taught Ms Al-Qahtani's classes in digital system design and computer architecture. “She's like an ideal student.”
She's not alone. In the US, Canada and most western countries, about 18 percent of undergraduate engineering students are female. At Texas A&M-Qatar it's more than twice that, at 40 percent.
The result is an empowering environment for young women. Though she wears the niqab, Ms Al-Qahtani has the confidence to speak up for herself and lead group discussions. When she heard last November that an Education City outreach program planned to visit her old school, she asked to come along.
She spoke about her father, her struggles as a student and her future career. “I want them to know they can do whatever they want,” she said of the high school students. “And I added a little flavour about the money you make as an engineer – most people like to hear that stuff.”
At least one observer came away impressed. “When we're speaking they hear us, but not completely,” said Maha Al Thani, recruitment and outreach coordinator at Education City. “When Muneera is speaking everybody is quiet and listening and giving their full attention.”
Ms Al-Qahtani has since come along on several other school visits, including the one to Al Bayan on Thursday.
“I thought her presentation was really good,” said Loolwa, a Qatari and Al Bayan 11th grader. “I'm definitely interested in Education City, I think I'll go to Carnegie Mellon and study business.”
Mariam, an 11th grader from Egypt, earns top marks at Al Bayan and wants to study medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. “I would love to go there,” she said. “But I'm worried I won't get in because of the competition.”
Other girls asked about the co-educational system at Education City. They had never taken classes with boys and their parents were unsure it was a good idea. “Don't worry, the boys are not always flirting and throwing their numbers,” Ms Al-Qahtani said. “They are here to study, just like you.”
She plans to earn a master's degree in engineering, then return to work for Qatar Foundation, which is sponsoring her education. For Ms Al Qahtani, it's an organisation that understands that dress is not destiny and that everyone deserves a chance.
“Whatever you wear, it does not say who you are,” she said. “If you don't go after your future, you won't get any respect.”
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an edited version appeared in the 11 June 2010 National, www.thenational.ae
6.04.2010
One organisation's efforts to bring orphans into the family
DOHA // Western-style adoption is prohibited within Islam, which allows only a guardianship that confers neither family name nor the legal status of a natural-born child. But Khaled Kamal wanted the orphans in his care to have the same rights and privileges that other children enjoy.
He made inquiries. He travelled the region. At a conference last month in Beirut, he secured a verbal fatwa from a leading Sunni scholar, Salman al Auda.
“He said it is no problem to give the child the family name, in Sharia it’s OK,” Mr Kamal, the general manager of the Qatar Orphan Foundation, said during an interview this week in his office. “You can’t imagine how important it is to be named according to the family.”
Since its creation three years ago by the Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, the Qatar Orphan Foundation, known as Dhreima after a violet flower that grows in harsh conditions, has steadily gathered steam.
Today its waiting list is growing, its average orphan stay is shrinking and its officials are working to broaden the concept of family and expand the fostering experience, traditionally seen as an important charitable act in the Muslim world.
“Yateem is a big thing in Islam,” said Mr Kamal, the Dhreima general manager, using the Arabic word for guardianship. “It helps you get to paradise.” The Prophet Mohammed said those who took care of orphaned children would be close to him in heaven, according to a well-known hadith.
But Sharia generally recognises only inheritance claims based on blood or marriage and does not allow full adoptions because they are considered relics of the pre-Islamic era of jiyaliyyah, or ignorance.
Thus Mr Kamal’s efforts to expand the concept of family. He said that the widely respected Doha-based scholar Youssef al Qaradawi had voiced a view similar to Sheikh al Auda’s. Dhreima is drafting documents for these scholars to sign into fatwa and hopes to institute the new policy by the end of the year.
If confirmed, this new stance would mark an uprecedented shift. “I do not see how such an opinion would be judged valid according to Islamic legal methodology as it would contradict the clear verses in the Qur’an concerning this very issue,” said Sheikh Musa Furber, a mufti who studied Islam for more than a dozen years in Damascus and Cairo and is now a researcher at the Tabah Foundation in Abu Dhabi. “Without seeing the actual text of these fatwa I cannot comment on their contents or evidence.”
Mr Kamal also hopes to help foster the passing down of family wealth via wasiya, or bequests, rather than meerat, or inheritance. But these proposals are in their early stages and still have to work their way through Islamic jurisprudence and various bureaucracies.
Meanwhile, Dhreima continues to assist Qatar’s most needy, focusing on four kinds of at-risk children: those with a mother but no father; those who have lost their father or both parents; the socially orphaned, which refers to financially incapable or broken homes; and finally babies whose parents are not known.
The first three, which represent the majority of children Dhreima works with, are supported with money, health care, rides to school and more. Only the last category can be fostered.
Dhreima’s facilities include three orphanages – one for newborns to seven years old, another for 7-18 year-old boys and a third for 7-18 year-old girls – and two guesthouses for those older than 18.
A key goal is integration. Dhreima’s in-house children attend normal government schools and regularly play with non-orphan children. If a local public school asks to bring their students for a visit, Mr Kamal refuses. “This is not a zoo where anybody can come to see them,” he said.
According to a Qatari law issued in 2007, police and other authorities are legally required to contact Dhreima whenever a newborn of unknown parentage is found or brought to them.
Origin is not an issue. “We don’t deal in colours, we don’t deal with income, language or religion,” said Mr Kamal. “We see orphans as human beings, and anyone within the borders of Qatar is accepted.”
Dhreima soon begins the search for a new home – such as that of Muna al Mutawa, who married in 1997 and learned over the ensuing years that she and her husband were unable to have children.
They heard about Dhreima in early 2008 and decided to apply to foster a child. Within a month they received a call that the orphanage had received a baby girl born two days prior – the same day Ms al Mutawa’s mother died.
She was one of five applicants for the newborn, but the others fell away in the rigorous screening process. The foster family must be Qatari nationals and include a mother and spouse (except in rare cases) between 25 and 45 years old. Dhreima visits the applicants’ homes and reviews family income and finances. Potential foster families also meet with a psychologist several times.
During Dhreima’s first year of operations, children stayed an average of four or five months before being placed, but now the average stay is a month or less. The last arrival was placed within 10 days. Now nearly a dozen families wait for the next orphan to arrive.
In May 2008, Ms al Mutawa took her baby girl, now named Reem, home for the first time. “Totally, completely, right away she was my baby,” she said, showing a photo of a smiling brown-eyed girl on her phone. “Now she is two years old, very naughty, very funny and very intelligent.”
Dhreima requires each foster couple to sign a contract committing to tell the child of its provenance. In the past, many families waited until high school or later to tell their children their family circumstance. “At that age, when they find out they are shocked and leave home,” said Mr Kamal, who advises foster parents to tell the child as soon as possible.
Ms al Mutawa plans to tell Reem soon. “It will happen in the coming months and years, Insh’allah,” she said. “But not until she gets a little older.”
Ms al Mutawa applauded Dhreima’s efforts to move towards full adoption. Her foster daughter is not a full Qatari citizen, like her and her husband, but rather a naturalised Qatari – a lesser standing that is reflected on passports and other official documents.
She hoped the passing on of the family name, if legally approved, would change that. “This would be great,” said Ms al Mutawa. “It was not possible when we adopted.”
He made inquiries. He travelled the region. At a conference last month in Beirut, he secured a verbal fatwa from a leading Sunni scholar, Salman al Auda.
“He said it is no problem to give the child the family name, in Sharia it’s OK,” Mr Kamal, the general manager of the Qatar Orphan Foundation, said during an interview this week in his office. “You can’t imagine how important it is to be named according to the family.”
Since its creation three years ago by the Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, the Qatar Orphan Foundation, known as Dhreima after a violet flower that grows in harsh conditions, has steadily gathered steam.
Today its waiting list is growing, its average orphan stay is shrinking and its officials are working to broaden the concept of family and expand the fostering experience, traditionally seen as an important charitable act in the Muslim world.
“Yateem is a big thing in Islam,” said Mr Kamal, the Dhreima general manager, using the Arabic word for guardianship. “It helps you get to paradise.” The Prophet Mohammed said those who took care of orphaned children would be close to him in heaven, according to a well-known hadith.
But Sharia generally recognises only inheritance claims based on blood or marriage and does not allow full adoptions because they are considered relics of the pre-Islamic era of jiyaliyyah, or ignorance.
Thus Mr Kamal’s efforts to expand the concept of family. He said that the widely respected Doha-based scholar Youssef al Qaradawi had voiced a view similar to Sheikh al Auda’s. Dhreima is drafting documents for these scholars to sign into fatwa and hopes to institute the new policy by the end of the year.
If confirmed, this new stance would mark an uprecedented shift. “I do not see how such an opinion would be judged valid according to Islamic legal methodology as it would contradict the clear verses in the Qur’an concerning this very issue,” said Sheikh Musa Furber, a mufti who studied Islam for more than a dozen years in Damascus and Cairo and is now a researcher at the Tabah Foundation in Abu Dhabi. “Without seeing the actual text of these fatwa I cannot comment on their contents or evidence.”
Mr Kamal also hopes to help foster the passing down of family wealth via wasiya, or bequests, rather than meerat, or inheritance. But these proposals are in their early stages and still have to work their way through Islamic jurisprudence and various bureaucracies.
Meanwhile, Dhreima continues to assist Qatar’s most needy, focusing on four kinds of at-risk children: those with a mother but no father; those who have lost their father or both parents; the socially orphaned, which refers to financially incapable or broken homes; and finally babies whose parents are not known.
The first three, which represent the majority of children Dhreima works with, are supported with money, health care, rides to school and more. Only the last category can be fostered.
Dhreima’s facilities include three orphanages – one for newborns to seven years old, another for 7-18 year-old boys and a third for 7-18 year-old girls – and two guesthouses for those older than 18.
A key goal is integration. Dhreima’s in-house children attend normal government schools and regularly play with non-orphan children. If a local public school asks to bring their students for a visit, Mr Kamal refuses. “This is not a zoo where anybody can come to see them,” he said.
According to a Qatari law issued in 2007, police and other authorities are legally required to contact Dhreima whenever a newborn of unknown parentage is found or brought to them.
Origin is not an issue. “We don’t deal in colours, we don’t deal with income, language or religion,” said Mr Kamal. “We see orphans as human beings, and anyone within the borders of Qatar is accepted.”
Dhreima soon begins the search for a new home – such as that of Muna al Mutawa, who married in 1997 and learned over the ensuing years that she and her husband were unable to have children.
They heard about Dhreima in early 2008 and decided to apply to foster a child. Within a month they received a call that the orphanage had received a baby girl born two days prior – the same day Ms al Mutawa’s mother died.
She was one of five applicants for the newborn, but the others fell away in the rigorous screening process. The foster family must be Qatari nationals and include a mother and spouse (except in rare cases) between 25 and 45 years old. Dhreima visits the applicants’ homes and reviews family income and finances. Potential foster families also meet with a psychologist several times.
During Dhreima’s first year of operations, children stayed an average of four or five months before being placed, but now the average stay is a month or less. The last arrival was placed within 10 days. Now nearly a dozen families wait for the next orphan to arrive.
In May 2008, Ms al Mutawa took her baby girl, now named Reem, home for the first time. “Totally, completely, right away she was my baby,” she said, showing a photo of a smiling brown-eyed girl on her phone. “Now she is two years old, very naughty, very funny and very intelligent.”
Dhreima requires each foster couple to sign a contract committing to tell the child of its provenance. In the past, many families waited until high school or later to tell their children their family circumstance. “At that age, when they find out they are shocked and leave home,” said Mr Kamal, who advises foster parents to tell the child as soon as possible.
Ms al Mutawa plans to tell Reem soon. “It will happen in the coming months and years, Insh’allah,” she said. “But not until she gets a little older.”
Ms al Mutawa applauded Dhreima’s efforts to move towards full adoption. Her foster daughter is not a full Qatari citizen, like her and her husband, but rather a naturalised Qatari – a lesser standing that is reflected on passports and other official documents.
She hoped the passing on of the family name, if legally approved, would change that. “This would be great,” said Ms al Mutawa. “It was not possible when we adopted.”
6.02.2010
Doha summit aims to adapt tools of global cooperation
DOHA // The World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative could hardly be more ambitious. Its main objective is to adapt the tools of international co-operation – the G20, UN bodies, the World Bank, World Trade Organisation and the like – to the complex challenges of the 21st century to ensure the long-term security of humanity.
It also aims to create a more inclusive global system.
“Legitimacy comes from people,” Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a former Singapore ambassador to the UN, said during the opening session of this week’s Global Redesign Summit in Doha. The report the WEF prepared for the event is titled Everybody’s Business.
“We have to learn to listen to the voices of 6.8 billion people,” he added. “The real purpose of this meeting is: let’s figure out how we can get the whole world involved in this, and not just some parts of it.”
Backed by the governments of Qatar, Tanzania, Singapore and Switzerland, the WEF launched the redesign initiative more than a year ago, in the depths of the financial crisis. A key aim was to move away from the so-called Washington Consensus and Bretton Woods-style institutions, created and led by industrialised countries, in the hopes of avoiding future catastrophes.
“The world has gone through a heart attack,” Arif Naqvi, founder of the Dubai-based Abraaj Capital, the region’s largest private equity firm, said during the opening plenary. “We have to work very carefully through this moment to make sure everyone acts in concert to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The GRI tasked more than 1,000 analysts, officials and policymakers to re-envision international institutions to better address global health, security, sustainability, development and the financial system. At a series of meetings over the past year, their ideas matured into proposals, which Doha participants sought to put into action.
“We have lots of ideas that now need spouses,” the WEF vice chairman, Mark Malloch-Brown said, advising government officials to choose a proposal and work to implement it.
Inclusion may be easier said than done. Despite the call for innovation and bold rethinking, many speakers at the event held fast to traditional institutions of co-operation.
Richard Samans, the WEF’s managing director, explained that the redesign initiative did not intend to replace the existing system for international co-operation, but rather augment it.
“We are not here to overthrow the system,” agreed He Yafei, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. “Global redesign of the system is not a revolution; it’s more an evolution.”
Few of the 58 proposals, which are to be finalised at Davos, Switzerland, in January, are revolutionary. They include strengthening the financial safety net, the creation of an international financial risk monitor, expanding the capacity of the International Labor Organisation and improving a UN-supported programme called Education for All.
“A lot of the proposals are what you might call ‘punting’,” passing the problem on, said Parag Khanna, the director of global governance at the New America Foundation, who previously worked for the WEF. He sat in on several meetings over the past year and attended several sessions during the Doha summit. “It’s not quite redesign yet.”
In addition, one sizeable demographic was mostly absent.
“For everything, whether it’s financial or climate change, we should look at the poor as part of the process, rather than beneficiaries,” said Harish Hande, the founder and managing director of Selco, a provider of sustainable energy solutions to rural India.
He was speaking on Davos Debates in Doha, a YouTube channel set up for the event. “Redesign needs to happen where the poor become part of the implementers, designers and thought processes,” Mr Hande said.
In the end, the GRI may be less redesign than makeover. In calling for change, one prominent observer complained of a hidebound system dominated by inertia.
“International deadlock is the norm; cynicism and mistrust are common currency,” said Queen Rania of Jordan, who is on the redesign council for education. “If just enough people are happy, there’s no need to change it.”
Mr Khanna acknowledged that the GRI is in part a branding exercise. But it could still effect change. “I think we might see in a couple years’ time that international organisations move towards sharing resources and collaborating more with NGOs and corporations,” he said. “And it will partially be attributable to WEF.”
------
originally ran in 1 June 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
It also aims to create a more inclusive global system.
“Legitimacy comes from people,” Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and a former Singapore ambassador to the UN, said during the opening session of this week’s Global Redesign Summit in Doha. The report the WEF prepared for the event is titled Everybody’s Business.
“We have to learn to listen to the voices of 6.8 billion people,” he added. “The real purpose of this meeting is: let’s figure out how we can get the whole world involved in this, and not just some parts of it.”
Backed by the governments of Qatar, Tanzania, Singapore and Switzerland, the WEF launched the redesign initiative more than a year ago, in the depths of the financial crisis. A key aim was to move away from the so-called Washington Consensus and Bretton Woods-style institutions, created and led by industrialised countries, in the hopes of avoiding future catastrophes.
“The world has gone through a heart attack,” Arif Naqvi, founder of the Dubai-based Abraaj Capital, the region’s largest private equity firm, said during the opening plenary. “We have to work very carefully through this moment to make sure everyone acts in concert to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The GRI tasked more than 1,000 analysts, officials and policymakers to re-envision international institutions to better address global health, security, sustainability, development and the financial system. At a series of meetings over the past year, their ideas matured into proposals, which Doha participants sought to put into action.
“We have lots of ideas that now need spouses,” the WEF vice chairman, Mark Malloch-Brown said, advising government officials to choose a proposal and work to implement it.
Inclusion may be easier said than done. Despite the call for innovation and bold rethinking, many speakers at the event held fast to traditional institutions of co-operation.
Richard Samans, the WEF’s managing director, explained that the redesign initiative did not intend to replace the existing system for international co-operation, but rather augment it.
“We are not here to overthrow the system,” agreed He Yafei, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. “Global redesign of the system is not a revolution; it’s more an evolution.”
Few of the 58 proposals, which are to be finalised at Davos, Switzerland, in January, are revolutionary. They include strengthening the financial safety net, the creation of an international financial risk monitor, expanding the capacity of the International Labor Organisation and improving a UN-supported programme called Education for All.
“A lot of the proposals are what you might call ‘punting’,” passing the problem on, said Parag Khanna, the director of global governance at the New America Foundation, who previously worked for the WEF. He sat in on several meetings over the past year and attended several sessions during the Doha summit. “It’s not quite redesign yet.”
In addition, one sizeable demographic was mostly absent.
“For everything, whether it’s financial or climate change, we should look at the poor as part of the process, rather than beneficiaries,” said Harish Hande, the founder and managing director of Selco, a provider of sustainable energy solutions to rural India.
He was speaking on Davos Debates in Doha, a YouTube channel set up for the event. “Redesign needs to happen where the poor become part of the implementers, designers and thought processes,” Mr Hande said.
In the end, the GRI may be less redesign than makeover. In calling for change, one prominent observer complained of a hidebound system dominated by inertia.
“International deadlock is the norm; cynicism and mistrust are common currency,” said Queen Rania of Jordan, who is on the redesign council for education. “If just enough people are happy, there’s no need to change it.”
Mr Khanna acknowledged that the GRI is in part a branding exercise. But it could still effect change. “I think we might see in a couple years’ time that international organisations move towards sharing resources and collaborating more with NGOs and corporations,” he said. “And it will partially be attributable to WEF.”
------
originally ran in 1 June 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
5.29.2010
Diplomacy works, so to speak
OHA // On a trip to Malaysia in 1989, Thabo Mbeki and his delegation from the African National Congress were forced to find new lodgings after the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, refused to share her hotel with “terrorists”.
Yet South Africa’s apartheid leadership had already opened a dialogue with the ANC – the political party of resistance, which decades prior had a militant wing – one that would ultimately bring an end to more than four decades of racial segregation.
Mr Mbeki went on to become president of South Africa. “In the end,” he said, during his keynote speech at the Fifth Annual Al Jazeera Forum on Monday, “the regime understood that even if it continued to resist change, ultimately it saw the negotiations as the only way with which it could bargain for some share of power.”
That theme ran throughout the forum here this week: when a conflict bogs down, talks are often the best route to peace and a share of the spoils for all. The hard part is deciding when, how and with whom to parlay.
“We need to move away from the notion of whether to engage to what kind of engagement,” said Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa programme director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict analyst. He urged the US to talk with supposedly unsavoury elements such as Hamas. “You can’t create peace by self-selecting those with whom you’ll engage.”
Discussion during the three-day event centered around some of the Muslim world’s most pressing problems, including Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan. A Monday session sought alternatives to the great tangle that is the peace process, but delivered mostly denunciations.
South African journalist and commentator Allister Sparks extended the parallels with his homeland, comparing Israel to the apartheid regime and the Palestinian territories to the camps where it kept South Africans from the black majority. “Like the bantustans, they are phoney homelands … used to deny them citizenship,” he said.
Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, attacked the other side. “It is staggering to see, despite the constraints around them, how badly the Palestinian leadership has done,” he said.
Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, was an equal-opportunity offender. He denounced Hamas for attacking civilians, said Israel’s international backers could be seen as supporting an occupation and called out the Arab world.
“Progress has been achieved neither by a charm offensive, such as the Arab Peace Initiative, or an offensive offensive,” he said.
A few possible solutions were presented. Mr Levy envisioned progressives from both sides uniting to create “a coalition, not even cooperation, but all rowing, perhaps, in the direction of 1967 de-occupation”.
Arguing that Palestinians have proven they will never give up their land, Basheer Nafi, a historian and Middle East analyst, said the one-state solution “offers the only genuine resolution to this conflict”.
Many felt that first the fighting had to cease. Ibrahim el Moussaoui, the head of Hizbollah’s media relations, said Hizbollah would not engage the US until it stopped supporting Israeli aggression.
Similarly, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, a former Taliban foreign minister, saw the country’s upcoming peace jirga, concurrent with the launch of the US forces’ campaign in Kandahar, as problematic. “Just imagine I’m talking to you but at the same time your men are attacking my home,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the forum. “This does not work – it has a negative psychological impact.”
Yet precedents abound. Oliver McTernan, the director of the conflict resolution consultancy Forward Thinking, said British officials were in direct contact with the Irish Republic Army throughout most of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Mark Perry, a US foreign affairs analyst, argued that negotiations with Sunnis intensified during the peak of violence in Iraq. “It wasn’t the surge that defeated the insurgents in Iraq, it was talking to them,” he said.
Sparks pointed again to South Africa. “If you wait until terrorists lay down their arms to begin negotiations, you’ll never get started.”
The United States refuses to negotiate directly with the Taliban, Hamas and Hizbollah, in part because it perceives them as terrorists, though others might call them freedom fighters.
Yet the Obama administration has voiced support for Afghan government negotiations with the Taliban. In February, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said: “We are talking to people.” That did not include direct contact with Taliban leaders because they had yet to renounce al Qa’eda, he said.
“The agenda of the Taliban is only a national agenda, not an international agenda,” Mr Muttawakil said during a panel discussing the issue of talking with the Taliban. The distinction distances the Taliban from other caliphate-seeking, pan-Islamist jihadi affiliates of al Qa’eda.
Last week, a Hamas official said the group wanted to establish “open and stable ties” with the United States. “The US and others, they give a distorted image of the resistance,” said Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for Hamas.
Several analysts urged the United States to alter its image of the Taliban and begin talks. The current US plan in Afghanistan is focused on peeling off and “reintegrating” moderate low- and mid-level soldiers in the hopes of weakening the Taliban’s negotiating position.
“Losers cannot be choosers,” said Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, referring to the US.
“This cannot be part of the solution,” Mr Muttawakil agreed. “There are no moderate or hardline Taliban, there is only one Taliban, under Mullah Omar, and they must talk to them.”
This may explain why gains have been minimal.
“Reintegration is not going particularly well,” said Robert Grenier, a consultant and former CIA station chief in Islamabad. “Momentum is building for some sort of political reconciliation that involves the leaders of the insurgency.”
Just last week, Taliban representatives and Afghan government delegates met in the Maldives. Mr Muttawakil dismissed these talks. “There’s a lot of money out there, and some are just using this as a business.”
To negotiate sincerely with Mullah Omar, Mr Muttawakil said, the US and Afghan governments must halt military operations, release Taliban detainees in Guantanamo and Bagram, remove the blacklist of Taliban to be captured or killed and allow the Taliban an office, an address where they can be reached.
“The Taliban don’t trust all these people,” he said. “They don’t believe all the talk.”
The Taliban might be willing to accept the Afghan constitution, which incorporates elements of Sharia. Key negotiating points would involve the system of governance and a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
“It is time to end this war,” said the former Taliban foreign minister.
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first ran in 28 May The National, www.thenational.ae
Yet South Africa’s apartheid leadership had already opened a dialogue with the ANC – the political party of resistance, which decades prior had a militant wing – one that would ultimately bring an end to more than four decades of racial segregation.
Mr Mbeki went on to become president of South Africa. “In the end,” he said, during his keynote speech at the Fifth Annual Al Jazeera Forum on Monday, “the regime understood that even if it continued to resist change, ultimately it saw the negotiations as the only way with which it could bargain for some share of power.”
That theme ran throughout the forum here this week: when a conflict bogs down, talks are often the best route to peace and a share of the spoils for all. The hard part is deciding when, how and with whom to parlay.
“We need to move away from the notion of whether to engage to what kind of engagement,” said Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa programme director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based conflict analyst. He urged the US to talk with supposedly unsavoury elements such as Hamas. “You can’t create peace by self-selecting those with whom you’ll engage.”
Discussion during the three-day event centered around some of the Muslim world’s most pressing problems, including Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan. A Monday session sought alternatives to the great tangle that is the peace process, but delivered mostly denunciations.
South African journalist and commentator Allister Sparks extended the parallels with his homeland, comparing Israel to the apartheid regime and the Palestinian territories to the camps where it kept South Africans from the black majority. “Like the bantustans, they are phoney homelands … used to deny them citizenship,” he said.
Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, attacked the other side. “It is staggering to see, despite the constraints around them, how badly the Palestinian leadership has done,” he said.
Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, was an equal-opportunity offender. He denounced Hamas for attacking civilians, said Israel’s international backers could be seen as supporting an occupation and called out the Arab world.
“Progress has been achieved neither by a charm offensive, such as the Arab Peace Initiative, or an offensive offensive,” he said.
A few possible solutions were presented. Mr Levy envisioned progressives from both sides uniting to create “a coalition, not even cooperation, but all rowing, perhaps, in the direction of 1967 de-occupation”.
Arguing that Palestinians have proven they will never give up their land, Basheer Nafi, a historian and Middle East analyst, said the one-state solution “offers the only genuine resolution to this conflict”.
Many felt that first the fighting had to cease. Ibrahim el Moussaoui, the head of Hizbollah’s media relations, said Hizbollah would not engage the US until it stopped supporting Israeli aggression.
Similarly, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, a former Taliban foreign minister, saw the country’s upcoming peace jirga, concurrent with the launch of the US forces’ campaign in Kandahar, as problematic. “Just imagine I’m talking to you but at the same time your men are attacking my home,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the forum. “This does not work – it has a negative psychological impact.”
Yet precedents abound. Oliver McTernan, the director of the conflict resolution consultancy Forward Thinking, said British officials were in direct contact with the Irish Republic Army throughout most of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Mark Perry, a US foreign affairs analyst, argued that negotiations with Sunnis intensified during the peak of violence in Iraq. “It wasn’t the surge that defeated the insurgents in Iraq, it was talking to them,” he said.
Sparks pointed again to South Africa. “If you wait until terrorists lay down their arms to begin negotiations, you’ll never get started.”
The United States refuses to negotiate directly with the Taliban, Hamas and Hizbollah, in part because it perceives them as terrorists, though others might call them freedom fighters.
Yet the Obama administration has voiced support for Afghan government negotiations with the Taliban. In February, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said: “We are talking to people.” That did not include direct contact with Taliban leaders because they had yet to renounce al Qa’eda, he said.
“The agenda of the Taliban is only a national agenda, not an international agenda,” Mr Muttawakil said during a panel discussing the issue of talking with the Taliban. The distinction distances the Taliban from other caliphate-seeking, pan-Islamist jihadi affiliates of al Qa’eda.
Last week, a Hamas official said the group wanted to establish “open and stable ties” with the United States. “The US and others, they give a distorted image of the resistance,” said Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for Hamas.
Several analysts urged the United States to alter its image of the Taliban and begin talks. The current US plan in Afghanistan is focused on peeling off and “reintegrating” moderate low- and mid-level soldiers in the hopes of weakening the Taliban’s negotiating position.
“Losers cannot be choosers,” said Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, referring to the US.
“This cannot be part of the solution,” Mr Muttawakil agreed. “There are no moderate or hardline Taliban, there is only one Taliban, under Mullah Omar, and they must talk to them.”
This may explain why gains have been minimal.
“Reintegration is not going particularly well,” said Robert Grenier, a consultant and former CIA station chief in Islamabad. “Momentum is building for some sort of political reconciliation that involves the leaders of the insurgency.”
Just last week, Taliban representatives and Afghan government delegates met in the Maldives. Mr Muttawakil dismissed these talks. “There’s a lot of money out there, and some are just using this as a business.”
To negotiate sincerely with Mullah Omar, Mr Muttawakil said, the US and Afghan governments must halt military operations, release Taliban detainees in Guantanamo and Bagram, remove the blacklist of Taliban to be captured or killed and allow the Taliban an office, an address where they can be reached.
“The Taliban don’t trust all these people,” he said. “They don’t believe all the talk.”
The Taliban might be willing to accept the Afghan constitution, which incorporates elements of Sharia. Key negotiating points would involve the system of governance and a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
“It is time to end this war,” said the former Taliban foreign minister.
----
first ran in 28 May The National, www.thenational.ae
5.20.2010
Gulf states getting jump on stem cell research
DOHA // “Countries today are not measured by their wealth,” said Dr Fathy Saoud, the president of Qatar Foundation, opening a stem cell forum hosted by Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar on Monday. “They are measured by what they produce, including research and ideas.”
Among medical researchers, stem cells are hot. Leading scientists are closing in on breakthroughs and lauding the cells’ potential to treat, even cure, some of the world’s most serious medical problems, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
“Stem cells have opened new and broad horizons,” Mr Saoud said, promoting the foundation’s nascent research programmes. “This is a noble purpose and we all have to seek to achieve it.”
Stem cells are found in all multicellular organisms and are marked by an ability to differentiate into various cell types. Unlike adult stem cells, stem cells taken from an embryo are completely unspecialised and can develop into any kind of tissue – to treat a variety of ailments or even replace a failing liver or heart, in theory.
But the harvesting of such cells destroys the embryo, which some see as a human life. This is why the then-US president George W Bush banned funding for embryonic stem cell research in 2001. Research continued in the UK, Japan, China and France.
The following year, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa declaring the practice consistent with Shia Islam, kick-starting Iranian research. In 2003, Saudi scholars sanctioned the use of embryos for therapeutic and research purposes, further opening the gates for Muslim stem cell research.
Turkey, Egypt and Malaysia have since launched stem cell research initiatives.
But ethical questions linger. Last July, scientists at the UK’s Newcastle University were able to produce sperm from embryonic stem cells. Several scholars, including Hassan Mohammed al Marzouqi, a professor of Sharia at UAE University, denounced the practice as prohibited by Islamic law.
The 2003 fatwa by Saudi Arabia’s Fiqh Council of the Muslim World League allowed for the use and growth of stem cells for research if obtained from a permissible source, which includes the placenta or umbilical cord, embryos or foetuses that have been miscarried or aborted for medical reasons and leftover embryos from in vitro fertilisation.
Cloning and the use of any intentionally aborted embryos are haram, according to Ali Qaradaghi, a Sharia professor at Qatar University. “The Sharia verdict for stem cells is undoubtedly that preserving human life and human generations is the main aim,” he said during the forum. “Anything that achieves this objective in a way that does no harm is considered acceptable.”
Concerns about embryos may soon be irrelevant. Researchers in Japan, the UK and the US, where President Barack Obama overturned the Bush ban last year, have had some success genetically reprogramming adult stem cells to act like embryonic stem cells.
Such advancements are likely to boost the Gulf’s nascent programmes. The three-year old stem cell therapy programme at King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh has published several papers, filed a handful of patent applications and established a collaborative project with Harvard University.
Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid, the UAE Minister of Finance and Industry, has set up a Dh20 million (US$5.4m) institution in his name that focuses on genetics and stem cell research and presents major regional and international awards every other year.
In Doha, the Qatar Foundation is the nexus. The government-backed non-profit made its interest in stem cell research known in 2006, with a US$2.5m donation to support stem cell research at Rice University’s James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Texas.
The Qatar Foundation plans a stem cell laboratory within the $3billion Sidra Medical Centre, as well as a biomedical research institute that is slated for completion in 2014 and will include a genetics and stem cell unit. In addition, the foundation has held a series of workshops and partnered with Virgin Health Bank, which is set to open a stem cell storage facility in Doha by next spring.
“One of the main goals of the programme is to be oriented toward the Qatari population,” said Dr Jeremi Tabrizi, who leads stem cell research at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Leading medical challenges in Qatar and across the Gulf include diabetes, leukaemia and serious blood disorders – all potentially treatable with stem cell therapy. Weill Cornell Medical College has the core capabilities in place and has begun working on cancer stem cells, but is awaiting government policy and legislative decisions before working with embryonic stem cells.
“Stem cell research is one of the highest priorities of the emir and Qatar Foundation,” added Mr Tabrizi, speaking just after the forum. “All of us are expecting the science to grow here.”
Some analysts argue that Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are mainly importing the talent and trademarks from abroad, not building indigenous capacity. But two doctors from Rice University’s James Baker Institute, which maintains its stem cell partnership with the Qatar Foundation, believe these programmes hold the potential to not just heal the sick, but also build diplomatic bridges.
“We conclude that the national governments of countries within the greater Middle East,” Jesse Flynn and Kristin Matthews write in the March 2010 Stem Cell Review, “have the unique opportunity to establish stem cell research policies which confer interoperability between nations to foster crucial international collaborations throughout the region.”
----
originally ran in the National, www.thenational.ae
Among medical researchers, stem cells are hot. Leading scientists are closing in on breakthroughs and lauding the cells’ potential to treat, even cure, some of the world’s most serious medical problems, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
“Stem cells have opened new and broad horizons,” Mr Saoud said, promoting the foundation’s nascent research programmes. “This is a noble purpose and we all have to seek to achieve it.”
Stem cells are found in all multicellular organisms and are marked by an ability to differentiate into various cell types. Unlike adult stem cells, stem cells taken from an embryo are completely unspecialised and can develop into any kind of tissue – to treat a variety of ailments or even replace a failing liver or heart, in theory.
But the harvesting of such cells destroys the embryo, which some see as a human life. This is why the then-US president George W Bush banned funding for embryonic stem cell research in 2001. Research continued in the UK, Japan, China and France.
The following year, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa declaring the practice consistent with Shia Islam, kick-starting Iranian research. In 2003, Saudi scholars sanctioned the use of embryos for therapeutic and research purposes, further opening the gates for Muslim stem cell research.
Turkey, Egypt and Malaysia have since launched stem cell research initiatives.
But ethical questions linger. Last July, scientists at the UK’s Newcastle University were able to produce sperm from embryonic stem cells. Several scholars, including Hassan Mohammed al Marzouqi, a professor of Sharia at UAE University, denounced the practice as prohibited by Islamic law.
The 2003 fatwa by Saudi Arabia’s Fiqh Council of the Muslim World League allowed for the use and growth of stem cells for research if obtained from a permissible source, which includes the placenta or umbilical cord, embryos or foetuses that have been miscarried or aborted for medical reasons and leftover embryos from in vitro fertilisation.
Cloning and the use of any intentionally aborted embryos are haram, according to Ali Qaradaghi, a Sharia professor at Qatar University. “The Sharia verdict for stem cells is undoubtedly that preserving human life and human generations is the main aim,” he said during the forum. “Anything that achieves this objective in a way that does no harm is considered acceptable.”
Concerns about embryos may soon be irrelevant. Researchers in Japan, the UK and the US, where President Barack Obama overturned the Bush ban last year, have had some success genetically reprogramming adult stem cells to act like embryonic stem cells.
Such advancements are likely to boost the Gulf’s nascent programmes. The three-year old stem cell therapy programme at King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh has published several papers, filed a handful of patent applications and established a collaborative project with Harvard University.
Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid, the UAE Minister of Finance and Industry, has set up a Dh20 million (US$5.4m) institution in his name that focuses on genetics and stem cell research and presents major regional and international awards every other year.
In Doha, the Qatar Foundation is the nexus. The government-backed non-profit made its interest in stem cell research known in 2006, with a US$2.5m donation to support stem cell research at Rice University’s James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Texas.
The Qatar Foundation plans a stem cell laboratory within the $3billion Sidra Medical Centre, as well as a biomedical research institute that is slated for completion in 2014 and will include a genetics and stem cell unit. In addition, the foundation has held a series of workshops and partnered with Virgin Health Bank, which is set to open a stem cell storage facility in Doha by next spring.
“One of the main goals of the programme is to be oriented toward the Qatari population,” said Dr Jeremi Tabrizi, who leads stem cell research at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Leading medical challenges in Qatar and across the Gulf include diabetes, leukaemia and serious blood disorders – all potentially treatable with stem cell therapy. Weill Cornell Medical College has the core capabilities in place and has begun working on cancer stem cells, but is awaiting government policy and legislative decisions before working with embryonic stem cells.
“Stem cell research is one of the highest priorities of the emir and Qatar Foundation,” added Mr Tabrizi, speaking just after the forum. “All of us are expecting the science to grow here.”
Some analysts argue that Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are mainly importing the talent and trademarks from abroad, not building indigenous capacity. But two doctors from Rice University’s James Baker Institute, which maintains its stem cell partnership with the Qatar Foundation, believe these programmes hold the potential to not just heal the sick, but also build diplomatic bridges.
“We conclude that the national governments of countries within the greater Middle East,” Jesse Flynn and Kristin Matthews write in the March 2010 Stem Cell Review, “have the unique opportunity to establish stem cell research policies which confer interoperability between nations to foster crucial international collaborations throughout the region.”
----
originally ran in the National, www.thenational.ae
5.09.2010
Detailed Gulf demographics coming soon
DOHA // A small army of enumerators took to the streets of Qatar and other Gulf countries a couple weeks ago, knocking on doors and asking each head of household a battery of questions about personal technology use, health, employment, residential status and more.
Armed with handheld computers, these foot soldiers in an unprecedented regionally synchronised census are helping compile a detailed and potentially invaluable portrait of Gulf demographics.
“For the longest time in the GCC, we have had this problem with planning; we always seem to be caught by surprise," said Hatem Samman, a Saudi national and director of the Ideation Centre, a Dubai-based think tank run by Booz and Co.
“Given that the GCC is heading towards economic union, they want to know the make-up of their populations,” he added. “It’s very important, very helpful to have data of all sorts, to know the characteristics of your people. You can respond to whatever factors that affect you.”
Of late, those factors have been considerable. The population of the GCC has increased nearly 45 per cent in the past decade and, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, is set to increase by an additional third within the next decade, tipping 53 million.
Qatar’s growth has been the most rapid. As of the end of March, the Qatar Statistics Authority estimated the country’s population at 1.68 million. If accurate, this would represent a 125 per cent increase from the most recent census – in 2004.
“Our country development moved very quickly,” said Hassan al Mohannadi, the director of the government’s permanent population committee. “We need frequently to readjust the levels of our development to cope with the surging needs.”
For the census, the QSA divided the country into more than 100 areas, each of which it then subdivided into a couple dozen blocks. In the past few months census takers gave every building in each of those blocks a number, then recorded the surnames and number of occupants in each unit and distributed pamphlets detailing the personal interviews to come.
Then they began knocking on doors and entering info into their specially programmed personal digital assistants. “If the enumerator tries to enter info that’s inconsistent, like a three-year-old female who is also a mother, it won’t allow him to do that,” said Mark Grice, a statistical expert from the United States who has been working with QSA for two years.
The survey includes questions about the number of wives and children, education and type of drinking water used.
“I have nothing to hide,” Rafik Boushlaka, a British national of Tunisian origin said after completing his census interview. He was standing outside the front door of his Doha home as his five-year-old daughter, Elaa, ducked under and out from his legs. “They will analyse the data and use it to make decisions. Any modern state needs information such as this.”
At the end of their shift, enumerators dump the data onto a desktop, which uploads it to a central server. As a result, preliminary data is available almost immediately. The entire census, from first phase to final results, is scheduled to take eight months.
Still there have been bumps in the road. One enumerator, Abdulaziz Abdulrahman, working in Doha’s Bin Mahmoud area, said residents are not home on the majority of his initial visits.
“I have to come back three, sometimes four, times,” he said, suggesting that the initial completion date of May 15 may not hold. “I don’t think even a month will be enough time to finish our work.”
Further, despite an official dictate mandating cooperation with the census, certain respondents have been less then forthcoming. “It’s been easy to get the information from foreigners,” said Naser Aideen Ahmed, a census inspector. “But the locals, sometimes they’re not telling us everything.”
Privacy of the family is a pillar of Qatari and Khaliji culture, so the withholding of some personal information may be understandable. Such hurdles are not unexpected.
“If anyone doing a census tells you there are no problems, they’re lying,” Mr Grice said. “But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
Mr Grice said home absences had been built in to the census plan and that inquiries and complaints could be made online or to a census hotline.
Barring major delay, a wealth of detailed information on nearly the entire population of the Gulf should be available to the public by the end of the year. The joint 2010 census, with each Gulf country taking part and using the same questionnaire, is the realisation of a commitment made by Gulf leaders at a GCC summit in Muscat in 2001.
Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain began surveying last week and Kuwait’s census is set to kick-off this month. The UAE scaled back its national census, which will now be done mostly at the federal level. But Abu Dhabi recently began recording the occupants of each residence, and will roll out the survey phase of its census in October.
Qatar plans to release its census data that same month, offering more than 130 tables and charts on its website. Ideally, businesses will use the data to move towards potential clients, developers will find and respond to the greatest housing needs and governments will provide better infrastructure and services, perhaps even before they are needed.
“This census will provide all of our various decision-makers with detailed information on demographic, economic, technological and social indicators, by block and by zone across the whole country,” Nasser al Mahdi, census director within the Qatar Statistics Authority, said in an interview. “This new data, inshallah, will inform and help them implement their plans in education, in health or any sector.”
Some of those plans are likely to embrace tradition. In the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, nationals represent less than 30 per cent of the population. Depending on the data, results from the current census may exacerbate Gulf concerns about the eroding of national culture and identity.
This week, the Qatar government ordered all private schools to teach Qatari history, Islam and Arabic. The UAE has launched a major effort to increase the use of Arabic. Qatari officials have also nurtured the Musheireb project, a downtown development costing US$5.5 billion (Dh20bn) that incorporates traditional architectural and social elements, as well as the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened last year, and the coming National Museum of Qatar.
“There has been a lot of talk lately about the identity of nationals and the Arabic language and the effect on culture,” Mr Samman said. “What you have to do is stress certain aspects of your culture that you can promote, perhaps a linguistic policy, or local-oriented education and development.”
-----
originally appeared in the 7 May 2010, The National, www.thenational.ae
Armed with handheld computers, these foot soldiers in an unprecedented regionally synchronised census are helping compile a detailed and potentially invaluable portrait of Gulf demographics.
“For the longest time in the GCC, we have had this problem with planning; we always seem to be caught by surprise," said Hatem Samman, a Saudi national and director of the Ideation Centre, a Dubai-based think tank run by Booz and Co.
“Given that the GCC is heading towards economic union, they want to know the make-up of their populations,” he added. “It’s very important, very helpful to have data of all sorts, to know the characteristics of your people. You can respond to whatever factors that affect you.”
Of late, those factors have been considerable. The population of the GCC has increased nearly 45 per cent in the past decade and, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, is set to increase by an additional third within the next decade, tipping 53 million.
Qatar’s growth has been the most rapid. As of the end of March, the Qatar Statistics Authority estimated the country’s population at 1.68 million. If accurate, this would represent a 125 per cent increase from the most recent census – in 2004.
“Our country development moved very quickly,” said Hassan al Mohannadi, the director of the government’s permanent population committee. “We need frequently to readjust the levels of our development to cope with the surging needs.”
For the census, the QSA divided the country into more than 100 areas, each of which it then subdivided into a couple dozen blocks. In the past few months census takers gave every building in each of those blocks a number, then recorded the surnames and number of occupants in each unit and distributed pamphlets detailing the personal interviews to come.
Then they began knocking on doors and entering info into their specially programmed personal digital assistants. “If the enumerator tries to enter info that’s inconsistent, like a three-year-old female who is also a mother, it won’t allow him to do that,” said Mark Grice, a statistical expert from the United States who has been working with QSA for two years.
The survey includes questions about the number of wives and children, education and type of drinking water used.
“I have nothing to hide,” Rafik Boushlaka, a British national of Tunisian origin said after completing his census interview. He was standing outside the front door of his Doha home as his five-year-old daughter, Elaa, ducked under and out from his legs. “They will analyse the data and use it to make decisions. Any modern state needs information such as this.”
At the end of their shift, enumerators dump the data onto a desktop, which uploads it to a central server. As a result, preliminary data is available almost immediately. The entire census, from first phase to final results, is scheduled to take eight months.
Still there have been bumps in the road. One enumerator, Abdulaziz Abdulrahman, working in Doha’s Bin Mahmoud area, said residents are not home on the majority of his initial visits.
“I have to come back three, sometimes four, times,” he said, suggesting that the initial completion date of May 15 may not hold. “I don’t think even a month will be enough time to finish our work.”
Further, despite an official dictate mandating cooperation with the census, certain respondents have been less then forthcoming. “It’s been easy to get the information from foreigners,” said Naser Aideen Ahmed, a census inspector. “But the locals, sometimes they’re not telling us everything.”
Privacy of the family is a pillar of Qatari and Khaliji culture, so the withholding of some personal information may be understandable. Such hurdles are not unexpected.
“If anyone doing a census tells you there are no problems, they’re lying,” Mr Grice said. “But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
Mr Grice said home absences had been built in to the census plan and that inquiries and complaints could be made online or to a census hotline.
Barring major delay, a wealth of detailed information on nearly the entire population of the Gulf should be available to the public by the end of the year. The joint 2010 census, with each Gulf country taking part and using the same questionnaire, is the realisation of a commitment made by Gulf leaders at a GCC summit in Muscat in 2001.
Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain began surveying last week and Kuwait’s census is set to kick-off this month. The UAE scaled back its national census, which will now be done mostly at the federal level. But Abu Dhabi recently began recording the occupants of each residence, and will roll out the survey phase of its census in October.
Qatar plans to release its census data that same month, offering more than 130 tables and charts on its website. Ideally, businesses will use the data to move towards potential clients, developers will find and respond to the greatest housing needs and governments will provide better infrastructure and services, perhaps even before they are needed.
“This census will provide all of our various decision-makers with detailed information on demographic, economic, technological and social indicators, by block and by zone across the whole country,” Nasser al Mahdi, census director within the Qatar Statistics Authority, said in an interview. “This new data, inshallah, will inform and help them implement their plans in education, in health or any sector.”
Some of those plans are likely to embrace tradition. In the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, nationals represent less than 30 per cent of the population. Depending on the data, results from the current census may exacerbate Gulf concerns about the eroding of national culture and identity.
This week, the Qatar government ordered all private schools to teach Qatari history, Islam and Arabic. The UAE has launched a major effort to increase the use of Arabic. Qatari officials have also nurtured the Musheireb project, a downtown development costing US$5.5 billion (Dh20bn) that incorporates traditional architectural and social elements, as well as the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened last year, and the coming National Museum of Qatar.
“There has been a lot of talk lately about the identity of nationals and the Arabic language and the effect on culture,” Mr Samman said. “What you have to do is stress certain aspects of your culture that you can promote, perhaps a linguistic policy, or local-oriented education and development.”
-----
originally appeared in the 7 May 2010, The National, www.thenational.ae
5.01.2010
Where the streets may soon have names...
Doha // The directions for a recent party at the residence of Edward Noriega ran to nine sentences and included references to a furniture store, three roundabouts, two fast food restaurants, a Montessori school and a speed bump.
“It’s a nightmare telling people how to get to my apartment,” said Mr Noriega, an investment manager from New York who moved to Doha in December. “I’d much rather say 75 West 20th street.”
He may get his wish.
In Qatar, as in much of the Gulf, most streets have no name, postal services require PO boxes and residents identify their location via landmarks and other topographical points of reference.
But a decision by the Qatari cabinet last week empowers the Central Municipal Council to name all streets, avenues and public parks. The move should ultimately simplify party hosting, pizza delivery and parcel distribution and pave the way for a western-style addressing system throughout the country.
“Its all part of the desire to become a world-class city,” said Rami el Samahy, an architecture and urban design professor at Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar.
Prof el Samahy, who teaches a seminar on contemporary Middle Eastern cities, pointed out that the population of Doha is estimated to have doubled since 2004. The challenge now, he said, is "to make sense of it all.”
While the streets of Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman remain mostly nameless, Qatar’s initiative dovetails with addressing systems being considered or implemented in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
The reasons for the trend are clear. Western expatriates see the lack of a street system – being made to draw a map on a delivery form, rather than write an address, is a popular reference – as a time-consuming throwback from the Middle Ages. Businesses suffer as a result of slow or failed parcel deliveries and daily trips to the post office to retrieve mail.
Taxi drivers suffer, too. “My dispatchers tell me backside, but it’s not backside – it’s beside,” said Daniel Ali Mukhtar, an Indonesian who has been driving a taxi in Doha for four years. “They give incorrect directions all the time.”
More seriously, firefighters and police often have to navigate unfamiliar areas to find their destination, inevitably putting lives at risk.
Yet addressing systems are time-consuming and expensive. The Abu Dhabi initiative is costing an estimated Dh200 million and completion is set for mid-2012. The Dubai programme, now on hold, is said to have been budgeted at Dh900m.
No estimate has been made for the Qatar initiative as it is still in its early stages. The ministry of municipal affairs and urban planning will soon create a street naming committee, comprised of representatives from the Supreme Education Council, the ministry of culture, arts, and heritage, the Public Works Authority and the private sector.
With help from the Central Municipal Council, that panel will build a list of thousands of possible street names appropriate for Qatari culture, history and geography. Finally, municipal constituencies will hold public hearings to review and approve the new names.
That’s just the first step. After naming more than 9,000 roadways, for instance, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipal Affairs, which is overseeing the address programme, must install uniform signage. It has hired the Australian Road Research Board Group to develop a street signs manual to determine where signs will be placed, their lettering, coloring and other specifics.
Qatar authorities have yet to decide how each building might be numbered and whether to adapt the postal system. “Are they going to deliver mail?” asked Prof el Samahy. “That could be a boon.”
In the end, the system may fail to take root. Prof el Samahy cited an address system in Caracas installed several years ago. Locals never learned the street names and the system fell out of use.
Juma Mubarak al Junaibi, the director general of Abu Dhabi Municipality, has acknowledged that the main challenge is getting the public to make use of the new system.
Indeed, navigation by landmark appears deeply ingrained into the Gulf psyche. More than two years into Saudi Arabia’s programme, which incorporates geographic co-ordinates and mail sorting systems that can read English and Arabic, businesses still use PO boxes and residents generally navigate by topographical references and large thoroughfares.
Most Abu Dhabi streets have had names or numbers for years, but locals generally prefer to use landmarks because the names are little-known. Doha, where some 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the streets have names, has a similar problem.
“If the customer gives us street names and numbers than it’s very, very difficult to find their place,” said Mohammad Shabab, the sales manager at the Garden Centre, a popular Doha flower shop. “But if he gives us landmarks and good directions than we are fine.”
Mr Mukhtar, the taxi driver, recalled incidents in which the use of a street name proved more difficult than topographical navigation. The transplanted New Yorker, meanwhile, felt confident.
“People are not used to addresses here, so there’s going to be a process of education,” said Mr Noriega. “In the end it’ll be a much safer, more efficient way to get from Point A to Point B.”
------
an edited version ran in the 30 April The National, www.thenational.ae
“It’s a nightmare telling people how to get to my apartment,” said Mr Noriega, an investment manager from New York who moved to Doha in December. “I’d much rather say 75 West 20th street.”
He may get his wish.
In Qatar, as in much of the Gulf, most streets have no name, postal services require PO boxes and residents identify their location via landmarks and other topographical points of reference.
But a decision by the Qatari cabinet last week empowers the Central Municipal Council to name all streets, avenues and public parks. The move should ultimately simplify party hosting, pizza delivery and parcel distribution and pave the way for a western-style addressing system throughout the country.
“Its all part of the desire to become a world-class city,” said Rami el Samahy, an architecture and urban design professor at Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar.
Prof el Samahy, who teaches a seminar on contemporary Middle Eastern cities, pointed out that the population of Doha is estimated to have doubled since 2004. The challenge now, he said, is "to make sense of it all.”
While the streets of Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman remain mostly nameless, Qatar’s initiative dovetails with addressing systems being considered or implemented in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
The reasons for the trend are clear. Western expatriates see the lack of a street system – being made to draw a map on a delivery form, rather than write an address, is a popular reference – as a time-consuming throwback from the Middle Ages. Businesses suffer as a result of slow or failed parcel deliveries and daily trips to the post office to retrieve mail.
Taxi drivers suffer, too. “My dispatchers tell me backside, but it’s not backside – it’s beside,” said Daniel Ali Mukhtar, an Indonesian who has been driving a taxi in Doha for four years. “They give incorrect directions all the time.”
More seriously, firefighters and police often have to navigate unfamiliar areas to find their destination, inevitably putting lives at risk.
Yet addressing systems are time-consuming and expensive. The Abu Dhabi initiative is costing an estimated Dh200 million and completion is set for mid-2012. The Dubai programme, now on hold, is said to have been budgeted at Dh900m.
No estimate has been made for the Qatar initiative as it is still in its early stages. The ministry of municipal affairs and urban planning will soon create a street naming committee, comprised of representatives from the Supreme Education Council, the ministry of culture, arts, and heritage, the Public Works Authority and the private sector.
With help from the Central Municipal Council, that panel will build a list of thousands of possible street names appropriate for Qatari culture, history and geography. Finally, municipal constituencies will hold public hearings to review and approve the new names.
That’s just the first step. After naming more than 9,000 roadways, for instance, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipal Affairs, which is overseeing the address programme, must install uniform signage. It has hired the Australian Road Research Board Group to develop a street signs manual to determine where signs will be placed, their lettering, coloring and other specifics.
Qatar authorities have yet to decide how each building might be numbered and whether to adapt the postal system. “Are they going to deliver mail?” asked Prof el Samahy. “That could be a boon.”
In the end, the system may fail to take root. Prof el Samahy cited an address system in Caracas installed several years ago. Locals never learned the street names and the system fell out of use.
Juma Mubarak al Junaibi, the director general of Abu Dhabi Municipality, has acknowledged that the main challenge is getting the public to make use of the new system.
Indeed, navigation by landmark appears deeply ingrained into the Gulf psyche. More than two years into Saudi Arabia’s programme, which incorporates geographic co-ordinates and mail sorting systems that can read English and Arabic, businesses still use PO boxes and residents generally navigate by topographical references and large thoroughfares.
Most Abu Dhabi streets have had names or numbers for years, but locals generally prefer to use landmarks because the names are little-known. Doha, where some 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the streets have names, has a similar problem.
“If the customer gives us street names and numbers than it’s very, very difficult to find their place,” said Mohammad Shabab, the sales manager at the Garden Centre, a popular Doha flower shop. “But if he gives us landmarks and good directions than we are fine.”
Mr Mukhtar, the taxi driver, recalled incidents in which the use of a street name proved more difficult than topographical navigation. The transplanted New Yorker, meanwhile, felt confident.
“People are not used to addresses here, so there’s going to be a process of education,” said Mr Noriega. “In the end it’ll be a much safer, more efficient way to get from Point A to Point B.”
------
an edited version ran in the 30 April The National, www.thenational.ae
4.25.2010
The fresh voice of youth at Aljazeera film fest
DOHA // Many of the nearly 200 films screened during this week’s Aljazeera International Documentary Film Festival offered a glimpse into the unsettled lives of youth across a region experiencing great and sometimes violent change as it opens up to, and crashes against, the modern world.
“Young people today are more likely to be bicultural and travel a lot,” Hamid Naficy, a film professor at Northwestern University-Qatar, said after watching several shorts by young filmmakers at the free four-day event.
“They experience different languages and ideas, and are no longer seeing the world through the national perspective, but a personal one,” he added. “They are constructing their own identities, and we’re seeing a shift from roots to routes.”
Launched in 2005, the festival has grown steadily. This year’s films, from more than 90 countries including the United States, China, Russia, Yemen, Japan, Senegal, Argentina, Spain, Iran and the UAE, were chosen from nearly 1,000 submissions. They competed for awards in four categories: full-length, medium, short and New Horizons, for young and first-time directors.
The festival theme was Freedom, but a number of films highlighted the hardships of where they were made. Sons of the Sun, made by the Doha-born Egyptian filmmaker Ahmad Abdul Nasser, examined the marginalisation of albinos in Egypt.
Petty Dreams, by the Qatari film student Tariq el Makki, addressed the increase in suicide among expatriate workers in Qatar. The story focused on South Asian labourers but also presented two Arab expatriates painfully recalling how deceptive recruiters destroyed their lives.
“The underbelly of the Qatari economy is blue-collar workers,” said Prof Naficy, who has written three books on exile and diaspora issues. “One part of globalisation is this incredible displacement of people, resulting in a ‘labour diaspora’ that covers a gamut of motivations and social classes.”
One social group with a strong presence in this year’s festival was women. They directed more than 50 of the selections, including Breast Cancer, a New Horizons short made by two second-year journalism students at Northwestern University-Qatar.
The film, for which Thouria Mahmoud and Zainab Sultan received top marks in their visual media class, details how despite advances in modern science, the illness remains a taboo subject across the Gulf.
“It’s always blamed on the woman here,” Ms Mahmoud, 19, a Palestinian born and raised in Qatar, said after the film’s screening. As a result, no locals were willing to speak about their experience on film. The young filmmakers instead focused on the difficult experiences of expatriates.
“Qatari women are involved in activist programmes,” said Ms Sultan, 21, an Indian raised in Saudi Arabia. “But they may not want to come out in such a public forum.” In the end, the film seemed to suggest that only by bringing the illness into the light could it be defeated.
The Syrian filmmaker Su’dad Kaadan, meanwhile, sought to upend gender roles. Looking for Pink tells the story of four Syrian women who excel in professions generally reserved for men in the Arab world, including a musician, a kickboxing champion and a pilot.
“They are in different fields and living distinct personal lives,” Ms Su’dad told the Qatar Tribune. “But they face the same kind of pressure from their families and society.”
Other films held fast to deeply rooted traditions.
Abdel Rahman El Bazanji’s A Tale from Mesopotamia uses Iraq’s narrative tradition – the birthplace of writing; the oft-told tales of Baghdad; the popularity of poetry – to frame the effect of the US invasion.
In making The Falcon, meanwhile, the veteran Australian wildlife filmmaker Lyndal Davis zeroed in Qataris’ centuries-long love for falcons.
Riham Assi also examined nature, but from a different angle. In her short film Forgotten Flower, which she made as her graduation project at St Joseph University in Beirut, a tobacco plant expresses abandonment and neglect as it is cut, dried and packaged for shipping.
“In the Middle East and beyond there has been a real emergence of women filmmakers, and along with that there is a new experimentation with style,” Prof Naficy said. “This is essentially an autobiographical story told from the point of view of the plant, and it’s told with great sensitivity and environmental consciousness.”
With bold thinking, cheaper equipment and the ease of online distribution, such experimentation among Arab filmmakers is leading to a blossoming akin to that of Iranian cinema in the 1970s, Prof Naficy said.
One hurdle, however, is that most major film and television ventures in the Gulf, such as Alnoor Holdings’ film fund, worth US$200 million (Dh734m), have their eyes turned to the West.
“Going towards Hollywood is one way, but going local is another way that can be equally exciting,” he said. Prof Naficy teaches students from 15 countries. He envisions them returning to their homelands to work, yet keeping in regular contact with their former classmates.
“A sort of lateral network will develop that might replace the national,” he said. “Governments would do well to create more venues and events like this festival to increase the opportunities for their creative youth.”
That is not to say there are no opportunities today. While leaving the screening of their film on Tuesday, Ms Mahmoud and Ms Sultan were introduced to a producer from Al Jazeera News. Prof Naficy advised the two journalism students to apply for jobs.
“We will,” said Ms Mahmoud, smiling.
-----
originally appeared in 23 April 2010 The National (www.thenational.ae)
“Young people today are more likely to be bicultural and travel a lot,” Hamid Naficy, a film professor at Northwestern University-Qatar, said after watching several shorts by young filmmakers at the free four-day event.
“They experience different languages and ideas, and are no longer seeing the world through the national perspective, but a personal one,” he added. “They are constructing their own identities, and we’re seeing a shift from roots to routes.”
Launched in 2005, the festival has grown steadily. This year’s films, from more than 90 countries including the United States, China, Russia, Yemen, Japan, Senegal, Argentina, Spain, Iran and the UAE, were chosen from nearly 1,000 submissions. They competed for awards in four categories: full-length, medium, short and New Horizons, for young and first-time directors.
The festival theme was Freedom, but a number of films highlighted the hardships of where they were made. Sons of the Sun, made by the Doha-born Egyptian filmmaker Ahmad Abdul Nasser, examined the marginalisation of albinos in Egypt.
Petty Dreams, by the Qatari film student Tariq el Makki, addressed the increase in suicide among expatriate workers in Qatar. The story focused on South Asian labourers but also presented two Arab expatriates painfully recalling how deceptive recruiters destroyed their lives.
“The underbelly of the Qatari economy is blue-collar workers,” said Prof Naficy, who has written three books on exile and diaspora issues. “One part of globalisation is this incredible displacement of people, resulting in a ‘labour diaspora’ that covers a gamut of motivations and social classes.”
One social group with a strong presence in this year’s festival was women. They directed more than 50 of the selections, including Breast Cancer, a New Horizons short made by two second-year journalism students at Northwestern University-Qatar.
The film, for which Thouria Mahmoud and Zainab Sultan received top marks in their visual media class, details how despite advances in modern science, the illness remains a taboo subject across the Gulf.
“It’s always blamed on the woman here,” Ms Mahmoud, 19, a Palestinian born and raised in Qatar, said after the film’s screening. As a result, no locals were willing to speak about their experience on film. The young filmmakers instead focused on the difficult experiences of expatriates.
“Qatari women are involved in activist programmes,” said Ms Sultan, 21, an Indian raised in Saudi Arabia. “But they may not want to come out in such a public forum.” In the end, the film seemed to suggest that only by bringing the illness into the light could it be defeated.
The Syrian filmmaker Su’dad Kaadan, meanwhile, sought to upend gender roles. Looking for Pink tells the story of four Syrian women who excel in professions generally reserved for men in the Arab world, including a musician, a kickboxing champion and a pilot.
“They are in different fields and living distinct personal lives,” Ms Su’dad told the Qatar Tribune. “But they face the same kind of pressure from their families and society.”
Other films held fast to deeply rooted traditions.
Abdel Rahman El Bazanji’s A Tale from Mesopotamia uses Iraq’s narrative tradition – the birthplace of writing; the oft-told tales of Baghdad; the popularity of poetry – to frame the effect of the US invasion.
In making The Falcon, meanwhile, the veteran Australian wildlife filmmaker Lyndal Davis zeroed in Qataris’ centuries-long love for falcons.
Riham Assi also examined nature, but from a different angle. In her short film Forgotten Flower, which she made as her graduation project at St Joseph University in Beirut, a tobacco plant expresses abandonment and neglect as it is cut, dried and packaged for shipping.
“In the Middle East and beyond there has been a real emergence of women filmmakers, and along with that there is a new experimentation with style,” Prof Naficy said. “This is essentially an autobiographical story told from the point of view of the plant, and it’s told with great sensitivity and environmental consciousness.”
With bold thinking, cheaper equipment and the ease of online distribution, such experimentation among Arab filmmakers is leading to a blossoming akin to that of Iranian cinema in the 1970s, Prof Naficy said.
One hurdle, however, is that most major film and television ventures in the Gulf, such as Alnoor Holdings’ film fund, worth US$200 million (Dh734m), have their eyes turned to the West.
“Going towards Hollywood is one way, but going local is another way that can be equally exciting,” he said. Prof Naficy teaches students from 15 countries. He envisions them returning to their homelands to work, yet keeping in regular contact with their former classmates.
“A sort of lateral network will develop that might replace the national,” he said. “Governments would do well to create more venues and events like this festival to increase the opportunities for their creative youth.”
That is not to say there are no opportunities today. While leaving the screening of their film on Tuesday, Ms Mahmoud and Ms Sultan were introduced to a producer from Al Jazeera News. Prof Naficy advised the two journalism students to apply for jobs.
“We will,” said Ms Mahmoud, smiling.
-----
originally appeared in 23 April 2010 The National (www.thenational.ae)
4.10.2010
Lone Qatari professor offers a woman's perspective
DOHA // After earning her doctorate in comparative literature from the University of London five years ago, Amal al Malki arrived at a career crossroads. She returned to Doha and came across an advertisement for professorial positions at Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar, which had just opened.
“I always planned to be a writer, a novelist, but I said I’m going to try for a year and see where I go from there,” she said. “It was only when I started teaching that I realised, ‘Oh, this is where I should be.’”
In late 2005, Prof al Malki accepted a full-time position at CMU-Q, becoming the first – and to this day, the only Qatari faculty member out of nearly 300 professors within the six American universities of Education City, the showpiece of Qatar’s higher educational system.
“It’s very prestigious and a privilege, but it’s a great responsibility,” she said. “I would like to model myself as a good example, someone who is educated, who is modern, who is tolerant and flexible.”
Born and raised in Doha, Prof al Malki earned her bachelor’s degree from Qatar University before heading to the UK for further studies. Upon accepting the job at CMU-Q, she received no local opposition, in part because Qatari women have a long history in research and education. That history is continued today by the Qatari first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, the chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation and the driving force behind Education City.
Prof al Malki's forthcoming book, The Veil in Arab Media, extends that legacy. For more than three years, she and several colleagues studied the portrayal of Arab women in English and Arabic language media.
Their findings suggest that Arabic language media portray Arab women as modern and active, while English-language media appears biased, extending stereotypes about the oppression of women in this part of the world.
“‘Any woman who is veiled is most probably oppressed by her religion or her culture,’” said Prof al Malki, parroting the western perspective. Her own view is that the hijab, which she wears, is rooted in religious custom, while the abaya is a cultural or tribal tradition.
“Their reduction of women into one single heterogeneous entity is wrong,” she explained. “There are other factors that determine who we are, it’s not just religion. Just being labelled a ‘Muslim woman’ reduces us, in a way.”
Prof al Malki, who recently married, believes Muslim women should be seen as equals to men in business, politics and society. She teaches a course on Islamic feminism, a movement that grounds its ideas about female equality in the Quran, which has predominantly been interpreted by male scholars.
“They are men, interpreting verses about women,” she said. “So each one would interpret reflecting his own prejudices and his era’s prejudices against women.”
This era is not free from those prejudices. Of 134 countries ranked in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report, which measures opportunity for women in health, politics, business and education, all 14 Arab countries included placed in the bottom 30.
Hissa Hilal, a Saudi mother and a poet, earned death threats for calling for greater freedoms for Arab women on the popular television show Million’s Poet. Many Arab women have a different perspective.
Last month, hundreds of Yemeni women marched in opposition to a proposed law banning child marriage. In Syria, an all-female Islamist group, Qubaysiyat, promotes piety and conservative Islam in its popular and well-funded schools, mosques and nurseries.
Prof al Malki sees progress in the Gulf – where Saudi Arabia is building a top-notch university for women and Kuwait recently elected its first female parliamentarian – but acknowledges that challenges remain. Even in Qatar, with Sheikha Mozah as a role model, young women have difficulty finding their way.
“Our female students are going through an identity crisis because they see western education in a very conservative, traditional setting and they don’t know how to negotiate between both,” Prof al Malki said. “There’s no need to be one or the other – there’s nothing wrong with being hybrid, being a fusion of different cultures.”
Prof al Malki hopes to draw more students, male and female, towards careers in higher education, and has spoken with the Qatar Foundation about creating a process to funnel more Qataris into teaching at Education City. But each American university there – Texas A&M, Georgetown, Carnegie-Mellon, Weill Cornell, Northwestern and Virginia Commonwealth – is responsible for hiring its own faculty, independent of the Qatar Foundation.
Robert Baxter, communications adviser for the Qatar Foundation, said: “We have chosen our university partners because they apply such high standards in all their activities. The young people currently passing through our universities are gaining an education upon which they can build an academic career, should they choose to do so.”
Prof al Malki is optimistic about Muslim youth, but she worries that too few young people in the Gulf appreciate their own culture and language. She hopes that, like her, they might learn from the West, take what they need and return home.
“It’s really nice to be modern and educated but you have to still have some grounding and know where you came from,” she said. “It would be really sad if we have a generation that has no history.”
“I always planned to be a writer, a novelist, but I said I’m going to try for a year and see where I go from there,” she said. “It was only when I started teaching that I realised, ‘Oh, this is where I should be.’”
In late 2005, Prof al Malki accepted a full-time position at CMU-Q, becoming the first – and to this day, the only Qatari faculty member out of nearly 300 professors within the six American universities of Education City, the showpiece of Qatar’s higher educational system.
“It’s very prestigious and a privilege, but it’s a great responsibility,” she said. “I would like to model myself as a good example, someone who is educated, who is modern, who is tolerant and flexible.”
Born and raised in Doha, Prof al Malki earned her bachelor’s degree from Qatar University before heading to the UK for further studies. Upon accepting the job at CMU-Q, she received no local opposition, in part because Qatari women have a long history in research and education. That history is continued today by the Qatari first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, the chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation and the driving force behind Education City.
Prof al Malki's forthcoming book, The Veil in Arab Media, extends that legacy. For more than three years, she and several colleagues studied the portrayal of Arab women in English and Arabic language media.
Their findings suggest that Arabic language media portray Arab women as modern and active, while English-language media appears biased, extending stereotypes about the oppression of women in this part of the world.
“‘Any woman who is veiled is most probably oppressed by her religion or her culture,’” said Prof al Malki, parroting the western perspective. Her own view is that the hijab, which she wears, is rooted in religious custom, while the abaya is a cultural or tribal tradition.
“Their reduction of women into one single heterogeneous entity is wrong,” she explained. “There are other factors that determine who we are, it’s not just religion. Just being labelled a ‘Muslim woman’ reduces us, in a way.”
Prof al Malki, who recently married, believes Muslim women should be seen as equals to men in business, politics and society. She teaches a course on Islamic feminism, a movement that grounds its ideas about female equality in the Quran, which has predominantly been interpreted by male scholars.
“They are men, interpreting verses about women,” she said. “So each one would interpret reflecting his own prejudices and his era’s prejudices against women.”
This era is not free from those prejudices. Of 134 countries ranked in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report, which measures opportunity for women in health, politics, business and education, all 14 Arab countries included placed in the bottom 30.
Hissa Hilal, a Saudi mother and a poet, earned death threats for calling for greater freedoms for Arab women on the popular television show Million’s Poet. Many Arab women have a different perspective.
Last month, hundreds of Yemeni women marched in opposition to a proposed law banning child marriage. In Syria, an all-female Islamist group, Qubaysiyat, promotes piety and conservative Islam in its popular and well-funded schools, mosques and nurseries.
Prof al Malki sees progress in the Gulf – where Saudi Arabia is building a top-notch university for women and Kuwait recently elected its first female parliamentarian – but acknowledges that challenges remain. Even in Qatar, with Sheikha Mozah as a role model, young women have difficulty finding their way.
“Our female students are going through an identity crisis because they see western education in a very conservative, traditional setting and they don’t know how to negotiate between both,” Prof al Malki said. “There’s no need to be one or the other – there’s nothing wrong with being hybrid, being a fusion of different cultures.”
Prof al Malki hopes to draw more students, male and female, towards careers in higher education, and has spoken with the Qatar Foundation about creating a process to funnel more Qataris into teaching at Education City. But each American university there – Texas A&M, Georgetown, Carnegie-Mellon, Weill Cornell, Northwestern and Virginia Commonwealth – is responsible for hiring its own faculty, independent of the Qatar Foundation.
Robert Baxter, communications adviser for the Qatar Foundation, said: “We have chosen our university partners because they apply such high standards in all their activities. The young people currently passing through our universities are gaining an education upon which they can build an academic career, should they choose to do so.”
Prof al Malki is optimistic about Muslim youth, but she worries that too few young people in the Gulf appreciate their own culture and language. She hopes that, like her, they might learn from the West, take what they need and return home.
“It’s really nice to be modern and educated but you have to still have some grounding and know where you came from,” she said. “It would be really sad if we have a generation that has no history.”
4.05.2010
Visa row over, Muslim scholar to visit US
Just as Tariq Ramadan was preparing to take up a professorial post at the University of Notre Dame in August 2004, the United States government revoked his visa, denying him entry on ideological grounds.
The US State Department lifted the ban in January, and the Swiss scholar is set to arrive on American soil later this week for a series of speaking engagements – his first visit since losing his visa.
“It was a mistake by the Bush administration, to prevent intellectuals from being critical,” Ramadan said during a recent interview in Doha. “The main thing is for me to go there and build bridges.”
It can sometimes be difficult to tell if Ramadan – rigorous scholar, champion of Islam and outspoken advocate for the rights and assertiveness of Muslims in the West – is building bridges or burning them.
Born and raised in Switzerland, the 47-year-old is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
He is often named among the world’s most influential public intellectuals yet regularly excoriated in both Muslim and Western media for a seeming lack of commitment to their respective values: he regularly denounces global capitalism, for instance, and says women should decide for themselves whether to wear the veil.
Last week he lectured in Doha at the request of the Faculty of Islamic Studies, where he will teach a course on contemporary Islam later this year. Before delivering his speech he considered the tensions within Gulf societies.
“You have some people that are very reactive to anything that has to do with the West, saying ‘this is the end of Islam,’” he said. “And you have some others saying, ‘No, we have to follow in the footsteps of the West because this is the way to be developed and modern,’ and in between you have people trying to find their way.”
In his next book, to be titled The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy for Pluralism, Ramadan writes about the shared values between Islam and the West.
“My understanding of Islam makes it clear that there is no contradiction in the Islamic values and the Western values,” he said. “To deal with modernity doesn’t mean that you lose your Islamic background.”
Yet since Al Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington, DC, in September 2001, signs of a clash have been near-constant. After a unanimous parliamentary vote last week, Belgium inched closer to becoming the first nation in the world to ban the full Islamic veil in public. Ramadan's home country, Switzerland, recently voted to prohibit the construction of minarets.
And in the wake of Farouk Abdulmattalab's attempt to blow up an Amsterdam to Detroit flight on Christmas Day, the United States has increased background checks on visa applicants from Muslim majority countries.
But in US President Barack Obama, Ramadan sees a leader with a considerable grasp of the situation. Though impressed by Obama's speech to the Muslim World in Cairo last June, he thought the time for words had passed.
He pointed to Iraq, where despite elections terrorist attacks, such as Saturday's massacre of two dozen members of a single family in Baghdad, are still common and society remains fragmented along sectarian lines. He cited the lack of progress with Israel, which has continued to announce settlements in East Jerusalem despite the Obama Administration's repeated calls for a freeze.
“Netanyahu is sending a very strong message: 'we don’t care,'” said Ramadan.
Despite what he sees as Palestinians' continued suffering and the marginalization of many Muslim communities in the West, Ramadan believes Muslims must look forward, not back. “We need to stop nurturing the victim mentality,” he said.
This is among the key points of Ramadan's 2009 book, What I Believe, that Muslims living in the West need to engage positively and work to become full partners in Western democracy.
“As citizens it is our Islamic duty to abide by the law of the country as long it does not contradict with our religious beliefs,” he said during the Doha lecture. “We must criticise the government while remaining loyal to the law – this is critical loyalty.”
Dr Basma Abdelgafar, a professor of public policy at the Faculty of Islamic Studies who has read several of Ramadan’s books, attended the lecture and came away impressed.
“It’s a very useful type of contribution to our understanding of Muslims in the West,” said Abdelgafar, a Canadian of Egyptian heritage who was looking forward to having Ramadan as a colleague. “It has nothing to do with a person’s creed or belief, it’s that they are representing something that’s right.”
Ramadan's critics, however, see him as a dangerous radical. “I don't see anyone today who is as effective as Tariq Ramadan in furthering fundamentalism in France,” French journalist Caroline Fourest, the author of an anti-Ramadan book, said last year. She accuses him of double-speak – saying one thing to Muslims and another to Western audiences.
Paul Berman, a journalism professor at New York University, goes further. “The problem lies in the terrible fact,” he wrote in a lengthy 2007 article, “that Ramadan's personal milieu -- his grandfather, his family history, his family contacts, his intellectual tradition -- is precisely the milieu that bears the principal responsibility for generating the modern theoretical justification for religious suicide.”
That may be going too far. Ramadan has distanced himself from Al-Banna's political opinions and denounced radical violence. His website prominently displays a large banner ad supporting non-violent resistance in Palestine.
Still, he does have some views unlikely to sit well with some Westerners.
“The neo-liberal economy, the way it’s now impacting lives and killing people every day because of the injustices of the economy, this is a'anam al harb (the world of war),” Ramadan said during the interview in Doha. “This economic order is killing people, and this is why we need ethics in our economy, and this recent global crisis is telling us exactly this.”
Taking an anti-capitalist, even socialist, stance is neither illegal nor in opposition to the West. But his position on certain huddud punishments may be more problematic.
Ramadan was asked if he saw any contradiction between his stated commitment to Western values and his calling, on French TV in 2003, for a moratorium on the stoning of adulterers in order to debate the merits of the punishment.
“As long as we don’t have answers to these questions we have to open a debate,” he said last week in Doha. “It’s not a contradiction, because Amnesty International, a Western organization, is calling for the same thing on the death penalty. So why is it not a contradiction for them and it is for me?”
In truth, the New York-based rights advocate takes a rather less equivocal stance on legal executions. “Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances,” according to their website. “The organization works for an end to executions and the abolition of the death penalty everywhere.”
-----
an edited version appeared in 5 April 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
The US State Department lifted the ban in January, and the Swiss scholar is set to arrive on American soil later this week for a series of speaking engagements – his first visit since losing his visa.
“It was a mistake by the Bush administration, to prevent intellectuals from being critical,” Ramadan said during a recent interview in Doha. “The main thing is for me to go there and build bridges.”
It can sometimes be difficult to tell if Ramadan – rigorous scholar, champion of Islam and outspoken advocate for the rights and assertiveness of Muslims in the West – is building bridges or burning them.
Born and raised in Switzerland, the 47-year-old is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and the grandson of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
He is often named among the world’s most influential public intellectuals yet regularly excoriated in both Muslim and Western media for a seeming lack of commitment to their respective values: he regularly denounces global capitalism, for instance, and says women should decide for themselves whether to wear the veil.
Last week he lectured in Doha at the request of the Faculty of Islamic Studies, where he will teach a course on contemporary Islam later this year. Before delivering his speech he considered the tensions within Gulf societies.
“You have some people that are very reactive to anything that has to do with the West, saying ‘this is the end of Islam,’” he said. “And you have some others saying, ‘No, we have to follow in the footsteps of the West because this is the way to be developed and modern,’ and in between you have people trying to find their way.”
In his next book, to be titled The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy for Pluralism, Ramadan writes about the shared values between Islam and the West.
“My understanding of Islam makes it clear that there is no contradiction in the Islamic values and the Western values,” he said. “To deal with modernity doesn’t mean that you lose your Islamic background.”
Yet since Al Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington, DC, in September 2001, signs of a clash have been near-constant. After a unanimous parliamentary vote last week, Belgium inched closer to becoming the first nation in the world to ban the full Islamic veil in public. Ramadan's home country, Switzerland, recently voted to prohibit the construction of minarets.
And in the wake of Farouk Abdulmattalab's attempt to blow up an Amsterdam to Detroit flight on Christmas Day, the United States has increased background checks on visa applicants from Muslim majority countries.
But in US President Barack Obama, Ramadan sees a leader with a considerable grasp of the situation. Though impressed by Obama's speech to the Muslim World in Cairo last June, he thought the time for words had passed.
He pointed to Iraq, where despite elections terrorist attacks, such as Saturday's massacre of two dozen members of a single family in Baghdad, are still common and society remains fragmented along sectarian lines. He cited the lack of progress with Israel, which has continued to announce settlements in East Jerusalem despite the Obama Administration's repeated calls for a freeze.
“Netanyahu is sending a very strong message: 'we don’t care,'” said Ramadan.
Despite what he sees as Palestinians' continued suffering and the marginalization of many Muslim communities in the West, Ramadan believes Muslims must look forward, not back. “We need to stop nurturing the victim mentality,” he said.
This is among the key points of Ramadan's 2009 book, What I Believe, that Muslims living in the West need to engage positively and work to become full partners in Western democracy.
“As citizens it is our Islamic duty to abide by the law of the country as long it does not contradict with our religious beliefs,” he said during the Doha lecture. “We must criticise the government while remaining loyal to the law – this is critical loyalty.”
Dr Basma Abdelgafar, a professor of public policy at the Faculty of Islamic Studies who has read several of Ramadan’s books, attended the lecture and came away impressed.
“It’s a very useful type of contribution to our understanding of Muslims in the West,” said Abdelgafar, a Canadian of Egyptian heritage who was looking forward to having Ramadan as a colleague. “It has nothing to do with a person’s creed or belief, it’s that they are representing something that’s right.”
Ramadan's critics, however, see him as a dangerous radical. “I don't see anyone today who is as effective as Tariq Ramadan in furthering fundamentalism in France,” French journalist Caroline Fourest, the author of an anti-Ramadan book, said last year. She accuses him of double-speak – saying one thing to Muslims and another to Western audiences.
Paul Berman, a journalism professor at New York University, goes further. “The problem lies in the terrible fact,” he wrote in a lengthy 2007 article, “that Ramadan's personal milieu -- his grandfather, his family history, his family contacts, his intellectual tradition -- is precisely the milieu that bears the principal responsibility for generating the modern theoretical justification for religious suicide.”
That may be going too far. Ramadan has distanced himself from Al-Banna's political opinions and denounced radical violence. His website prominently displays a large banner ad supporting non-violent resistance in Palestine.
Still, he does have some views unlikely to sit well with some Westerners.
“The neo-liberal economy, the way it’s now impacting lives and killing people every day because of the injustices of the economy, this is a'anam al harb (the world of war),” Ramadan said during the interview in Doha. “This economic order is killing people, and this is why we need ethics in our economy, and this recent global crisis is telling us exactly this.”
Taking an anti-capitalist, even socialist, stance is neither illegal nor in opposition to the West. But his position on certain huddud punishments may be more problematic.
Ramadan was asked if he saw any contradiction between his stated commitment to Western values and his calling, on French TV in 2003, for a moratorium on the stoning of adulterers in order to debate the merits of the punishment.
“As long as we don’t have answers to these questions we have to open a debate,” he said last week in Doha. “It’s not a contradiction, because Amnesty International, a Western organization, is calling for the same thing on the death penalty. So why is it not a contradiction for them and it is for me?”
In truth, the New York-based rights advocate takes a rather less equivocal stance on legal executions. “Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases and under all circumstances,” according to their website. “The organization works for an end to executions and the abolition of the death penalty everywhere.”
-----
an edited version appeared in 5 April 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
3.26.2010
Arabic death throes in the Gulf?
DOHA // Abbas al Tonsi sees something wrong in a future where citizens of Gulf countries wear dishdashas and abayas but are unable to speak Arabic.
“How can you say ‘I am an Arab’ if you don’t know the language?” said the professor of Arabic at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.
For Mr al Tonsi, who has written several Arabic textbooks and has been teaching the language for almost 40 years, the crisis is personal. “I am afraid that after 20 years,” he said, “Arabic will just be a language of religious ritual.”
The native tongue for more than 300 million people and used regularly by 1.6 billion Muslims, Arabic is in no danger of extinction. But because of the dominance of English, its usage in everyday life is under threat in several of the Gulf’s smaller states.
A senior official at Qatar’s ministry of culture, arts and heritage recently acknowledged Arabic’s decline and underscored the seriousness of the problem. “Language is the key issue for the identity of a society,” Marzook Basher Binmarzook said last month.
Mr al Tonsi’s forthcoming study of Arabic instruction reveals how Qatari schools are helping to erode that identity. Standards are vague and not communicated well to the teachers, he said.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Meet this level of efficiency’. But how do you guide the teachers to get the students there?” said Mr al Tonsi. “What exactly are the main ideas? In these standards, there are no indicators of intent, no uniform lesson plans or content.”
Secondly, he said, most of the Arabic teachers were inadequately trained and relied on outdated methods.
“The teachers mainly teach grammar, and it’s mainly teacher-centred,” Mr al Tonsi said. “They lecture rather than engage the students.”
Finally, schools use a wide variety of textbooks, which complicates proficiency testing. They also lean too heavily on grammar, according to Mr al Tonsi, and use simplistic drills that fail to develop critical thinking. Further, most books are overly proud and authoritarian, he said.
“‘We are the best, we are the bravest’ – you feel this is nonsense if you’re a young person,” said Mr al Tonsi, who co-authored Al Khitaab, an Arabic textbook used in about 700 universities worldwide.
Similar problems exist in the UAE. Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority recently found that Arabic in private schools was poorly taught by underqualified teachers using inadequate resources.
In addition, fewer Gulf nationals are opting for teaching careers because of low pay and a lack of cultural respect. And a major reform programme in Qatar has instituted a more westernised curriculum.
“Westernising the curriculum, per se, is not necessarily bad,” said Hatem Samman, the director of the Ideation Centre, a think tank based in Dubai, where Arabic has also lost ground in most primary schools. “But if you bring in English in mathematics, geography and science, that definitely has an effect on Arabic, on the language and the culture as well.”
Gulf culture has in recent decades shifted towards the West. Arabs represent a minority population in Qatar, as in the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. English dominates business, and is more common in many public places, such as malls.
Many schools now favour English as the primary medium of instruction. And Education City in Doha, American University in Dubai and Sharjah and New York University in Abu Dhabi point to a higher educational system that is embracing English.
Many students and their parents see it as the best route to success.
“Many Arab families now want their children to learn English before they learn Arabic,” said Jinanne Tabra, the founder of Araboh, a producer of contemporary Arabic learning materials. “There is this ridiculous impression that English is somehow superior to Arabic.”
But instead of becoming bilingual, most students in Qatar lack fluency in any language. In the past four years, only five to seven per cent of primary and junior high school students in Qatar achieved acceptable standards in national tests for Arabic and English.
“Unless you have a very solid system of your first language you cannot progress in a second language,” Mr al Tonsi said. “Learning Arabic is important for learning English well – it’s very clear.”
As a result, the cultural winds may be shifting again. Last month the UAE announced a new national plan to help Arabic “re-emerge as a dynamic and vibrant language”. Qatar has organised seminars and festivals to celebrate Arabic language and culture.
Mr al Tonsi has more concrete recommendations. He would like to see all courses from preschool to middle school taught in Arabic and English. He cited the example of Lebanon, where most students were fluent in three languages by the time they reached their adolescence.
He urged schools to improve teacher training and create extra curricular activities in which students could converse in Arabic – book clubs, speech groups, drama clubs and poetry readings. He also thinks schools should use audio and video as the main texts, and teach an Arabic that is challenging, enjoyable, respectful of young minds and develops critical thinking.
Maybe learning Arabic could even be fun. “You will never learn a language unless you are willing to learn it,” he said. “No one learns a language by force.”
“How can you say ‘I am an Arab’ if you don’t know the language?” said the professor of Arabic at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.
For Mr al Tonsi, who has written several Arabic textbooks and has been teaching the language for almost 40 years, the crisis is personal. “I am afraid that after 20 years,” he said, “Arabic will just be a language of religious ritual.”
The native tongue for more than 300 million people and used regularly by 1.6 billion Muslims, Arabic is in no danger of extinction. But because of the dominance of English, its usage in everyday life is under threat in several of the Gulf’s smaller states.
A senior official at Qatar’s ministry of culture, arts and heritage recently acknowledged Arabic’s decline and underscored the seriousness of the problem. “Language is the key issue for the identity of a society,” Marzook Basher Binmarzook said last month.
Mr al Tonsi’s forthcoming study of Arabic instruction reveals how Qatari schools are helping to erode that identity. Standards are vague and not communicated well to the teachers, he said.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Meet this level of efficiency’. But how do you guide the teachers to get the students there?” said Mr al Tonsi. “What exactly are the main ideas? In these standards, there are no indicators of intent, no uniform lesson plans or content.”
Secondly, he said, most of the Arabic teachers were inadequately trained and relied on outdated methods.
“The teachers mainly teach grammar, and it’s mainly teacher-centred,” Mr al Tonsi said. “They lecture rather than engage the students.”
Finally, schools use a wide variety of textbooks, which complicates proficiency testing. They also lean too heavily on grammar, according to Mr al Tonsi, and use simplistic drills that fail to develop critical thinking. Further, most books are overly proud and authoritarian, he said.
“‘We are the best, we are the bravest’ – you feel this is nonsense if you’re a young person,” said Mr al Tonsi, who co-authored Al Khitaab, an Arabic textbook used in about 700 universities worldwide.
Similar problems exist in the UAE. Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority recently found that Arabic in private schools was poorly taught by underqualified teachers using inadequate resources.
In addition, fewer Gulf nationals are opting for teaching careers because of low pay and a lack of cultural respect. And a major reform programme in Qatar has instituted a more westernised curriculum.
“Westernising the curriculum, per se, is not necessarily bad,” said Hatem Samman, the director of the Ideation Centre, a think tank based in Dubai, where Arabic has also lost ground in most primary schools. “But if you bring in English in mathematics, geography and science, that definitely has an effect on Arabic, on the language and the culture as well.”
Gulf culture has in recent decades shifted towards the West. Arabs represent a minority population in Qatar, as in the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. English dominates business, and is more common in many public places, such as malls.
Many schools now favour English as the primary medium of instruction. And Education City in Doha, American University in Dubai and Sharjah and New York University in Abu Dhabi point to a higher educational system that is embracing English.
Many students and their parents see it as the best route to success.
“Many Arab families now want their children to learn English before they learn Arabic,” said Jinanne Tabra, the founder of Araboh, a producer of contemporary Arabic learning materials. “There is this ridiculous impression that English is somehow superior to Arabic.”
But instead of becoming bilingual, most students in Qatar lack fluency in any language. In the past four years, only five to seven per cent of primary and junior high school students in Qatar achieved acceptable standards in national tests for Arabic and English.
“Unless you have a very solid system of your first language you cannot progress in a second language,” Mr al Tonsi said. “Learning Arabic is important for learning English well – it’s very clear.”
As a result, the cultural winds may be shifting again. Last month the UAE announced a new national plan to help Arabic “re-emerge as a dynamic and vibrant language”. Qatar has organised seminars and festivals to celebrate Arabic language and culture.
Mr al Tonsi has more concrete recommendations. He would like to see all courses from preschool to middle school taught in Arabic and English. He cited the example of Lebanon, where most students were fluent in three languages by the time they reached their adolescence.
He urged schools to improve teacher training and create extra curricular activities in which students could converse in Arabic – book clubs, speech groups, drama clubs and poetry readings. He also thinks schools should use audio and video as the main texts, and teach an Arabic that is challenging, enjoyable, respectful of young minds and develops critical thinking.
Maybe learning Arabic could even be fun. “You will never learn a language unless you are willing to learn it,” he said. “No one learns a language by force.”
Muslim world lags in aid and development
Doha // Muhammad Yunus may have kick-started modern microfinance, won the Nobel Peace Prize and inspired the current vogue for social entrepreneurialism. But across the Middle East and North Africa, his Muslim brethren seem to have dropped the baton.
Of the thousands of social businesses around the world, Arabs founded less than 75, according to a study by the Middle East Youth Initiative. Of those, five were launched in the wealthy nations of the GCC: three in Kuwait and one each in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; none in Qatar and the UAE.
“Social entrepreneurship is a nascent field here,” said Ehaab Abdou, an adviser to MEYI, a partnership of the Brookings Institute and the Dubai School of Government. “This is a big gap that we need to address.”
One after another, officials, academics and industry experts speaking at the third annual World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists (WCMP) here underscored how the Muslim world – which represents nearly a quarter of humanity – has been failing to pull its weight in responding to poverty, hunger, humanitarian emergencies and the radicalisation of youth.
In bringing philanthropists and aid organisations up to speed, they may need to start with the basics.
“Very few people in the field in Saudi Arabia even know what development is,” said Saudi Princess Banderi Abdul Rahman Al Faisal, the director general of the King Khalid Foundation (KKF), which works with Saudi non-profit organisations to train their staff, design projects and improve effectiveness and monitoring.
Ms Faisal likely hit on the key problem: inadequate education.
“The way to jannat [Arabic for ‘paradise’] is not just building mosques,” said Atta-ur-Rahman, a former education minister of Pakistan who now heads the science and technology body of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). “You have to build schools, you have to build research and innovation centres and knowledge parks.”
Ten years ago, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr, crown prince and deputy ruler of Ras al Khaimah, helped launch the Arab Science & Technology Foundation. Today the organisation has 15,000 member scientists and regularly links international businesses with entrepreneurial Arab scientists.
“We try to match those who have some knowledge with those who have some money to develop something really good,” said Abdallah al Najjar, the foundation’s president and CEO. Out of 90 start-up concepts the organisation has presented to investors, 22 have received financing.
Yet more needs to be done, particularly within Muslim countries. Nearly one billion people in OIC-member states are below the age of 25, according to Mr Rahman. Due to a lack of training and opportunity, many are unable to access the advantages of a globalised economy.
A study by the International Council on Security and Development found that more than 85 per cent of young men in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia say there are not enough jobs and that greater numbers are joining militant groups.
Similar problems exist from Algeria to Indonesia. ISOC works to minimise such discontentment by providing homes, jobs, marriage and education.
“We could turn this group of young men, this demographic time bomb, into married men with jobs, a house, a commitment to their community, a sense of identity, a sense of enfranchisement,” said Norine McDonald, ISOC director. “All these things we work on should be given the same political and financial support as we give to military and police actions.”
Such support is undermined by a lack of information and suspicion about aid efforts. In a recent YouGov survey, nearly 40 per cent of respondents across the Middle East said they had not donated to Haitian earthquake relief because they did not know where or to whom to contribute.
Further, 35 per cent said they did not trust local non-profits and 36 per cent believed it was easier to donate to international organisations.
KKF has partnered with the Columbia Business School, Acumen Fund and the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Yet most Saudi donors still view non-profits as ineffective or unaccountable and prefer to give directly to the beneficiary.
“We have to build non-profit capacity because the donors must be able to trust their abilities,” said Ms Faisal. “We’re actually looking to shift the mindset, shift the culture, and that’s very difficult.”
Another hurdle is a lack of commitment from those in a position to help.
The Islamic Development Bank is one of the world’s largest and most innovative international aid institutions and many of the more developed Muslim nations have significant aid agencies. As a percentage of GDP, in fact, wealthy Gulf states are among the world’s leading providers of aid.
And while philanthropists gathered in Doha, Arab leaders met in Cairo hoping to net US$2 billion (Dh7.3bn) for a new Darfur reconstruction fund.
Yet only a small percentage of the more than $100 billion in zakat payments collected annually by OIC member states goes to help the needy, said Mat Hassan Essa, head of the International Zakat Organisation. He proposed a cooperative effort to collect and disburse these funds to projects for the poor.
Islamic bankers, too, generally ignore the base of the pyramid. Globally, Islamic finance is set to reach $10 trillion this year, yet out of 77 million microcredit loans worldwide, some 380,000, or about 0.4 per cent, are Sharia-compliant.
“Right now Islamic financing is geared towards serving the haves of the world,” said Ali Ibrahim, a law professor at Georgetown University in Bahrain.
Many of those haves might be unaware that one-sixth of humanity remains hungry and that food production in Africa is set to drop one-fifth by 2050. Tarik Cheema, CEO of the WCMP, is not among them.
At the conference’s opening session he announced the Hasana Fund, a microfinance initiative that will provide interest-free loans to small-scale farmers across more than 20 poorer nations, including Bangladesh, Ghana, Ethiopia.
“As human beings and Muslims,” said Mr Cheema, “it is our duty not just to give food but also to help the poor produce their food so that they are not dependent.”
Of the thousands of social businesses around the world, Arabs founded less than 75, according to a study by the Middle East Youth Initiative. Of those, five were launched in the wealthy nations of the GCC: three in Kuwait and one each in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; none in Qatar and the UAE.
“Social entrepreneurship is a nascent field here,” said Ehaab Abdou, an adviser to MEYI, a partnership of the Brookings Institute and the Dubai School of Government. “This is a big gap that we need to address.”
One after another, officials, academics and industry experts speaking at the third annual World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists (WCMP) here underscored how the Muslim world – which represents nearly a quarter of humanity – has been failing to pull its weight in responding to poverty, hunger, humanitarian emergencies and the radicalisation of youth.
In bringing philanthropists and aid organisations up to speed, they may need to start with the basics.
“Very few people in the field in Saudi Arabia even know what development is,” said Saudi Princess Banderi Abdul Rahman Al Faisal, the director general of the King Khalid Foundation (KKF), which works with Saudi non-profit organisations to train their staff, design projects and improve effectiveness and monitoring.
Ms Faisal likely hit on the key problem: inadequate education.
“The way to jannat [Arabic for ‘paradise’] is not just building mosques,” said Atta-ur-Rahman, a former education minister of Pakistan who now heads the science and technology body of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). “You have to build schools, you have to build research and innovation centres and knowledge parks.”
Ten years ago, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr, crown prince and deputy ruler of Ras al Khaimah, helped launch the Arab Science & Technology Foundation. Today the organisation has 15,000 member scientists and regularly links international businesses with entrepreneurial Arab scientists.
“We try to match those who have some knowledge with those who have some money to develop something really good,” said Abdallah al Najjar, the foundation’s president and CEO. Out of 90 start-up concepts the organisation has presented to investors, 22 have received financing.
Yet more needs to be done, particularly within Muslim countries. Nearly one billion people in OIC-member states are below the age of 25, according to Mr Rahman. Due to a lack of training and opportunity, many are unable to access the advantages of a globalised economy.
A study by the International Council on Security and Development found that more than 85 per cent of young men in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia say there are not enough jobs and that greater numbers are joining militant groups.
Similar problems exist from Algeria to Indonesia. ISOC works to minimise such discontentment by providing homes, jobs, marriage and education.
“We could turn this group of young men, this demographic time bomb, into married men with jobs, a house, a commitment to their community, a sense of identity, a sense of enfranchisement,” said Norine McDonald, ISOC director. “All these things we work on should be given the same political and financial support as we give to military and police actions.”
Such support is undermined by a lack of information and suspicion about aid efforts. In a recent YouGov survey, nearly 40 per cent of respondents across the Middle East said they had not donated to Haitian earthquake relief because they did not know where or to whom to contribute.
Further, 35 per cent said they did not trust local non-profits and 36 per cent believed it was easier to donate to international organisations.
KKF has partnered with the Columbia Business School, Acumen Fund and the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Yet most Saudi donors still view non-profits as ineffective or unaccountable and prefer to give directly to the beneficiary.
“We have to build non-profit capacity because the donors must be able to trust their abilities,” said Ms Faisal. “We’re actually looking to shift the mindset, shift the culture, and that’s very difficult.”
Another hurdle is a lack of commitment from those in a position to help.
The Islamic Development Bank is one of the world’s largest and most innovative international aid institutions and many of the more developed Muslim nations have significant aid agencies. As a percentage of GDP, in fact, wealthy Gulf states are among the world’s leading providers of aid.
And while philanthropists gathered in Doha, Arab leaders met in Cairo hoping to net US$2 billion (Dh7.3bn) for a new Darfur reconstruction fund.
Yet only a small percentage of the more than $100 billion in zakat payments collected annually by OIC member states goes to help the needy, said Mat Hassan Essa, head of the International Zakat Organisation. He proposed a cooperative effort to collect and disburse these funds to projects for the poor.
Islamic bankers, too, generally ignore the base of the pyramid. Globally, Islamic finance is set to reach $10 trillion this year, yet out of 77 million microcredit loans worldwide, some 380,000, or about 0.4 per cent, are Sharia-compliant.
“Right now Islamic financing is geared towards serving the haves of the world,” said Ali Ibrahim, a law professor at Georgetown University in Bahrain.
Many of those haves might be unaware that one-sixth of humanity remains hungry and that food production in Africa is set to drop one-fifth by 2050. Tarik Cheema, CEO of the WCMP, is not among them.
At the conference’s opening session he announced the Hasana Fund, a microfinance initiative that will provide interest-free loans to small-scale farmers across more than 20 poorer nations, including Bangladesh, Ghana, Ethiopia.
“As human beings and Muslims,” said Mr Cheema, “it is our duty not just to give food but also to help the poor produce their food so that they are not dependent.”
3.19.2010
Five years after terror, Doha Players play on
DOHA // The players were nearing the climax of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when an unexpected guest interrupted the show.
“I’d been on stage for 10 minutes when I heard this crashing noise,” said Sherwynne O’Grady, an Australian schoolteacher who played a mother in the production.
An SUV smashed into the theatre lobby. Then it exploded.
“There was a tremendous boom,” Ms O’Grady recalled. “The concussion was amazing, everybody was deaf for a few minutes and parts of the ceiling started falling down.”
Five years ago today, an Egyptian suicide bomber struck the Doha Players Theatre. A dozen people were injured and the show’s director, Jon Adams, who had hurried towards the auditorium doors to investigate the initial crash, was killed.
The attack – Qatar’s first and, as yet, only, terrorist bombing – pierced the nation’s veneer of security.
“My first reaction was to get out of the country,” said Elaine Potter, the Doha Players’ secretary at the time, now theatre administrator and producer. She attended the show with her nine-year-old daughter, but they left at the interval.
Ms Potter was not alone in her fear. In the days after the bombing embassies and international schools erected concrete barriers. Luxury hotels installed metal detectors to scan all guests and visitors.
Worried about repeat attacks, a handful of Doha Players’ members left Qatar, moving to Dubai or back home to Australia or the UK.
Most returned within a year, according to Ms Potter, and resumed their former lives. Yet the Doha Players remains adrift.
Founded by a group of mostly British expatriates in 1954, the troupe performed irregularly at a variety of locations over the next quarter century, and its following grew. In 1979, the Emir, reportedly impressed with the members’ commitment, offered them a permanent home at a 340-seat theatre on Al Wabra street.
By the turn of the millennium the Doha Players had hit its stride, selling out productions of Shakespeare and fairy tale musicals, organising readings and community events and hosting well-known performers such as the Scottish actor and comedian Billy Connolly.
The bombing doused that momentum, took away one of the theatre’s most prominent members and destroyed its home. In the next day’s edition, The Gulf Times, Qatar’s most popular English-language daily, declared “the end of the Doha Players”.
The theatre board convened an emergency meeting. “The decision to rebuild and continue was made very quickly and very unanimously,” said Chris Evans, a former board member who attended the meeting. “We were quite determined to establish the fact that we were not dead.”
Donations poured in from prominent local backers and ex-members overseas. Qataris and expatriates organised a peace rally on a vacant area next to the theatre. It was attended by hundreds of students and religious leaders, including Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi.
Another prominent backer emerged. Before his death, Jon Adams taught for years at the Qatar Academy, a primary and secondary school operated by the Qatar Foundation, which is run by Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. “After the bombing, Sheikha Mozah said anything you need, we will help you,” said Ms Potter.
Together with the Qatar Foundation, the Doha Players organised a fundraiser, with the proceeds helping the theatre get back on its feet. In December 2005 the troupe returned to the stage, with production of Cinderella for a short run at the National Theatre.
The show was a success, but the Doha Players remained homeless. In recent years they have scraped by and performed wherever they could – school auditoriums, the lawn of the Sheraton Hotel, even in gardens and living rooms.
“That’s going back to the way they performed over 30 years ago,” Ms Potter said. “Before they had the theatre, they performed in an old house.”
Since the September 2001 attacks on the US, Gulf nations have been mostly terror-free, outside Saudi Arabia. And with two American military bases, Qatar appeared secure.
It may still be. Qatar has not suffered any more attacks in the ensuing years, and Qatari authorities believe the Doha Players’ bomber, an engineer employed at Qatar Petroleum, acted alone. They have been unable to link him to al Qa’eda or another terrorist group.
Yet the attack occurred on the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq War and a week after an al Qa’eda leader in Saudi Arabia called for attacks against western targets in the Gulf. “My sense is that this was an independent operation by someone who was inspired by al Qa’eda ideology,” said Thomas Hegghammer, a research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment whose book, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, will be released next month.
The Doha Players recently moved into a temporary home on land owned by the Qatar Foundation. The villa will provide offices and storage space but the troupe must look elsewhere to house productions such as Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, scheduled for May.
On a recent afternoon, several dozen actors auditioning for next production seemed unconcerned about any potential terrorist attacks.
“The show must go on,” said Ms Potter. “Nothing ever is going to stop the Doha Players … No matter what happens, there’s still going to be enthusiastic actors who will do anything to find some place to perform.”
-------
originally appeared in the 19 March 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
“I’d been on stage for 10 minutes when I heard this crashing noise,” said Sherwynne O’Grady, an Australian schoolteacher who played a mother in the production.
An SUV smashed into the theatre lobby. Then it exploded.
“There was a tremendous boom,” Ms O’Grady recalled. “The concussion was amazing, everybody was deaf for a few minutes and parts of the ceiling started falling down.”
Five years ago today, an Egyptian suicide bomber struck the Doha Players Theatre. A dozen people were injured and the show’s director, Jon Adams, who had hurried towards the auditorium doors to investigate the initial crash, was killed.
The attack – Qatar’s first and, as yet, only, terrorist bombing – pierced the nation’s veneer of security.
“My first reaction was to get out of the country,” said Elaine Potter, the Doha Players’ secretary at the time, now theatre administrator and producer. She attended the show with her nine-year-old daughter, but they left at the interval.
Ms Potter was not alone in her fear. In the days after the bombing embassies and international schools erected concrete barriers. Luxury hotels installed metal detectors to scan all guests and visitors.
Worried about repeat attacks, a handful of Doha Players’ members left Qatar, moving to Dubai or back home to Australia or the UK.
Most returned within a year, according to Ms Potter, and resumed their former lives. Yet the Doha Players remains adrift.
Founded by a group of mostly British expatriates in 1954, the troupe performed irregularly at a variety of locations over the next quarter century, and its following grew. In 1979, the Emir, reportedly impressed with the members’ commitment, offered them a permanent home at a 340-seat theatre on Al Wabra street.
By the turn of the millennium the Doha Players had hit its stride, selling out productions of Shakespeare and fairy tale musicals, organising readings and community events and hosting well-known performers such as the Scottish actor and comedian Billy Connolly.
The bombing doused that momentum, took away one of the theatre’s most prominent members and destroyed its home. In the next day’s edition, The Gulf Times, Qatar’s most popular English-language daily, declared “the end of the Doha Players”.
The theatre board convened an emergency meeting. “The decision to rebuild and continue was made very quickly and very unanimously,” said Chris Evans, a former board member who attended the meeting. “We were quite determined to establish the fact that we were not dead.”
Donations poured in from prominent local backers and ex-members overseas. Qataris and expatriates organised a peace rally on a vacant area next to the theatre. It was attended by hundreds of students and religious leaders, including Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi.
Another prominent backer emerged. Before his death, Jon Adams taught for years at the Qatar Academy, a primary and secondary school operated by the Qatar Foundation, which is run by Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. “After the bombing, Sheikha Mozah said anything you need, we will help you,” said Ms Potter.
Together with the Qatar Foundation, the Doha Players organised a fundraiser, with the proceeds helping the theatre get back on its feet. In December 2005 the troupe returned to the stage, with production of Cinderella for a short run at the National Theatre.
The show was a success, but the Doha Players remained homeless. In recent years they have scraped by and performed wherever they could – school auditoriums, the lawn of the Sheraton Hotel, even in gardens and living rooms.
“That’s going back to the way they performed over 30 years ago,” Ms Potter said. “Before they had the theatre, they performed in an old house.”
Since the September 2001 attacks on the US, Gulf nations have been mostly terror-free, outside Saudi Arabia. And with two American military bases, Qatar appeared secure.
It may still be. Qatar has not suffered any more attacks in the ensuing years, and Qatari authorities believe the Doha Players’ bomber, an engineer employed at Qatar Petroleum, acted alone. They have been unable to link him to al Qa’eda or another terrorist group.
Yet the attack occurred on the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq War and a week after an al Qa’eda leader in Saudi Arabia called for attacks against western targets in the Gulf. “My sense is that this was an independent operation by someone who was inspired by al Qa’eda ideology,” said Thomas Hegghammer, a research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment whose book, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, will be released next month.
The Doha Players recently moved into a temporary home on land owned by the Qatar Foundation. The villa will provide offices and storage space but the troupe must look elsewhere to house productions such as Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, scheduled for May.
On a recent afternoon, several dozen actors auditioning for next production seemed unconcerned about any potential terrorist attacks.
“The show must go on,” said Ms Potter. “Nothing ever is going to stop the Doha Players … No matter what happens, there’s still going to be enthusiastic actors who will do anything to find some place to perform.”
-------
originally appeared in the 19 March 2010 The National, www.thenational.ae
3.12.2010
Story of the artist as a...Qatari
DOHA // Indian-born artist MF Husain has been seeking sanctuary for a long time. “Since my wife passed in 1996 I had no home,” Husain said during an interview at his West Bay villa in Doha.
Barefoot and wearing a loosefitting Arab kandoura, he tapped and twirled an oversized black paintbrush as a servant poured tea. “At this stage of my life, my mission is to work,” he said. “And I like to work in maximum peace and comfort.”
Realising these are two things he might never find in his homeland, Husain, 94, relinquished his Indian passport this week and accepted Qatari citizenship. With that, India lost a national treasure and Qatar gained a living legend.
“The arrival of a world-renowned artist like him, it will be a blessing for Qatar,” said SAM Bashir, an Indian businessman who has lived in Qatar for 20 years and is the former president of the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre in Doha.
Husain’s paintings hang in museums from New York to Shanghai and controversy has mostly brightened his star. Today his works sell for up to US$2 million (Dh7.3m) at auction – as pricey as the work of any living non-western artist.
“But it is a national disgrace for India,” added Mr Bashir. “I don’t know why anyone from the Indian government didn’t make any attempt to solve the problem and bring him back to India. It’s a total failure of our democracy and secularism.”
Born in Pandharpur, near Bombay, in the fall of 1915, Maqbool Fida Husain had a rather progressive upbringing. “Nobody was religious, we were nationalist,” he said. “We were very secular right from the beginning.”
He began painting when he was six years old, and later attended art school. In 1947, the year India gained independence, Husain cofounded a progressive artists’ alliance.
He had a well-received solo show in Munich a few years later, followed by exhibitions in the United States and Europe. He moved into filmmaking, and his first film, Through the Eyes of a Painter, won the Golden Bear at the 1967 Berlin Film Festival.
The Indian government honoured him with top civilian awards in 1955, 1973 and 1991.
The trouble began just months before Husain’s wife died in 1996, when an Indian magazine published images of naked Hindu deities he had painted decades prior. With religious sensitivities running high in the wake of several communal clashes, Hindu nationalist groups responded angrily, filing lawsuits, burning effigies and threatening his life.
Husain left, bouncing between Europe and the Middle East for years. He spent a lot of time in Dubai. He visited Doha and struck up a friendship with the royal family, who bought dozens of his paintings for their new Museum of Islamic Art.
New works continued to spark controversy. In 2006 he painted India as a naked woman (Mother India). After the November 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, he depicted that woman being raped (The Rape of India), whipping right-wing Hindu groups into an anti-Husain lather. Returning home seemed out of the question.
Around this time, Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned learnt he was working on a series about Arab civilisation and offered to serve as his patron, promising housing, facilities and creature comforts.
“I wanted a sponsor, so I accepted,” said Husain.
More than 1,200 court cases have been filed against him in India, mainly for impugning religious and nationalist beliefs. Hindu extremists threaten to chop off his hands or gouge out his eyes if he returns.
Husain blames the government’s lack of response to the venom of Hindu nationalist groups such as the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, which are linked to India’s leading opposition political party, the BJP.
“The government was weak, and it’s still weak,” he said. “The whole thing is political, it has nothing to do with art or religion – they only want to get some votes.”
The sacred and the profane have mingled in Hindu iconography for centuries. Examples include the erotic carvings at Khajuraho and certain engravings within the Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes not far from Husain’s birthplace.
Though he has not set foot in India for five years, the decision to renounce his Indian citizenship was not an easy one. “I still love my country,” said Husain, who is working on a series of paintings on Indian civilisation.
Like Sheikha Mozah, many Doha residents look forward to his future contributions to the Gulf.
“This is the first time a big Indian celebrity is taking a passport from the GCC, from an Arab country, so I think this is very good,” said PN Baburajan, an Indian property agent who has been living in Qatar for 25 years. He also works as a correspondent for a Malayalam TV news channel. “Now he loves Qatar and he’s going to do some work for Arab culture and civilisation.”
Earlier this week, several dozen large, completed works were scattered about Husain’s villa, clogging the hallways and leaning against the walls and furniture. Most had never been publicly exhibited. They included a sombre work called Palestine Blue and a large, disjointed painting entitled Yemen.
In addition to his thousands of paintings, Husain has six children, 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Most of his family remains in India, where some observers see the artist’s decision as a defeat for free speech.
“A large body of people stood up and spoke for you in the confidence that you are with them in this struggle,” analyst Shazi Zaman wrote in open letter to Husain in the Calcutta Telegraph this week. “We thought that a person as privileged, as loved, liked and respected as you would certainly fight. But you took a flight out to Qatar.”
Sipping tea in his new home, Husain had a different perspective. “I am not a leader, I am a painter,” he said. “My job is to paint.”
-----
first appeared in 12 March The National, www.thenational.ae
Barefoot and wearing a loosefitting Arab kandoura, he tapped and twirled an oversized black paintbrush as a servant poured tea. “At this stage of my life, my mission is to work,” he said. “And I like to work in maximum peace and comfort.”
Realising these are two things he might never find in his homeland, Husain, 94, relinquished his Indian passport this week and accepted Qatari citizenship. With that, India lost a national treasure and Qatar gained a living legend.
“The arrival of a world-renowned artist like him, it will be a blessing for Qatar,” said SAM Bashir, an Indian businessman who has lived in Qatar for 20 years and is the former president of the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre in Doha.
Husain’s paintings hang in museums from New York to Shanghai and controversy has mostly brightened his star. Today his works sell for up to US$2 million (Dh7.3m) at auction – as pricey as the work of any living non-western artist.
“But it is a national disgrace for India,” added Mr Bashir. “I don’t know why anyone from the Indian government didn’t make any attempt to solve the problem and bring him back to India. It’s a total failure of our democracy and secularism.”
Born in Pandharpur, near Bombay, in the fall of 1915, Maqbool Fida Husain had a rather progressive upbringing. “Nobody was religious, we were nationalist,” he said. “We were very secular right from the beginning.”
He began painting when he was six years old, and later attended art school. In 1947, the year India gained independence, Husain cofounded a progressive artists’ alliance.
He had a well-received solo show in Munich a few years later, followed by exhibitions in the United States and Europe. He moved into filmmaking, and his first film, Through the Eyes of a Painter, won the Golden Bear at the 1967 Berlin Film Festival.
The Indian government honoured him with top civilian awards in 1955, 1973 and 1991.
The trouble began just months before Husain’s wife died in 1996, when an Indian magazine published images of naked Hindu deities he had painted decades prior. With religious sensitivities running high in the wake of several communal clashes, Hindu nationalist groups responded angrily, filing lawsuits, burning effigies and threatening his life.
Husain left, bouncing between Europe and the Middle East for years. He spent a lot of time in Dubai. He visited Doha and struck up a friendship with the royal family, who bought dozens of his paintings for their new Museum of Islamic Art.
New works continued to spark controversy. In 2006 he painted India as a naked woman (Mother India). After the November 2008 terrorist assault on Mumbai, he depicted that woman being raped (The Rape of India), whipping right-wing Hindu groups into an anti-Husain lather. Returning home seemed out of the question.
Around this time, Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned learnt he was working on a series about Arab civilisation and offered to serve as his patron, promising housing, facilities and creature comforts.
“I wanted a sponsor, so I accepted,” said Husain.
More than 1,200 court cases have been filed against him in India, mainly for impugning religious and nationalist beliefs. Hindu extremists threaten to chop off his hands or gouge out his eyes if he returns.
Husain blames the government’s lack of response to the venom of Hindu nationalist groups such as the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena, which are linked to India’s leading opposition political party, the BJP.
“The government was weak, and it’s still weak,” he said. “The whole thing is political, it has nothing to do with art or religion – they only want to get some votes.”
The sacred and the profane have mingled in Hindu iconography for centuries. Examples include the erotic carvings at Khajuraho and certain engravings within the Ajanta and Ellora cave complexes not far from Husain’s birthplace.
Though he has not set foot in India for five years, the decision to renounce his Indian citizenship was not an easy one. “I still love my country,” said Husain, who is working on a series of paintings on Indian civilisation.
Like Sheikha Mozah, many Doha residents look forward to his future contributions to the Gulf.
“This is the first time a big Indian celebrity is taking a passport from the GCC, from an Arab country, so I think this is very good,” said PN Baburajan, an Indian property agent who has been living in Qatar for 25 years. He also works as a correspondent for a Malayalam TV news channel. “Now he loves Qatar and he’s going to do some work for Arab culture and civilisation.”
Earlier this week, several dozen large, completed works were scattered about Husain’s villa, clogging the hallways and leaning against the walls and furniture. Most had never been publicly exhibited. They included a sombre work called Palestine Blue and a large, disjointed painting entitled Yemen.
In addition to his thousands of paintings, Husain has six children, 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Most of his family remains in India, where some observers see the artist’s decision as a defeat for free speech.
“A large body of people stood up and spoke for you in the confidence that you are with them in this struggle,” analyst Shazi Zaman wrote in open letter to Husain in the Calcutta Telegraph this week. “We thought that a person as privileged, as loved, liked and respected as you would certainly fight. But you took a flight out to Qatar.”
Sipping tea in his new home, Husain had a different perspective. “I am not a leader, I am a painter,” he said. “My job is to paint.”
-----
first appeared in 12 March The National, www.thenational.ae
3.01.2010
Al Bashir and Darfur rebels sign peace deal
DOHA // The Sudanese president, Omar al Bashir, and the leader of the main Darfur rebel group signed a ceasefire agreement in Doha last week, paving the way for talks intended to bring peace to Sudan’s war-ravaged western region weeks before the nation’s first national elections in decades.
“We are taking a very important step towards ending conflict and war in Darfur,” Mr al Bashir said before the signing.
The 12-point accord represents a ceasefire between the government and the largest rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem). It also marks the start of bilateral negotiations on a final deal, which is to be signed by March 15, and a list of provisions to be included in those negotiations.
They include the integration of Jem troops into the armed forces and the release of Jem prisoners of war. Further, the pact immediately transforms Jem from rebel group to political party, stipulating “participation of the Jem at all levels of powers”.
Since ethnic rebels in Darfur took up arms against the mostly Arab Sudanese government in 2003, some 300,000 have been killed and 3 million displaced, according to the UN. Violence has waned but never halted. Without the backing of regional players, key rebel groups or the international community, several previous peace deals failed to hold.
But the presence of Mr al Bashir and the Chadian president, Idriss Deby, who also attended the signing, highlighted a considerable improvement in relations. The leaders of Chad and Sudan have in the past exchanged bitter accusations about supporting rebels operating on each other’s territory.
The deal is the most far-reaching yet. Greater international scrutiny, the support of Chad and Sudan’s first national elections in 24 years, scheduled for April, should further bolster the agreement.
Still, the Sudanese government appreciates the need for a more broadly embraced settlement.
“We believe that Darfur can’t be solved bilaterally,” Amin Hassan Omar, the government negotiator, said on Monday. He called the Jem truce an “important breakthrough”, adding, “we hope we can negotiate with the other groups to reach a final and comprehensive agreement.”
A dozen smaller rebel factions have fused into two main groups to narrow their demands. After meeting with the lead negotiator for the UN-African Union team in Doha, they hinted yesterday at the possibility of joining the talks.
Another provision in the pact is the return of all displaced people and government compensation for all victims of the conflict. The world’s first leader charged with war crimes by the Hague-based International Criminal Court while still in office, Mr al Bashir may be seeking to burnish his image at home and abroad.
The Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, who also attended the signing, said he planned to establish a $1 billion (Dh3.67bn) fund for reconstruction in Darfur.
The agreement may herald a peacemaking coup for his government. The tiny but wealthy Gulf state has in recent years carved out a reputation for helping to settle international disputes.
The US state department has praised the deal as an important first step towards a peaceful Darfur. Yet shortly after preliminary commitments were made on Saturday, Jem field commanders in Darfur reported skirmishes with government troops.
“We are taking a very important step towards ending conflict and war in Darfur,” Mr al Bashir said before the signing.
The 12-point accord represents a ceasefire between the government and the largest rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem). It also marks the start of bilateral negotiations on a final deal, which is to be signed by March 15, and a list of provisions to be included in those negotiations.
They include the integration of Jem troops into the armed forces and the release of Jem prisoners of war. Further, the pact immediately transforms Jem from rebel group to political party, stipulating “participation of the Jem at all levels of powers”.
Since ethnic rebels in Darfur took up arms against the mostly Arab Sudanese government in 2003, some 300,000 have been killed and 3 million displaced, according to the UN. Violence has waned but never halted. Without the backing of regional players, key rebel groups or the international community, several previous peace deals failed to hold.
But the presence of Mr al Bashir and the Chadian president, Idriss Deby, who also attended the signing, highlighted a considerable improvement in relations. The leaders of Chad and Sudan have in the past exchanged bitter accusations about supporting rebels operating on each other’s territory.
The deal is the most far-reaching yet. Greater international scrutiny, the support of Chad and Sudan’s first national elections in 24 years, scheduled for April, should further bolster the agreement.
Still, the Sudanese government appreciates the need for a more broadly embraced settlement.
“We believe that Darfur can’t be solved bilaterally,” Amin Hassan Omar, the government negotiator, said on Monday. He called the Jem truce an “important breakthrough”, adding, “we hope we can negotiate with the other groups to reach a final and comprehensive agreement.”
A dozen smaller rebel factions have fused into two main groups to narrow their demands. After meeting with the lead negotiator for the UN-African Union team in Doha, they hinted yesterday at the possibility of joining the talks.
Another provision in the pact is the return of all displaced people and government compensation for all victims of the conflict. The world’s first leader charged with war crimes by the Hague-based International Criminal Court while still in office, Mr al Bashir may be seeking to burnish his image at home and abroad.
The Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, who also attended the signing, said he planned to establish a $1 billion (Dh3.67bn) fund for reconstruction in Darfur.
The agreement may herald a peacemaking coup for his government. The tiny but wealthy Gulf state has in recent years carved out a reputation for helping to settle international disputes.
The US state department has praised the deal as an important first step towards a peaceful Darfur. Yet shortly after preliminary commitments were made on Saturday, Jem field commanders in Darfur reported skirmishes with government troops.
Arab world facing brain drain
DOHA // As millions of young people across the Arab world reach the age of employment, many Arab economies are likely to lose a good number of their most prized human resources.
“The young folks that are most educated, most connected and most employed are the ones who want to emigrate more,” said Ahmed Younis, a senior analyst at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.
Nearly a third of young employed Arabs surveyed would like to leave their country permanently, while only 17 per cent of the unemployed felt the same way, according to the Silatech Index, released here on Tuesday.
Just over a quarter of those who have some college education, meanwhile, are interested in moving abroad, versus 16 per cent of those who never finished high school. These are also the people most likely to start a business.
“Brain drain is the kind of phraseology that’s used,” said Mr Younis, who is also the director of strategic partnerships for Silatech.
“But we’re seeing an SME [small and medium enterprises] drain, an entrepreneurship drain, and there will be less innovation, less enterprise development and less ability for these economies to create an atmosphere that convinces ambitious young people to stay in the future.”
The Silatech Index is the first survey to comprehensively gauge young Arabs’ views on opportunity and the job market. Silatech, founded in 2009 by Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, seeks to foster job creation and entrepreneurship for young people in the region.
Partnering with Gallup last year, surveyors asked more than 40,000 15- to 29-year-olds across 21 Arab countries a battery of questions about their economy, job prospects, education and governmental support. With two-thirds of the Arab world’s population under 30, their perspective is vital.
The first data set came out in June 2009, highlighting three key metrics: mindset, which gauges society’s support for the economic contributions of youth; access, focused on access to skills training, entrepreneurial assistance and job placement services; and policy, measuring the government’s ability to increase employment opportunities.
The findings of the second Silatech Index suggest that Arab economies often fail to meet the needs of their increasingly informed and ambitious youth.
One key question concerned how to reduce “waithood”, the sometimes-lengthy period between college graduation and full-time employment in one’s chosen line of work. The overwhelming response was the need for more quality jobs.
But creating jobs is not a simple proposition. Just ask US President Barack Obama, whose economic stimulus package, enacted a year ago and aimed primarily at job creation, has mostly failed to stem the tide of job loss.
And most Arab economies face a much steeper climb. One of the key problems is that launching a business is so taxing, with stacks of forms to be filled out, endless red tape and weeks of waiting. According to the survey, nearly a quarter of all Arab youth would like to start a business in the next year. But the number that will actually do so is considerably lower.
“Policy structures are not encouraging for young people to start their own businesses,” said Mr Younis. “There needs to be a public discourse about how policymakers present the options to young people to join economic life in their country.”
Such entrepreneurialism may help build a stronger society, according to the index. The youngsters most likely to start a business are also those who know a reliable person who could serve as their business partner. They are also those most likely to have helped a stranger in the past week.
“This suggests that those who perceive a community are those that seek to start a business,” said Mr Younis. “We need to communicate to policymakers and developers that economic development and community development are intimately linked.”
The social and economic development of a country is also linked to the degree to which its youth are sanguine about their prospects. Thus, the index’s highest scores were found in the Gulf countries, which maintain the highest GDP and the best security and living standards in the Arab world; although about two-thirds of all young Gulf nationals remain outside the workforce, either as students or unemployed.
Qatar topped the mindset and access categories, while the UAE led in policy.
The lowest scores were in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, three countries mired in conflict. Some 15 per cent of Iraqi youth believe enough is being done to increase the number of jobs, and less than a quarter believe the government is maximising the nation’s youth potential. In Lebanon, just one in five young people think now is a good time to find a job and 88 per cent believe the government is not maximising youth potential. Less than a third of young Palestinians believe that children learn there every day – the lowest among all countries surveyed.
It is not only the war-ravaged economies that have problems. About a third of Algerian youth are unemployed, and only slightly more are confident about the job market. Morocco scored among the lowest on quality of education, with just 42 per cent of respondents saying the country’s schools were adequate. Only one in four Egyptians believe the economy is headed in the right direction, while nearly 70 per cent believe the West can help their country’s economic situation.
Amid the dark data, Mr Younis sees a silver lining. Those surveyed called for more education and training, better access to job placement and business development services, and a more responsive government.
“Young Arabs know exactly what they need, they just can’t find what they’re looking for,” said Mr Younis, who recommended greater co-operation among the 22 Arab nations surveyed. “If young people are given the resources to succeed in the economic life of their country, they would rather stay in their home country than leave permanently.”
“The young folks that are most educated, most connected and most employed are the ones who want to emigrate more,” said Ahmed Younis, a senior analyst at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.
Nearly a third of young employed Arabs surveyed would like to leave their country permanently, while only 17 per cent of the unemployed felt the same way, according to the Silatech Index, released here on Tuesday.
Just over a quarter of those who have some college education, meanwhile, are interested in moving abroad, versus 16 per cent of those who never finished high school. These are also the people most likely to start a business.
“Brain drain is the kind of phraseology that’s used,” said Mr Younis, who is also the director of strategic partnerships for Silatech.
“But we’re seeing an SME [small and medium enterprises] drain, an entrepreneurship drain, and there will be less innovation, less enterprise development and less ability for these economies to create an atmosphere that convinces ambitious young people to stay in the future.”
The Silatech Index is the first survey to comprehensively gauge young Arabs’ views on opportunity and the job market. Silatech, founded in 2009 by Qatari First Lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, seeks to foster job creation and entrepreneurship for young people in the region.
Partnering with Gallup last year, surveyors asked more than 40,000 15- to 29-year-olds across 21 Arab countries a battery of questions about their economy, job prospects, education and governmental support. With two-thirds of the Arab world’s population under 30, their perspective is vital.
The first data set came out in June 2009, highlighting three key metrics: mindset, which gauges society’s support for the economic contributions of youth; access, focused on access to skills training, entrepreneurial assistance and job placement services; and policy, measuring the government’s ability to increase employment opportunities.
The findings of the second Silatech Index suggest that Arab economies often fail to meet the needs of their increasingly informed and ambitious youth.
One key question concerned how to reduce “waithood”, the sometimes-lengthy period between college graduation and full-time employment in one’s chosen line of work. The overwhelming response was the need for more quality jobs.
But creating jobs is not a simple proposition. Just ask US President Barack Obama, whose economic stimulus package, enacted a year ago and aimed primarily at job creation, has mostly failed to stem the tide of job loss.
And most Arab economies face a much steeper climb. One of the key problems is that launching a business is so taxing, with stacks of forms to be filled out, endless red tape and weeks of waiting. According to the survey, nearly a quarter of all Arab youth would like to start a business in the next year. But the number that will actually do so is considerably lower.
“Policy structures are not encouraging for young people to start their own businesses,” said Mr Younis. “There needs to be a public discourse about how policymakers present the options to young people to join economic life in their country.”
Such entrepreneurialism may help build a stronger society, according to the index. The youngsters most likely to start a business are also those who know a reliable person who could serve as their business partner. They are also those most likely to have helped a stranger in the past week.
“This suggests that those who perceive a community are those that seek to start a business,” said Mr Younis. “We need to communicate to policymakers and developers that economic development and community development are intimately linked.”
The social and economic development of a country is also linked to the degree to which its youth are sanguine about their prospects. Thus, the index’s highest scores were found in the Gulf countries, which maintain the highest GDP and the best security and living standards in the Arab world; although about two-thirds of all young Gulf nationals remain outside the workforce, either as students or unemployed.
Qatar topped the mindset and access categories, while the UAE led in policy.
The lowest scores were in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, three countries mired in conflict. Some 15 per cent of Iraqi youth believe enough is being done to increase the number of jobs, and less than a quarter believe the government is maximising the nation’s youth potential. In Lebanon, just one in five young people think now is a good time to find a job and 88 per cent believe the government is not maximising youth potential. Less than a third of young Palestinians believe that children learn there every day – the lowest among all countries surveyed.
It is not only the war-ravaged economies that have problems. About a third of Algerian youth are unemployed, and only slightly more are confident about the job market. Morocco scored among the lowest on quality of education, with just 42 per cent of respondents saying the country’s schools were adequate. Only one in four Egyptians believe the economy is headed in the right direction, while nearly 70 per cent believe the West can help their country’s economic situation.
Amid the dark data, Mr Younis sees a silver lining. Those surveyed called for more education and training, better access to job placement and business development services, and a more responsive government.
“Young Arabs know exactly what they need, they just can’t find what they’re looking for,” said Mr Younis, who recommended greater co-operation among the 22 Arab nations surveyed. “If young people are given the resources to succeed in the economic life of their country, they would rather stay in their home country than leave permanently.”
Neighborhood watch
The rough-and-tumble streets of Jaffa’s Ajami neighbourhood probably seasoned Scandar Copti for the Herculean task of making his first feature film, and also lent the film its propulsive realism. But it was his parents’ effort to keep him away from danger that pointed him towards his future career.
“They wanted to keep us off the streets, so they brought us a lot of films,” says the 34-year-old Palestinian. He remembers watching Bruce Lee and French movies on Betamax with his brothers as a child.
“I would try to understand, ‘How did they do this? How did they make this funny?’” he recalls. “So I would rewind them and watch them again and again.”
If his first film is any sign, Copti is a quick study.
Ajami, which he co-directed with Yaron Shani, has drawn large crowds and lavish praise, won a special mention for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival and become the first mostly Arabic-language film to sweep Israel’s top film honours. Last month, the film received an Oscar nomination for the year’s Best Foreign Language Film.
Getting it to the screen was a fraught ordeal that took plenty of time. The idea of an urban crime drama filmed with non-professional actors first came to Shani, who grew up in a seaside village south of Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital, about a dozen years ago.
By 2002 he had put it on the back burner to organise a student film festival, where he came across Copti’s 12-minute mockumentary, The Truth. “‘He approached me and said, ‘Let’s work together, I like the way you think,’” says Copti, who gravitated to film after earning a degree in mechanical engineering from a prestigious Israeli university. “I said, ‘Whoa. What – a movie?’”
The two began working on a jigsaw puzzle of a script set in Ajami, a neighbourhood that offered a glimpse into the life of the roughly 1.5 million Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship. Today a part of much larger Tel Aviv, Jaffa is an ancient seaport that dates to the eighth century BC. Most of the city’s Arab residents fled with the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, and Jaffa now contains some 40,000 Jews and about 18,000 Arabs.
Nestled against the Mediterranean, Ajami is the city’s only predominantly Arab quarter. Some 25 per cent of its residents are Jewish, but with recent gentrification that number has been increasing – along with tensions.
Socio-economically, the neighbourhood is diverse. Judges live above criminals and doctors next to those on the margins. Shacks with no electricity sit near restaurants with gorgeous sea-views, like the one in the film. Copti worked there as a waiter and cook while he and Shani pounded out the script.
“It’s so hard to create something from nothing,” he says, citing scriptwriting as the most difficult part of making Ajami. “Sometimes you feel stupid, sometimes you have nothing to say and you lose your self-confidence.”
Finishing the screenplay took three and a half years. Then the two inexperienced filmmakers strolled into Israeli production houses peddling a movie that called for dozens of non-professional actors who would never see the script. It would be made mostly in Arabic and shot in chronological order, using two cameras simultaneously.
“‘What, are you nuts? Please close the door on your way out,’” Copti recalls one producer telling them. “We were knocking on the doors of producers and nobody wanted to get in.” Eventually they raised nearly $1 million (Dh3.7m) from German and French backers as well as an Israeli film fund.
Next they put the word out in the neighbourhood that they were looking for non-professional actors. Some 300 people turned up, from high-school kids to ex-convicts, mothers, sisters and former police officers. After several workshops they’d trimmed the group to a few dozen and began role-playing.
The goal was to move the participants – not actors – away from performing and towards reacting with real emotion. They were asked to crawl on the floor like serpents, to scream at the top of their lungs or chase each other with chairs. “We start with this and you are liberated, you don’t see the camera any more,” Copti explains. “Then, bit by bit we add emotions and start to see which participant would fit into which character.”
After 10 months of workshops and rehearsals, the cast was set. Filming began, with one unusual condition: none of the actors got a screenplay. “They had to trust us and we had to build this trust,” says Copti.
The shooting of one scene reveals the power of that bond. Three policemen are cruising around Jaffa one afternoon when they pull up along a curb. A scruffy man in torn clothing approaches their window. Mumbling, he offers them a pair of bright red boots. The policemen examine the boots and pass them back to the junkie, telling him off.
“He was a real junkie,” says Mr Copti, laughing. “He wasn't a part of our movie, he was just walking on the street, he didn't see the camera.” The incident was fitting, and stayed in the film, because seconds later the officers receive a call to arrest a drug dealer nearby. They soon pull up behind the dealer's car and start to yank him from the vehicle.
Dozens of young boys and men – placed there by the filmmakers and told to help their friend – pop out of nearby buildings. They swarm the police, striking the officers and wrestling with them and ultimately freeing the drug dealer. “It's real violence – it happened,” said Mr Copti. “We had to stop it, we had to jump from the monitor and say 'OK, cut. Kiss each other and let's do another take.'”
The filming took a brisk three weeks. All of Ajami pitched in: cars and locations were provided free of charge; and seeing the cast and crew working late into the night, residents brought Arabic coffee to the set.
Seven years after their first meeting, the co-directors had a film (both filmmakers got married in that span, Shani also became a father and learnt Arabic). But before its release, there was a final hurdle.
“We showed it to people, to sell it for distribution, and they said, ‘Look, it’s an amazing film, but nobody will watch it,’” Copti recalls. “‘It’s in Arabic, it’s complicated, it’s not pleasant. It will never make any box office.’”
In the end it was seen by hundreds of thousands of Israelis. That’s just one long-standing myth the film upset. Another is that Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and Christians are homogeneous groups. A third is that each side automatically blames the other for its predicament.
Harsh and gritty, Ajami follows the criss-crossing lives of a handful of neighbourhood residents. Omar, a young Muslim, tries to repay a family debt while wooing the Christian Palestinian daughter of a restaurateur. While working illegally in Ajami, a Palestinian teenager from the West Bank turns to crime to pay for his mother’s surgery back home. A combustible Israeli police officer desperately seeks answers about his brother’s disappearance.
Shani has said, “The film is about a society that is segregated, where people live in bubbles.”
Even so, the lives of the characters often paralleled the lives of the actors playing them. Copti’s brother Tony, who played the drug dealer in the film, was arrested earlier this month after coming to the aid of kids getting harassed by the police. The violent Israeli policeman whose brother goes missing is played by Eran Naim. A month before filming began, says Copti, he was dismissed from the police force after being caught on camera putting his fingers into the nostrils of an Israeli settler who was lying on the floor to protest at his evacuation from Gaza.
And the husband of the first-time actress Nisreen Siksik was chased for years by a gang of killers – once they shot him eight times, another time they bombed his car – before finally being ambushed in his shop. In the film, her son is stalked by a violent clan. Siksik, a 45-year-old mother of four who still lives in Ajami, has acknowledged how all of the old worries flooded back during the filming. Yet she has since acted in two more films.
Critics have given high praise to Ajami’s journalistic feel for daily life in a vendetta-fuelled district, its intelligence and even-handedness and its subtle approach to the most tangled of conflicts. “This is Ajami’s moment,” said The Wall Street Journal.
The most significant compliments might have come from an unlikely source. “What Ajami shows, in continually surprising revelations, is the essential core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: people on both sides trying to protect their loved ones and keep them alive, often with heartbreaking consequences,” wrote Bradley Burston, the film critic for the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Days after that review was published last September Ajami won best picture, best screenplay and best direction at the Ophirs, the Israeli version of the Academy Awards. Its nomination for an Oscar seemed inevitable.
Indeed, a film from Israel or the Palestinian territories has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in four out of the last five years. The streak began in 2006 with the Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now.
Copti condemns the Israeli government for exploiting the film as a promotional tool. He says Palestinians living in Israel have no equal rights, are treated with racism and not allowed to teach their history or culture. He hopes the film calls attention to their plight. “Acknowledging a group of people exists is the beginning,” he said. “When you know that something exists, you know it has problems. When you know that it has problems, it’s the first step in finding a solution.”
Oddsmakers say Ajami’s Oscar chances are slim. But if it were to win, Shani would be the first Israeli to win the Oscar, and Copti the first Palestinian. “I never made this film to get awards or nominations,” says Copti, who is taking a break from filmmaking to work as the director of community outreach and a programming official with the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. “Getting Israelis to watch it, in Arabic, and to identify with a Palestinian character – to cry when his mother is crying, to humanise him again after 60 years of demonising Arabs and portraying them as terrorists, as inhuman – that’s been the most rewarding thing.”
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An edited version of this story appeared in the 26 February The National, www.thenational.ae
“They wanted to keep us off the streets, so they brought us a lot of films,” says the 34-year-old Palestinian. He remembers watching Bruce Lee and French movies on Betamax with his brothers as a child.
“I would try to understand, ‘How did they do this? How did they make this funny?’” he recalls. “So I would rewind them and watch them again and again.”
If his first film is any sign, Copti is a quick study.
Ajami, which he co-directed with Yaron Shani, has drawn large crowds and lavish praise, won a special mention for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival and become the first mostly Arabic-language film to sweep Israel’s top film honours. Last month, the film received an Oscar nomination for the year’s Best Foreign Language Film.
Getting it to the screen was a fraught ordeal that took plenty of time. The idea of an urban crime drama filmed with non-professional actors first came to Shani, who grew up in a seaside village south of Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital, about a dozen years ago.
By 2002 he had put it on the back burner to organise a student film festival, where he came across Copti’s 12-minute mockumentary, The Truth. “‘He approached me and said, ‘Let’s work together, I like the way you think,’” says Copti, who gravitated to film after earning a degree in mechanical engineering from a prestigious Israeli university. “I said, ‘Whoa. What – a movie?’”
The two began working on a jigsaw puzzle of a script set in Ajami, a neighbourhood that offered a glimpse into the life of the roughly 1.5 million Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship. Today a part of much larger Tel Aviv, Jaffa is an ancient seaport that dates to the eighth century BC. Most of the city’s Arab residents fled with the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, and Jaffa now contains some 40,000 Jews and about 18,000 Arabs.
Nestled against the Mediterranean, Ajami is the city’s only predominantly Arab quarter. Some 25 per cent of its residents are Jewish, but with recent gentrification that number has been increasing – along with tensions.
Socio-economically, the neighbourhood is diverse. Judges live above criminals and doctors next to those on the margins. Shacks with no electricity sit near restaurants with gorgeous sea-views, like the one in the film. Copti worked there as a waiter and cook while he and Shani pounded out the script.
“It’s so hard to create something from nothing,” he says, citing scriptwriting as the most difficult part of making Ajami. “Sometimes you feel stupid, sometimes you have nothing to say and you lose your self-confidence.”
Finishing the screenplay took three and a half years. Then the two inexperienced filmmakers strolled into Israeli production houses peddling a movie that called for dozens of non-professional actors who would never see the script. It would be made mostly in Arabic and shot in chronological order, using two cameras simultaneously.
“‘What, are you nuts? Please close the door on your way out,’” Copti recalls one producer telling them. “We were knocking on the doors of producers and nobody wanted to get in.” Eventually they raised nearly $1 million (Dh3.7m) from German and French backers as well as an Israeli film fund.
Next they put the word out in the neighbourhood that they were looking for non-professional actors. Some 300 people turned up, from high-school kids to ex-convicts, mothers, sisters and former police officers. After several workshops they’d trimmed the group to a few dozen and began role-playing.
The goal was to move the participants – not actors – away from performing and towards reacting with real emotion. They were asked to crawl on the floor like serpents, to scream at the top of their lungs or chase each other with chairs. “We start with this and you are liberated, you don’t see the camera any more,” Copti explains. “Then, bit by bit we add emotions and start to see which participant would fit into which character.”
After 10 months of workshops and rehearsals, the cast was set. Filming began, with one unusual condition: none of the actors got a screenplay. “They had to trust us and we had to build this trust,” says Copti.
The shooting of one scene reveals the power of that bond. Three policemen are cruising around Jaffa one afternoon when they pull up along a curb. A scruffy man in torn clothing approaches their window. Mumbling, he offers them a pair of bright red boots. The policemen examine the boots and pass them back to the junkie, telling him off.
“He was a real junkie,” says Mr Copti, laughing. “He wasn't a part of our movie, he was just walking on the street, he didn't see the camera.” The incident was fitting, and stayed in the film, because seconds later the officers receive a call to arrest a drug dealer nearby. They soon pull up behind the dealer's car and start to yank him from the vehicle.
Dozens of young boys and men – placed there by the filmmakers and told to help their friend – pop out of nearby buildings. They swarm the police, striking the officers and wrestling with them and ultimately freeing the drug dealer. “It's real violence – it happened,” said Mr Copti. “We had to stop it, we had to jump from the monitor and say 'OK, cut. Kiss each other and let's do another take.'”
The filming took a brisk three weeks. All of Ajami pitched in: cars and locations were provided free of charge; and seeing the cast and crew working late into the night, residents brought Arabic coffee to the set.
Seven years after their first meeting, the co-directors had a film (both filmmakers got married in that span, Shani also became a father and learnt Arabic). But before its release, there was a final hurdle.
“We showed it to people, to sell it for distribution, and they said, ‘Look, it’s an amazing film, but nobody will watch it,’” Copti recalls. “‘It’s in Arabic, it’s complicated, it’s not pleasant. It will never make any box office.’”
In the end it was seen by hundreds of thousands of Israelis. That’s just one long-standing myth the film upset. Another is that Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and Christians are homogeneous groups. A third is that each side automatically blames the other for its predicament.
Harsh and gritty, Ajami follows the criss-crossing lives of a handful of neighbourhood residents. Omar, a young Muslim, tries to repay a family debt while wooing the Christian Palestinian daughter of a restaurateur. While working illegally in Ajami, a Palestinian teenager from the West Bank turns to crime to pay for his mother’s surgery back home. A combustible Israeli police officer desperately seeks answers about his brother’s disappearance.
Shani has said, “The film is about a society that is segregated, where people live in bubbles.”
Even so, the lives of the characters often paralleled the lives of the actors playing them. Copti’s brother Tony, who played the drug dealer in the film, was arrested earlier this month after coming to the aid of kids getting harassed by the police. The violent Israeli policeman whose brother goes missing is played by Eran Naim. A month before filming began, says Copti, he was dismissed from the police force after being caught on camera putting his fingers into the nostrils of an Israeli settler who was lying on the floor to protest at his evacuation from Gaza.
And the husband of the first-time actress Nisreen Siksik was chased for years by a gang of killers – once they shot him eight times, another time they bombed his car – before finally being ambushed in his shop. In the film, her son is stalked by a violent clan. Siksik, a 45-year-old mother of four who still lives in Ajami, has acknowledged how all of the old worries flooded back during the filming. Yet she has since acted in two more films.
Critics have given high praise to Ajami’s journalistic feel for daily life in a vendetta-fuelled district, its intelligence and even-handedness and its subtle approach to the most tangled of conflicts. “This is Ajami’s moment,” said The Wall Street Journal.
The most significant compliments might have come from an unlikely source. “What Ajami shows, in continually surprising revelations, is the essential core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: people on both sides trying to protect their loved ones and keep them alive, often with heartbreaking consequences,” wrote Bradley Burston, the film critic for the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Days after that review was published last September Ajami won best picture, best screenplay and best direction at the Ophirs, the Israeli version of the Academy Awards. Its nomination for an Oscar seemed inevitable.
Indeed, a film from Israel or the Palestinian territories has been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in four out of the last five years. The streak began in 2006 with the Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now.
Copti condemns the Israeli government for exploiting the film as a promotional tool. He says Palestinians living in Israel have no equal rights, are treated with racism and not allowed to teach their history or culture. He hopes the film calls attention to their plight. “Acknowledging a group of people exists is the beginning,” he said. “When you know that something exists, you know it has problems. When you know that it has problems, it’s the first step in finding a solution.”
Oddsmakers say Ajami’s Oscar chances are slim. But if it were to win, Shani would be the first Israeli to win the Oscar, and Copti the first Palestinian. “I never made this film to get awards or nominations,” says Copti, who is taking a break from filmmaking to work as the director of community outreach and a programming official with the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. “Getting Israelis to watch it, in Arabic, and to identify with a Palestinian character – to cry when his mother is crying, to humanise him again after 60 years of demonising Arabs and portraying them as terrorists, as inhuman – that’s been the most rewarding thing.”
------
An edited version of this story appeared in the 26 February The National, www.thenational.ae
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