Zionism is not a religion

Israeli police detain Palestinian protesters in East

Jerusalem. A 14 year old American boy was killed

there by a police bullet.

24 OCT 14

It's troublesome, listening to governments. Obviously, the Israel we know is right and good and should be defended. Obviously, the Palestinians who oppose Israeli rule are the immoral players in the current conflict.

At least, that's one story we're given.

Objectivity paints a larger picture.  As in all national conflicts, the short explanation is inadequate.

Today, Palestinian children get less water and food than Israeli children.  It's national policy, enforced by the military.

Today, a Palestinian family, supposedly citizens of Israel, can be evicted without cause from their house where they've legally lived for generations.  For no other reason than that of their Arab roots.

But the community tolerated Palestinians in their midst, didn't they?!  Then came Hamas, the Islamic Resistance movement ... Well, yes; things have escalated, perhaps because for forty years, Palestinians been without redress when they were arrested or killed for peaceful protest.  They've had no peaceful recourse to being driven from their homes and denied the means to feed themselves.

Palestinian activists, human rights defenders, journalists and academics are frequently picked up off the streets, out of their homes in the middle of the night, in front of their families – Israel's thug soldiers take them off to jail and inter them without trial, often in conditions of torture and isolation. Military courts then rubber-stamp the actions of Israel's military and spy agencies.

In just over one year of unarmed demonstrations
in Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian community
in the West Bank, 155 of the village’s 500 residents
were wounded (about 60 of them children); 35
homes were damaged and dozens of the village’s
people were detained. Yet even after the protest’s
leader was put behind bars by the army, the struggle
for the Nabi Saleh’s land continues

(25 OCT 14) There was one salient example of their regime only this week. Abdullah Abu Rahme, one of the main organisers of popular resistance against Israel's apartheid wall in the village of Bil'in, was convicted by one of the Israeli military's kangaroo courts of "obstructing the work of a soldier". In a 2012 incident, Abu Rahme tried to stop a military bulldozer from clearing land on which to build the wall.

The Temple Mount, holy to both Jews and Muslims,

is a frequent focus of unrest. Jews and Muslims

come to pray, each sees the other as a

desecration, a defilement. Police restrict

entry to one or the other, depending

 on the occasion, in an attempt

to limit violence.

In the city of Jerusalem, a Jewish citizen lives under regular laws.  A Palestinian citizen lives under military law on the same street in the same job in the same community.

The administrative issues, like permits and driver's license and business documents are different and more difficult if you're Palestinian.

The segregated society is supported by policy, by practice, and law.  A young Jewish boy in the city would not likely ever have occasion to sit down in a comfortable setting with Palestinian kids his own age.  Much like white South Africa under Apartheid, Israel is a segregated nation.

OK, that's another story we're told.

"The borders [of Israel] are determined by where Jews live,
not where there is a line on a map."

  ~Prime Minister Golda Meir, 1971
This map narrative is refuted by many; the land was unoccupied
until filled with illegally migrating Muslims according to some.

From inquiry, we find that 1947 and 1967 were turning points, but not the defensive response of an attacked nation.  They were opportunities for conquest by a militarily prepared nation against less capable neighbors who had not initiated conflict and posed no identified threat.  Minutes recorded in cabinet and military meetings in 1967 clearly identify the preemptive actions as seizing opportunity, not defense.

The Zionist agenda;

• conquer the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean
• remove the Arab people, their culture and history

The first is complete.  The second is continuous.

Palestinian girls run away after an  Israeli air strike
in the  northern  Gaza Strip. November 18, 2012.

In September 2008, in supposed response to Hamas rocket attacks, Israel began carpet bombing in Gaza ... on a school day ... at precisely 11:25 AM, the turnover time for morning and afternoon school when the most children would be concentrated in the streets.  The attacks on civilian population areas continued for 21 days, the bloodiest period in the nations history since 1967.  Much was made in the news of destroyed Hamas sites, but no mention was made of the cost.


OK, that's another view we're given. 

Four hundred Palestinian towns were 'depopulated' in the 1947-9 war. Most houses were destroyed, mosques and churches put to other uses, and cemeteries plowed under.  The communities were driven out. Refugee Palestinians have since carried their village names, memories, and possessions with them into the diaspora.

Their villages and towns continue to be captured, cleared, and  renamed. Their monuments from the last fifteen-hundred years are destroyed.  Their rights are cancelled.

While the borders of Israel are internationally recognized, it remains an occupied territory as defined under international law.  The Israeli treatment of the nation's occupants is discriminatory oppression under international law.  The annexation of East Jerusalem was ruled "null and void" by the UN Security Council; Israeli sovereignty over the annexed territory has not been recognized by any country.

Israel claims to be democratic and to support universal suffrage, yet there are more than 50 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life, including their rights to political participation, access to land, education, state budget resources, and criminal procedures.

Israel has broad anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination by both government and non-government entities on the basis of race, religion, and political beliefs, and prohibit incitement to racism,^[1] yet extreme racism against Arabs in Israel exists in institutional policies, personal attitudes, the media, education, immigration rights, housing, social life, and legal policies.

Us and them, or us against them?
 

Zionists see themselves as refugees from around the world, fleeing the pogroms and persecutions, returning to their homeland from which they were driven fifteen centuries before.  They were denied citizenship in the countries where they lived, they were driven out of their homes leaving everything behind.  They were hunted down and killed along with their children.

Critics of Palestinian resistance see them as irrationally violent, ethnic/religious murders whose goal is to wipe Israel from the earth.

Palestinians see themselves as refugees in their own land, victims, driven from their homes, denied citizenship and the means to provide for their own, attacked and killed along with their children.

Critics of Zionism see it as a colonialist or racist ideology that has led to the denial of rights, dispossession and expulsion of the "indigenous population of Palestine".

So that's yet another few perspectives we're offered.

It is worth noting, the Arab nations that surround Israel were created not by Arabs but by decree. England and France spent five years in secret negotiations following the WWI. The resulting borders were arbitrarily written without regard to the occupants.

The prevailing rationale behind these artificially created states was how they served the imperial and commercial needs of their colonial masters. Iraq and Jordan were created as emirates to reward the noble Hashemite family from Saudi Arabia for its loyalty to the British against the Ottoman Turks during World War I, under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia. Iraq was given to Faisal bin Hussein, son of the sharif of Mecca, in 1918. To reward his younger brother Abdullah with an emirate, Britain cut away 77 percent of its mandate over Palestine earmarked for the Jews and gave it to Abdullah in 1922, creating the new country of Trans-Jordan or Jordan, as it was later named.
And on, and on.  So ...

All these stories are widely accepted among various hearer groups.  Each considers their view to be the definitive truth.  So how might the issues be resolved?  Can they be resolved?

Lots of possibilities going forward.  Switzerland has managed well as a confederation of states, as has Belgium.  It's a known viable option.  Not a difficult choice, perhaps, unless you require everyone to be like you.  That's apartheid; it's been tried before.

What we know for sure is that if you've chosen to agree with just one side against the others, there are a lot of people who think you're wrong, and for quite good reasons.

Arrived!

OK, this is the last of
it. I've graduated. I
know pretty much
everything.
I've arrived!

Having completed our education and embarked on life, the most stunning of truths is how little we know and how much remains to be learned.

Our minds continue to learn and change over time; we're taught continuously by that to which we give our attention.

It's up to us to choose.  Reality TV is a brain-shaper, as is the news media.  Work, family, relationships, and inquiry (more studying) continue to shape and add to our thinking and behavior over time, for good or ill.

Too, we learn by doing (or not), perhaps more than in any other venue.

There's always more, and the best is discovered by deliberate choice.  Whatever is right and good and noble, those are the things worth learning to understand and do.  Got a list?  Is it the good stuff?  Go and do, now while you have the chance.

There's always more.


There's always more.


There's always more.


There's always more.

Don't miss the good part.

the helper

Helping others is a better purpose in life than a lot of the choices

we see being made these days.  True?

This helper fellow was making his way to the capital city. He was walking, and it was still miles and miles away.  So, these really sick and contagious guys, huddled together away from regular folks on the edge of their village, they saw this helper fellow as he came along.  Somehow, they knew who he was, and keeping their distance, they waved and hollered to him for help.  He spoke to them graciously and sent them off to be checked by the folks in town who did such things.  As they went, they were healed, and apparently it was pretty spectacular.  One fellow, and only just the one, was so over-full of happiness and appreciation. that he turned around and ran back to this helper fellow who had spoken to him and the others. There, he collapsed on the ground in tears, but he was crying for joy as he tried to speak about his deep thanks and wonder.  He was from some foreign country, not a local.

The helper fellow received him graciously, of course.  Then, probably with a smile and one eyebrow raised, he says to the folks there, weren't there ten who got healed?  And just this foreign fellow comes back to honor the gift and say thanks?  Then quietly to the man there on the ground at his feet, he says with a smile, you can get up now my friend and get along home; you believed and that brought you the healing you'd been wanting.

That sort of thing happened a lot around this helper fellow, apparently.

Homeless

"I didn't know at the time how I could possibly fit into their world, and if they wanted me to fit into their world."

Paul Simon wrote this song with Joseph Shabalala, lead singer of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  The group's name comes from the town of Ladysmith, South Africa. 

It was the 1980's, and Paul Simon was among those supporting the anti-apartheid movement. Life in South Africa was a horror story if you weren't white. Afrikaners held that it was impossible, impracticable and ungodly for the different races and cultures to live as one.
Simon had seen Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a BBC documentary called Rhythm of Resistance: The Music of South Africa, and traveled to South Africa in 1985 to meet them.  Shabalala gave him albums the group had recorded.  Simon listened to them every night. 

In the documentary Under African Skies, Simon explained: "I was bewitched by Ladysmith Black Mambazo because they were so beautiful. The music was enchanting - it was all a cappella, and it was so beautiful that I was intimidated. They were so good at what they did and it was so contained that I didn't know at the time how I could possibly fit into their world, and if they wanted me to fit into their world."

• Regarding the meaning of the song, Joseph Shabalala said, "We're far away from home and we're sleeping. Our fists are our pillows."

Afrikaners (the white folks) held that it was impossible, impracticable and ungodly for the different races and cultures to live as one.

High school students protest in 1976 Soweto.

This is Hector Pieterson, the first casualty, being carried by Mbuyisa

 Makhubo after South African police fired into the crowd of children.

His sister, Antoinette Sithole, runs beside them. Hector

was declared dead on arrival at the clinic where they'd 

taken him, hoping for help.

The death toll; 176 to 700 depending on the

data source.  More than an additional 1000

people were wounded by the police action.

In 1976, thousands of black children in Soweto, a black township outside Johannesburg, demonstrated against the Afrikaans language requirement for black African students.  The police opened fire with tear gas and bullets. 

The protests and government crackdowns shattered all illusions that apartheid had brought peace or prosperity to the nation.

The United Nations General Assembly had denounced apartheid in 1973, and in 1976 the UN Security Council voted to impose a mandatory embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. In 1985, the United Kingdom and United States imposed economic sanctions on the country.  In early 1994, it was finally over.

The English portion of the lyrics...

Strong wind destroy our home
Many dead, tonight it could be you
(repeated)

And we are homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
(repeated)

And the Zulu lyrics translate approximately ...

Steep cliff

We sleep on the cliffs

My heart and the cold 

My heart, my heart 

My heart, and the cold 

My heart, my heart 

My heart sleeping far from home

My heart, my heart 

A suggested meaning, "My heart/The cold has already killed me." 

The years pass, the world changes, often for the better.  There's a price we pay for the change.  Is it worth it?  Yes and no, and it's huge when there are children involved.  It's hard to balance that equation.

True Religion vs. True Politics

Where are the boundaries?

Faith and belief are personal, I suppose.
We acknowledge truth and build our personal convictions as an issue of good conscience; they can't be required of us by others.  True?

Then there are rules.  Imposed, mostly.  Rules for membership, for being 'in' the religion.
And there are rules about everybody outside the group.  But these don't have much to do with faith and belief.

Then there is the money for government of the group and its rule.  There is a lot of money required for salaries and buildings, governing bodies and meetings and mountains of literature; all business and corporation-type things that cost money.  It's big business, or it can be.

Then there are the speeches and policies to keep people in line.  Politics, really.
And then there are more speeches and policies to persuade others into compliance or out of the way.  Is that like propaganda?

Then there are the campaigns and conquests, harsh activities where religion says people have to get on board or die.  At the extremes, it's deadly.

It first occurred to me to ask these questions as I sat on a hillside in Spain watching our softball game.  A bunch of young folks from several churches had informally started playing on that sunny afternoon.  Everybody was hot and sweaty and laughing a lot as we only occasionally made a good hit or a good catch or play.  The exception; the ladies from one church sat on the hillside in their long homemade skirts and head scarves.  Their rules didn't allow them to wear sports clothes or play baseball.

That's okay, I suppose, but how far do rules and rule makers get to go with that thinking?  Is there a known limit?  And is compliance with such rules the choice of the believer?  Or are such rules imposed on the group by those who rule?

True religion's heart, we're told, watches over those in need and works hard to avoid being corrupted by the culture in which we must live. 
(The culture's ways?  The culture's governance and rule and intolerance and its willingness to deprive another of life and of a chance to find the good part?)

"Real, true religion from God the Father's perspective is about caring for the orphans and widows who suffer needlessly and resisting the evil influence of the world."

I recall being told that the practical work of the catholic church, things like hospitals and schools and charities to feed the poor, those are all secular and don't count for anything because they're not spiritual.  

It requires a bit of a sense of humor to make a place for such thinking, perhaps.  It's not funny, though; not funny at all.

Who can be my friend?

Anyone with beach access would be of interest, of course.

In Kenya, a local fellow and I became friends through weeks of working together.  We talked about work and life and family.  Along the way, he introduced me to his grandson, age 6 or so, and we took him along on some of our travels together. 

My buddy, Ali.  He gets to
go with grandpa Abdul
when he works,
sometimes.

He took me home to meet his large family.  Then, on a day off, we all visited a nearby game preserve.  He brought the whole family, and we had an exhaustively delightful day together.  He's Muslim and I'm Christian; no problem at all being friends, though.  

He explained how, in his community, Muslim and Christian folks get along, share goals and labor, doing their best to make a better world for their children.  They're not particularly divided except for where they go to church.

Egyptian friend and daughter. 

On another long trip, an Egyptian college girl was alone and struggling in the confusion of international travel.  I walked her through this and that, and we spent several hours together on a transoceanic flight.  She's a Rhodes scholar, and like my daughter, a school teacher; we found a lot to talk about, and we prayed together about some of it.  She's grown up now, married and with a precious little girl of her own.  We still correspond.  They're Muslim, too.

Young men on the beach in Djibouti, clowning for
the camera just one more time.

Over decades, career travel has pushed us up close and personal to our inadequately informed thinking.  Grouping folks into this category or that, 'them' instead of 'us'. I'd grown up in a town where there were two kinds of water fountains; white and colored.  White folks sat downstairs in the movie theater, colored people sat in a crowded balcony above where the seats weren't as nice. Fortunately, my mom and dad walked me through that nonsense early in life.  There's more than just black and white, of course.

Along the way, we're forced to ask if our faith is big enough to see others as part of the plan.  Is the "no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female," idea really working in the way we view ourselves and others.  More importantly, can we talk about such things among our friends?

Just a few steps away from the wealthy

tourist area, a Kenyan fellow tends his 

flock of goats.

On the city's edge, my friends live simply, like
 most of  the world.  Outdoor kitchen and a
little vegetable kiosk for selling produce.

Geography holds billions of people in its grip.  We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively.

- Harm de Blij, The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape, from Steve McCurry's photo gallery.

A NASA engineer 'tends his sheep'.

A kitchen, indoors.

From our “mother tongue” to our father’s faith ...  where we start our journey has much to do with our future.

Where you are born - what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own, stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalization have to say.  - Jeanette Winterson

So, how do we choose to understand the world we see, and the people issues it brings?

the mud-maker

Precious friends for many years.

Mom fans the coals, making coffee the traditional way from

 hand-ground beans that she roasted on the same fire.  Sis

 spread grass on the floor for their guest.  Everything they 

 own is in this 10 x 15 ft. hut.  The two candles light the    

home; there's no electricity here.                                   

Mom was blind and crippled for several years.  Thanks to
 a healthcare program and a little assistance, she can see

and walk now. She has a hip replacement scheduled that

that should complete her recovery.  She's a widow, and 
her kids, who've cared for her all through the ordeal,
 are thrilled, of course.                                         

Ethiopia, 2011.

He was walking and talking with his friends when they saw this blind fellow beside the road, begging for money.  The guys wondered why this beggar had ended up that way.  Did he deserve it because he had done something wrong? Or maybe his parents had?

He explained for them, no, this blind fellow and his parents hadn't done anything wrong, and that's the wrong question, looking for someone to blame.  This blindness is going to show something wonderfully good, and it will happen today while there's light, and before night comes and no one can see. He made some mud from spit and the dirt on the ground and put it on the blind fellow's eyes, then told him to to go wash at this public water place.

The blind fellow did as he was told, and went home seeing!  It caused a stir, of course.  His relatives and neighbors couldn't believe it and asked all kinds of questions.  They even wondered if he was the same guy. He explained the little he knew of what had happened, how this man had put mud on his eyes, and when he washed, he could see!  They wanted to know where the mud-maker was, but he didn't know.

The gathered crowd took the fellow to the local leaders who made a big deal of this mud-maker guy doing things like that during their holiday.  Lots of loud and emphatic words followed, and even the fellow's parents got dragged in to the melee, but he stuck to what he knew; I was born blind but now I'm not.  I don't know any more than that.  The politicos were pretty angry; it didn't fit their agenda, I suppose, so they threw the fellow out along with his story, dismissing the whole event.

Later, when the mud-maker heard about it, he found the fellow and explained things a bit.  It was a 'now you see, now you know' kind of conversation, and the fellow rather suddenly got it; he got it all and was so, so thankful to now see and to understand, too.

At the farthest far end of the road, children came cautiously out to meet us.
The fellow brought his school things, perhaps so we'd know he was a
person of substance and consequence. Nice kids, introduced us to

their parents and neighbors.
                     Djibouti, 2011.

Later, folks from the ruling party confronted the mud-maker about it all. Apparently he had made some comment about the blind seeing and those who could see going blind, and they asked about themselves; are we blind?  It was an argument-starter sort of question.

You have to wonder if he was smiling or wincing when he answered the question.  If you were really blind, he explained, you wouldn't be accountable for what you can't see.  Since you claim you can see, well, it's all on you.

The question continually pursues us all, I suppose.  Can we see what's in front of us?

... turning away is easier, but not the best way. It's kind of like tossing out the once-blind fellow along with his story.

Right and Left

A young refugee girl and her father near Faisabad, Afghanistan
(Image Afghanistan | Steve McCurry)

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

~ Bertrand Russell

Warfare has been offered as a noble conquest, a campaign against uncivilized or wicked people, waged by a great ruler and willing soldiers; the long march, the great battles, the magnificent heroes ....

Reality is harsh.  War reaches out to subjugate peoples, to capture wealth from the provinces, to rule the land ... or the world.

War is perhaps the ultimate expression of selfishness.  Every lesser crime, every sin, every moral violation, all are visible in the wake of advancing armies.  Beyond soldiers killing each other, war brings pillage, bloodshed among the innocent, theft, murder, years of deprivation, and  inconsolable anguish for the victims who manage to survive.

Leaders are the responsible agents.  Most among the soldiers and sailors hope to serve well, with honor and integrity.  In centuries of retrospect, we see many such good folks in the field doing their best, unknowingly serving an ignoble cause.  Propaganda and lies, deception and misrepresentation ...  Given the chance to understand what their leaders knew, most would have turned against the ruling elite.  Citizens would likely rise up in arms if they knew.

War is not a solution, it's the explosion that concludes an escalating competition.  At stake are lives, land, rule, and wealth. Characterized by violence, social disruption, and economic destruction, war should be understood as an intentional and widespread armed conflict, convened by political players, most commonly with an underlying economic agenda.

In the days of power players and their cronies who are willing to sacrifice a few thousand or million lives, how might the rest of us find a path that allows a good conscience?  Curious?

Hans and his foster daughter Liesel whom he came to love
dearly.  Caught up in a corrupted culture, Hans did his best
to stay on a path of good conscience.

Liesel and her dear friend, Rudy.  He
was swept up by the Hitler-Youth
movement and persuaded it was for
the best.  He couldn't have known
more than he was given.

Death himself narrates the best seller, 'The Book Thief'.  An extraordinary movie (and book) that illuminates the issue well.

Set in war-torn Europe, the focus is on regular people caught in the middle, struggling to hold on to what's right and good.  In Hitler's Germany, Hans and Rosa have taken in Liesel (the book thief) as their foster daughter whom they come to love dearly.  Hans spends his life doing his very best to be loving, kind, and wise.

Death himself recounts his task of collecting souls of persons in the story as they perish.  Of Liesel's dear foster-father, Hans, and others, Death says,

So we're reminded, even in the worst of times, in the veritable valley of the shadow of death, we can give ourselves to that which is right and good and even noble, thank you Father.  And we hope to bring a few or perhaps many along with us.  

Most Memorable

She didn't know she had changed the world.

The Afghan Girl; she was perhaps twelve years old and living in a refugee camp when National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry took her picture.  He didn't know her name.

Her picture was on the cover of National Geographic in 1985.  It became one of the most recognized photographs in the world; illuminating the conflict in Afghanistan and the refugee crisis around the world, but we didn't know who she was.  For years, no one knew.

Several attempts were made to find her and to perhaps hear her story.  Finally in 2002, a Nat Geo team found her and her family.  She was perhaps thirty years old, but remembered well the occasion of being photographed.  Even though he'd asked gently and she'd given him permission to photograph her, she was angry.  He was a stranger!

She hadn't seen the world-famous cover photo; she saw it for the first time after seventeen years when they showed it to her in '02.

Her parents had been killed in the Afghan conflict when she was about six. With her brother and three sisters, she followed her grandmother, walking through the snowy mountains to Pakistan, begging for blankets and hiding in caves along the way.  They entered the refugee camp in 1984.  She married at thirteen (no, you were sixteen, her husband insists) and later returned with her husband to her home village in Afghanistan.  They have three daughters; a fourth died in infancy.

When asked about her hopes for the future, she said she hoped they could afford medical care for her husband and to send her daughters through school.  She didn't ask for anything for herself.

"The reunion between the woman with green eyes and the photographer was quiet. On the subject of married women, cultural tradition is strict. She must not look—and certainly must not smile—at a man who is not her husband. She did not smile at McCurry.  Her expression, he said, was flat. She cannot understand how her picture has touched so many. She does not know the power of those eyes."

Reluctant at first to be photographed yet again, she relented when she heard how effective the first photo had been in focusing the world's attention on the plight of those in war-torn Afghanistan.

National Geographic told her story in 2002.  They set up an international fund to provide education for Afghan girls at first, then expanded to include boys.  They funded the family's medical needs and more, and they provided a pilgrimage to Mecca for them, too.  In a later interview, she actually smiled as she told of the progress her family had made and offered thanks for the help they had received.

"Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist. Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened."  

“She’s had a hard life,” said McCurry. “So many here share her story.” Consider the numbers. Twenty-five years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century. It's not the life she would have chosen.    ~from the Nat Geo article

Hers is a story like so many others.  Today, Pakistan hosts more than one and a half million refugees, most from Afghanistan.

Newly arrived Somali refugees wait in line to be registered by the UN office
Dagahaley camp in Dadaab, northern Kenya (Reuters).

According to the UN, the four active Dadaab camps were originally designed for a population of 150,000,
 yet are home to half a million refugees (80 per cent of whom are women and children), making living
 conditions difficult at best.  Twenty years in operation, the camps have been the only home for many.
It's not the life one would choose for their children.

Worldwide, more than 51 million people are currently refugees, displaced from their homes by conflict, the highest refugee number since WWII.  More than half are children, many unaccompanied.

Each one is a person like Sharbat Gula and perhaps has a similar story.  Each could use our help and prayers.  Perhaps we might take a moment to be thankful for our easier, safer lives, and give a little help where it might make a difference.



Update: 26 OCT 2016 -- Gula was arrested Wednesday in Pakistan for possession of fraudulent identification. She had Pakistani and Afghan ID cards in her possession, and both ID cards have been seized. We're told that more than 60,000 fraudulent IDs have been uncovered across Pakistan, and that eight officials so far have been charged with issuing fraudulent ID cards to foreigners.  Gula was arrested and released on similar charges last year.

Like millions more, she's a refugee. At last report, she is in custody awaiting her court hearing.  No information is available yet on her husband and daughters.  McCurry, the National Geographic photographer, said he is committed to helping her legally and financially. Her arrest goes to the heart of an ordeal confronting many Afghan refugees who fled across the border into Pakistan because of decades of war.

Pakistan has been pressuring refugees to leave, and has set a deadline for March. But Afghanistan remains a dangerous place — Taliban insurgents on Wednesday killed 26 Afghans abducted from the central province of Ghor. Nearly half a million Afghans have crossed the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan so far this year as a deadline approaches for them to leave.

Update: 31 OCT 2016:  Sharbat Gula has been released on bail.  She has two surviving daughters also in Pakistan.  Her husband died about four years ago.

Steve McCurry commented to Al Jazeera, "In seeing this current global refugee crisis, it's almost like people in Europe and the US are scared of refugees. Or they simply don't want the burden of hosting them. But we forget none are actually more scared than the refugees themselves. They are forced from their country, their homes. Desperate people do desperate things.

Sharbat is a widow trying to raise her children. She lost her parents, her husband, one of her daughters, and her brother. There is a lack of compassion for refugees.

Even though she's been offered to relocate to a safer country, there's no place like home. She wants to be near her relatives, this is all she knows.

If she had gone to another country, she would have had a very different life. But she chose not to. She remains humble to her life and to her struggle. We keep in touch periodically through my contacts on the ground.

The world sees the humanity in her. She wants the same things we do, but she lives in another part of the world."

BBC Viewpoint: Why Afghan refugees are facing a humanitarian catastrophe-

Us & Them

Dr. James Rohrer, "A couple of years ago I was teaching a college class on American Democracy. I sent my students to various political sites, including AlterNet, to get a range of viewpoints on the issues that we were discussing in class. I encouraged my students to share their own opinions online, to leave comments on any articles that hit a chord. One of my students, an eighteen year old from a small Nebraska town who was raised in the Catholic Church and a member of the Catholic student group on campus, responded to a post on AlterNet. The particulars of the article and the nature of her views are not relevant; her comment was thoughtful, polite and (unlike many thread comments) actually focused on an important point raised by the original article. Although I did not share her opinion, I thought that she had successfully raised legitimate questions, and of course I believe that she was engaging in a process that is fundamental to democracy.  

In response to her thoughtful comment, she received a stream of terribly hurtful messages, including “Catholics can fuck themselves.” 

In any moral universe, this is not rational discourse. It is simply intolerant meanness. To try to justify it by an appeal to freedom of speech is absurd. I am a member of the ACLU, and I will defend to my last breath the right of a fool to speak foolish things, just as the ACLU has defended the right of the Klan to spout hatred. But let’s not kid ourselves. It IS hatred, it is not moral, and I repeat my caution that such remarks do indeed harm the cause of progressive social change."

From an article by Dr. James Rohrer, Associate Professor,

 Colonial & Revolutionary America, American Religious History  

Read the article on A Gentleman's View.

Let's not kid ourselves.  The intent behind hurtful speech is not to inform, but to beat down, to cause harm, distress.  

Trying to justify it by an appeal to freedom of speech is absurd.

Such behavior, a remnant of playground bullying, illuminates not the issue but the character from which it originates.

Much of political speech today approaches that line, fanning the ideological flame of us vs. them, polarizing, ignoring the fact that we must share a country ... and our children, a future.  Perhaps we might learn and choose well for their sake.  

Trouble with the Western Mind

Rwanda village - Panaramio

(in Rwanda) "... we've had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers, especially the ones who came right after the genocide."

"What kind of trouble did you have?"

"Well, they would do this bizarre thing," he explained. "They didn't take people out in the sunshine where you begin to feel better. They didn't include drumming or music to get people's blood going. They didn't involve the whole community. They didn't externalize the depression as an invasive spirit. Instead what they did was they took people one at a time into dingy little rooms and had them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them."(Laughter) (Applause)

He said, "We had to ask them to leave the country." (Laughter)                   
~ A Rwandan describes post-genocide assistance efforts; from the transcript of Andrew Solomon's TED Talk on Depression, the Secret We Share.

Dragging a Western mind into a non-western culture can be entertaining and perhaps unsettling, to say the least.  It's likely to disassemble much of our thinking.

Whose viewpoint is correct?  Is there clarity between what's right and what's just different?

What's right? Principles of right and wrong, generally universal (fortunately), the standard by which behavior is judged; e.g., stealing is wrong everywhere.

What's different?  There are standards of behavior within a given culture or social grouping; e.g., uncovering a woman's face in public is inappropriate (in some places and social groupings).

Bikini vs Burka:   Consider the tension.  The burka and bikini themselves are simply pieces of cloth, nothing more.

OK, we could have used a picture with a bikini ...

• Is the bikini an expression of the woman's personal freedom, or is it the imposed style of a male-dominated social norm?

• Is the burka an expression of the woman's personal choice of modesty, or is it the oppressive burden imposed by a male-dominated social norm?

To both questions, the answer is yes and sometimes, yes.

From an illuminating article on Beliefnet.com, 

 hijab tutorialCHOICE

"Many women choose burka freely, as well as lesser variations such as hijab or ridah. ... My own wife wears ridah full-time, even to medical school, though I was initially against the idea. But I supported her in her desire to achieve her modesty, and the result has been astonishing. But the benefits she derives from wearing ridah are a topic for some other time."

"Contrast the Qur’anic prescription of modest dress with the tribal custom of imposing oppressive dress on women. It’s not exaggeration to say that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity brought the first concepts of equality between genders to tribal peoples who at the time had decidedly primitive notions of gender roles. 

Afghan Taliban beating woman in Kabul

To take one self-aimed example, pre-Islamic customs of burying first-born daughters alive was stridently condemned by Muhammad SAW. Yet these practices still persist in modern times – for example in Nigeria, where a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. Also recently a woman was sentenced to be buried up to her neck in sand and again stoned, for having a child out of wedlock.

Violence against women fueled by patriarchal social values, lack of adequate laws and enforcement.  From UNICEF, the percentage of women aged 15–49 who think that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances is as high as: 90% in Afghanistan and Jordan, 87% in Mali, 86% in Guinea and Timor-Leste, 81% in Laos, and 80% in the Central African Republic.[UNICEF]  A 2010 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that stoning as a punishment for adultery was supported by:  82% of respondents in Egypt and Pakistan, 70% in Jordan, 56% Nigeria, 42% in Indonesia.[PEW Research]

"These kind of barbaric decisions are always made in remote villages by a band of grizzled elder men, who invariably call themselves an 'Islamic court'. The truth is that these are immoral primitive tribal customs, which are used by the tribal elders as a power play of enforcing their authority. They are wrapped in poorly-argued Islamic reasoning, often bundled with some selective out-of-context Qur’anic verse, so that no one dares argue. But this is not Islamic, it’s purely a primitive cultural practice, with its sole aim as a power play of I-have-control-over-you."

"These tribal impulses of control are the root cause of the Saudi burka, and the absurd punishments in Nigeria and Pakistan, and the concept of honor killings. They also, to a lesser degree, are the underlying philosophy behind the bikini, which is the real subject of this essay."

"I am not saying that the woman wearing a bikini is immoral, though that opinion is shared by many, not just Muslims. We can leave that open to debate. But for the purposes of this essay, the manifestation of men’s control over women, is what I am labeling immoral. I am careful to only use the word “immoral” in the context of forcing women to wear burka, or the power play which makes (some) women (sometimes) want to wear a bikini to please men. The burka and bikini themselves are simply pieces of cloth, nothing more."       

~ see the original Article

Crossing cultural lines can be a bit of a minefield excursion, but there is much understanding that can come with doing so.  With understanding comes some clarity about right and wrong.