عزل الرئيس التونسي زين العابدين بن علي اليوم الخميس والي سيدي بوزيد التي انطلقت منها الاحتجاجات الاجتماعية الأخيرة ضد ما أسموه "تردي الظروف المعيشية وتفشي البطالة والفساد"، وذلك ضمن تعديلات شملت تعيين ثلاثة ولاة جدد، ويأتي ذلك بعد يوم واحد من تعديل وزاري شمل أربع وزارات. وذكرت وكالة الأنباء التونسية الحكومية أن الرئيس بن علي قرر تعيين عبد الحميد العلوي واليا على سيدي بوزيد، ومحمد بن عبد الله واليا على جندوبة، ولطفي شوبة واليا على زغوان. واندلعت اشتباكات عنيفة بين الشرطة وشبان غاضبين بسبب تفشي البطالة في سيدي بوزيد، بعد أن أقدم شاب على حرق نفسه احتجاجا على مصادرة عربة للخضروات والغلال يقتات منها، إضافة إلى منعه من مقابلة الوالي لتقديم شكواه. كما توفي اليوم شاب تونسي ثان متأثرا بجروحه التي أصيب بها خلال الاشتباكات التي جرت مع قوات الأمن في مدينة منزل بوزيان. وكانت عدة مدن تونسية شهدت في وقت سابق محاولات للخروج في مظاهرات احتجاج اجتماعية جديدة، غير أن القوات الأمنية حاصرتها كما هو الحال في جندوبة وقابس وجبنيانة. وتزامن ذلك مع انتقاد عدد من قيادات المعارضة التونسية المحظورة لخطاب الرئيس زين العابدين بن علي الذي تنصل فيه من المسؤولية، وتجاهل مطالب واحتجاجات غالبية التونسيين، حسب هذه القيادات. وفي مدينة المهدية شرق تونس، منع رئيس الاتحاد العام التونسي للشغل المتظاهرين من الخروج في مسيرة نحو المدينة. كما أجهضت قوات الأمن مسيرة وسط العاصمة. وكان الرئيس التونسي أعلن تعديلا وزاريا الأربعاء عين بموجبه سمير العبيدي وزيرا للاتصال، وعبد الحميد سلامة وزيرا للشباب. وتعهد الرئيس التونسي بأن تبذل حكومته مزيدا من الجهود لمواجهة بطالة خريجي التعليم العالي، لكنه توعد بالحزم في تطبيق القانون ضد من أسماهم المتطرفين والمأجورين ضد مصالح بلدهم. كما طالب بن علي المسؤولين بالمرونة في التعامل مع المواطنين، واستقبالهم وتلقي شكاواهم والتعامل معها بجدية. | |||||
In a quiet street in the Sheikh Jarrah district of occupied East Jerusalem 88-year-old Rifka al-Kurd is explaining how she came to live in the house she and her husband built as Palestinian refugees in the 1950s. As she speaks, three young ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers swagger in to stake their claim to the front part of the building, shouting abuse in Hebrew and broken Arabic: "Arab animals", "shut up, whore".
There is a brief physical confrontation with Rifka's daughter as the settlers barricade themselves in to the rooms they have occupied since last winter. That was when they finally won a court order to take over the Kurd family's extension on the grounds that it was built without permission – which Palestinians in Jerusalem are almost never granted. It is an ugly scene, the settlers' chilling arrogance underpinned by the certain knowledge that they can call in the police and army at will.
But such takeovers of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah have become commonplace, and the focus of continual protest. The same is true in nearby Silwan, home to upwards of 30,000 Palestinians next to the Old City, where 88 homes to 1,500 Palestinians have been lined up for demolition to make way for a King David theme park and hundreds of settlers are protected round the clock by trigger-happy security guards.
Throughout the Arab areas of Jerusalem, as in the West Bank, the government is pressing ahead with land expropriations, demolitions and settlement building, making the prospects of a Palestinian state ever more improbable. More than a third of the land in East Jerusalem has been expropriated since it was occupied in 1967 to make way for Israeli colonists, in flagrant violation of international law.
Israel's latest settlement plans were not "helpful", Barack Obama ventured on Tuesday. But while US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian negotiations go nowhere and attention has been focused on the brutal siege of Gaza, the colonisation goes on. It is also proceeding apace in Israel proper, where the demolition of Palestinian Bedouin villages around the Negev desert has accelerated under Binyamin Netanyahu.
About 87,000 Bedouin live in 45 "unrecognised" villages, without rights or basic public services, because the Israeli authorities refuse to recognise their claim to the land. All have demolition orders hanging over them, while hundreds of Jewish settlements have been established throughout the area.
The Israeli writer Amos Oz calls the Negev a "ticking time bomb". The village of Araqeeb has been destroyed six times in recent months and each time it has been reconstructed by its inhabitants. The government wants to clear the land and move the Bedouin into designated townships. But even there, demolitions are carried out on a routine basis.
At the weekend, a mosque in the Bedouin town of Rahat was torn down by the army in the night. By Sunday afternoon, local people were already at work on rebuilding it, as patriotic songs blared out from the PA system and activists addressed an angry crowd.
The awakening of the Negev Bedouin, many of whom used to send their sons to fight in the Israeli army, reflects a wider politicisation of the Arab citizens of Israel. Cut off from the majority of Palestinians after 1948, they tried to find an accommodation with the state whose discrimination against them was, in the words of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, "deep-seated and intolerable" from the first.
That effort has as good as been abandoned. The Arab parties in the Israeli Knesset now reject any idea of Israel as an ethnically defined state, demanding instead a "state of all its people". The influential Islamic Movement refuses to take part in the Israeli political system at all. The Palestinians of '48, who now make up getting on for 20% of the population, are increasingly organising themselves on an independent basis – and in common cause with their fellow Palestinians across the Green Line.
Palestinian experience inside Israel, from land confiscations to settlement building and privileged ethnic segregation, is not after all so different from what has taken place in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. After 1948, the Palestinians of Jaffa who survived ethnic cleansing were forced to share their houses with Jewish settlers – just as Rifka al-Kurd is in Jerusalem today. The sense of being one people is deepening.
That has been intensified by ever more aggressive attempts under the Netanyahu government to bring Israel's Arab citizens to heel, along with growing demands to transfer hundreds of thousands of them to a future West Bank administration. A string of new laws targeting the Palestinian minority are in the pipeline, including the bill agreed by the Israeli cabinet last month requiring all new non-Jewish citizens to swear an oath of allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state.
Pressure on Palestinian leaders and communities is becoming harsher. A fortnight ago more than a thousand soldiers and police were on hand to protect a violent march by a far-right racist Israeli group through the Palestinian town of Umm al-Fahm. The leader of the Islamic Movement, Ra'ed Salah, is in prison for spitting at a policeman; the Palestinian MP Haneen Zoabi has been stripped of her parliamentary privileges for joining the Gaza flotilla; and leading civil rights campaigner Ameer Makhoul faces up to 10 years in jail after being convicted of the improbable charge of spying for Hezbollah.
Meanwhile Israel is also demanding that the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah recognise Israel as a Jewish state as part of any agreement. Few outside the Palestinian Authority – or even inside it – seem to believe that the "peace process" will lead to any kind of settlement. Even Fatah leaders such as Nabil Sha'ath now argue that the Palestinians need to consider a return to armed resistance, or a shift to the South African model of mass popular resistance, also favoured by prominent Palestinians in Israel.
As for the people who actually won the last elections, Mahmoud Ramahi, the Hamas secretary general of the Palestinian parliament, reminded me on Monday that the US continues to veto any reconciliation with Fatah. He was arrested by the Israelis barely 24 hours later, just as talks between the two parties were getting going in Damascus.
The focus of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle has shifted over the last 40 years from Jordan to Lebanon to the occupied territories. With the two-state solution close to collapse, it may be that the Palestinians of Israel are at last about to move centre stage. If so, the conflict that more than any other has taken on a global dimension will have finally come full circle.
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Associated Press
2:26 PM CST, November 28, 2010
CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — Anger over a Somali-born teen's failed plan to blow up a van full of explosives during Portland's Christmas tree lighting ceremony erupted in arson on Sunday when a fire damaged an Islamic center frequented by the suspect, authorities said.
Police don't know who started the blaze or exactly why, but they believe the Islamic center in Corvallis was targeted because terror suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, occasionally worshipped there.
Yosof Wanly, the imam at the Salman Alfarisi Islamic Center, said he was advised by friends to take his family out of their home because of the potential threat of hate crime, and members decried the alleged arson attack. No one was injured, and the fire was contained to one room.
"We know how it is, we know some people due to ignorance are going to perceive of these things and hold most Muslims accountable," Wanly said. "We do what we can, but it's a tough situation."
The failed attack on Portland's Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Friday is testing tolerance in what has typically been a state accepting of Muslims, and the FBI warned it would not accept retribution for Mohamud's alleged plot.
The agency was working closely with leadership at the center as agents investigated the fire, said Arthur Balizan, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Oregon. A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest.
Ahson Saeed, 25, who worships at the center, called the fire "a heinous act."
The fire was reported at 2:15 a.m., and evidence at the scene led authorities believe it was set intentionally, said Carla Pusateri, a fire prevention officer for the Corvallis Fire Department.
After daybreak, members gathered at the Corvallis center, where a broken window had been boarded up.
"I've prayed for my family and friends, because obviously if someone was deliberate to do this, what's to stop them from coming to our homes and our schools?" said Mohamed Alyagouri, a 31-year-old father of two, who worships at the center. "I'm afraid for my children getting harassed from their teachers, maybe from their friends."
Mohamud was being held on charges of plotting to carry out a terror attack in Portland. He is scheduled to appear in court on Monday, and it wasn't clear if he had a lawyer yet.
On Friday, he parked what he thought was a bomb-laden van near the ceremony and then went to a nearby train station, where he dialed a cell phone that he believed would detonate the vehicle, federal authorities said. Instead, federal authorities moved in and arrested him. No one was hurt.
Authorities have not explained how Mohamud, an OSU student until he dropped out on Oct. 6, became so radicalized. Mohamud graduated from high school in Beaverton, although few details of his time there were available Saturday.
Wanly described him as a normal student who went to athletic events, drank the occasional beer and was into rap music and culture. In the days leading up to his arrest Friday, however, Mohamud's friends thought he appeared at edge, Wanly said.
"He seemed to be in a state of confusion," Wanly said. "He would say things that weren't true. He'd say 'I'm going to go get married,' for example. He wasn't going to go get married."
Officials said Mohamud had no formal ties to foreign terror groups, although he had reached out to suspected terrorists in Pakistan.
FBI agents say they began investigating after receiving a tip from an unidentified person who expressed concern about Mohamud. Wanly said Mohamud was religious but didn't come to the mosque consistently.
Beginning in August 2009, court documents allege, Mohamud began e-mail communications with a friend overseas who had studied in Oregon, asking how he could travel to Pakistan and join the fight for jihad.
The e-mail exchanges led the FBI to believe that Mohamud's friend in Pakistan "had joined others involved in terrorist activities" and was inviting Mohamud to join him, prosecutors said.
Mohamud tried to board a flight to Kodak, Alaska, on June 14 from Portland but wasn't allowed to board and was interviewed by the FBI, prosecutors said. Mohamud told the FBI he wanted to earn money fishing and then travel to join "the brothers." He said he had previously hoped to travel to Yemen but had never obtained a ticket or a visa.
Less than two weeks later, an agent e-mailed Mohamud, pretending to be affiliated with one of the people overseas whom Mohamud had tried to contact.
Undercover agents then set up a series of face-to-face meetings with Mohamud at hotels in Portland and Corvallis.
During their first meeting on July 30, Mohamud told an agent there were a number of ways he could help "the cause," ranging from praying five times a day to "becoming a martyr."
Mohamud replied he "thought of putting an explosion together but that he needed help doing so," the documents said.
At a second meeting on Aug. 19 at a Portland hotel, the agent brought another undercover agent, the documents said, and Mohamud told them he had selected Pioneer Courthouse Square for the bombing.
On Nov. 4, in the backcountry along Oregon's coast, agents convinced Mohamud that he was testing an explosive device — although the explosion was controlled by agents rather than the youth.
The affidavit said Mohamud was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could die, and that he could back out.
Prosecutors say after the trip to the backcountry, Mohamud made a video in the presence of one of the undercover agents, putting on clothes he described as "Sheik Osaka style:" a white robe, red and white headdress, and camouflage jacket. He read a statement speaking of his dream of bringing "a dark day" on Americans and blaming his family for getting in the way.
Friday, an agent and Mohamud drove into downtown Portland to the white van that carried six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but all of them were inert.
Authorities said they allowed the plot to proceed to obtain evidence to charge the suspect with attempt.
Tens of thousands of Somalis have resettled in the United States since their country plunged into lawlessness in 1991, and the U.S. has boosted aid to the country.
Wanly, the imam at the Corvallis center, said the local populace has long been accepting of Muslims.
"The common scene here is to be very friendly, accepting various cultures and religions," Wanly said. "The Islamic center has been here for 40 years, it's more American than most Americans with regards to age."
___
Duara reported from Portland. Associated Press writers William McCall and Tim Fought also contributed to this report.
By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
Sunday, November 28, 2010; 12:33 PM
-- Helene Lauffer knew Muslim children - orphaned, displaced, neglected - needed homes in the United States. She knew American Muslim families wanted to take them in.
But Lauffer, associate executive director of Spence-Chapin, one of the oldest adoption agencies in the country, couldn't bring them together.
The problem was a gap between Western and Islamic law. Traditional, closed adoption violates Islamic jurisprudence, which stresses the importance of lineage. Instead, Islam has a guardianship system called kafalah that resembles foster care, yet has no exact counterpart in Western law.
The differences have left young Muslims with little chance of finding a permanent Muslim home in America. So Lauffer sought out a group of Muslim women scholars and activists, hoping they could at least start a discussion among U.S. Muslims about how adoption and Islamic law could become compatible.
"At the end of the day, it's about trying to find families for kids," said Lauffer.
Lauffer is not alone in raising the issue. As Muslim communities become more established in the United States, pressure is building for a re-examination of Islamic law on adoption.
Refugee children from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere are being resettled here. Muslim couples who can't conceive want to adopt but don't want to violate their faith's teachings. State child welfare agencies that permanently remove Muslim children from troubled homes usually can't find Muslim families to adopt them because of the restrictions in Islamic law.
"I get all kinds of families who come to me for fertility issues. They want to adopt and they want to adopt Muslim children and I'm thinking this is a crime that they can't," said Najah Bazzy, a nurse and founder of Zaman International, a humanitarian service group in Dearborn, Mich. "No one is going to convince me that Islam makes no allocation for this. Either somebody is not interpreting it right, or it needs to be reinterpreted."
Mohammad Hamid, a clinical psychologist and co-founder of the Hamdard Center, a social service agency in the Chicago area that has many Muslims among its clients, said he regularly received requests from American Muslims for advice on how they could adopt.
"We don't tell them it's Islamic or un-Islamic," said Hamid, whose nonprofit does not handle adoptions. "Our job is to facilitate the process. We believe if the child can be adopted, you are saving a child."
The prohibition against adoption would appear contrary to the Quran's heavy emphasis on helping orphans. The Prophet Muhammad's father died before his son was born, so the boy's grandfather and uncle served as his guardians, setting an example for all Muslims to follow.
However, Islamic scholars say the restrictions were actually meant to protect children, by ending abuses in pre-Islamic Arabic tribal society.
Ingrid Mattson, professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, said adoption in that period had more in common with slavery. Men would take in boys, then erase any tie between the child and his biological family. The goal was to gather as many fighters as possible as protection for the tribe. Orphans' property was often stolen in the process.
As a result, Muslims were barred from treating adopted and biological children as identical in naming or inheritance, unless the adoptee was breast-fed as a baby by the adoptive mother, creating a familial bond recognized under Islamic law.
When an orphan reaches puberty, the Islamic prohibition against mixing of the sexes applies inside the home of his or her guardians. Muslim men cannot be alone with women they could potentially marry, and women must cover their hair around these men. Islamic law sets out detailed rules about who believers can and cannot marry, and an orphan taken in from another family would not automatically be considered "unmarriageable" to his siblings or guardians.
For these reasons and others, Muslim countries only rarely allow international adoption.
"There hasn't been a concerted push to open doors for Muslim orphans because the expectation would be that those efforts would fall flat," said Chuck Johnson, chief executive of the National Council for Adoption, a policy group in Alexandria, Va.
Advocates for a new interpretation of Islamic law are more hopeful, at least about the prospect for a different approach to the issue in the United States. Mattson argues that the flexibility in Islamic law for accommodating local cultures and customs can lead to a solution.
Open adoption, which keeps contact between the adoptee and his biological family, is seen as one potential answer. In New South Wales, Australia, child welfare officials created an outreach program to Muslims emphasizing that Australian adoptions are open and adopted children can retain their birth names. The New South Wales program is the only well-known adoption campaign targeting a Muslim minority population in a Western country.
The Muslim women scholars Lauffer consulted in New York, who meet annually as a shura (advisory) council, tackled the complexities of modesty rules inside the home. They debated whether Muslim adoptees in the West could be considered Islamically "unmarriageable" to their siblings or guardians, since Western governments classify adoptees the same as blood relatives. The shura council will soon release a statement on the issue through its organizing body, the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality.
It's unclear how successful their efforts can be. There is no central authority in Islam to hand down a ruling on adoption. Muslims consult individual scholars, or, in the United States, seek an opinion from an imam at their local mosque.
Catherine England, a Muslim who teaches in the Seattle area, adopted four children after she and her husband learned they could have no children of their own. One of her children is an orphan from Afghanistan. Two others are biological siblings.
"I felt that my understanding - and this is entirely my understanding - is that what is forbidden in Islam is closed adoption," said England, who converted to Islam more than three decades ago. She consulted a Muslim scholar who she said affirmed her view that open adoption was allowed.
Lauffer hopes to hear more stories like England's soon.
ما القاسم المشترك بين السوري العربي هيثم المالح واليابانيين ''أراكاوا تيوزو'' و''شيبا أيانو'' و''كاناموري أيشي''؟ لا شيء تقريبا باستثناء الاشتراك في نفس العمر (ثمانين سنة) عندما عرفوا حدثا هاما في حياتهم، ربما شكل ذروة هذه الحياة.
لنتوقف في البداية عند اليابانيين الثلاثة.
هم ينتمون لمجموعة تضم أكثر من خمسين اسما ويعرفون تحت اسم ''نينجن كوهيهو" أي الكنوز البشرية الحية.
سنة 1950 قررت الحكومة اليابانية أن تعطي الدولة، بعد استشارة أهل الذكر، لقب كنز بشري حيّ، لكل رجل أو امرأة تميّز بعمله المتقن في أحد الميادين الفنية التي تعرّف الثقافة اليابانية مثل الصناعات التقليدية.. وبالطبع تكريمه بصفة تفوق المعتاد."
تقليد رائع أقرته الحكومة اليابانية عام 1950 عندما قررت أن تعطي لقب كنز بشري حيّ، لكل رجل أو امرأة تميّز بعمله المتقن في أحد الميادين الفنية التي تعرّف الثقافة اليابانية مثل الصناعات التقليدية
"
وفي غضون أقل من نصف قرن تشكلت قائمة لا تفوق حاليا مائة شخص، تضمّ عمالا وعاملات في قطاعات فنية، أحيانا جدّ هامشية، لكنها تلعب دورا هاما في هوية الأمة اليابانية ويمكن اعتبارهم أعضاء جديرين بأصدق وأشرف أرستقراطية.
إنه تقليد رائع لم تأخذه عن اليابان لحدّ الآن إلا كوريا وتايوان وتايلند وحاولت اليونسكو أن تتبناه وأن تعممه في العالم بغية الحفاظ على كل تراث فني أصيل مهدد بالضياع. ألا يقول مثل أفريقي إن موت بعض الشيوخ كاحتراق مكتبة.
صحيح أن هذا التكريم الخارق للعادة لا يشمل إلا صنفا معينا من الأعمال الفنية ذات العلاقة الوثيقة بالتراث التقليدي، لكن لنتأمل بعض المعاني التي تزخر بها ظاهرة الكنوز البشرية الحية.
هي دلالة على حقائق جعلتها ممكنة ومنها أن هناك:
- تقديس الأمة اليابانية للعمل والعطاء.
- ترصّدها للبحث عنه ومكافأته.
- تمثيلها من قبل دولة لا تخشى من إعطاء لقب كهذا يضع المكرّم فوق كل رجل سياسي وربما حتى فوق الإمبراطور.
- إرادتها رفعةَ من رفعوها خاصة إذا كانوا أشخاصا متواضعين ومغمورين ولم يسعوا للشهرة وإنما أفنوا أعمارهم في خدمة ثقافتها وهم لا يعون حتى بخطورة ما يفعلون.
- انتباهها لضرورة وصول التكريم والاعتراف للشخص قبل فوات الأوان وألا يموت الشيخ الجليل بالحسرة في الفؤاد ليمضغ وهو ميت عنقود العنب الذي رفضت له حبة واحدة منه وهو حيّ.
- فخرها واعتزازها بهؤلاء المبدعين ووعيها بأهميتهم في تواصلها وعظمتها.
- أخيرا لا آخرا حثّها على الخلق والإبداع والرسالة داخل الرسالة: قوموا بواجبكم تجاهنا نحن الأمة وسنقوم بواجبنا نحوكم إذا اتضح أنكم أحسن أبنائها.
كيف نستغرب بعد هذا تفجّر الطاقات وكيف لا تكون اليابان من أولى الدول والشعوب في كل الميادين، علما بالطبع بأن مبدأ الاعتراف والمكافأة والتكريم الكبير قائم في كل الميادين، حتى وإن لم يتخذ صبغة تكاد تكون من قبيل التقديس كما هو الحال في الكنوز البشرية الحية؟
| " الرسالة التي تريد الأنظمة توصيلها لنا بعدم تكريمها لكنوزنا الحية: لا نقدّر ولا نحترم أحدا ولا يكبر في أعيننا كبير ولا نستحيي من سجن عجوز في الثمانين فانتبهوا لحالكم " |
انظر وضع هيثم المالح مقارنة مع اليابانيين المذكورين أعلاه. لنذكّر مرة أخرى أن الرجل بلغ ثمانين حولا ولم يسأم –من النضال عن شعبه وأمته- وكل جريمته ما سمي في سوريا إطالة اللسان... اللسان الذي هددني على مرأى ومسمع من الملايين لواء مخابرات مصري بقطعه، لأن أسيادنا أينما كانوا لا يطيقون نقدا. تأمّل المعاني المضمنة في سجن مريض في الثمانين، سبق أن قضى في ضيافة النظام السوري ست سنوات.
الرسائل المراد توصيلها كالآتي:
- لا نقدّر ولا نحترم أحدا ولا يكبر في أعيننا كبير ولا نستحيي من سجن عجوز في الثمانين فانتبهوا لحالكم.
-لا قيمة لأي شخص فيكم بما يقدم إلا إذا كان ما يقدمه لنا، لأننا نحن الوطن ومن ضدنا آليا ضد الأرض والتاريخ والشعب والأجيال القادمة.
- لا نريد عطاء ولا بذلا إلا الذي يصب في مصلحتنا والبقية شغلكم.
- لا وجود لكنز بشري إلا القائد الملهم الفذ الذي لم تجد بمثله الأقدار وكل ما عداه من ضمن الألف كأفّ.
تقول المقارنة لا تجوز فاليابان تكرّم فنانين تقليديين لا سياسيين أو مناضلي حقوق الإنسان وهيثم المالح ليس رساما على الخزف أو خطاطا على خشب الأبنوس لحشره في موضوع كهذا.
اعتراض وجيه يقابله اعتراضان نتمنى أن يكونا وجيهين أيضا.
الأول أنه لا شيء يشابه التكريم الياباني يتلقاه حرفيو فاس وحلب والقاهرة، في ميادين فنية مثل الخط والرسم والنقش والسجاد إلخ.
من منكم سمع يوما بعاملة في مصانع السجاد بالقيروان ابتدعت أجمل اللوحات الفنية، لم يعرف قيمتها إلا السياح الأجانب وعرفت تكريما كالذي عرفته "جونوكوشي ميي" التي دخلت سنة 1955 قائمة الخالدين والخالدات في الثقافة اليابانية؟ القاعدة أن كل فنانة مبدعة في فن السجاد، تموت بعد أن أكل العمل المضني عمرها وعينيها دون أن تجني منه إلا ما يسدّ رمقها ورمق أطفالها.
ثم من سمع منكم بأن أهل المهن الفنية يتابعون بنشاط كل مبدع ومبدعة ويتفقون على ترشيحه للتكريم ولا يبقى على الدولة إلا التنفيذ؟
أغلب أهل الصناعات التقليدية والفنون المرتبطة بها يعيشون بقرب المزابل في أزقة مدننا العتيدة يجاهدون لبيع بعض البضاعة للسياح، من أجل البقاء على قيد الحياة.
وحتى عندما يتمّ تكريم بعض الكتاب أو الفنانين فهو مجرد إجراء شكلي تمنّ فيه دولة لا شرعية ببعض الفتات من الاعتراف، على من أظهروا لها الولاء الكافي. ثم استغربوا بعد هذا الكساد الفكري والفني في وطننا العربي والحال أنه لم يثبت لحدّ الآن أن للدماغ الياباني ضعف الخلايا في الدماغ العربي.
الاعتراض الثاني أنه لا شيء يمنعنا من توسيع مفهوم "الكنز البشري الحيّ" إلى كل المبدعين أيا كان مجال خدمتهم للمجموعة الوطنية من الرسم على البلوّر أو المحافظة على أقدم طريقة في تزيين ملابس العرس، إلى العطاء في ميادين العلم والأدب والسياسة... بالطبع كل هذا يوم يصبح للشعوب العربية دول وللدول العربية شعوب وتردم الهوة بينهما بالشيء الذي تبخر متسببا في معاناتنا جميعا: الاحترام المتبادل.
| " يجب أن لا ننتظر من دول لا تخدم إلا عصابات وعائلات, التعرّف على كنوزنا البشرية الحية وتكريمهم قبل خطب التأبين الرائعة والعبثية " |
والآن كفى بكاء ونحيبا على حالنا. يجب تغيير ما بأنفسنا كما أُمرنا بذلك من أحسن آمر. لنستبطن أن هيثم المالح، مثل الصادق شورو في السجون التونسية ومناضلي الحرية في السجون العربية، ليس ضحية وإنما أسير حرب... أن الحقوق تفتكّ ولا تعطى... أن واحدا من حقوقنا التي يجب أن نمارسها -لا أن ننتظرها دوما من دول لا تخدم إلا عصابات وعائلات- هو التعرّف على كنوزنا البشرية الحية وتكريمهم قبل خطب التأبين الرائعة والعبثية.
نعم بانتظار أن تكون لنا دول مهمتها تحفيز الطاقات الهائلة التي تنضح بها مجتمعاتنا وليس إجهاضها... وبانتظار أن تكون لنا حكومات تعرف أن الزمردة لا ترمى في المزبلة أو في سجن وإنما توضع أينما يجب أن توضع الكنوز... ولأن كل طريق طويل يبدأ بخطوة والغيث النافع بقطرة، فهل تسمحون لي باسمكم جميعا أن أرشح هيثم المالح للقب كنز عربي حيّ، وأن نكرمه كلنا هذا اليوم في عقولنا وقلوبنا
(Reuters) - The State Department said on Tuesday it had warned the Lebanese government about the risks of a visit by Iran's president to Lebanon next week.
Lebanese officials expect President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, a staunch ally the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah which dominates southern Lebanon and which the United States views as a terrorist organization, to visit Beirut on October 13-14.
Ahmadinejad's visit is his first to Lebanon as president and comes at a time of greater tension in Beirut in the run up to indictments expected to be issued against Hezbollah members in the 2005 assassination of statesman Rafik al-Hariri.
Lebanon's largest parliamentary bloc, the Western-backed "March 14" coalition, voiced concern last week about the visit, saying Ahmedinejad regards Lebanon as "an Iranian base on the Mediterranean."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the issue of Ahmadinejad's proposed visit when she met Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in New York last month on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
"We expressed our concern about it given that Iran, through its association with groups like Hezbollah, is actively undermining Lebanon's sovereignty," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters at his daily briefing.
"But ... we respect that these are judgments for (the) Lebanese government to make," he added.
Sunni Arab countries are concerned about Shi'ite Iran's rising influence in the region, through its proxies of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Sunni Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Lebanese political sources have said they expect Ahmadinejad to meet Hezbollah politicians and visit Bint Jbeil, a bastion of Hezbollah and a border village that was heavily bombed during the Israeli-Hezbollah war in 2006.
Iran is embroiled in a long-running dispute with the West over its controversial nuclear program, that has sparked rumors of planned Israeli or U.S. military strikes to deter it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
U.S. commanders have warned that military strikes against Iran could spark retaliatory action by Tehran and its allies like Hezbollah and Hamas that could destabilize the region.
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| Ahmadinejad's visit comes amid speculations that Hezbollah might be indicted in Hariri's assassination case [AFP] |
Lebanon’s largest parliamentary bloc has expressed concerns at a planned visit of the Iranian president to the country on October 13.
In a statement issued on Friday, the March 14 alliance described Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit as a "provocation."
The Iranian president is scheduled to hold talks with his counterpart, Michel Sleiman, who invited him, as well as Prime Minister Saad Hariri and parliament speaker Nabih Berri.
Ahmadinejad is also due to meet with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shia group Hezbollah, a key ally whose powerful party is widely considered a proxy of Iran.
The Iranian president is expected to tour the predominantly Shia southern Lebanon.
Message to Israel
The leaders of the March 14 coalition believe that Iran is using Lebanon in its confrontation with the West and Israel, and that Ahmadinejad’s visit is meant to a message to Israel.
"The message is that Iran is at the border with Israel," said Fares Souaid, coordinator of the March 14 alliance.
read more... Lebanon row over Ahmadinejad visit - Middle East - Al Jazeera English
Over the summer months, Muslims in Murfreesboro — for three decades a virtually silent minority and a sliver of the city's population — have endured challenge after challenge to their fundamental right to build a house of worship. The latest comes in the form of a trial that started Sept. 27 in Rutherford County Chancery Court, where three aggrieved citizens and their attorney, Joe Brandon Jr., are fighting the proposed expansion of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
On their side, the plaintiffs have allies such as Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the conservative think-tank Center for Security Policy. Gaffney told the court he is not an expert on Sharia law, which made skeptics wonder why he was on hand "to warn this community of seditious acts of Sharia law." But on Sept. 28, the same day Gaffney was giving the Chancery Court a non-expert crash course in Islamic conspiracy theory, local Muslim leaders were quietly receiving encouragement from an unexpected guest: the U.S. Department of Justice.
Thomas Perez, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, spent the day making house calls in Middle Tennessee, assuring Muslim leaders — including the imams of the Murfreesboro mosque and the Islamic Center of Nashville — that his office has their back if it turns out that opponents aren't as interested in zoning esoterica as they are in sidelining the practice of Islam in Murfreesboro.
"Basically, what we're being told is that if there's any civil violation of the rights of the Muslim community here, they'll step in," says Abdou Kattih, vice president of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, who also met with government officials.
It makes sense that the feds would arrive in Murfreesboro, where Muslims who have lived and worshipped without incident for three decades suddenly find themselves eyed as some kind of sleeper cell. Their most fervid opponents — including Nashville-based lobbyist Laurie Cardoza-Moore and a posse of web prowlers playing connect-the-dots on Google — seem to think the mosque's congregation (like all the others) is biding its time until radical Islam makes its move.
Their contention, as expressed in part two of the lawsuit — to which Cardoza-Moore is not a party; her strategy has been to stir and step back — is that the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro's endgame is to subjugate Middle Tennessee to the grisliest, most extreme tenets of Islam's holy Sharia law.
"Sharia law is jihad," attorney Brandon told the Murfreesboro court last week. "We believe there is a direct connection to the ICM [Islamic Center of Murfreesboro]. Sharia says the U.S. Constitution is suitable for toilet paper."
The Murfreesboro mosque's worshippers, however, suggest that alarmist warnings about Sharia rule in Middle Tennessee are what should be printed on Charmin.
"It's ridiculous," says Kattih. "If you look at our members, we're a system of government. Everything is done through certain government systems. Our congregation is less than 1 percent of the population in this area. How can we possibly impose anything on the government?"
Mohammad Ahmed Al-Sherif, imam of the Islamic Center of Nashville, says it is reassuring in a time of fear and anxiety for Middle Tennessee Muslims to have the fully expressed backing of the U.S. government.
"They said they extend the commitment to protect the religious freedom of this country without anybody being discriminated against or harassed from this group or that group," he says. "We never had a question about our government [being there]. We always trusted them. It's very nice to hear this message, and their commitment and reminding us of our rights. It's very important, I would say, that we hear this."
The Department of Justice conversations took place almost 10 years to the day after President Bill Clinton signed into effect a law that would protect religious organizations from discrimination in local zoning matters. Greeted with bipartisan support and agreement from frequently opposed groups, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was the federal government's response to an insidious new form of bigotry and subjugation — a tactic worming its way around both the Constitution and existing anti-discrimination laws.
In the mid-1990s, reports surfaced that local zoning boards throughout the country — driven by ideology, not urban planning — were starting to deny permits to minority religious groups who sought to build or expand their worship facilities. Denying a permit on religious grounds is, of course, unconstitutional. But procedural arcana proved just as effective for turning away unwanted religious neighbors.
Especially those without numbers on their side. In a series of nine hearings held over three years, Congress found that half the incidents concerned faith groups who collectively make up only 9 percent of the population.
Perez says it's common for the justice department to make its presence felt in a discriminatory environment, if only to remind those under siege that laws like the Religious Land Use Act exist. American Muslims have been a particular target during the past year. According to a recent justice department report, of the 18 complaints under the land-use law that the government has monitored since Sept. 11, 2001, eight have come since May.
"We have seen a spike in the zoning confrontations, in efforts to keep mosques and the like from being built," Perez says.
Perez and Jerry Martin, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, say that federal enforcement of existing civil rights laws is crucial, citing a recent precedent close to home. Under the 1996 Church Arson Prevention Act — itself the swift legislative response to a rash of arsons against black churches in the 1990s — the government successfully prosecuted the perpetrators of an arson that claimed the Islamic Center of Columbia, Tenn., in 2008.
That's precisely the kind of activity, Perez says, that his office monitors — and it has been on the rise. In February, vandals spray-painted graffiti on Nashville's Al-Farooq Mosque near the fairgrounds. Even now, the FBI and ATF continue to investigate the burning of construction equipment Aug. 28 at the mosque site in Rutherford County. The fire has been ruled arson.
"It was a very sobering meeting to listen to Murfreesboro leaders describe the climate of fear that they're living in," Perez tells the Scene.
The current legal attack on the proposed mosque expansion is far less dramatic. Several months ago, the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro asked permission from the Rutherford County Planning Commission to build a 52,900-square-foot facility on Veals Road, just outside the Murfreesboro city limits. The commission granted the permit unanimously.
Typically, a public meeting notice must be widely circulated in advance of a hearing. When rumors of a legal challenge stirred a month ago, however, Doug Demosi, county planning director, explained to the Scene that because of state law, the mosque was not subject to the same kind of public hearing process that non-religious facilities must undergo.
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs contend that the commission did not properly alert the public of the hearing it held May 24, when it gave final approval for the facility. They accuse the commission of violating the state's open meetings act.
But as the heated rhetoric from Brandon and Frank Gaffney made clear, this is not a debate about proper procedure. It's a line drawn in the sand against Sharia law — a poorly understood concept that, like many poorly understood concepts, makes a handy all-purpose bogeyman of a buzz term.
The mainstream version of the Muslim faith — the kind practiced in Murfreesboro — neither requests nor requires the faithful to overthrow other forms of governance, much as today's conventional Christians are not called to crusade. In Islam, Sharia is the sacred law derived from the Prophet Mohammed, and it governs all aspects of Muslim life, including prayer and family rituals.
There is much debate in the Muslim world over the implementation of Sharia law and how to balance religion with secular government.
"Sharia law tells us we obey the law of the land where we live," says Ahmed, of Nashville. "The only difference, I think, in my opinion, between Sharia law and the American law is that Sharia, for us, is divine. The Constitution is human. That's it."
According to a 2009 report by the Council on Foreign Relations, while critics of Islam home in on the most controversial aspects of Sharia — overt sexism and corporal punishment, on highest display in countries such as Saudi Arabia — most Muslim scholars believe changing times should usher new interpretations of Islamic law. It's a curious parallel to many Americans' evolving views of the Constitution, another relatively ancient document run through a thoroughly modernized world.
"There is no contradiction between Islam and the U.S. Constitution," Kattih says.
In fact, most times American law intersects with religion of any kind, it is to protect the religious from intolerance. In 2009, the U.S. justice department sued (and eventually settled with) Metro government after local officials changed zoning laws to keep Christian-based Teen Challenge from building a residential drug treatment facility. In April 2005, the civil rights division sued the city of Hollywood, Fla., for denying a building permit for an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in a residential neighborhood. The city wound up paying $2 million in damages and attorneys' fees.
After the city of Garden Grove, Calif., denied a Buddhist group's request to convert a former mechanical building into a temple in 2007, the justice department investigated. It halted its query earlier this year, when the city finally relented. And in Berkeley, Ill., a congregation seeking to expand its mosque and accommodate its growing population was denied the appropriate permit until the department investigated. The township granted the permit in March 2008.
The Murfreesboro trial resumes Oct. 20. In the meantime, understanding is at a low ebb. Muslim, Sharia, terrorist — these terms are starting to blur so insistently in the public mind as to be indistinguishable. Yet they require the same distinctions that make all Christians not Koran-burning buffoons with Civil War mustaches, or all Americans not greed-crazy warmongers.
"During times of uncertainty in our nation's history, people often look for scapegoats," Thomas Perez says.
Evidently, we are uncertain.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Washington (CNN) -- The United States apologized Friday for a 1946-1948 research study that purposely infected people in Guatemala with sexually transmitted diseases. A statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the action "reprehensible." "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the joint statement said. "The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala." Clinton called Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom on Thursday night to inform him, said Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela. "They were obviously concerned about this information. They were saddened by it," Valenzuela said in a telephone news conference Friday. Guatemalan officials took into account that the experiments occurred more than 60 years ago, Valenzuela said. "We reject these types of actions, obviously," said Guatemala presidential spokesman Ronaldo Robles. "We know that this took place some time ago, but this is unacceptable and we recognize the apology from Secretary Clinton." The study came to light recently when Wellesley College researcher Susan Reverby found the archived but unpublished notes from the project. The scientific investigation, called the U.S. Public Health Service Sexually Transmitted Disease Inoculation Study of 1946-1948, aimed to gauge the effectiveness of penicillin to treat syphilis, gonorrhea and chancres. Penicillin was a relatively new drug at the time. The tests were carried out on female commercial sex workers, prisoners in the national penitentiary, patients in the national mental hospital and soldiers. According to the study, more than 1,600 people were infected: 696 with syphilis, 772 with gonorrhea and 142 with chancres. A similar study was conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, on nearly 400 poor African-American men with syphilis whose disease was allowed to progress without treatment. The subjects were not told they were ill with the disease. The Guatemala study was done under the direction of U.S. Public Health Service physician John C. Cutler, who later ran the Tuskegee experiment, said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes for Health. Collins, who called the Guatemala study "a dark chapter in the history of medicine," spoke at the same teleconference in which Valenzuela made his remarks. U.S. officials stressed Friday that ethical safeguards would prevent such abuses from occurring today. "The study is a sad reminder that adequate human subject safeguards did not exist a half-century ago," the U.S. statement said. "Today, the regulations that govern U.S.-funded human medical research prohibit these kinds of appalling violations." Clinton and Sebelius said the United States is launching an investigation and also convening a group of international experts to review and report on the most effective methods to make sure all human medical research worldwide meets rigorous ethical standards. "As we move forward to better understand this appalling event, we reaffirm the importance of our relationship with Guatemala, and our respect for the Guatemalan people, as well as our commitment to the highest standards of ethics in medical research," the U.S. statement said. CNN's Arthur Brice and Nick Valencia contributed to this report. |
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| Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/01/us.guatemala.apology/index.html |
