I was glad to read your diaries (at least 3 of your diaries - come on the others!!) and see that you have started the Connect Program!! You all said that you felt shy, and afraid about technical problems and/or your English, but don't worry - that's normal! It'll get easier as the program progresses - believe me!! It's also difficult to talk to people you don't know yet, but you'll see, with the help of the facilitators you'll create a fantastic group and begin to share your opinions, fears, beliefs .... all sorts of things - but remember it is, in the end, up to all of you participants to make the effort, to take risks by saying what you really think, and asking the questions you might be afraid to ask. So come on, this week be brave! Make an extra effort to ask someone a question, contribute to the discussion, take an initiative and then ... tell us how it went!
I would like to have a debriefing session - how about Wednesday 2nd November at 12.30 in my office?
Francesca
Week 2 : Beginning to talk !!
RispondiEliminaThis week we have finally begun to discuss something!
The required readings was “The clash of civilizations” by Samuel Huntington and “Why is the Legacy of Confrontation so Strong?” by Rami G. Khouri.
This week we continued to have some tech problems, and this is something that I really believe that will happen in all sessions of the program. We also had some people missing in this sessions, which is something that worries me a bit, because it can shatter the tie of the group. We also had a new person on this session too, Mahmut, from Turkey but lives and studies in Germany, he seems to be a interesting person with strong opinions, I hope that in time he will feel free to share them.
We begin with a game in which we should tell something funny about ourselves, something we don't share much. That's a good way to know a bit about the others and to create some bound between us. (I have shared my preference by fantasy and adventure books, like vampire books. :P)
We started this session with an interesting activity, we should choose three words that reflects our view of the Western Society and three word that reflects the Muslim-Arabic society. I chose diversity, independence and open to the western society and religious, closed and colorful to the Muslim-Arabic society. We just present our words and why have we choose them. I believe that this game was intriguing to see the people from Muslim-Arabic background choose word like friendly or tolerant. Words that just an insider person can say. In my opinion It was a little fast, I would like to have questioned them about their words.
After that they ask us if we have read all the articles, and just the American girl have read just one article. And they begin ask our opinion about the article. I made a fast resume of the article and explain why I didn’t agree with Huntington. And that was a good moment, because we started to give our opinions about culture shocks and if there is a tension between the two worlds. The group started showing there opinion, and that was great.
With the discussion going we started to enumerate the problems we think that exist between the two world, and the facilitators guide us into trying to give some solutions to this kind of problem.
Unfortunately, there were people that don't have participated much in the discussion and I believe the most has left his or her argument in a superficial level.
Subsequently, the facilitator cut us because we were arriving the end of the meeting and they want us to indicate some themes to talk in later sessions.
Summarizing, it was a ok meeting. We started to give some opinions, but I really think they were mild. Not everybody participated, and some people didn’t enter much in the discussion.
I hope that over time we will arrive to deep discussions and opinions...
This week I had a lot of technical problems during the meeting, and it was very difficult solve them. I was in panic, nobody could see or hear me and there wasn’t the tech support. I refreshed so many times and after a while I managed to speak with the tech support who helped me, but after I had problems again so I missed almost an hour of the discussion sadly( anyway I think I wasn’t the only one, many people weren’t connected, we were only six). When finally everything was ok with my connection, it was a little bit difficult understand what the topic of the conversation was and entered in it. They were talking about difference between Muslim and western, each one had to write some adjective to describe the two civilization. I didn’t hear all the answers because of technical problems but, based on what I understand, many of us talked about freedom and tolerance and there was a different in how we, western, see Muslim, describing them as very religious and sometimes not so tolerance and too much strict, and Muslim people who thought the opposite. I think this activity was to introduce the main discussion of that section, that was about the article and the facilitators asked us if we agree or disagree with the ideas in these articles. It was a very interest discussion because we started to talk about what is happening between Islam countries and western. The article is about the clash of civilization, but someone of us said that it’s not true, there’s no clash between civilization, the contrast is due to the fact that everybody want to control the other, but especially western who make feel Arabs failed. I think, and I said it, that a clash is present between these two civilization because we are very different and so sometimes we can’t understand each other so what we have to do is try to comprehend other people’s point of view because I think that is possible to live together despite of difference. Someone said that maybe this is true but the problem is not with common people, because they can try to do that, but the tension is between govern. So to solve the problem we have to build relationship, as we done with Soliya program. This was the core of the discussion and it was very interesting but I realized how difficult to express my own thought in English is.
RispondiEliminaTuesday 24th was my second Soliya session.
RispondiEliminaI was worried to connect in time because of the rule we decided with my group: if we are late, we have to sing our country Anthem. It is better to not hear me singing!;)
Unfortunately we were only 3 connected person and the 2 facilitators (Billal and Martin)... Also last time many people were absent... It doesn't mean it wasn't interesting. However I feel that we are not exploiting the real potential of this work. A good conversation is a comparison (and sometimes a confrontation) of different thoughts. Hearing a totally different point of view can lead to react. I believe that these reactions are the really appealing thing! It is the way to query our opinions critically and to learn more about what the others cultures think and, most of all, what I really think!
In particular in view to face the issues we are already discussing (the relations between the Muslim world and the Western one) we need more opinions.I perceived it was a sorrow of all the members of my group.Sincerely I felt a little sorry for it. In fact we had only Manar (a girl from Palestine) who was representative from the world I would like to know better. Considering that I have some Muslim friends, I am interested to understand if what they usually tell to me is comparable with what I will learn through this programme. I am saying that because I have met them outside from their original countries. So I want to see how much they keep their ideas in comparison with who remain entirely in his/her culture and country. This is the reason why I wish that next time we will be more and I hope they will feel comfortable to share their ideas even if they will be entered late into the group.
Anyway I was glad to have this second session, I felt more at easy than last time (surely because I did not have any technical problem compared with the first time).
Initially, we started talking about our first memory of childhood and what we have done on the weekend. It was a way to start easily the conversation (and to wait the others). I found it very amusing. Then, seeing that nobody else would have come, we went into a more serious discussion. We had to write the first 3words that came to our mind for the Western societies and the predominantly Muslim societies. I think our facilitators worked well because we approach this topic in a simple but significant way. Indeed, after we wrote the words, we discuss on them. We focused only in the more particular and surprising one. I think it was because we had little time.
I found interesting the word "Irrationality" for the Muslim world that Tino (from Switzerland ) wrote. The idea was that Islam (or Religion in general) is not rational, on the contrary the West focuses itself on money and on economic power (so it can be very rational).
Thus we arrived to speak about the relation between Religion and Nationality. Only Manar (from the Palestine) could truly feel this question and she answered that, first of all, she feels Muslim, then Palestinian and she told us that most of the Muslim surely feel the same way. It would have been interesting to hear more about this from others...
After we returned speaking about the concept of "irrationality" in the Muslim world: meaning that many behaviours we find "normal" in the Western side are not in the other side and vice versa (for instance the choice for a woman to be indipendent by driving). After this I wanted to ask if Muslim women feel protected by all the limitation that the Quran gives them. Unfortunately we didn't focus on this even if I wanted to ask more about her feelings. I would like to clarify how is the liaison between women and the Quran. Nevertheless we went thought the issue of integration. I am afraid we didn't enter in depth in this issue. We just presented our countries situation but it didn't imply any closer examination.
RispondiEliminaAfterwards we had to enter in the subject of the articles we had read. Each of us told how do we perceive the clash of civilizations. We just shared our opinions from our experiences and our countries and we didn't really connect with the articles (in the view to comment them). The clash seems to born for the question of energy, natural resources, for a play of power and domination. We all seemed to agree with this.
Finally the topic turned into the relation between politics and religion and if they should be separated or not. I obviously argued that I disagree with this match, explaining my reason with the example of the influence of the Vatican in Italy (next time I hope to go further in this argumentation). Instead Manar said that a politician should be religious so he would not think on a selfish way but he would think for the people. We arrived to asking us if it is needed to be religious to be moral. Only Manar seemed to hold this opinion. The others leant more on the impression that also the family can teach you morality but most of all it has to come from inside and it is not only a shape from outside. So religion and morality are not related so strongly.
At the end, we had to vote the next topic we will discuss. We have voted ( 2 votes out of 3): "Religion: relationship of Islam with the Western world, morality and separation of church from the State".
I conclude saying that, weirdly, I found we had little time to more clarify the principal topics we faced although we were only 3. We remain on a simple discussion, maybe because we were disoriented. In spite of this I was pleased to have my second discussion session, I felt more able to express myself...I hope it will go better from this time on. More over I really hope the group will increase in size and will reach more complicity .
(maybe I have to be a little shorter...:)
The second meeting has been a really good one, and we finally start to get thorough to the topics of the reading.
RispondiEliminaI appreciated the fact that we begun by brushing up a concept we came across in the previous meeting. The majority of us shared the fear of miscommunication, and Jo, out facilitator, broke the ice by telling us a joke on that. I found it very thoughtful, and it made me feel comfortable. We also stressed the need of setting down a good foundation for our meeting, laying down some rules we consider important to have a proper discussion. So we all agreed to the necessity of keeping an open-minded attitude, allowing the other to express themselves. Sarah, the American girl stressed the need of not being afraid of expressing an opinion, even if it may be unpopular, as we are all there to discuss also about sensitive topics. I found myself agreeing with her, I think that being direct – in a polite way of course- is fundamental to get the most from this experience.
Finally we started talking about the lectures, even though not all of us read them. We spoke mainly about Huntington article, which was about the clash of cultures as the main cause of future conflicts. Some of us were sort of irritated that those conflicts were depicted as unavoidable, while we were all working to communicate in order to bring those cultures together. We didn’t talk thoroughly of the lectures, we used them more as a cue to start our discussions. We kept on talking about cultures, and we were asked to think on how we identify ourselves “culturally speaking”, and how belonging to a certain country affects our culture.
I really enjoyed this second meeting, however I would really like it if we could spend less time on formalities while focusing on more engaged discussions.
October 26th
RispondiEliminaWe started the second Soliya meeting with a normally question: how are you feeling today? In a few words everyone told about his state of mind. In my opinion it was not only a way to start the conversation, but also to share something about our everyday life. Then, one of the facilitators asked us to tell how we’re saying good morning, thank you, welcome in our language. It was interesting to hear some words in Arabic and I noticed also the fact that everyone was proud to introduce his tongue.
For some minutes we talked about the ground rules, the informal rules to guide our conversations. We have all been of the opinion that everyone should have the opportunity to speak and that we have to respect the other opinion even if it is different from ours. I liked what John, a student from USA, said: We have to give time to people to express themselves. It is well known that is not always easy to accept the others opinions, but only keeping an open-mind will be possible to build bridges between different cultures. During the discussion I used a quote of George Bernard Shaw to explain better this concept, that I like to suggest to you too: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas”.
Then Jo gave us some categories and asked us to make questions around these words that could be used for the next sessions: Free time/Activities/Music; Family; Culture/ Traditions; Religion; Role of Women & Men in Society; Stereotypes; Approach to emotion: Comfort with conflict, anger, sadness; Taboos; Values. The result was a sort of brainstorming, like a puzzle made by all…very nice.
The next step was to talk about the two articles that we had to read and to give the highlights. Most of us considered that we couldn’t speak about a clash of civilizations or about the West against the rest, forgetting of the globalization process. I agreed with Hasan when he said that usually the conflicts are starting with some extremist groups and not with a whole culture. At this point of the conversation our Muslim friends tried to explain that Islam means not terrorism, on the contrary, it means to be peaceful with the others, to understand and accept them even they are “different” from us. Since we live in a “shrinking” world, there must be a way to co-exist with our brothers.
We finished this second meeting talking about identities. At the end we were all pleased about the discussion, it was a really constructive one.