Hi everyone
This is your final week of Soliya sessions!!
First of all I'd like to congratulate you for completing the program despite the technical problems and other issues you may have had. I do hope that you feel it was a worthwhile experience and that you have gained much much more than you would have done from a 'standard' university English language course. Don't forget to write your final diary on this last session, which may even be emotional for some of you (so have some tissues ready - past participants have been known to shed a tear or two!) Also you have the final reflective paper to write, Soliya will have given you guidelines on how to prepare the paper if you want it considered for publishing on the Common Ground website. If you don't want it published there, don't worry so much about the format, but send it to me before Christmas!!
Now you should start thinking about how you can continue to engage with Soliya and the issues you have approached through this project. Our meeting on Monday was a great start, thank you for Iulian and Natalia for inviting your friends to this meeting which I think was fruitful for all of us, and I hope it was just the first of many future events!
Finally, I'm taking part in an Erasmus Multilateral project on the theme of integrating online intercultural exchange ( or 'telecollaboration') into university education across Europe. Could I ask you to spare approx. 20 minutes of your time to take part in an online survey about this topic? I would really value what you have to contribute about this topic and your input would be of a big help to us. You can find the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/intent1
Thanks again, a presto!!
Francesca
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This week was the last one and it was so sad! I was become so used to talk with these people, I felt comfortable to speak with them about everything and I going to miss all of this!
RispondiEliminaWe talked again about women human rights and it was very interesting to hear different point of views. Me, Natalia and Emilie said women are free, in our countries, to do whatever they want so they can do any kind of job having the same rights than men. Wafa and Merna said some different things, in their countries women have rights but there are some men who don’t want to allow women to have a job, and in Tunisia women can’t became President. What really impressed us was the fact that Merna said that too much freedom for women is not a good thing because some limits are necessary because we have to be good women. If a man propose, the woman has to accept if he is a good man, in Tunisia they have the arranged marriage, is very important for a woman be marriage because if you are single people don’t respect your ideas because they will think that there is something wrong with you. Moreover a woman can’t married a not Muslim man, she can do that only if the man converted himself before getting married, if she married him despite everything, she will be disowned by her family. Then we introduced religion, in particular we started to talk about the relation between religion and women rights. What impressed me is the fact that in Muslim countries they had no rights before Islam, women could be bury alive, men could do whatever they want with women and they said that the situation for women was very bad and Islam made it better. I always think that was the opposite, I mean that I thought that was Islam that oppressed women forced them to do what men want but they said that is thanks to Islam if they have some rights as women, but I still think that there are not equality between men and women in that part of the world, but is also true that neither in our society there is the right equity and sometimes women are discriminated only because they are women, and then we have also the Vatican that influenced some important decision about women like abortion or birth control. We talked also about this big topic: if birth control and abortion are part of women rights or not. We weren’t agree about this in fact Merna said that abortion is legal in Egypt but she think that politics should interfere in this kind of things in name of religion while I think, and also some other girls from western have the same idea, that religion have to stay out from this because everyone should have the right of choose what she think is the best for her.
Here we are, the last one!
RispondiEliminaI had last one Soliya session today! I will definitely miss them all!
We started reading Stephanie recognitions about the program, it was strange, when we start to know each other and to feel ourselves more and more comfortable we have to stop this knowledge…
Rod and Karrie left us really free to ask during our last session, it was less academic than previous times. We start to ask our personal curiosities about others in the group.
For example how long it takes to travel to go to the University ( I felt really shocked when Basema said that she had four hours every day!!!).
Kelly asked if Basema and Almaha will have the opportunity to choose their husband, than Almaha asked to me and Kelly if during this Program we changed our possible negative thought about Islam and Arab Countries.
My answer was really structured and complex. I will try to give you a full description, because I think that it is really important to understand the whole meaning of my answer.
I think it is always important to emphasize dialogue. During the sessions I frequently asked provocative questions. I just wanted to see how far it was possible to evaluate an effective “Open-mind” approach of the Muslim societies over issues that are nowadays the “top priorities” from my personal point of view.
During the program I realized more and more that Western countries should stop thinking to be superior than the Arab ones. We must not teach anything to anyone, and we must stop using our assumed “superiority” to justify outrageous invasions that have strong underlying economic interests.
At the same time, however, I think that certain social achievements of Western countries cannot be negotiated. I am not referring to Italy, which still has much work to be done with regard to social protection of minorities. I am referring to the West in general.
My examples about homosexuality or polygamy are heading in this direction, certain practices of discrimination cannot be accepted regardless of religious beliefs. For this reason I will continue to strongly support that religion is something that must be highly protected, but lived in a private dimension (including public demonstration of course, but that involves a belief in private). The public, the State should represent an empowerment to the protection of ALL minorities. I am not willing to negotiate on this ground.
Kelly, Basema, Almaha, Karrie and Rod, they all understood my point of view. I just tried to go more in deep, I believe that we all need more courage to talk about issues that are not comfortable at all. We can’t just say that we are all sons of the same God, we have to face the reality and to act on the way of knowledge and dialogue. It is the only way ( personal opinion ).
After my reply Basema asked me if I have Muslim friends, and if I am willing to consider them as all my other friends. I replied that I have Muslim friends and that there is no reason why I should treat them otherwise. Basema asked me another question that made me reflect a lot. If a Muslim friend should pray, I will wait him or it will bother me?
Yes, this question got me a lot to think about, because I realized even more that the problem is Knowledge. I explained that it will not bother me at all, I will wait that friend of mine with no problems. Probably my appeal to the need for religion to be lived in a private sphere it has been understood by Basema as an extreme secularism, but I tried to explain my point of view in a more detailed way and at the end Basema told me that she understood.
RispondiEliminaAt the end we shared our opinions about the Program, Who would you like to stay in touch with?, Who made you feel understood?, etc etc.
And then, it ended. I said thank to all the group for this amazing opportunity.
I have a lot of suggestions, emotions, and ideas about this experience, I will write them into my reflection paper. I just want to say that I strongly suggest this type of involvement to everybody, it shows you what we should do every single day to promote integration and mutual understanding.
Thank you for this brilliant experience!
This was our last session, I can say that for me started a bit sad. I got used to see this group every week for the last month and even knowing that we are so far away, I feel very close to them. I became friend of most of the group, I have the entire group on my facebook and talk to them periodically, but it's not the same thing, I hope we don't lose contact with each other, but it will be really difficult to continue talking all the time.
RispondiEliminaIn this session one of our facilitator was sick, so we just have Sumyia(the facilitator from Egypt), I missed Juliet, I really like her, and I would like to say a proper goodbye to her. Sumyia started asking us some reflections on Soliya's sessions. And I agree with everyone's point of view, we said points like: Learn to respect the others, it was interesting learn different point of views, talk about different issues, and other.
She, Sumyia, returner the discussion to women rights, because in the last session we talked a lot about it, and we all would like to have continued talking about it. So she ask us if it is common for women to work in your community and if women in our household work and how our community usually view women. As everyone was presenting theirs point of view, I notice Merna's (Muslim Egypt girl), she said that too much freedom is not good to women, and I ask her about that.
Merna tried to explain that in Arabic countries, society view women if they are good or not upon their way of life, if they are good women. With that answer (which to me was not an answer at all), Emily(from US), ask her, what a “Good Women “ is. And Wafa (Tunisia girl), tried to help Merna, explaining that a good women was a good wife, a good daughter. As the discussion was going on, we talked about the different vies of women in countries, and I my case, I tried to understand how the Arabic societies seen the woman.
Sumyia, continued in the discussion, ask us if religion have anything to do with human rights. And for me it was very interesting to hear that the Islam improved the women rights, they ensured some rights to them like, marry when and if they want to have children or not. We talked also about what can be changed in our community, or what can be improved..
Sumyia started to finish our discussion because I believe she know that if she let's it we could talk about that until next week. She started make some analysis about our sessions, asking questions like: Who make you laugh? Who make you feel understood? And questions like that. But believing that everyone have had an important paper in our group, it was difficult to choose a specific person, so at the end we all were answering everyone to the questions.
As it was finishing we started saying our thanks and our goodbyes... It was very sad, because I see everyone as a good friend and I will miss them a lot. I really hope we continue to talk and be friends.
So that is it, the end. I can say that I feel honored to be part of this project and I learned a lot, I hope I can be part of other projects like this or help it in some way. I will miss them all and I can say that it was a great experience.