Hi there
I apologize for not having remembered to post a blog entry for week 3. I am away on a trip for work to Ethiopia and access to Internet has not been easy. Please post your comments here if you have not yet posted them to week 2!
Francesca
I apologize for not having remembered to post a blog entry for week 3. I am away on a trip for work to Ethiopia and access to Internet has not been easy. Please post your comments here if you have not yet posted them to week 2!
Francesca
Hi! Finally week three has come! I am a bit late to write my diary but I had some technical issues after the session! Well, this third meeting was very interesting.. As usual technical problems follow me everywhere, I was ten minutes late for the session because my train to go home was late, so when I arrived home I ran to my pc as soon as SOLIYA technician called in my cell phone.. proving that Soliya really cares of you! Happily I didn't lost much of the conversation because the group was greeting each others and talking about their week! We started our session recalling what make us angry, an episode, a situation, an event in our life, and how we face angriness. Inevitably, Louie, who lives in Ny, told us about his experience regarding 9/11.. how he was angry and how it has been a tragic event for his family, friends and himself. Then I gave my personal experience, I don't like and I get angry if someone tries to judge me or my family or anybody else from the color of skin, race or cultural background. I received much feedback with my intervention because everyone agreed with me. So we went further on talking about what are the "trigger words" that are commonly used in media (most of the times with a negative connotation), but maybe can have different meanings. The most of us chose the words terrorism/t, racism/t, Arab, Muslim, extremism/t, democracy, capitalism, invasion, oppression. We explained what these words means to us and what they mean for media, how they use them.. and end up saying that again this is a matter of how medias and governments manipulate information to create bad stereotypes. Instead we should avoid using stereotypes and try to get to know many different people from different cultures in order to broaden our minds and spread the idea that different people are positive and that nobody has to be racist. The group ended talking about the article and the video we had to analize during the week. We spoke about the reasons why for someone cohexisting with other cultures may be a problem. Once again Louie and Gabby gave us an insight of America, many people are still racist. I gave an insight of how Europe is too, stating that we are facing an economic crisis, which reflects on people behaviour towards ethnic differences too. I also said that it is easy to cohexist, though, if you really want it too (giving the example of my own parents coming from two completely different countries and cultures). Roua, from Tunisia and Alaa, supported me saying that their families too come from different origins.
RispondiEliminaI was glad to hear how in my group everyone agrees with each other, even if we have very different backgrounds, the pillars we have in common (respect for example) is important for us in order to communicate. We ended our session choosing our next subject to discuss, with a poll. We chose Iran-Palestine issue.
Another session is gone, but it left me positive feelings. That's all for this week!
Giada Zanella:
RispondiEliminaHere is what happened on the third session of the Soliya Connect Program:
As a warm up activity, we had been asked to prepare some questions about family, friends and free time to ask the members of our group. We talked about books (and found out that girls from Egypt and USA have got similar tastes as for books) and social media, especially Facebook. I’ve always thought about Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends far away, but actually for the girls in Egypt and the guy from Tunisia Facebook helped very much in the revolution… I was amazed to realise how powerful this kind of media can be (and this why there are specific laws about their use in countries at war or with serious political troubles).
Then we moved on to the main topic of the session, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and the first question was: how would you describe the relationship between these two countries?
Of course I think it’s far too complicated, so I can have an opinion but I’m afraid it’s no going to be perfectly objective. I think both countries think they have the right on the land and care more about their ideology rather than millions of suffering people. The solution, if there’s any, is extremely hard to find because both Israeli and Palestinians are very passionate about it, and won’t put political issues aside in favour of their people.
The second question was: how do you form your opinions on this issue? People from Islamic countries have a completely different point of view, because they’re much more involved. The way I form my opinions is through newspapers, internet, TV news, history books and other people’s opinions. Now that I can hear what people more involved in the conflict, I think my opinion will have a stronger base to stand on. Discussing with the group members, I had the feeling the Palestinians are portrayed as victims, which I think is partly true but not completely. I mean, we shouldn’t forget that they’re killing people as well, and they’re not working to build peace. That said, it’s true that Israeli is helped by the Western world, especially, the US, so that news we heard of are distorted, plus the forces in the conflict are not equal at all.
We ended up talking about conspiracy theories, like that the 9/11 attack was meant as an excuse to attack the Muslim world. I wouldn’t be that surprised if it was true, honestly; we’ll never know what money and power could make people do.
We spent a lot of time talking about “the right to the land”, who came first and who came later, if splitting the country would be a solution. I didn’t agree with what the girls from Egypt were saying, that only one people should settle there. We cannot look at history, because it’s hard to declare exactly who came first, and because it’s pointless. Now there are innocent people living (or should I say dying) there, now there’s a war going on and now we have to find to find a solution looking forward, not backward. We have to build the future, not rebuild the past. I found myself quite passionate while talking, even if I’d never felt this way about the topic before. And next topic is going to be religion, I guess I’ll be even more passionate!
Overall, the more I get involved in this program, the more I’m satisfied with it. It brings out topics I never discuss, but I always hear of. And every session I learn now things, such as Temple Mount, the Balfour Declaration and Muhammad Ali. I think the best way to describe this experience so far would be enriching.
HI!
RispondiEliminaI'm a bit late for posting for week three! sorry, I had some technical problems. the last soliya session was very interesting, and the mood of the convesation was very 'hot'!
We start talking about religion and its role in government. We found the deep difference between the 'Western' secular world and Muslim world.
Then the conversation went on, and we discussed about ethic problems such as abortion, same sex marriage, legalisation of prostitution, and 'muta' (muta are temporary marriage contracts).
The topics were very strong and heavy...sometimes we got a bit upset because of our cultural differencies.
Personally, I was a bit shocked by some very offensive worlds used by a muslim boy, referring to same sex relationships such as 'disease' and 'abuse'. I thought he's a bit limited person!
the conversation went on and on and time passed very quickly, so we had to say goodbye a bit later!
I think we could have continue for another hour!
I start to be very involved!!
this week I'm a bit ill and I have to study but I hope to partecipate!
bye
Hi everybody...sorry for the delay!!!
RispondiEliminaDuring the session of the 30th of october we had a very hot and passionate debate.
We started talking about the role that religion plays in our societies and government and what we think about it, if it is a good o bad aspect of our social and political systems where we live our dailylife.
The answers of the guys from Italy and U.S.A were similar, we said that our consitutions establish a clear separation of church and state. However I added that sometimes in Italy both conservative and democrats parties use religious topics in order to gain the electoral consensus of a slice of citizens.
On the other hand muslim guys cought the opportunity to explain us how Islam influences and organizes many aspects of their social life dtermining the behaviours and the relations between men and women while remains a religion of love and respect that God teach to everybody.
Then the debate became alight when we started to discuss about the main topic of the day: THE GENDER IDENTITY meant as sexual identity,heterosexual and homosexual.
The answer of an egyptian brother was a little bit harsh because he claimed that the homosexual has a disease and that their behaviour goes against the will of God.
It would be interesting continue the debate on the topic asking " If Islam is a religion that, as Catholicism, teaches The Love, isn't it an expression of love a gay marriage or a consensual sexual act between two guys, so in line with the will of God?".
This topic led us to another social one, the plague of pronsitution in the global world. Always our egyptian fellow said us that he has been astonished and indignant after he had known that in Germany and Holland pronstitution has been legalized by the government.
I tried to explain that, although pronstitution in my opinion remains a sad social issue,trying to legalize it is the only option for the western governments in order to avoid that young African, Chinese or Eastern European girls could be exploited from criminal organizations. But I didn't get a great success and I have received an answer that let me a little bit astonished too and this was that Islam has a natural way to resolve the issue of pronsitution and women's sexual exploitation : the polygamy, because marring more than a wife is an act of love and responsability to take care about her and her children.
We know that this two topics are not easy ones and obviously this approaches set on fire the debate but the time finished quickly so we fixed this last topic as the new topic of our next session with the hope that the dialogue keeps always respectful and calm.
See ya the next week!!!