Hello everybody,
Now it is week four, please send your posts as comments to this message. I'm afraid I have been away and haven't had time yet to read your most recent posts, however I shall catch up this week and also let you know where we are going to meet on Friday. Enjoy this week!
Francesca
Good evening everybody!
RispondiEliminaEthiopia? What a luck!
What about my session? We were not so many and some people came to the chat room with delay.. this is not good!
We are becoming more friends week after week, because we know better each other and we know more or less what the others think about religion or politics or values, etc.
It was fantastic to see the boys from Iran or Dubai, they were wearing a t-shirt while the Europeans had 2 pulls!
We started the discussion talking about what we were doing or what we did yesterday. We were so silent and nobody answered at first! We also said which is our favourite program or movie. Fortunately, I don’t watch very much TV, but I love watch movies on my computer and the last one that I saw was ‘The Truman Show’.. It’s quite impressive!
Then we moved on how to formulate a question and the different types of questions. You can do it with an open answer or just choosing “yes” or “no”.
The facilitator would like to know if there are some topics that we prefer not to speak about. The Muslim girl said sexual life for example.
So we went further, talking about the role of religion in our society. I said that it is not so important in Italy, although it influences a lot our politics.
Instead, for Jana, religion plays a significant role in Saudi Arabia because it is a way of life. Menna said the same thing, telling us that they practice Islam everyday in Egypt.
After that we reflected about the clash of civilizations between the Muslim and the Christian World. Someone said that there is not a clash, however everybody agreed that medias and politics want to produce this conflict.
Suddenly we didn’t speak and the main room was completely silent! The facilitators tried to involve us but the issue wasn’t very interesting. Changing the topic, the two boys of the group started a discussion on the use of religion. In particular, they said that sometimes it oppresses the minorities or the most impotents, like women. I was glad to listen to them and to see how they were debating!
Two hours of session ran so fast and we ended up talking about the video’s project. Our younger teachers gave us some technical information and tried to underline the importance of beeing on time at the meeting! Besides they said that we are always free to say what we want.
Good session to everybody!
Monica
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaI did my fouth session this afternoon and, as the other times, it has been a pleasure to meet again my group. I don't know why but today a lot of people were late and our facilitators got a bit annoyed by that, because actually since we are a lot of people it would be better to be all on time, otherwise, like today, every time someone arrives we have to recap what we have said just 5 minutes earlier.
A part from this little porblem the session was really interesting, we started talking about US election that for the moment is the top issue in my group, in every session we ended up talking about that, and finally this time it was impossible to avoid it since today is the election day! We discussed what could change in US policy toward the Middle East and the majority of the people in the group considered the election of Romney a step back from the already unstable and complicated situation in the ME and in general for the relation of US and ME countries, but at the same time some of us argued that the contemporary situation will not change that much with a different President because in any case US foreign policy will remain the same and US interests in the ME will not change.
After this our facilitators proposed to divide the group in 3 different subgroups in order to talk and discuss the topic we would have choosen more in the deep, so I was in the group with Diana and Ayesha,respectively from China and Pakistan and the topic of our discussion was homosexuality, the way it is periceved by the society and how it is considered by national law and how much this is influenced by religion; the most interesting point that has been underlined by Ayesha from Pakistan,is that in her country social cleavages between the elite and the rest of the populationare particulary felt ,also regarding this issue, homosexuality is seen as forbidden for the majority of the Pakistani population, but for the elite being homosexual is considered something fashionable and so it is much more easily permitted and accepted from the moral point of view.
After 45 minutes of sub groups discussion we returned in the main meeting room and we talked about the first article we had to read (it has been a really productive session actually!) Walker, an american guy, asked us about our opinion regarding the role of religion in decision making process, how much it should influence the position of one country's persident, and the majority of us, or maybe all of us, we argeed that political decision at such an high level shouldn't be take following your own personal faith.
This is more or less the summary of today's meeting, as I said before we touched a lot of issues, I am a little bit concerned about the video project,I am afraid not to have time to do something I really like, because I am having some difficulties in appreciating the youtube videos... I will work on that during the week.
bye!
Anna
Hello!
RispondiEliminaAs usual also today's meeting was really interesting and maybe also funnier than the previous ones.
Fortunately this week I did not have any technical issues that I had to struggle with last week. However unfortunately many of my mates keep having several connection and technical issues, and I have to say that these kind of problems are really annoying as sometimes they make it difficult to communicate. In fact in this cases we have to repeat many times what we said before or we also have to write our thoughts in the chat box.
In today's meeting we were joined by a new facilitator, Jill, as our previous one was abroad with work. However Jill did a great job and she was a really nice and lively person, she also introduced herself telling us something interesting about her life, for example that she have travelled a lot all around the world.
At the beginning of today's meeting we summarized what we focused on last week in order to explain and show Jill what we already did. Then to our big surprise our facilitator informed us that we had to start working in smaller groups. This new activity was really interesting and funny, I think that our facilitators wanted us to work in groups in order to let us know each other better but also to motivate us to speak more and more freely. At the start it was quite an embarassing situation because we didn't know how to start the conversation on our own and without our facilitators help, however as we decided the topic everything turned out to be easier.In addition at the beginning it was difficult to start a conversation also because of some connection issues, for example Ghazamfar's and Sara's microphones weren't working and they had to write everything in the chatbox. There were also other kinds of tech issues but our facilitators immediately fixed the situation.
In our group we discussed about the role of religion, how people live religion in different parts of the world and if religion should be separated from state or not. It was really nice to see our different perspectives, however I have to say that I love to compare my point of view to that of others'.
When we returned to the main room we also discussed about the articles we had to read for today's meeting and we especially focused on the relationship between state and religion and if state is influenced by religion or not.
How I said above also today's experience was a great one and I can't wait to attend my fifth meeting.
Bye!
Giada Zanella:
RispondiEliminaOn 8th November I had my fourth session in the Soliya programme, and this is what happened.
First we talked about what went well in our discussions, what didn’t and how we can improve them; I think they went great because we can talk freely without feeling judged, and everybody respects others’ opinions. On the other hand, I still have the impression that we’re too politically correct, and sometimes I’m more worried about finding the appropriate words not to offend anyone rather than the most appropriate to express my point of view. And this is clearly showed also by the answers that the others gave to these questions, because they all are really enthusiastic (as I am) but none of them suggested a way to improve, and I think however amazing our group can be, there’s always room for improvement.
The second question was about what we learned through this program that can be used elsewhere. Almost everybody including me replied that the most important thing we learned is how to deal with people from other cultures, how to overcome differences and focus on similarities. I’m glad to say that I feel a better person after the Soliya sessions
The next activity was pair one: we broke into groups of two or three and discussed about ad important issue of our choice. I was paired with a girl from Egypt and one from the US, so there were three of us, from three different continents, talking about religion!! I loved discussing with them, both because each one of us talked a lot and expressed herself freely, and because we had quite different view on religion in general (and religious differences as well).
When we went back to the main meeting room, the first question the facilitator asked us was again about religion (actually it was the topic of that session). We explained how important religion is in our lives, and I realised that I’m the least religious person in the group, in the sense hat I don’t practice and I have deep doubts about the existence of God, whether everybody else seemed quite sure. I was fascinated by their point of view, and how their religion has a profound impact on their everyday life. One Muslim girl offered to teach me something more about the Holy Quran and we exchanged emails to talk about it privately. There are so many things I’d like to learn about any kind of religion, I didn’t even know where to start, but now I guess I’ll be starting from a Muslim point of view! If some time ago I had been told a girl from Egypt would teach me about the Quran, I would have never believed that… I guess I was more narrow-minded than I thought.
I disagreed with some group members about the fact that there are some values because of religion. I don’t think it’s true, there are many philosophers, especially from ancient Greece, who talked about ethics and values like friendship, respect etc way before our idea of morality was born. I think that we should live according to some values not before some kind of Almighty power told us to, but because we truly believed in them and think that by doing this we can make the world a better place.
Finally, we wondered if things like sarcastic comics, articles etc about religion should be banned (since what happened in Denmark and other countries and the respective reaction in the Middle East). All of us agreed that, for example the cartoon in a Danish newspaper mocking the prophet Muhammad was extremely disrespectful and shouldn’t have been published. I don’t think this kind of mockery should be banned though, it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not publishing them is fair. I think that if there’s the slightest doubt that something might be offensive, it shouldn’t be published; but banning them would be against freedom of speech and thought.
(Giada Zanella, continues)
RispondiEliminaOverall, I think this one was the best session (I probably said so every time, but I truly believe it). I’d have liked to talk more about religion, because it’s a very controversial topic and as consequence, the most interesting one, in my opinion. I hope there will be other chances to talk about that more deeply.