Hi everyone
We're now halfway there nearly - it's week 4!
As you know for this week you have readings to discuss on religion, please make sure you read them to help you prepare for your sessions. You should also be well on the way with your video projects.
We can discuss all of these in a meeting. I will send you a mail regarding dates
Please post your session diaries here for this week!
Francesca
We're now halfway there nearly - it's week 4!
As you know for this week you have readings to discuss on religion, please make sure you read them to help you prepare for your sessions. You should also be well on the way with your video projects.
We can discuss all of these in a meeting. I will send you a mail regarding dates
Please post your session diaries here for this week!
Francesca
Yesterday we had our fourth meeting, time runs so fast! Unfortunately Claudia missed, but also with Sonja, the new facilitator only for this session, everything went well.
RispondiEliminaI talked really a lot. In the last session I proposed to display some pictures of the place where we live and I sent five photos to Claudia, 2 of Padova, where I'm studying, 3 of Tarvisio, the town where I live with my family. I showed Prato della Valle and Saint Antonio's church, but my friends were very inquiring about Tarvisio. It is a little town (only 4,000 inhabitants) in the middle of the mountains , the Alpi GIulie, just on the borderline with Austria and Slovenia. There was a pictures with a beautiful lake which seemed to be made with Photoshop (but it was real!), and the other 2 images were of the town in winter, snow covered. Some in the group have never seen the snow! I guess that for this reason they were so interested in my little village: it is very different from the place where they live. They asked me questions about history, about the fact that it is located near two other countries, about nature and sports. I told Kane, who like skiing, that I practice alpine skiing. You have to go up to the mountain with your own legs,without lift or funicular railway, with the ski (you need a particular sporting equipment) and obviously you ski to go down; it is a very hard sport but nice! Kane was really impressed.
Then was Mustafa's turn. He displayed a lot of images of his country, Pakistan, and in particular of his city, Lahore. He showed to us a beautiful photo of the "food street" and I wanted to know something more about it. Ali, the Egyptian student, remembered that also the last time I talked about food and he wrote in the chat box: "Chiara, it seems you are very hungry, you always think about food!!!". Everybody in the room laughed. It was funny and to me this little episode tells a lot of the group: we have the same sense of humor and the fact he makes a fool of me means we are at ease with each other and we begin to be close. He told me he thinks I'm an amusing person and that I have a very strange accent, but he was always kind and I'm not a touchy person.
In the second part of the session we were divided into two groups in the breakout room, boys and girls, to have a more intimate conversation. I loved talking with the girls and we discovered something about our personal lives. A girl asked me if I am married or if I have children (I don't know why, I don't seem so much older than the others! but I guess this question was just to talk) and I decided to tell the truth. I live in Tarvisio with my boyfriend and I was afraid the other Muslim girls could have a bad impression about me, because to me Islam seems a traditional and very strict religion and what is allowed in the West for them is forbidden, like living with someone without being married. They didn't criticize me and on the contrary, they said they were happy for me if I feel good with my boyfriend. I had to change my mind.
Sonja said it was time to come back it the room...I loved the fact we didn't want to!!!
In this session we didn't speak about the readings, we had no time.
Two hours are too little!!!
Yesterday I had my fourth session with Soliya and finally for the first time after four weeks there were all the guys and there were not technical problems related video or audio, or other things like those. This last sesion was until this moment probably the most informative and the most interesting because there was a long discussion about the weight and the influence that religon has in our countries. Of course about this subject in the Western world the guys like me, the dutch boy and the two guys from United States argued that religion is not a burden, but it is not very invasive in life and in society, even if i said that in Italy the influence of the Vaticat is surely significant. Boys better girls from Middle Eastern countries and Pakistan have instead argued that religion certainly has a fundamental importance in society and in people's lives because it is the fundamental principle on which they are based in those countries where the Islamic religion is at the first place. During the debate, I was very surprised and almost shocked after the intervention of a Pakistan girl who told us that in her country it is even present a so-called blasphemy law that is a written law that is based on all the principles of Sharia law and punishable by the death penalty all those who say bad things about the Islamic religion. The same girl even said that in her country the situation regarding freedom of thought and profession of a religion is very worrying. Even more important is the fact that while this girl was telling us these things with an opposite opinion respect the majority of her country, the facilitator, the Indian girl, asked her if she was close to people who could not like what she was saying and if she was, was better i she stopped to talk but just wrote them in the box.
RispondiEliminaThen we expressed our opinion if state and religion should be two separate things in every country and we were all agree except a girl that nowdays these two aspects of our life must be at least a minimum separated.
After this interesting exchange of views at the end of the session we moved on to talk about lighter topics like our favorite hobbies and also cinema.
At the end of our facilitator gave us some advices and some more explanation about the video project that we will have to prepare for next week .
Ended this session, i was very satisfied and glad because we discussed current and interesting topics and because i'm starting to learn more about these guys with whom we have opened a friends group on facebook.
Yesterday's session was different from the others. The four of us got together in the breakout. The idea was "you pick the topic". It's not that easy to start without someone who leads the discussion but in e few minutes we managed to figure out what to talk about. I was curious to know about the differences that exist in the Muslim world when it comes to women's position in society. The main reason of such differences, is the fact that even though the Muslim countries profess the same religion they do have different cultural backgrounds. For instance Tunisia has a Berber background. Every Muslim country has embraced Islam without eliminating the its original traditions. In many cases Islam has nothing to do with such traditions, yet they tend to be interpreted as part of Islam. In fact the practice of infibulation in certain African countries shouldn't be confused as Islamic. If it were so it should be practised in all the Muslim countries but that's not the case. pointed out the fact that when it comes to the teachings of Quran extremists groups tend to misinterpret the message. For instance the fact that women in Saudi Arabia can't drive it's more of an interpretation than an actual teaching of Quran. Tanner (yes, Tanner was back after two weeks, computer issues) wanted to know about the religion we identify as and what do we thing about religion in general. The main clue that came out was that religion is an important part of life since it helps whoever is a believer, to be a better person, to go beyond it's own humanity, it's own limits and selfishness. However, I said, religion could be a problem when it tends to impose its truth rather than propose it. History teaches that horrible things have been done using (or better say abusing) religion. A good example to illustrate this point is the Inquisition used by the Catholic Church as a tool to get rid of those who challenged its views.
RispondiEliminaI "complained" that it isn't that easy to understand Quran. In fact I tried reading it a couple of times but couldn't get much. Afrah told us that the main issue is Quran's translation. I was relieved, because now I know that I'm not dumb as I thought, and if I wanted to understand the Quran I must learn Arabic!
The talking kept going and Samira wanted to know why someone relates Islam to terrorism. To me it seems that Islam has had a bad presentation in the last decade especially following 9/11. Many violent actions have been perpetrated by people professing Islam. Tanner added that often people tend to stereotype and based on prejudice the main opinion is: Islam = terrorism. I said that the violent groups need to be isolated and a common voice should arise from the Muslim leaders and Muslims in general. Afrah agreed adding that Muslims aren't doing a good job when it comes to know more about the Western world, but at the same time this should be be done in a mutual way since the West needs to get rid of stereotypes and quit generalizing.
That's all for this week. Have a nice weekend
(PART ONE)
RispondiEliminaDear diary, dear friends
Yesterday a new girl entered in our group. She is Asmaa and she comes from Egypt, Cairo. She studies art at university. Unfortunately there were some Internet connection problems with her so she didn’t participate at all conversation.
Every times we start to talk about our week, our day and what we did at school or during free time.
After that Aleksandra, the facilitator, started to ask us if we have read the articles about the role of the religion in the government. I said: “yes”, but in this last session something changes. Indeed the facilitators didn’t ask us questions, but we had to ask questions. Luckily when I read the articles, some questions were born in my mind.
First of all if the different creeds respect the others, could the religions give to future generations some essentials values to live better?
And the second one was if we are really sure about what this part of the article said: “Freedom is an inherent value of all religions, without which no religion would have come into being, or would have flourished. Islam and Christianity are the biggest beneficiaries of that freedom. Indeed, it is the freedom of speech that has allowed Islam to flourish in Christian majority nations, and I wish Muslim majority nations reciprocate the same to Christians and others who are their minorities. A hallmark of great civilization is free speech and a two way values, live and let live". With my questions the discussion started. Of course they were difficult questions especially the second one but me and the other guys tried to answer.
In my point of view, I believe that religious leader have to teach to people in particular to children that in our world there are different religions and different Gods; but we must respect this reality, we can’t think that one God or more general one religion is better than others. When I read the article in which I copied here one part, I reflected if all religions have the same freedom. For me no! For example if we think when a group of Muslim people want to build in the countries of the western world a mosque, at the beginning they could meet some protests but at the end they will get it. On the other hand if catholic people go to the Middle East and they want to build a church, so it will be more difficult and maybe it could be the possibility that one extremist group against this idea attack the Christian community.
Other questions, which are emerged, they were for example the role of the religion in Europe, US and Middle East, to be honest I didn’t know very well the situation in other parts of the world, so I talked about my country, Italy, and the role of the Vatican with Italian policy. I stressed the aspect that nowadays Francis Pope is revolutionizing the catholic word nearer to Jesus’ worlds. However into the Vatican there are some lobbies connected with the parliament, which want to preserve the ancient order in society. As I said during the session, I’m in a political party and I support the idea that when one person such as a catholic enters in policy, he has to think to “common good” for the development of community and not just about some interests. On these arguments we talked also about gay marriage, abort and stem cells.
(PART TWO)
RispondiEliminaIn the second hour of the session we talked about other aspects and we touched the situation of Turkey because as we can see we have no benefits if policy and religion live together. All people know the laws and the changes that Erdogan did, for example he avoided alcohol and he made it compulsory the veil for women in the public spaces. Maybe one part of the Turks accepts them, but in a secular state the governments mustn’t impose religion rules otherwise you kill the people’s freedom.
At the end I described one phenomenon here in Italy especially in the northern against the idea of the presence of Muslim people. I’m talking about North League party, which doesn’t accept not only this aspect but also other foreign people, and this is bad for us, for our society because today we live in a multicultural world and we can’t exit from this process of globalization. I think that we must respect all people and obviously these people have to respect us.
My conclusions are that also this time I enjoyed myself and I was excited this session because I liked the religion topic. I have to say that sometimes I talked more than other but I asked them sorry for this; to be talk active is good but not so much. ☺
See you next week
Matteo
Hi everyone, there are two links I'd like to share in regards to what we are doing. The first is the link of an article I read this morning on "The Telegraph". It argues that we can move beyond the simple tolerance. The second one is a TED talk link. They're both very interesting and I think could give us something to talk about during our next meetings.
RispondiElimina1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10742683/The-British-Muslim-is-truly-one-among-us-and-proud-to-be-so.html
2. www.ted.com/talks/mustafa_akyol_faith_versus_tradition. _in_islam
Fourth Soliya Meeting
RispondiEliminaThe last meeting was fantastic. We were almost all, lacked only one person, and finally none of us had technical problems, so for the first time everyone could speak.
For this time, we had a new facilitator, as well as Lily, Miles; a very relaxed and young guy, and thanks to him, it was very simple to feel at ease.
First of all, the facilitators asked us to summarize one or more of the readings of the week. After this, Lily said to take a few minutes, and think of questions about the articles, or for the other group members. The first of us that made a question was Victoria, an American girl. She said that one article dealt with moderate Islam that feels disrespected by the west, so she asked "What does everyone think about this?" Besides, "are they really disrespected by the west? If so, how?". Monia, a Tunisian girl, said that these groups feel in this way because the west is trying to teach them to be democratic, accusing them of terrorism also because they are very religious.
Then, a person asked if "when we say "the West" do we mean Americans? Of other countries as well?". The answer of the group was that West refer to developed nations in general, but the articles seemed to be focusing more on the U.S. because of it's foreign policies.
Then I asked at the others, "Do you think America should intervene in Syria or not?". Funnily, American students weren't so well-informed on this situation, so, Monia and me have explained the outline of the situation; reflecting on it we have considered the existence of unpredictable factors that make a potentially dangerous status. And so the final response was that U.S. had made a right choice of not intervening there.
The next question was, "what's the difference between a secular and a religious person?". According to me the moral rules are a hard part of some practices while a secular person is free from every duty. Then, I asked if they think the Burka is too degrading for women. Surprisingly, all Muslim guys have been very moderate and open-minded. They said that the Burka is not necessary even if in the Islam religion it is not a woman's choice. Nevertheless, they said that for them Islam should give women the freedom to choose. This is a good news for me, because I thought that the most part of Muslim considered such rules as unchanging over time. Then, they explained the difference between a burka and hijab and because someone would choose to wear one or the other. One of the most interesting topic that came to light is that in New York there is a law where the police can stop anyone at any time and search them for anything that might be dangerous. This law is known as "stop and frisk".
Later, we have went into small groups. I was with two Egyptian boys, Amr and Mohamed, we had to speak about the role religion plays in our life and in our government. We talked about how is the religion in our countries, but above all in our life. They said me that the religion has a big role in their life and they had to pray five times per day. While they asked me what I think of Egyptians that live in Italy. I said that I have had only positive experiences with the Egyptian people, while in my experience there are some problems with above all Moroccan. Then, I asked what they think of present situation in their country. They, surprising once again, said that in their opinion there was a better situation with Mubarak as President.
Later, we have exchanged our Facebook's contacts, so we can chatted so much. In fact, this week I have already chatted with my new friend Amr.
This has been the best meeting until now, we have chatted a lot and I have discovered many new interesting things about what my "classmates" thinks and on the customs of their countries, in particular over Islam.
See you next week
Matteo Lasen
Hello everybody!
RispondiEliminaSo, let’s talk about mi fourth meeting. First of all, I did my video project and I post it few days ago so all you can watch it! I think I did a good job but it’s not up to me to give judgement, I hope I will receive some positive feedback.
Last Monday, we had a little talk about what we did during the weekend: I went shopping with my brother, he’s moving to Germany so he NEED a new closet full of new clothes! On Saturday, I went to a rockabilly concert, and it was great! I had a lot of fun ;)
Then, the facilitators asked us if we were logged from the university or from somewhere else; I think I was the only one logged from home, everybody was logging in from the university. I don’t know how they could talk so much in a university lab, I will be so shy and I would not say a word!
The thing that excited me most was the ‘breakout room’ session we did: we were divided in groups of two or three people and for half an hour we were supposed to talk about religion, by asking some questions the facilitators gave us. It’s was very interesting, and I noticed that I learned a lot about middle east religion, ideas, way of thinking etc.. During the sessions, we are more or less ten people and it is difficult, sometimes, to catch all the information that the people say, but this face-to-face session was absolutely great! And we didn’t talk just about religion, we also talked about a lot of other things so we knew each other in a better way!
When we returned in our session, we talked about the breaking room and I noticed that all the people gave, more or less, a positive feedback on that!
And then we just talked a little bit about the topics we wanted to talk about the next sessions, and that’s all!
Looking for my fifth session today, xxx
IV
Hello everyone!
RispondiEliminaSorry for late posting! My fourth week was great! I didn't talk much though during the first part of the session. At first, we told each other what sort of events we have in our universities. It was interesting to hear that in the university of Jordan students care a lot about students elections. Last week, one of the girls, Razan, didn't even attend her classes because she was worried about elections. She sad that the whole school was in a bad mood! Then Chris and Rachael from New York told us about a special event “Relay for life”: it's an event that their school has to raise money for other organizations. They said that they raise 1000s of dollars for this event. Indeed, it's a huge event on their campus and almost 900 people participated. After that, the American guys started talking about the U.S. I didn't say almost anything because they were just more involved than me in the conversation. I found it very interesting to listen to them complaining about president Obama. I don't know why, but I thought that all Americans loved him. They said they like him, but in their opinion there are also lots of things to complain about. First of all, they all agreed on the fact that he spends more time on foreign policy than internal policy. They don't understand why he (and the U.S in general) worries about others when there are people struggling in the country. We really talked a lot about this issue and we came up with many ideas. However, in the end, the general opinion was that America does it for the “democracy”, but this is just an excuse. We all think that every country should solve its own problems. As the students from American were asking me and the others what we think about the U.S, I wanted to do the same and I asked them what they think about Italy and Italian politic. I was totally surprised by their answers. A part for Jaber (from Tunisia), all the others didn't know anything about Italy. Chris and Rachael said that as long as a country doesn't involve the affairs the U.S has, it doesn't say anything about it. Then, we talked again about media. It's a topic we are all really interested in. And again I was surprised to know that Italy, America, Jordan and Tunisia have the same problems: the media is controlled and so publishes things that are not related to the truth. After that Nisaa, the facilitator, stopped us and exlpained us an amazing activity we were going to do: she divided us in pairs and for 20 minutes we had to talk face to face with our pair. I was with Muna, she is also a language student. So we had lots to say to each other: we talked about how our university works, what we would like to do in the future and also we talked about travels. Well, actually, I talked about travels because she told me that she had never been out of Jordan in her life, but as soon as she gets her degree she will travel. After that, the time was almost over, so we had a really short chat on the hijab. Unfortunately, we had a really short time left so we said we would have countinued discussing the topic the following week.
Federica Tognotti