Hi everyone,
Well, we've passed the threshold and we're up to week 5 of the Soliya Connect Program. I've enjoyed talking to some of you last week, and will talk to more of you this week to see how you are getting on. Judging from your diaries and also what I've heard from Nahid of Soliya, everything seems to be going very well, you are building more meaningful connections and understanding of each others' lives and are having deeper conversations on more sensitive topics. That's great, keep up the good work and push yourselves more and more!
As you know, your video projects have to be ready by Wednesday, hope you are well on your way. Remember too to watch your peers' videos so you can discuss them in the session which is set for that discussion.
Daniel sent some links in the comment - which I'll share with you here too since you may not all have seen the links in the comment.
1. 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
I also wanted to let you know that on Tuesday there is a talk with the journalist Giuliana Sgrena about her book " Rivoluzioni violate. Primavera laica, voto islamista" -https://www.facebook.com/events/239474489569655/
Enjoy this week!!
Francesca
Well, we've passed the threshold and we're up to week 5 of the Soliya Connect Program. I've enjoyed talking to some of you last week, and will talk to more of you this week to see how you are getting on. Judging from your diaries and also what I've heard from Nahid of Soliya, everything seems to be going very well, you are building more meaningful connections and understanding of each others' lives and are having deeper conversations on more sensitive topics. That's great, keep up the good work and push yourselves more and more!
As you know, your video projects have to be ready by Wednesday, hope you are well on your way. Remember too to watch your peers' videos so you can discuss them in the session which is set for that discussion.
Daniel sent some links in the comment - which I'll share with you here too since you may not all have seen the links in the comment.
1. 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
I also wanted to let you know that on Tuesday there is a talk with the journalist Giuliana Sgrena about her book " Rivoluzioni violate. Primavera laica, voto islamista" -https://www.facebook.com/events/239474489569655/
Francesca
In our fifth session I decided to follow professor Helm's suggestion: I tried to go beyond kindness and friendship and to profit from the opportunity Soliya is presenting to us. The purpose of this program is to confront ourselves with other cultures and to talk about some delicate issues in the matter of relationship between West and Middle East, always in a kind and politically correct manner, and this was what we did yesterday.
RispondiEliminaAt the beginning Kane showed some pictures of Colorado and he answered some questions. The place where Kane lives is very similar to Tarvisio, my little town, except for the skyscrapers!
Then Claudia asked us if there was a particular topic we would like to discuss and I said I was very interested in the issue of the veil, which was also the subject of the text we were asked to read. There were two girls, Zeinab from Egypt and Marva from Tunisia, the first wearing the veil, the second not. I asked Zeinab if she was wearing the hijab because it was a choice or if it was imposed and she told me about what her religion orders and she said she was very proud and confortable with it. There was a little discussion because Mustafa, from Pakistan, affirmed that the Quran doesn't imposed to use the veil. In Pakistan women are not obliged to use the veil, but Mustafa's sister wears it and she says it is a choice of hers and she doesn't feel opressed by using it. It is a symbol of her religion. I learned a little bit more about the differences between Quran and Hadith and I understood there are different interpretations in the Muslim world about the veil. Ali, the Egyptian boy, didn't agree with women who don't use the veil; he said it is a question about security and about the way a woman has to behave, in a kind, polite and timid manner. He told that if a woman doesn't wear the veil, men have a bad opinion of her. I think this was offensive for Marva who doesn't use the veil. In Tunisia the veil is not forbidden (it depends of the veil you want to wear) and she told is not the way you appear to make you a good muslim but the way you act. There was some moment of tension but it is important to confront ourselves with different opinions and to learn even more thanks to these dicussions. Kane talked about the way veil is seen in the USA and I also presented the European situation and I explained in particular the cases in which the veil is banned.
I really loved this session: we spoke about important topics, all of us had different points of view but we were able to have a good conversation because we have understood that the most important thing is respect.
Andrea Gallo
RispondiEliminaHi to everyone.
Yesterday i had my fifth session with Soliya and first of all i was happy because all the people were there, present on time. Yesterday Kuy, the american guy from the University of Potsdam made an ineresting question about the 9th of September so finally after five weeks we talked about this event so important and significant for the relation between the West and the Predominant Muslim Societies; the question was about the discussions which raised after the idea to build a mosque where there was the terroist accident, the so called Ground Zero. In my opinion i said that maybe build a mosque there, could be an unesful provocation but the right solution was to build a memorial for all the people who died during the attack; i was surprised for the fact that the majority of the girls from the East didn't remember anything about the attack because they said we were too much young to remember it and for us from the West this was really strange; this showed the strong difference between the attack's impact on our societes and the difference between the work of the media about it. However for me is not very good that guys like us from other parts of the world don't know the recent history.
After this we started to talk about our life; Sushmita, our facilitator asked us to think about three events which influenced more our personal experience in connection with the relation between the West and the PMS and the other two in general which influenced our life and made us like we are now. Personally i chose these three events: the fact that during the last six months i shared a flat with a turkish muslim boy with who i knew many new things about Islam that i didn't know before; the second event that influenced me was my peiriod of studies in a foreign country, in Poland, which was an amazing experience and in the end my work which helped me to take my responsabilities and try to don't depend too much on my parents.
All the muslim people were very excited when i said that i lived for a long period with a muslim guy.
Actually i think that only me and Wouter, the dutch guy, understood the real meaning of the question that Sushmita made because the other people answered in a wrong way, like my family helped me, my theachers gave me the right education and things like these; Sushmita asked us three events in our life.
Hower after this discussion the meeting was already over and the facilitator just reminded us to make the video project that i have already done and i guess we are going to discuss it next week.
Hy guys!
RispondiEliminaYesterday we had our meeting as expected and it was funny! We drove another picture but this time a tree. Many of us drove a tree without visible roots and this was meaningful! Vilma and Chelsea, our facilitators, showed us also the image of an iceberg with at the bases "values, intentions, assumptions, needs, perceptions, wounds, belief" and on the top "position and conclusion". This figure to understand that our opinions are necessarily influenced and conditioned by a background! Then, our facilitators asked us to choose three important events in our life that revels us the relation between West and ME. I talked when I was child, learning history at elementary school, I discovered that the South of Italy and especially Sicily, was dominated by Arabians. And, I think it's still visible a strong contamination in custom as well as in architecture of many Sicilian towns. Also, I said that another important events was when, by media, I learnt the existence of islam religion and the problems regarding to the coexistence between different ethnic group in the same space. Moreover I asked a Tunisian girl, Mariem, something relating to the Tunisian revolution in particular if now they are living better than before. She said it's a particular moment of transition, but she is hopeful. I said also, women had an important role in the revolution, but under the Muslim Brothers' control, could the situation be get better for them? Yes said that something has changed but she didn't clarify. After this, I asked my self if I hadn't been too inappropriate.. The meeting was concluded with a share of impressions and opinions about volunteer activity and the girl from Venezuela and the boy from Egypt found something in common, this for all the group was a pleasure discovered!
Well we are waiting for all the videos to discuss next week!
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminayesterday it was a strange session because my group was very very small; indeed we were in three guys and two facilitators.
When we started the session, as usual, all members of the group talked about their life and their week. We are in the same situation indeed we are studying a lot for our university exams. After that it was a big pleasure for me to introduce the session, as a sort of facilitators, because I prepared some questions and some curiosities, which I wanted to share with my friends in the group.
The first questions were “what is the idea in your countries about gay marriage, divorce, abortion and stem cell research? And religion has to support these new aspects of the modern world? In which way?” These questions were born in my mind because in this period here in Italy, public opinion, mass media and other parts of our society are talking a lot and also the religious circles are talking about this, so I wanted to know the opinions of the guys, who came from other countries especially the Egyptian girl. Very interesting it was the debate that I had with Ece, the girl who come from Turkey. We had two different points of view on the gay argument. While she supported both of gay marriage and gay adoptions, my positions were few different. I believe in gay marriage because if a human being loves another one of the same sex, no one can avoid to him/her the marriage, but the gay adoption is a sensitive issue. I think the nature has wanted that the child is the result of a union between one woman and one man; probably there is a reason and for me during the first period of the life is important that the baby has the education from parents with opposite sex.
On this topic I was very curious to know the position of Asmaa but unfortunately when she talks none understand her because sometimes there are some background noises… Bah also this is very strange, and when one facilitator ask her to write, nothing happens.
Subsequently we moved on another discussion, which was based on an article taken from Time magazine. In this part of the session the issue was if the politicians have to follow their faith or not. In my opinion the answer was no, because as I said in the last session when one person enter in the politic in a secular State, he or she has to achieve the common good of all citizens in order to develop society. In this regard I took as example the Erdogan’s Turkey in which after the Westernization of the country in the first years of the last century led by K. M. Ataturk, now despite the Turkish constitution says that the Anatolian territory is secular, Erdogan wants to impose his Islamic creed to population and if they don’t follow his rules they could be persecuted; I disappointed about this!!
Unfortunately dear diary, my Turkish friend went to 6:30 pm because she has a school commitment so I stayed alone with Asmaa and this was not good. Maybe you ask me why? Eh because the facilitators tried to create a sort of debate or discussion with some questions for example “why the south countries of the world are more religiousness than develop countries? Or why American lost their faith especially after 9/11? And so on…” The problem was that the Egyptian girl suddenly stopped to speak in English and she started to speak in Arabic. Fortunately there was Mohammed who comes from Qatar that he translated what she said, but I didn’t find correct this because for me it was difficult to express complicated concepts, while she talked in her own language so it was easier for her. Any way every time that Aleksandra asked us something I said my opinions and I brought some examples. Even so the second hour was so boring.
I hope that next time in our group there will be more guys, but…. I don’t know :)
Matteo
FIFTH SOLIYA MEETING
RispondiEliminaOn Tuesday I had my fifth Soliya meeting. Also this time we were almost all. Lacked only Toqa, the Jordan girl. First of all, Lily asked to do a “word’s activity”. We had to think three words we would use to describe “Western societies” and three words we would use to describe the “predominantly Muslim societies”. Then, we have sent the words into a private chat to Lily and she would compile a list. Later Lily published the list on the chat box.
The words for Western societies were: Democracy, Hegemon, Developed, Conservative, Open to Criticism, Advisor, Greedy, Capitalism, Developed, Work Hard, Respect Each other, Technology and knowledge, Democracy, Progress, Nice people, Powerful, Civilized Successful, Superficial, Modern, Chaotic, Friendly.
While the words for predominantly Muslim societies were: : Muslim, Male, Intolerant to Criticism, Religious, Hijab, Sharia Law, Peace, Family, Government Oriented, Need everything without working, Not respectful, Lovely, Corruption, Not effective, Traditional, religious, Determined, Devout, Respectful, Late, Friendly.
Then the facilitators asked us “What reaction are people having to this list?” and “How do you feel about these words?”. And in addiction, “Why do you think you are having a strong reaction to some of the words?”.
Immediately, the focus of the group has moved towards the word corruption. Above all Muslim students weren’t agree that this term refers only to their part of world. Finally group’s opinion was that in each society there is some corruption.
Then Peter asked us to talk about “life stories”, or better “Which events in our lives have affected/determined the way that you understand the relationship between Western societies and prominently Muslim societies”. Monia, said that, about her, 11 September and President Bush’s decision to go into Iraq to fight terrorism really impacted the lives of all Muslims around the world. For many of us, 11 September was an upsetting event which affected people in the West as well. Even if many of us were very young when it happened. After this disaster, Muslims get blamed for everything and media are trying to unify the West so that they have support of the West to be in the Middle East (for oil).
Furthermore, Gehad said he felt astonished and couldn’t believe it.
This session has been interesting because we have known different points of view on same facts; in particular, some guys participated to debate more than other times. The most part of us, furthermore, expressed the desire to talk about the way to better relationships between our societies and cultures; so, probably, next time we’ll talk about it.
See you soon
Matteo Lasen
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaMy fifth meeting was a little bit boring because we only did one activity but then we talked about usual things like ‘what did you do last weekend’. That is the reason why, this time I won’t tell you too much things, because there are few things to tell
But the activity we did was interesting, actually, and we were supposed to write down three life experiences but then share only one of them. Finally we had to discuss about it, asking questions, clarifying the concepts and so on…
I decided to share a story, but not a personal one. It was a report of my parents’ experience during a vacation to Cuba: they told me a lot of things about how communism on an extreme level ruined a beautiful country. They said that there is a lot of poorness, and the weird side is that there are two different money, one for Cuban people (pesos) and the other for tourists (cuc); consequently, some shops have two different entrances, and this is very sad. Cuba is still at the 50’s, nothing changed there.
I decided to share this story because I can’t understand why, in 2014, politics could ruin such a beautiful country with beautiful people. The people of my group said that they agree with this idea, in fact we talked a lot about extremism.
At the end of the session the facilitators asked us ‘what did you learn?’ and we all said that people could be different by religion, culture, colour… but at the end we are all human beings, we are all the same.
For this week that’s all,
IV
Hi everyone!
RispondiEliminaThis week he had to post our video project. I've also watched the videos of the members of my group and I noticed that we all made different choices. I don't think there were right choices and wrong ones, but my video was totally different from the others. What I tried to do was starting with really strong and opposite messages and then slow down to more neutral positions. For the session I am going to attend this afternoon, we are all supposed to explain our choices and our thinking.
From this week until the end of the project I'll be connecting from home because of Easter holidays and other festivities. I've done the Diagnostic Test and everything seems to be all right. I've also sent to the tech-support an email with the confirmation number that appeared at the end of the test, but they didn't answer. I really hope there won't be any problems, otherwise I don't really know what to do!
By the way, talking about last Thursday...I really enjoyed it and I managed to talk a lot! Most of the time we talked about language...and this is a topic I'm really interested in! I found out the Jaber from Tunisia knew lots of things about Italy...he said that the reason why he knows so many things is because Tunisia and Italy are really close to each other...I was really impressed because I don't know absolutely anything about his country! Then the American students explained us how people in the U.S talk according to the State they live in. However, they said it is more a matter of accent and pronunciation. I had a really hard time trying to explain them that in Italy we have dialects! They just couldn't understand how it is possible for a person from the North not to understand a person from the South. However, this didn't really impressed me because I knew already that in other parts of the world dialects don't exist.
After that, the facilitator gave us an activity to do: we had to think about three events (2 personal and 1 related to the relation between West and Middle East) that shaped us and made us the person we are now. Some stories were really touching and it was nice to share this sort of things with them! Even if we almost don't know each other, we felt like we could do it! However, Austin from America was the only one who didn't want share his events. He said that we must not let events and history shape our personality, but we have to build our own story. I can understand his point of view, but I think he should find a half way position. I can't believe that nothing in his life had touched him in some ways. There must be something in everyone's life, otherwise we would be aliens!!!
That's all for this week!!! :) Bye Bye :)
Federica Tognotti
APRIL 9, 2014
RispondiEliminaThe fifth week was interesting. We got to talk about two things. First share one or two personal experiences that has directly influenced our thoughts, our ideas, and our behavior. Second we were invited to think of events that took place and affected our perception of others.
Having been born and raised in a country ruled by a communist dictatorship until the age of 13, has shaped me into the person I am today. I have seen what a dictatorship looks like. I've touched it, smelled it, felt it and feared it. Being the son of a prosecuted father I had to be careful to who I spoke, what I spoke and how I spoke. I met people who had endured prosecution, who had family members executed by firing squads, only because they opposed the official policies of the party in power. I've met people who spent years in jail because of their religious believes, of their political views. Freedom of speech didn't exist and an entire nation was forced to think and act according to the line of the Party! Living in such a political and social context has made me appreciate freedom to a greater extent that one may think. I said that when I hear about journalists being intimidated and put in jail in Russia, Erdogan shutting down social media, I can't help but get upset.
Afrah shared a similar experience. It was about her mother who during a student protest while studying at the University in Tunis, was arrested and put in jail. Somehow her father got her out, and she had to move to the South of the country and hide for a while. She couldn't go back to University and never graduated.
When it comes to suppressing freedom it doesn't matter the reason laying behind it. It's all about someone who want's to impose over everybody else his own ideas, and perspective. The result is the same: executions, prison time, torture and so on.
The second topic was about perception of others. 9/11 was the event that somehow effected my perception of Muslims. I grew up in a country of Muslim majority never experiencing any tensions. After the terrorist attacks on Manhattan were confusing to me. Some Muslims blew themselves and others up and many others supported them. I compared these Muslims to my Muslim friends back home and I couldn't find a connection between them! Things started to clearer when I personally met Muslims from the Middle East, people from the very region where the troublemakers come. Meeting with them, talking to them was surprising and it gave me a whole new perspective on Arabs. It is a fact that fanatic religious groups around the Muslim World use violence for its political purposes, but there is the majority of the Muslims who is eager to show to everybody that Islam has nothing to do with violence. Furthermore, Muslims, differently from what we hear and see on the media tend to be more tolerant that I thought. In 2010 I went to a conference on inter religious dialogue held by Father Paolo dall'Oglio. He had founded this religious community in Syria dedicated to Muslim-Christian dialogue. He had been living in Syria for over 30 years and was kidnapped last year in Northern Syria part by a Jihadists group affiliated to Al-Qaeda.
Afrah shared with us a very personal experience that changed her perception about a person but since it is too personal I'm not sharing it with the blog out of respect to her privacy.
As for Samira, she didn't share anything. Her life, she said, has been a quiet one without any important experiences. I think that given the political situation in Egypt she might have some problems speaking politics!
P.S. I want to apologize for posting my week 5 session so late. It has been a frenetic fortnight. I tried to do my best to finish everything, but I couldn't make it on time.