Hi everyone I hope you had a good Easter. Sorry am not connecting from a computer so have trouble writing. I just want to remind you all that younjust have this week and next before the project ends, so be bold and brave, really try and push the conversations to get to critixal issues you want to discuss and learn more about. Take ownership of the group process, and encourage others to participate too.
Enjoy!
Francesca
Enjoy!
Francesca
Andrea Gallo
RispondiEliminaHi to everybody!!
I have just finished my seventh session with Soliya and today for the first time after more than one month i was a bit angry because i had some technical troubles with my microphone. Actually i started my dialogue normally, without any problem but during the second part of the session my mic stopped to work so i had to type all my opinions and my feelings in the chat-box which was not really good because of course i prefer to talk and express my thoughts with my voice but at least it was an useful exercise for my written english to due the fact i paid more attention at the grammatcal rules. Anyway i have one session more to talk a lot!!
Finally today we talked about our video project and Sushmita asked us to say something about our impressions about that and how we chose the right clips for the assigment and moreover why we chose them; personally i said that for me was really difficult choose the right clips for the video because we had something like one hundred clips and at the same time we had just four minutes to make the footage. In my video-project i decided to show the most significant differences between the reactions in the western world and the East; in fact i put a clip about an american woman who said that everybody has the freedom to do and to say whatever he or she wants and on the other hand i put a clip of a man from Pakistan who condemned the film and had very bad and cruel words for the filmmaker. Indeed i could see that almost everyone wanted to show this subject, the difference between the widespread of the movie in the West and after in the East; however there was a common opinion about that because all of us was in accordance to say that everybody has the freedom of thought but of course respecting other people and other cultures without offending anyone. After this, Sushmita ask us something about our feelings during this experience with wevideo, how we felt making that and i said that the new thing with this project was the fact that i felt myself like a true journalist because i could choose the clips and the footage so i could talk about a true story with my perception of that, giving to my "viewers" a vision of reality and of what happened with my point of view; that is why after this we started the discussion about the media and the different channels that we have in our countries. Hannah, the american girl said something about Fox-tv, which is maybe the most representative television in the United States and which has a lot of channels about everything (news, movies, cartoon, sport) and which is a clear example of a television that can shape the reality in his own way sometimes giving biased news; but not only in the United States because for example also in Italy we have different channels and so different perspection of the reality and i am sure that is the same in the Predominant Muslim Societies where also there are a lot of channels and also from the western televisions.
When Sushmita tried to make this question: "Should news reports feature equal coverage of all the opinions held by the public, or should coverage be proportional to the number of people who hold a certain perspective?" and when anybody tried to answer because we actually didn't understand very well the meaning of the question we decided to close the discussion about the video-project and tell something about our best experiences for the last minutes of the session; i think it was really nice and useful share our best experiences because i could see that almost everybody of us think that the best experience was something connected with trip around the world and knowing other people from other country. I talked about my period of studies in a foreign country where i shared a flat with a muslim guy from Turkey. Moreover at the end of the session we were all agree saying that Soliya is going to be another important experience of our lives.
Look forward for the last session next Tuesday!!
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaThis week we really had an exciting meeting! Unfortunately, we were just four of us, and I don’t know why there were so much people missing, maybe it is because of the spring break.
As usual, we started talking about Easter holidays and what we did during the weekend. Then, we started talking about “gender”, we all gave our description but more or less we all have the same idea of what gender is.
The good thing of this meeting was that we were able to develop a speech from a single argument; in fact, we started talking about gender role and we focused on women role in society through the years. We all say something about women in our families, we all reported stories on how women fought for their rights and we compared those stories to nowadays. Times have changed: before, women were forced to stay at home and they were not supposed to be educated nor go to the university; now, women have a big role in society, they are encouraged by their parents to study, to be more educated as possible, and to work, to build a family and a future.
At the end of the meeting, we had a discussion about feminism, and the facilitators shared a satiric cartoon showing a girl wearing her burka. So we talked about the veil, the hijab. somehow I was glad to be just four in our meeting because we could talk for a long time about something: and so we did. I always was curious about what it means for a girl to wear the veil, total or partial, and why they wear it etc. I made an hundred questions about this, and all my questions had an answer this time.
For this week that’s all,
IV
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaCan't believe that we're already in our last week of sessions!!! This is the seventh diary I write and I really hope I managed to include in my diaries all the important things that have been said with my group. Every moment has been important and I really wanted to share with you all my thoughts. However, I did my best to do it, for sure!
The seventh week has been the best so far! In the first hour and a half of session we talked about “normal” topics, but in the last 30 minutes we talked about music and films...They have been 30 minutes of pure fun! By the way, with “normal topics” I mean those related to culture, religion, politic etc. The ones we were supposed to be discussing during the whole project.
So, at first Razan and Muna (the girls from Jordan) talked about their video project, since they were absent the week before. I think they both did a good job, even if Muna didn't use the videos provided by Soliya. She made a sort of Power Point explaining her point of view for 4 minutes. I don't know if she could do so, but I liked her video. Then Chris, from New York, asked them the same question he had asked us the week before. The question was about the freedom of speech and we all realised to have almost the same idea on the topic: we think that everyone should be free to express his/her opinion, as long as he/she knows that it's not going to offend anyone. However, there are so many people in the world that someone somewhere will feel offended anyway ;)
Then Nisaa, the facilitator, asked us if we wanted to discuss about the figure of Bin Laden in the U.S and in the Middle East, since Jaber, from Tunisia, had sent by email some interesting articles about the topic. We all agreed, but Razan and Muna started saying that they didn't want to talk about it because it was a boring topic and they didn't know anything about it. They started talking about other things, without letting us saying anything. At that point, Nisaa stopped them and left us commenting Jaber's articles for a while. I think that Nisaa's decision to stop them was right, as we were all a bit disappointed. However, Muna and Razan put a smile on my face because in the end they actually talked more than others! :D
After the Bin Laden's discussion, we talked about social networks. That was a topic that we said we wanted to discuss from at least 2 weeks! We all agreed that social networks have a great potential and can be really useful. However, they can also be very dangerous if people don't use them in a clever way. You never know who's behind the screen if you're chatting to someone; moreover, people tend to spend a lot of time of social networks ending up wasting it.
And now comes the nice part. We started talking about the music we like. Rachael from New York, was really curios about it and wrote down all the names of singers she didn't know, especially Italian and Arab ones. Jaber was really surprised when I said that I don't like Italian music very much because he actually loves it. He likes Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini...I find it really funny! At one point Rachael said she is mad about country music, but no-one else does in my group, so the boys started making jokes about it. The jokes went on until the end of the session and we all had really fun together!!! Wish the session could last longer. Talking about films the situation “got worse”...we were all saying things like “if someone here likes Twilight I'm going away”. Razan and Muna started laughing and said a bit embarrassed “well...actually...mmmh...I would say that...I find Twilight...interesting”. We made jokes at each other all the time and at one point Nisaa wrote: “I see the respectful dialog has gone out the window with a Twilight, Bieber discussion :P” (just cut and pasted from the chat box). AHAHAH!!! :D
That's pretty much all for this week! I really hope that every person of my group will be participating in the next session, since it's the last one. ;)
Federica Tognotti
Questo commento è stato eliminato dall'autore.
RispondiEliminaDear diary
RispondiEliminaReally really sorry for the late, but on Thursday after the session I had fever and so for four days I was ill. Fortunately I don’t forget you and now I want to talk you what happened in my seventh session of Soliya.
First of all we started to discuss about the role of the media as the end of last session and Alexandra, the facilitator, asked us these questions: “how is the West as a whole generally portrayed in Arab/ Muslim Media? Are Europe and the US portrayed differently? How? How are predominantly Muslim communities generally portrayed in US or European Media?” So, in my point of view the news which are written by European journalist, most of the time are conditioned by an American view; indeed if American media said something bad against Arab world, at the same time other European media retake this message. I don’t know exactly why but probably there are some politics interesting and of course the linkage between this two continents, Europe and America, come from the past. We don’t forget that during the Cold War they create a military alliance called NATO that today it still exists, so probably someone want to maintain good relationship also through the aspect “media”. After that Alexandra posted in the box this statement “media independence is often cited as one of the most crippling deficits in the Arab world, where the broadcast industry is mostly state-run, and private press is often indirectly controlled by the government” and some links. That of which speaks the first text I agree, because I believe that not only in the Arab world but also in Western a lot of governments control the media and this is not correct, indeed you deny the freedom of speech, aspect that maybe many countries have in their constitution but they don’t respect at all, and you give at times false information which citizens could believe. The videos have been the representation of what I said; more over I found three key words: violence, terrorism, attacks, occupation. Why I called them key words? Because in the different reportage that I saw in the video more and more times all journalists talked about these aspects in specific country and this is bad because they painted the all population who live there as a sort of war people who can’t love and so on…
The second part of the session, when my energies started to abandon me, but I resisted, with the second facilitator, we talked about taboo and obviously we came back on the issue of homosexuality in our society and then we ended the session describing our free time and our activities. It was interesting to know the passions of the guys who are in my group!!! Unfortunately after the session I didn’t pass a good evening, but of course I can said that I spent a good afternoon with Soliya. ;)
See you
Matteo
Last week we had a very interesting session. As I suggested students from middle-east had to answer to the question “What do Muslims think about Westerners?”. We went into a number of topics ranging from the main cultural differences between the East and the West, to interactions within families and between parents and children, to arranged vs. free marriage, to wedding traditions. It was a very good conversation and I think we all learned something from it. People from Muslim countries don’t like the way USA government try to rule the world, imposing western values without any consideration of people’s wishes and religion. They feel that Islam is disrespected by the West. They are worried about economic issues and they request for more basic needs such as economic development. Mustafa said that the main difference are new technologies. He feels East is always a little bit behind the West about technology but he told that to him it is not a bad thing, because in Muslim countries interactions between people are deeper than in the USA and Europe, because of the great use of Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networks. I agree with Mustafa. I think that technology has an important value (without it we would not be able to connect with Soliya!) but we have to learn to use it in the right way, we don’t have to become addicted to it. Mustafa added that he sees that relations with parents and family are stronger in Muslim countries, there is more respect . I don’t say in Western countries we disrespect our parents and families, but divorce make things more difficult. If a father or a mother is divided into two families, interactions with children could not be easy. Then we talked about divorce and I discover it is not forbidden in Muslim countries, husband and wife have the same right, but Mustafa stressed that divorce is despise by God; this works like a deterrent. We had a long conversation about arranged marriages and I was shocked to know that it is still a common practice. Muslim girls told they are free to refuse the husband that their family chooses, but to me it seems that it is difficult for them to say no! they meet the man to see if they are compatible; the most important thing is that he has to be Muslim. This is a great difference between East and West! I can’t imagine to marry a man chosen by my family because he is Christian just like me!
RispondiEliminaNext time it will be the last session; I’m really sorry and I hope to discover something new about Islam for the last time!
The past frenetic fortnight prevented me from participating at the sixth session. In fact I had to catch a plane on Wednesday the 16th. That's why I couldn't post on blog either. However I managed to make it for the seventh session while being on vacation.
RispondiEliminaWe started with a little warm up. We talked a bit about Easter and Kholoud told us about Spring Day in Egypt. This celebration falls after the Christian Easter and is celebrated with a special delicacy. There are many special ways around the world to celebrate certain occasions but Egypt has a nasty and disgusting one! This delicacy called Fesikh is nothing else but salted rotten fish! Every year many people get sick and some even die because of food poisoning in Egypt during this event. So much for the delicacy!
I've said many times that our group has been lacking participants and this has influenced the outcome of the group's discussions. Last Wednesday wasn't different, only three of us showed up. The facilitator gave us a few topics to chose from and asked us to talk about it for an hour. We picked “extremism”.
15 minutes after the discussion had started, Samira didn't feel well and left the room. It was only me and Afrah left in the chat room keeping alive the session!
I wanted to know one simple thing when it comes to extremism: Why is so hard for the Arab and Muslim World to isolate the extremists. My point was that competent religious men in the Muslim World, such as theologians and scholars should get together and raise their voices against violent groups who claim to act based on the teachings of Qur’an. Horrible things are happening in Syria but none of these scholars say a word against Jihadists.
The answer was simple, surprising and somehow shocking. According to Afrah there is a big problem within the Muslim World. In fact when it comes to theologians they tend to not understand (and perhaps they don't want to understand) that times have changed and they continue living in the past. The main issue is related to the Quran's interpretation, thus making hard for change to kick in. As far as this attitude won't change, theologians not only won't be the solution but will be the problem! Afrah mentioned one of the most influential Arab theologians, a Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has his own Friday show on Al Jazeera. On his speeches al-Qaradawi does nothing to help prevent violence in Syria. Whoever listens to his speeches understands that he is inviting Muslims to go and fight in Syria. In Afrah's opinion theologians are the main issue in the Arab World, because they purposefully mislead Muslims. If an important scholar as al-Qaradawi preaches this way “Houston we've got a problem” is the only thing for all of us left to say!
A very harsh critic! This came from a practicing Muslim girl, not a secularist one. Afrah has made clear her devotion to Islam and Qur’an many times during our online meetings. However Afrah thinks that being able to criticize and change certain things when it comes to Qu'ran's interpretation, is vital to today's Islam.
I am dead sure that if more Muslims like Afrah could have the chance to become an important voice within the Muslim World things would change radically. Freedom and human rights would overcome the main hardship in countries such Saudi Arabia, U.E.A., Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and so on.
Unfortunately it was only two of us talking and there was no arguing about the topic since me and Afrah shared the same view! What a pity!