Hi everyone,
You are now halfway through your Soliya journey, so well done!! I'm glad it seems to be going well for most of you, though some of your group members seem to be having tech troubles. This is unfortunate and can slow down conversations at times, it is also to a certain extent a sad reflection of reality, power dynamics and inequalities!
i know we are approaching holiday season in ITaly, you have the Easter break, but Soliya does not stop for holidays (as you know, not everyone celebrates Easter!Our religions holidays are not universal), so even if you have your session on Monday, please do your best to participate as you will be missing part of the group development process if you do not join. If there is really nothing you can do about missing a session, make sure you tell your facilitators in advance.
I see that several of you have started discussions with a partner to prepare for your final project - this is a great opportunity for you, so do your best to engage with yoru partner as much as you can within and outside of your Soliya sessions and let your facilitators know if you have any trouble!
Finally, on a language note - for your diaries, we DISCUSS religion, politics etc.(NOT discuss about something) in English; also people can be SEEN AS extremists, or fanatics or conservative etc., not like.
Enjoy your sessions this week, and Happy Easter!
Francesca
You are now halfway through your Soliya journey, so well done!! I'm glad it seems to be going well for most of you, though some of your group members seem to be having tech troubles. This is unfortunate and can slow down conversations at times, it is also to a certain extent a sad reflection of reality, power dynamics and inequalities!
i know we are approaching holiday season in ITaly, you have the Easter break, but Soliya does not stop for holidays (as you know, not everyone celebrates Easter!Our religions holidays are not universal), so even if you have your session on Monday, please do your best to participate as you will be missing part of the group development process if you do not join. If there is really nothing you can do about missing a session, make sure you tell your facilitators in advance.
I see that several of you have started discussions with a partner to prepare for your final project - this is a great opportunity for you, so do your best to engage with yoru partner as much as you can within and outside of your Soliya sessions and let your facilitators know if you have any trouble!
Finally, on a language note - for your diaries, we DISCUSS religion, politics etc.(NOT discuss about something) in English; also people can be SEEN AS extremists, or fanatics or conservative etc., not like.
Enjoy your sessions this week, and Happy Easter!
Francesca
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaLast Monday afternoon I had my fourth meeting at Soliya’s session.
At the beginning, we started talking about Easter’s holiday because for most of us, next Sunday is Easter.
Anee, our facilitator, asked us if we wanted to share some typical Easter’s traditions with the group and then talked together.
We discovered that in the USA celebrating Easter is quite similar to Europe because on Sunday morning Americans go to the church and then they have Easter’s lunch with family.
We talked about Easter’s holiday till Manar, the other facilitator logged in, because she was late.
First of all, she asked us how we could make to have a good conversation and then she wrote in the chat box four different types of questions:
1) Yes/No questions: “do you think he has a good job?”;
2) Cross-Examination: “don’t you think that…?”;
3) Points of clarification: “what do you mean when you say…?”;
4) Open-ended questions: “tell me more about your view…”.
We all agreed that number three and four are the best types of questions because we could improve dialogue, fell free to talk, share things and have a deep and productive conversation in a short time.
Subsequently, we started talking about articles we read as homework during last week and the main topic was religion.
First article we examined was “Islamic veil across Europe” because in the most part of European countries there are many local bans on face covering veils.
Muslim students said that women who are veiled have no right to wear the hijab in France, for example, because they will be punished by the police.
They believe that many Americans and Europeans think that wearing veil for a Muslim woman could limit their freedom, instead for them is simply a choice of life.
They all agreed that nobody forced them to wear veil but many women suffer sexual discrimination if don’t wear it chiefly in Arabian’s countries.
Najeh, who connected for the first time last Monday, said that his ideal woman is a woman wearing hijab every day, because woman’s beauty is something inside and not outside.
He added that this was his personal point of view, but he respects women who don’t wear veil or hijab.
Many of us agreed that most of the time identification by police isn’t attribute to a religious discrimination but only in order to warn and guarantee public security.
The time was passing fast, so we couldn’t talk about the other two articles: “Moderate against Extremist views in the Muslim world” and “what Alabamians and Iranians have in common” by Crabtree and Pelham.
We will talk again on religion’s topic next Monday, because many of us expressed a special interest.
The last twenty minutes, we continued our final paper’s work so we logged out from the “main meeting room” and logged in the “social room” with Paula an other student.
We couldn’t talk also with Michaela because Meryem, an Arabian student was absent and the facilitator moved Michaela from my group.
We continued talking about subject we chose last time till the last ten minutes of two hours.
After that, we moved again to the “main meeting room” where we met other students for the final greetings.
Look forward to the next week!
Federica
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaLast Monday I had my fourth meeting at Soliya!
The theme of the week was about religion; but, before getting into the topic, my facilitators made us do a game to get to know each other better: we had to put up two thumbs if we agreed with the statements that one of the facilitators proposed. I thought it was a good idea, because, having missed the presentation of my fellow students during my first section, I could learn something more about them.
Then facilitators asked each one to move to another meeting-room together with the same student as before to continue the discussion for the final paper.
Firstly I asked my friend to give me his e-mail to continue the interview later on, so that we could go deeper into the question, because we were allowed only 15 minutes.
Secondly I asked him if he believes the increase in the Earth's temperature, over the last century, is caused by human activities or natural causes. He answered that he thinks global worming is a natural process, but human activity is accelerating this process, and I agree.
15 minutes passed and we went back to the principal meeting-room, and we started to talk about religion.
First we explained what role religion plays in ones life. Most of us believe religion is an important part of our life; others consider it not that important.
Then we discuss if government should be influenced by religion. We had different opinions: half of us felt that religion and government should be kept separate, while the other half agreed that religion should take part in political affairs.
Then we spoke about the articles that we had to read for the meeting. My Muslim fellow students expressed that Islam is a pacific religion while the main radical group interprets it differently.
Regarding the article about the lower church attendance in Western Europe I explained to them that it was probably due to corruption of the clergy.
Finally we commented on the percentage of Americans who practice religion (65%).
Omega
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaLast Monday I had my fourth Soliya session. We are in the middle of our Soliya journey.
It was the most interesting session until now because we talked about a lot of topics.
Sushmita, the facilitator, nominated me ‘mini-facilitator’ to help my group to interact. The topic of the week was ‘The role of Religion in Society’ and to create a discussion with my group I decided to write some questions about the articles we had to read during the week.
Before starting with the discussion, while we were waiting for the connection of all, Sushmita asked us what we did over the weekend; we discovered that many of us have gone to a birthday party last Sunday!
The session started with a riddle asked us by Sushmita; she read us a description of an animal and we had to draw it. In my opinion the description was about an elephant, but it wasn’t so. It was a anteater! This simple exercise gave us a clear idea that we have predetermined ideas as we hear things but one detail could make an important difference. Many times, when we listen people that speak, we usually jump to conclusion; actually we should listen with more curiosity.
During the session I asked to my group some questions about the role of religion in society; first of all we talked about the population’s religiosity level that is strongly related to its average standard of living. The article, in fact, gives the idea that poor nations are most religious than rich ones; all of us were agreed that people who live surrounded by luxuries tend to distance themselves from spirituality.
Ammar started to talk about Islam, a religion that continues to increase also in Europe; why Islam is increasing while other religions are decreasing? The justification could be the increase of immigration and the mix of cultures.
Another question that I asked to the group was if government and religion should be together or separated; in Italy for example we can see that the strong role of the Church in government has declined throughout history.
The discussion became very intense when Ammar and Nicholas started to talk about the aim of ISIS and its relationship with Western democracies; what does ISIS want? Nicholas said that people need to be part of something stable and strong and most of terrorists believe in ISIS as a strong entity. What is needed is to draw a line between what is war and what is terrorism; killing innocent people for no reason is terrorism. What point will we stop fighting? This is the problem of the world today.
After the one on one discussion with our partners about the topic of final project we decide with Sushmita the topic for the next time: the discussion will be about the Media and Culture.
This session was been very interesting because everybody had talked and we were able to hold a discussion that showed many points of view. I’m very happy to see that the relationship with my group is growing up!
Veronica
Dear Diary,
RispondiEliminaIn the last session there were all my peers, except for Assad that had Easter Holidays.
We talked about speaking foreign languages, and how we feel when we speak in other languages. The facilitator Gena told us that when she speaks in German she is very nervous and speaks more loudly. Rabin said that he is comfortable with his native language (Arab) and also with English, but in this case he tries to find the right word in the right context. I told them that when I speak English I’m very embarrassed and nervous, and I’m afraid to make mistakes, but obviously when I speak my native language I feel comfortable. The American student Dom encouraged me, and wrote to me in the chat box: “you have good English”. Rafy always writes to me in the private chat and he also tries to write in Italian, but the result is that he writes nonsense sentences and we laugh a lot. He added me on Facebook, and I think this is a good opportunity to keep in touch with him and all the others peers.
Then, we talked about the articles we had to read. They were about religion, and it was very interesting to listen to different points of view about this important issue. There was also a kind of misunderstanding between Rabin and Amani. Amani didn’t understand why Rabin said that religion wasn’t important for him. They talked a lot about that, and Rabin said that he doesn’t steal, he loves his family, and he doesn’t do anything wrong, so he doesn’t need a religion that imposes these obvious rules. On the contrary, Amani told us that she is totally involved in her religion, and that she finds happiness in religion because it is the reason of her life.
In the group there are also more moderate opinions, like Rafy’s and mine, because we are religious but we also think that the most important teaching of every religion is love.
At the end of the session we talked about the article about Muslims, which treated the differences between moderate and radicals and their connection with violence and terrorism. Rafy told us his experience in Iraq, where there were very violent small groups of radicals. The session continued discussing about political and present issues and topics (wars, terrorism, Isis…) and Rafy told us that last week he and Assad talked about the bombing and shootings that happened in Pakistan.
It was a very interesting session and after only four sessions I can say that we are a tight-knit group! All the guys are very kind and nice!
Lucia
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaI can’t believe that we are at the halfway, but we still have other four weeks together and I really hope that the time left will be as exciting as it was until now.
Last Wednesday our session was - how could I say it - “easy”, I suppose because we had to draw an animal, and I must confess, none of us is a great painter. Norhan described the characteristics of an animal “ found largely in Africa”, well the results were hilarious. Based on details she gave us we all thought of an elephant, when she actually was describing an anteater. The point of this activity was, I suppose, to show as how sometimes a thing it may seem something when it’s actually something totally different from what we expected.
Then, it was time for the work group. As I said earlier, I’m very satisfied about my group, since we all come from different societies; I believe this will give us a broader view on the topic, because we would have three different points of view, from three different countries on the issue of discrimination, inequality.
The subject of this past session was religion, and we had the required readings about this topic, however during the 2h we only talked about our personal experiences. Besides discussing how religion influenced our lives, we also discuss atheism. Gibson described his experience with religion, how some members of his family are very religious and how some of his friends make fun of him or don’t accept his “choice”; however he was very surprised that in our group we listened and we haven’t criticized his point of view, that we were so, as he called us, civilized. Then he asked us about our experiences with non- religious people and how we relate to them. I told them of my experience is with my atheist friends and how we don’t have a conflictual relation when it comes to religion and the fact that we all respect our choices when it comes to our personal beliefs.
During the session we were asked to think about two question to make to others about religion, and it’s importance in our life. Related to our experience Hamdi asked us what do we think about people that make fun of other religions under the “umbrella of liberty or freedom of expression”, I suppose he was referring to the events of 7 January in Paris. He also asked if it's an usual thing to make fun or criticize the president, or to mock other religions in the U.S. Gibson, but also Sara, they both argued that in fact there are many TV shows that use irony to criticize both politicians and the different religions; I, for instance, I told them of some satirical programs on the Pope, the old one and also the new one. From what I could see Hamdi was pretty satisfied of our answers.
At the end some of us had some question about the final project and, as usual, our facilitators were very helpful.
I must say I am more and more amazed of the level of trust we have in each other and our ability to speak so freely, but always respectful, of both personal and, sometimes, difficult issues, with people who do not always share our beliefs. I’m almost sorry that this experience will be over in less than four weeks.
Maria
Dear diary
RispondiEliminaMonday 30 March I participated at new meeting of solyia..
In this session there were only 5 people.
The first question of our facilitators was,what books would bring in a deserted island.?
I choose Peter Pan of James Mattew Barrie because this is the first book that I read when I was child, the second book is Lord of the ring because I like this type of history and in addition inspired one of the best movies I've ever seen.
The principal question of this session was how in our society is see the veil.
Everyone in general have responded that there is tolerance but is important see the face for a question of security.
The dialogue it has been very long and intense in particular between two guys Sami and Khealsea the first is Lebanese the second is American.
The second part of the meeting we have discussed the problem and relationship between people religious and no-religious.
I said that for me in Italy there is a good respect and dialogue between this two group don’t have a particular problem or clashes, at contrary in other state the situation is different because there are many religion, many different group, big community, an society more complex and for this reason is easy have a clashes or problem.
Then this dialogue I think that the question about religion is more felt about other guys because they live in a society more multicultural respect Italy.
In Italy most people are catholic, immigrant and other religion are in any case a minority for this reason for me is very interesting listen and understand my company because in this way I have the possibility to know a contest more complex respect the Italian society.
At the end of discussion our facilitators are very happy for this eloquence and interest.
The last minute we have speak about the final project and we have decide the topic to developed.
I have a little difficult to understand my American and Arab company because they have a pronunciation many different, complex, in addition for me this is the first time that a speak with a people that live in this country and don’t know anything of Italian language.
However I like this experian and I’m happy that continue.
Paolo.


Dear diary,
RispondiEliminalast Wednesday I had my fourth Soliya meeting. We were six of us.
Our main topic was the role of religion, but before to start interacting our facilitators made a question:
“You’ve been exiled to a desert island for one year. In addition to the essentials you my take one piece of music, one book and one luxury item you can carry with you. What would you take and why?”
Answers about the luxuries items were very different while about the book three of us pointed to the sacred text of their own religion (Bible or Koran); also the pieces of music were different. I answered: a photo of my family, the “Little Prince” book and Italian music. I asked them if they knew Italian music but apparently no one heard anything of it!
Then everybody moved on to face to face discussions about the final project for about 20 minutes. Mykia and I decided our topic: freedom of speech. We started explaining each other our personal vision on the freedom of speech.
When the plenary meeting resumed in the main meeting room we discussed freedom of speech as a group.
Yasser told us that sometimes not speaking or expressing yourself might save your life. I agreed and disagreed at the same time. This can be true in some extreme situations but more often people don’t accept what you say simply because you are not expressing yourself clearly. It is important to try to understand everybody’s view.
In the last part of the session we discussed the role of religion in our personal life and how we feel about people of different faith.
I'm a Roman Catholic but religion has no role in my personal life. I don't practice my religion. We agreed that different religions can have similar or different views on a specific issue but interreligious respect is essential.
Then we moved to how religion affects our society. I think that in modern times religion has an important role in the social and cultural private lifestyle but it doesn’t play anymore a significant role in politics. Youness said that religion strongly impacts the society; it all depends from what perspective we look at it; for example it is a strong mean of manipulation but it is also a source of spiritual energy. The Yasser’s opinion was that religion and politics should be mixed but he was very surprised to know that in Italy only the Roman Catholic religion is taught at school.
This session was very interesting. I learnt a lot and I am happy for the respect displayed by the group.
I'm looking forward to participate to next week session.
Marina
Dear diary
RispondiEliminathis week we spoke a lot about Muslim. We are only in four cause easter holidays in other countries. The next week is easter for me and other guys so we spoke a little about the next meeting. One of the guys at the start of the meeting said that western don't understand Muslim people. Starting to this argument we spoke a lot about the difference between Christian culture and muslim culture.after this we had 15 minutes to spoke about the final work with our partner. I and jenan spoke on skype about women rights and she said that she don't known what we have to do. After individual meeting we spoke a lot about ourselves and in the end we decided the argument for the next weeks : the iranian's nuclear crisis.
I'm ready for the next meeting
Bye
Giada
Dear diary,
RispondiEliminaThis is the fourth session Soliya.
this week I connect from my home country (Kosovo). I initially made it very difficult to connect because of the network. I was able to connect five minutes after.
Briefly we could not finish the discussion about the conflict between Palestine and Israel.
Immediately the best solution emerged, was the creation of two states. this seems the best solution to end the conflict.
The fourth session started in a very funny. Each of us has indicated in their own language: "how are you".
From this point it is open the whole debate.
Facilitators asked us what role religion occupies in our lives, I started the debate by saying that I believe in God, but I'm not practicing. Religion for me takes a secondary role.
Religion influences the society. Even in Italy the theme is similar, for example in Italy marriage "gay" is not recognized by the state. I believe this is also a problem of the presence of the Vatican State. His influence is so wide as to not allow the Legal Recognition to Unions "gay".
My companions agreed with me. Spain, a country much more religious of Italy, recognizes unions "gay".
The second theme addressed was the "paper". The "paper" was some European countries. Some of the most liberal countries were richer than other countries, where religion was present to a greater extent.
My Dutch friend Sara, described his country, pointing to the fact that religion is not very present.
The paper wanted to put this out.
The last point was treated: how religion was treated in society. The boys of the Islamic religion have immediately indicated the separation of Islam from terrorist organizations. It is the media that manipolizzano news in their favor.
The real Islam is not what the media describe. Islam has nothing to do with ISIS or with other organizations.
Their was a strong stand, none of them is recognized in Islam violent.
Once again was the theme of the "power" and how it interacts.
I said that in Italy the popololazione is very frightened by this "Ismal violent." Even the media on many occasions feed these concerns.
The available time was over. I said goodbye to my friends.
Next week we have to finish this topic.
shqiprim.