Carnegie Foundation offers grant to explore religion issues in “Islamic World”

The Carnegie Foundation is offering a grant through the International Center for Journalists to explore religion in the Islamic World. They always grab me by promoting it as an exploration of issues in “the Arab World” and then drill down to the Islamic World, like Arabs are an extinct breed or something. I really hate the shift from the secular Arab identity to the religious identity. Arabs cover both Muslims and Christians, and even Jews and others, too. It seems the outside world wants us to segregate, to separate or weaken the Arab Identity because, somehow, if they can just eliminate the word “Arab” from the world lexicon maybe all the problems will go away and they can then dilute the term Islamic because the majority of Muslims are NON ARAB.

There seems to be a growing trend where non-Arab and non-Islamic groups — but that also includes Islamic groups with heavy non-Arab leaderships like CAIR, for example — are trying to play towards the divisions that exist in the Islamic World. I have been to conferences branded as “Arab” that focused almost exclusively on “Islamic” issues.

You know, Ariel Sharon tried this in the 1970s, to promote the Islamic agenda above the Arab agenda in the Gaza Stripa nd that experiment failed — thanks to Sharon and Menachem Begin (excuse me while I clear my throat of the phlem that name creates) and his accomplice Yitzhak Shamir (what a destructive trio these fanatics were), the founders of Hamas were able to get Israeli support to launch the Islamic Association which Israel helped by allowing them to raise money and to control the Village System that Israel imposed to control Palestinians. And as soon as the group got powerful enough, they launched strikes during the first Intifada to take them over.

Yikes!

It doesn’t pay towards peace to go the religion route. The road to peace is through the secular groups, like them or not in the Arab World or in Israel, or in the region. As soon as a conflict becomes religious, it’s lost. The religious zealots cannot compromise on faith and faith dictates the vision for resolution of conflict — they win, you lose. Compromise is a sin. Haram. A shame.

But, it is so much easier to walk around the Palestine question by addressing issues as “Islamic” or religious, and then to bash people whor aise these issues as “anti-Muslim.” We’re not allowed to talk about these problems that exist.

But I will tell you that success comes from recognizing failures, not pretending you are wearing beautiful non-existent clothing. When you recognize failure and deal with failure (that means taking on the taboos and the tough issues and the embarassing issues) you can overcome challenges and succeed.

I like the ICFJ Carnegie project and even applied to deal with the issue of the vanishing Christians in the Arab and Islamic Worlds and the Middle East. You should apply, too. Doesn’t mean we can’t practice what we preach and change the system the right way and from both the inside and the outside.

We Arabs hate to deal with failure and anything that suggests failure like problems in our religion. “Problems? We ain’t go no stinking problems.”

Ray Hanania
www.TheMediaOasis.com

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