Jefferson Aero Plane

"You can't believe in that power anymore."

2012-01-25T09:41:00.003-06:00

One of my Iraqi friends from Damascus, Sarab Shada, is interviewed here by the local PBS affiliate. The interviewer notes that she is Iraqi, and therefore asks her to explain all of Middle East politics - and she does so, like a pro.

Sarab is currently studying at Loyola University in Chicago, and I think she will do great things.

She's also trilingual - English, Arabic, Neo-Aramaic. How many people can say that?

http://iraqistudentproject.org/

South Sudan

2012-01-21T20:48:00.000-06:00

On Thursday, I will be taking my first trip with the organization I work for. I am going to the world's newest nation, South Sudan, with my boss and some of our colleagues. We will be meeting a group of several hundred people coming out of slavery in Sudan, documenting their stories and giving them food and other supplies, and delivering medical supplies to our clinic in the area.

Or rather, they will be. I'll be taking pictures, learning all that I can, and doing my best not to get in the way.

I probably won't be back until a week into February or so.

One of my professors senior year shared this photo with our class. The more lit-up a place is on the map, the more connected it is to the rest of the world, by transporation and telecommunications.

See that dark red splotch in eastern Africa? That's where I'm going.

It takes a day to get from the U.S. to Syria. It'll take me four days to get to our final destination in South Sudan.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan this summer, six years after a peace treaty put an end to sixty years of nearly constant warfare between the Muslim North and the Christian, animist South.

A gentleman I met this week (who is in a position to know) told me that 80% of adult women in this country have been raped, and virtually everyone above the age of seven has seen a person killed in front of them.

I think it's safe to say I'm not entirely prepared for this. If it comes to your mind, please pray for safety and mental fortitude for me.

Much love to you all.

The End of History, Come at Last!

2012-01-16T15:30:00.000-06:00

"Ender's Game open casting call being held at the Hilton Garden Inn located in the Warehouse District of New Orleans on Saturday, January 14th from 11am to 3pm.

"Alexis Allen, along with Batherson Casting, are seeking bright and talented kids and teens ages 10-17 of varying ethnic background for the feature film production of Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"; based on one of the most famous science fiction novels of the last 40 years.

"The film stars Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin. Oscar-winning Director Gavin Hood will be filming Ender's Game in New Orleans from February until June 2012, providing those selected with up to 8 weeks of work."

- http://www.hatrack.com/

I am.

So very.

Excited.

"If the other fellow can't tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn't trying to kill you."

Movies in the Muslim World

2012-01-16T11:09:00.001-06:00

So, reading through a seven-year-old political column by one of my favorite sci-fi authors today, I came across this passage:

"Seeing Kingdom of Heaven this week, I was sharply reminded of the fact that Islam has produced great leaders who accomplished great things. The portrayal of Saladin in that movie coincided very closely with the historical record. And if this movie were actually to be shown in the Muslim world, Saladin's words in the script could be read as a political instruction manual for political Islam today." (Emphasis mine)

Kingdom of Heaven was actually shown in the Muslim world. And it was wildly popular.

I know this because a) I watched this movie in the Muslim world, and b) my Muslim Syrian Arabic teacher was a huge fan, and made us read dialogues for class about a bunch of friends who go to see the movie and talk about it afterwards.

One of the many assumptions about the Muslim world that goes too-little-challenged in our national dialogue is that the entire region is like Saudi Arabia. It's not. Saudi Arabia is the exception. In nearly every other Muslim country, social pressure is the only thing standing between you and movies, alcohol, strip clubs, and un-scarved women.

Or maybe, instead of using Saudi Arabia as a stand-in for the whole region, we've simply transplanted our conception of Eastern Europe onto the new Enemy.

But for the record - almost every kind of Western media is available in most Muslim countries. There is some censorship, of course, but it's mostly symbolic. Throughout the Syrian revolution, I could access the BBC, CNN and other news sites reporting daily on the Syrian security forces' atrocities. But Ha'aretz? (An Israeli newspaper). Not so much.

Far bigger obstacles to the free flow of information in the region are illiteracy, poor foreign language education, and low rates of book translation into Arabic. The UN's 2002 Arab Human Development report famously found that the entire Arab world tranlsated fewer books in the past 1,000 years than Spain translates in a single year
I was once shocked to find Patrick S. Seale's classic critique of the Syrian regime, Asad, in an open-to-the-public cultural center in Damascus.

Of course, it was in English.

Why would you watch news about Syria...

2012-01-08T20:31:00.003-06:00

...when you can watch satirical puppet shows made by the Syrian opposition?

I don't know who this guy is, but these videos are masterpieces. Wonderfully scripted, wonderfully voiced, great music and camera work. They evoke real laughs and real horror.

Most of all, they are completely accessible to Western audiences (their English subtitles are WAY better than anything the Syrian Ministry of Tourism has ever written), but still distinctly Syrian. There are tons of inside jokes and references to Syria's political culture, so that watching these puppet shows is an education in itself. Check out Episode 6, "Talk show," where the diabolical and oblivious Bashar character reinterprets a real-life Syrian propaganda song to assert his divinity:

"Didn't you hear the song that goes:

'Millions and millions of Syrians swear
We will build our country with you our president,
and we won't kneel except to God.'

I like this song a lot, by the way. I blast it in my car and drive in circles around Ummayyad Square."

When I started watching them, I assumed they would all be comedies. For the most part, they are. But episode 7, "Investigation," is simply a dialogue between a political prisoner and a guard who is torturing him:

Prisoner: You are here because you are not free!

Guard: What? Are you crazy? I am free! I can thrash you and crush you. But you can't do anything. I come and go, unlike you who's in prison.

Prisoner: Look, you are imprisoned just like me. I'll leave prison in a month or two. But you'll stay here! Because you are afraid to take your freedom!

And episode 10, "Devils," a dialogue between Bashar and two demons who come to advise him on the uprising, is nothing short of horrifying.

These are dark, dark times for Syria. While it is still nigh impossible to know what's going on inside that country, it seems that the regime's ten months of unremitting brutality has succeeded in fragmenting the formerly peaceful opposition into groups willing to use varying degrees of violence to achieve their goals.

On Friday, over two dozen people were killed in a suicide bombing near an elementary school in Damascus' Al Midan district, an area just to the south of the church where I lived last year. Two weeks earlier, 44 people were killed in twin suicide bombings near a security forces' station in a wealthy Damascus district.

The opposition claims that the government is behind these bombings. I doubt it. In the long history of Islamic terrorism, few radical Muslims have ever blown themselves up in the service of a secular state. One suicide bombing might have been a false-flag attack from the government; three is the beginning of an Islamist insurgency a la Iraq or Afghanistan.

The regime is entirely responsible for this outcome. By meeting peaceful protests and entreaties with force, it has succeeded only in thwarting the possibility of a peaceful transition, and given al Qaeda-minded radicals an entrance into this once-harmonious country.

There is no clear way out of this mess, no Tahrir, no Tmisoara, only a long, bloody struggle. Dark forces have been unleashed in Syria, and they will not be tamed by all the democratic reforms in the world.

Pray for Syria.

And then watch Bashar's kids staging a protest in his house:

Hmm, what an interesting point RICHARD DAWKINS

2011-12-22T08:47:00.002-06:00

"Men on a lower level of understanding, when brought into contact with phenomena ofa higher order, instead of making efforts to understand them, to raise themselves up to the point of view from which they must look at the subject, judge it from their lower standpoint, and the less they understand what they are talking about, the more confidently and unhesitatingly they pass judgment on it. ...From the basement one cannot judge of the effect of the spire. But this is just what the learned critics of the day try to do. For they share the erroneous idea of the orthodox believers that they are in possession of certain infallible means for investigating a subject. They fancy if they apply their so-called scientific methods of criticism, there can be no doubt of the conclusion being correct. This testing the subject by the fancied infallible method of science is the principal obstacle to understanding the Christian religion...for so-called educated people."

- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, 1893, p. 67, 71

The New Atheists: 118 years late to the game.

Further reading (from a communist, no less - recommended by the great Kenny Gradert).

PS: I've finished Islam Without Extremes by Mustafa Aykol, and hope to review it here soon. Now I'm working on this Tolstoy book. More insights as they come.

Alvin and I's Still Untitled Podcast

2011-12-09T07:26:00.000-06:00

My housemate Alvin Shim and I have been making podcasts. Alvin's the brains behind the operation. He picks the topic, poses the questions, edits the audio and writes out the transcript. I just run my mouth off. But it's a lot of fun.

Anyway, if you're inclined to have a listen, I'd love to hear what you think. In this episode, we talk about Rick Perry's new Iowa ad, "Strong."

http://alvinshim.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/podcast-perry-strong-dec-9-2011/

And here's the ad itself, in all its glorious condescension.

What Rick Perry says:

What Rick Perry means: "I think Iowa Republicans are stupider than potatoes with mouths."

Prove him wrong, comrades!

The Levant is Not Enough

2011-12-07T20:20:00.001-06:00

This graphic, courtesy of the the insightful and talented Adam McClure:

video platform video management video solutions video player

Etiquette note to this oh-so-cultured and Western president: Don't LAUGH when you're talking about the murder of 4,000 of your countrymen.

(Bonus quote from the interview: "We don't kill our people. No government in the world kills its people, unless it's led by a crazy person.")

Podcast!

2011-12-07T07:08:00.000-06:00

Podcast.

Fail of the Day

2011-11-27T12:26:00.000-06:00

While I love my church, it usually takes me an hour or more to get there on the subway, best case scenario, after which I have to walk about a mile to actually reach the church building. Since I have a new bike, I decided that this morning I would try to bike there instead. It’s only about eight miles by Google Maps’ reckoning, so I thought I’d have a nice, scenic ride instead of two hours of dark subway time.

Scenic? Yes. Nice? Not so much.

Turns out, at about the midpoint on the route I plotted between my house and my church, the Potomac River courses through a valley so steep that, according to the historical markers on the way, the Union Army used is as a natural defense for the Capital against the advancing rebel army.

Robert E. Lee I am not.

The bike path descends sharply downward into the valley, crosses the massive Chain Bridge, and then promptly runs into a highway with “no biking” signs posted everywhere. On the other side of the highway was a hill even steeper than the one I had just come down.

At that point I was already ten minutes late for church. So, I pushed my bike back up out the valley and pedaled sadly home.

At least it was a nice day.

Book Review: The Unmaking of Israel by Gershom Gorenberg

2011-11-25T21:59:00.000-06:00

I love Gershom Gorenberg. He is a magnificent storyteller, a bold whistleblower, a clear-minded historian, a sober analyst and a humble advocate. His books and writings, while almost exclusively devoted to Israeli history and politics, have a way of illuminating politics as a whole.

Gorenberg is an American-Israeli historian and journalist. I had the honor of hearing him speak in Jerusalem three years ago, and I have been a devoted fan ever since. I based one of my final papers in college on his book The Accidental Empire, which I’ve found myself coming back to over and over again ever since. And so, when I heard about his latest work, The Unmaking of Israel, I ordered it almost immediately.

The book does not disappoint. Instead of focusing on settlements or the conflict, Gorenberg examines the history of the Israeli political system as a whole, from the near-civil war between the Labor Party and hardline nationalists in 1948 to the division and paralysis of the present day.

Palestine-sympathizers are perpetually flabbergasted at the sheer ferocity and dogmatism of U.S. support for Israel. It seems completely disproportionate to America’s actual interest in the matter. What could possibly explain this?
they ask.

While some blame apocalypse-minded evangelicals, some cite the influence of the Israel lobby, and some see Israel as a projection of colonial power, I would argue that, while all of those explanations are true to some extent, the biggest factor in America’s unyielding support for Israel is our perceived cultural similarities. We look at Israel, and see ourselves – a first-world, secular-but-religious, democratic, filthy-rich, high-tech society with a shady (to say the least) founding story, under assault from Islamic terrorists.

A huge part of our getting over this most entangling of alliances will be to begin to see ourselves in the Palestinians as well. The Unmaking of Israel accomplishes the opposite. Gorenberg strips the mask of civilization off of Israeli politics, and shows us the tribalism and savagery at its core.

One priceless example from pg. 149: After listing some prominent Orthodox rabbis who have spoken out in favor of the rule of law in Israel, Gorenberg comments, “They provide a reminder – sadly necessary at the moment – that Orthodox Judaism and democracy are compatible.”

Judaism and democracy are “compatible”? That’s the way Westerners talk about Islam. Surely speaking about the State of Israel in the same way is beyond the pale.

Well, no. It only seems that way because Israel shares so many of our cultural trappings.

In fact, Israel is a land where the military’s chief rabbi proclaims that an army medic should allow a wounded gentile to die rather than break the Sabbath, where state money is used to build homes for one ethnic group on land stolen from another, where the government can only rely on certain (and few) military and police units to enforce the law, or risk mutiny and perhaps civil war, where the foreign minister openly advocates redrawing the country’s borders to exclude its minority citizens.

Gorenberg’s sobering conclusion: Zionism and Israel have failed to “graduate from being an ethnic movement to being a democratic state in which all citizens enjoy equality.” If Israel does not succeed in implementing the rule of law on its territory (and defining the borders of that territory), it will collapse into “a territory marked on the map, between the river and the sea, where the state has been replaced by two warring communities.”

As I said before, Gorenberg’s writing about Israeli politics has a way of illuminating all of politics. Seeing Israeli politics for what it is can help us in the States to do the same with our own. Americans tend to think of our political system as different in kind, not just degree, from the totalitarian menaces of the 20th century and the dictatorships and failed states of the modern era. We have elections. We have separation of church and state. We don’t target civilians in our wars.

And yet.

And yet, our politics, our magnificent constitution and checks and balances and educated citizenry produced the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the oppressive and one-sided politics of the IMF and World Bank, and scores of client dictatorships around the world.

To those on the outside, does the distinction in the manner in which these policies were arrived at matter so much? Are these disasters so easy to dismiss as aberrations in a system that otherwise delivers peace and justice? Is the destruction of Iraq merely a stumbling block on the road to the “least bad” political reality? Or is it a symptom of a political system that is just as rotten as those we vilify in our press and public rhetoric?

Anyway. It’s a great book, and I would recommend it to all students of politics and the Middle East.

Now that I’ve praised it to the firmament, let me enumerate its flaws.
Gorenberg is a forceful advocate of the two-state solution. One state for the Jews, one state for the Palestinians. Self-determination for all, everybody’s happy.

His argument against the “one-state solution” – one man, one vote, one government for all the Jews and Palestinians in the land – is that, “A single state would not be a solution – or even a workable arrangement… It would be a nightmare: another of the places marked on the globe as a country in which two or more communities do battle the most educated or well-connected members of each look for refuge elsewhere.” Gorenberg cites Lebanon as an example.

Yes, of course, it would be a disaster. And yet, The Unmaking of Israel does not seem to offer a way to avoid that outcome. Just because Lebanon is a perpetual mess does not make a “four-state solution” (Christian, Sunni, Shia, Druze) possible there. So too with the Jews and the Palestinians.

Gorenberg knows exactly what must be done save his country. The tragedy is that, in explaining what must be done, he demonstrates its impossibility.

One example: Gorenberg writes, “Ending the occupation is…the precondition for disestablishing religion and creating equality for the Arab minority.” This, he says, is because the occupation makes it politically impossible to include political parties representing Israel’s Arab minority in coalition governments, thus giving small Jewish ultra-Orthodox parties effective veto power on things like civil marriage and religious education.

This is akin to arguing that, in order to get into the car, we will need to drive to the locksmith.

A political party that has the power to block, say, civil marriage, most likely also has the power to block the surrender of the Holy Land, yes?

And once Israel somehow achieves a coalition government willing to end the occupation, how will it be accomplished? There are over 500,000 Jews living on occupied territory. As Gorenberg admits, even with the most creative redrawing of borders and land swaps, 65,000 settlers, at a minimum, will have to be evacuated to create a Palestinian state.

As Gorenberg details in the book, removing just 9,000 settlers from Gaza required a combined force of 25,000 soldiers and policemen, or almost three security officers per settler. The operation utilized 10,000 police, a third of Israel’s police force, which was called upon because Israel’s leaders were uncertain if the army could be counted on to carry out the evacuation without mutinying.

Will the Israel Defense Forces really carry out the biggest forced expulsion of Jews since 1948? Will Jewish soldiers deport Jews from Bethlehem and Hebron and Shechem and Jerusalem?

The uber-depressing reality of this conflict is that it has the potential to continue for decades, if not a century. While American presidential candidates grandstand about their unswerving support for Israel, Israel’s own policies have very likely already doomed it to dirty ethnic conflict for the foreseeable future. Two-state? One-state? Probably, none of the above.

For all the talking that gets done about Israel in this country, I rarely hear these realities acknowledged. If we’re going to continue butting in to this conflict, then it’s our responsibility to listen to voices like Gorenberg’s. There may yet be hope.

Speaking the Queen's

2011-11-16T22:10:00.002-06:00

About that last post...sorry if it threw you for a loop. Sometimes I get grandiose notions about writing here in Arabic EVERY DAY, and slowly building a bilingual audience. Then I actually try it, and it takes me half an hour to write three paragraphs, and I scale back my ambitions slightly.

...

I have a permanent place to stay, but not a permanent place to sleep.

I shall explain.

For the first five weeks I was in DC, my best friend since I was 9, Adam, let me crash on his futon in his tiny apartment in Arlington. This was a good arrangement, and I'm blessed to have friends as generous as him, but I clearly needed a place of my own.

I had originally planned to housesit for some Dordt alums in the area who were selling their place. That didn't work out in the end. So I got on the interwebs, and found a great house out in a suburb called Falls Church. There are six other Christian guys living here, most of whom have jobs in the city, and a few of whom are going to seminary.

So I moved into the house's basement two weeks ago. It's really nice, and very spacious - it has a kitchen, a living room and a bathroom. My housemates are great, although they're pretty busy. One of them works on for a congressman on the hill and rides the same train as me and reads the same science fiction novels as me. So that's pretty special. Another went on the exact same study abroad program as me a year after I did!

All of which is to say, it's very nice to be grounded for the first time in a while. But the basement apartment is unfurnished. And I haven't had the time to go bed shopping. So I've been sleeping on an air mattress for the past two weeks.

I'll get around to it. Eventually.

...

Almost every Sunday since I moved here, I have attended services at the Arabic Baptist Church, in the northwest corner of the District. I went the first Sunday I was here, the congregation welcomed me very warmly, and I understood a lot more of the sermon than I thought I would, so I've kept going. The congregation is made up almost entirely of Arab immigrants and their families - from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and elsewhere. I feel very blessed to have found this congregation, and honored by their welcome. The only hitch is that it's kind of far from my house. Hopefully I'll be able to keep going.

...

LAST Sunday though, my good friend Jordan, who was in Syria with me and now, providentially, is working with the Mennonite Volunteer Service in the District

invited me to go to a Syriac Orthodox Church service in Virginia. A bishop he knew from his time in Syria was visiting, and he wanted to see him.

Like the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, the Syriac Orthodox Church preserves the language of the Christians of Syria from before the Arab-Muslim conquest in the 7th century. That language is Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and his followers, and still widely spoken in Syria today.

The mass was awesome! The ushers gave us books that printed the entire liturgy in English, Syriac, and Syriac-transliterated-into-English-letters so we could chant along with the congregation. It amazed me how similar Arabic and Syriac are. Still, I was able to tell when the bishop stopped speaking in Syriac and started speaking in Arabic. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to which of the three languages was spoken at any one time. It was exhilarating.

...

My brother Simon and his friend Matt came to visit two Saturdays ago, my first weekend in the new house. They were kind enough to drive my parents' car home for me (I hate city driving, and I love the DC Metro), but that took them all day Sunday, so we had to pack all of our activities into Saturday. To that end, I marched them out the door at 9:00 AM and didn't bring them back until 10:00 PM.

We had a great time! Though, barring an imminent proletarian revolution, I'm pretty sure I've got some career-devastating dirt on my bro.

"Let a unbathed COMMIE teach our kids math? Not my Jimmy!"

...

Also - ALSO! - I am sharing my massive new basement apartment with one of my best friends from college, Proconsul Alvin Shim himself. His is a life to be imitated by all lost 20-somethings out there in Recessionland. Fresh off a year of teaching English in Korea, when I told him I was moving to DC for work, he decided to move here too - to job search. I have never done anything that courageous. I have no doubt he'll find work soon. Any company would be lucky to have him. And I am very blessed to have his company and wisdom. Here's to you, pal.

...

Work is good. But I can't really talk about it. Omar B. is probably watching this page...

...

With a paycheck comes an illusion of riches. I recently succumbed to this illusion by buying five books on Amazon, sheerly for pleasure.

Two days ago, the first three arrived. The Unmaking of Israel by Gershom Gorenberg, Islam Without Extremes by Mustafa Aykol, and Formic Wars: Burning Earth, by Orson Scott Card.

Ohmygoshimsoexcitedicanhardlywaittofinishallthree...No. No. Have to pace myself.

...

Speaking of books, my friend Adam (not the guy who let me crash on his futon) recently asked me this:

"What books were foundational for you? I'd like to read more but I don't know where to start. A budding Pacifistic Socialist needs some guidance."

Pacifistic socialist? Slow down, Karl.

The Accidental Empire by Gershom Gorenberg
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi
The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
The Unconquerable World by Jonathan Schell
Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid
The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria
The Inescapable Love of God by Thomas Talbott
The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul
The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky
The Scandal of Evangelical Politics by Ronald Sider
Living in the End Times by Slavoj Zizek
Jesus for President by Chris Haw Shane Claiborne (why lie?)
Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
Until Justice and Peace Embrace by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Mind you, these are simply the books I've read that influenced me the most. There are almost certainly better books out there.

What do you think, readers? Which books would be on your list?

...

If it's all the same to you guys, I'm not going to blog much more about the 2012 presidential race. What more is there to say than this: we live in an age and a country where the national frontrunner can forget which country we were at war in last, where our news media is so nihilistic that the only question they ask about any occurrence or utterance is, "Will this help/hurt him/her in the polls?," where a momentary brain lapse during a debate is both universally acknowledged to be an uncontrollable side effect of stress and universally proclaimed to be a candidacy-shattering moment, where candidates boldly propose cutting ALL foreign aid, only to have their spokespeople rush in after the fact to clarify that, of course, they didn't mean to imply that we would ever, EVER cut off aid to Israel.

In a race like this, camping out with a bunch of petulant signs and no demands actually is a rational alternative to voting.

...

Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin'.
Like the stillness in the wind
'Fore the hurricane begins,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking.

Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they'll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sands
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.

And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they're spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.

A song will lift
As the mainsail shifts
And the boat drifts on to the shoreline.
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck,
The hour that the ship comes in.

Then the sands will roll
Out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touchin'
And the ship's wise men
Will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watchin'.

Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'.
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Then they'll raise their hands,
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands,
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh's tribe,
They'll be drownded in the tide,
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.

دفتر اليوم بالعربي

2011-11-12T21:52:00.002-06:00

مرحبا و سلام, يا اصدقائي. قررت ان ابداء اكتب بالعربي هنا, على بلاجي. تبعا, اعرف سوف يكون كثير غلط, لاني مثل الولد بالعربي. ولكن, اريد ان امارس. ان شاء الله, شي يوم سوف اقرا هده كلمات و اضحك معكم.

الان, اعيش في مدينة واشينتن, العاصمة الامريكية. هده مدينة لها كثير عرب. تقريبا كل يوم, اسمع الناس يتكلمون عربي. احيانا, احاول اتكلم معهم. عداة, لا. انا لا اريد ان اعزبهم, و تبعا, في كثير امريكيين هنا انهم يتكلم عربي افضل مني.

ولكن اليوم, ذهبت الى حلاق, و كنت متفاجئ و سعيد, لانه الحلاق و اخه كانوا من الاردن! و ايضا كان فيه ضابط من السفارة الكويت. كلهم كانوا لطيفين فعلا, و عندما دركوا اني اعرف بعض عربي, تكلموا معي شوي. الضابط عزمني لاشرب قهوة معه شي يوم في السفارة!

ايضا اليوم, شتريت الدراجة. كان غالي شوي (ثمانين دولار) ولكن, امبيا كل شي هنا غالي. و ايضا,افكر انه الراجل هو باعه علي كان غشاش. صديقي شترا الهويس عشرة دولار, ولكن عندما حاولت اشتري نفس الهويس, قال "عشرين دولار"! فكرت كنت في القاهرة مرة ثانيا.

هدا بس. شكرا للكم لتقراون, و اذا تشهدون غلط كبير, اقولوني, من فضلكم.

مساء الخير و الله معكم.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

I went to Occupy DC today. Actually, today it was more like Occupy DC/Statehood for DC/Stop the Machine/Out of Afghanistan/Martin Luther King Jr. Dedication/Troy Davis was framed/Marxism, yay! The local DC political leadership decided to plan a march to call for DC statehood the day before the official dedication of the MLK Jr. monument. Of course, Occupy DC and all the other usual suspects had to join in.

It was fun.

---

"So, Joel, what do you think of the Occupy Wall Street movement?"

Why thanks for asking!

Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots, spontaneous outpouring of anger at the situation our country is in, and an acknowledgement that the democratic political process in the United States has failed. It has failed about as completely as it could without sparking an actual armed revolution.

The correct way to address grievances, we are told, is to lobby, write letters, and above all, vote. And vote we have. In 2008, after seven years of horrifically bloody war and the biggest economic disaster in eighty years, we replaced a WASP conservative president with our first minority president ever: a liberal, half-term senator of Muslim ancestry. If that wasn't a sign that the electorate was fed up with politics as usual, I don't know what could be.

That president has continued the last one's war policy almost unaltered - except for the new methods he has devised to flout the Constitution - and has done very little to help the millions of Americans facing unemployment or foreclosure, or hold accountable the financial sector that got us into this mess. So we voted the opposition party into power in Congress. In the past year and half, the opposition party has nearly shut down the federal government twice, nearly sent us into national debt default once, and has challenged the president on abortion, gay rights, healthcare, foreign policy, increased taxes on the rich - just about everything but help for the middle class and meaningful economic reform. Last week, after killing the president's plan to create more jobs, the Loyal Opposition unveiled its own job creation plan: repeal universal healthcare, add a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, expand offshore drilling, and cut corporate taxes (in a year when GE paid NO TAXES WHATSOVER). Thanks, GOP! Glad you're taking our Third World unemployment rate so seriously.

9.1% of Americans are unemployed.

17.8% are underemployed

25% of American children are in poverty.

Average wages for middle class and poor Americans have declined by 7% and 12% respectively in the past decade.

800,000 homes will be foreclosed on this year. 1 million were last year.

All this, in the richest country on earth. That's insanity.

Mass unemployment and poverty is only the biggest crisis our country is facing. If we ever get it sorted out, we will have to proceed to tackle the debt crisis, the entitlements crisis, the immigration crisis, the environmental crisis, the education crisis, and so on. And once the crises are dealt with, we must address the host of fundamental, unspoken unjustices of the American system: regressive taxation, massive corporate subsidies that distort the free market and undermine developing economies around the world, a military budget that exceeds the combined military budgets of every other country on earth, military aid to dictators overseas, the war in Afghanistan/with Pakistan.

Do YOU think, based on the last three years, our political system is up to the challenge?

The normal political channels are not working. The media cycle, the campaign finance system, and the two-party power structure all conspire to ensure that no one who might actually fix things will win an election. The odds that the 2012 elections will bring in leadership who would enact true change are similar to the odds that the 2005 Egyptian elections would have.

And so, our dispossessed have opted for an Egyptian solution. Go outside the political process. Occupy a public space. Interrupt business as usual. Focus the attention of the media and the political class on real issues facing us, as opposed to fake ones. ("Will Sarah Palin run? Will Amanda Knox be released? Do conservatives think Obama is the Antichrist?")

Thus far, they have manifestly succeeded. And for that, they deserve our gratitude.

---

"What do the protestors want?" the media and conservative politicians ask over and over again. It's a fair question. I asked it myself when the protests were first starting. At that point, I didn't think they would come to anything. The fact that they have become a global phenomenon WITHOUT a clear set of demands or objectives is astonishing, and should tell us just how bad things have become. Grilling the Occupy Wall Street protestors should be the last thing on our minds. In a world in this state, we should be posing questions to our political and economic class, as they are.

But if the protestors refuse to make demands...then how does this end?

Keep in mind that the whole point of these protests is to effect change OUTSIDE the normal political/economic system. I found this statement on a pro-OWS blog: "Making demands is ultimately disempowering because it gives the other side the power to address or ignore them as they see fit."

Those words sound like academic bullhonkey at first blush. But I find them kind of chilling. By not making demands of those power, the protestors are declaring that they don't recognize the power of those in authority. Nothing short of unconditional surrender will do.

Carrying that thinking to its logical conclusion leaves us with nothing less than a dictatorship of the proleriat stepping in to assert the "General Will" of the people. Hey, it happened in Egypt and Libya.

Of course, that won't happen. But assuming these protests spread, it does give the powers that be extra incentive to make concessions, eh?

The Mask is Off و نشاهد الوجه الحقيقي

2011-10-11T21:12:00.001-05:00

I spent more of my day than I'd like to admit translating a flurry of Facebook postings from my Egyptian Christian and Muslim friends. I learned a lot of new Arabic words - "cowardly," "dogs" [plurals are tricky] and a curse word that's pronounced "mdasesh" and isn't found in any of my dictionaries.

OK - some context.

On February 18, Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt after three weeks of massive street protests, transferring power to a military council. The military council pledged to restore order and hold democratic elections after an appropriate transitionary period.

Since then, Egypt's economy has stalled, its violent crime rate has exploded, at least one person has been arrested and hauled before a military court for saying mean things about the army on his blog, and most worryingly, violence against Egypt's Christians (10% of the population) has spiraled out of control. Scores of Christians have been killed in attacks by Muslim extremists on churches, priests, and Christian homes.

Still, there was still a chance that Egypt's new military rulers were serious about steering Egypt towards a genuine, liberal democracy. The Egyptian people trusted them. I did too.

Sunday, that question was settled for us.

On Sunday, 1,000 Egyptians, mostly Christian, but also some Muslims, marched in Cairo to protest the burning of a church in southern Egypt by a Muslim mob on September 30. (There's a book I want these fanatics to read. It imparts insights like this: "لا اكراه في الدين.")
The protestors, quite understandably, demanded better protection for Christians from the government, an end to inflammatory rhetoric against Christians on state TV, and the sacking of a governor who incited the mob.

A few hours into the peaceful march, the protestors were assaulted by plainsclothed thugs. When the protestors tried to resist, the military suddenly appeared with tanks and guns. Troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd, and the tanks starting deliberately running over protestors. When it was all finished, around 25 people were dead.

Egypt's military rulers appear to have found a solution to the embarrasment of Muslim-on-Christian violence: kill the Christians until they shut up about it.

The revolution is betrayed. The Egyptian military, having prospered muchly under three decades of rule by Air Force commander Hosni Mubarak, owns anywhere between 5 and 30 percent of Egypt's economy. That's not a whacked-out conspiracy; that's life in the third world. It seems clear now that the Egyptian military's strategy to survive the revolution is, and has been from the start, to assume the role of the Guardian of Liberty, transfer political power to a democratically-elected government that's seen as legitimate by the people, then slip behind the curtain to enjoy its portion. Equal rights for Egypt's Christians have no place in that strategy. The military isn't about to risk upsetting the majority on their behalf.

After this massacre - judging by the press accounts there appears to be no other word for it - Egyptians of good will, Muslim and Christian, may unite again in Tahrir to demand the end of the military power structure. Or, maybe, the military will succeed in its intimidation strategy, hold elections as scheduled on November 28, and run off into the night, plunder in tow and minorities hung out to dry. They may get away with it.

But know this, ya mushir: there is a God in heaven, and there is a Judgment Day.

The Weekly Standard explains why we should stick with Hamid Karzai

2011-10-06T22:52:00.000-05:00

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."

- George Orwell, 1946

"At the center of any effort to build an independent Afghan state is [President] Hamid Karzai, who is much maligned for a realpolitik approach to statecraft, ties to corruption, and a changeable personality. But however correct these critiques may be, it is also true that Karzai is the product of a particular political system, a man with clear interests and largely predictable behavior and, crucially, whose political objects largely align with our own in the region."

- Richard Cleary and Thomas Donnelly on the Weekly Standard blog today

And translating into Old English: "Yes, Hamid Karzai is an election-stealing, drug-running, double-dealing thug, but he's the only political figure in the country who will do our bidding, and really, what can else can you expect from Muslims? Let's continue to send him American money and weapons and young American men and women to die defending his regime."

Ben Ali Mubarak Qaddafi Saddam Suharto Pinochet Arafat Diem Zia Reza Shah Ceaucescu the House of Saud Saleh Bashir Montt Mobutu Karimov Bakiyev Duvalier. Mind you, this is only off the top of my head.

How much longer are we going to do this, kids?

Obama and Michelle pose with this guy.

Of Settlers and Cemeteries

2011-09-29T19:01:00.000-05:00

A good friend of mine from my semester in Egypt is currently attending med school in Beer Sheva, Israel. This is good for him, because he is an avid traveler, who documents his travels to many places* on his blog Not Enough Clothes in my Bag. Recently, he posted about his trip to Hebron, the former capital of ancient Israel, home to 400,000 Palestinians, 400 Jews, 2,000 Israeli soldiers and a whole heck of a lot of trouble. His writing is both entertaining and illuminating (and in this age of austerity, I think we can all appreciate the fact that he refuses to capitalize anything). I highly recommend reading this post.

A sample:

"there are all kinds of 'historical' placards in [Hebron] (in english), describing the variety of ways that the arabs have insulted judaism in the city throughout history. one talks about how they disrespected a jewish cemetary by allowing a farm to built beside it. literally across the street, there is an overgrown arab cemetary with an israeli army bunker built in the middle of it, and huge spools of extra barbed wire stacked on top of the graves."

That is all.

I miss you, Jason.

*Like Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kenya, India, Dubai, the UK, Nepal, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Greece, Iceland, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Montenegro, Oman, Qatar, South Korea, Serbia, Uganda, France, Albania, Italy, Sri Lanka and such.

Phantom Menace

2011-09-28T22:32:00.001-05:00

"The tribulation may be upon us," warns Washington State professor Matthew Avery Sutton in the New York Times.

Not the Great Tribulation predicted in the Bible. No, the tribulation that will be shortly ushered in by American evangelicals voting for "anti-statist" candidates, because of their fear that Obama is the Antichrist.

In times of trouble, from World War I to the Great Depression, Professor Sutton tells us, American evangelicals have long sought comfort and explanation in biblical apocalypticism. And these are times of trouble! Sutton concludes, "The sentiment that Mr. Obama is preparing the United States, as Roosevelt did, for the Antichrist’s global coalition is likely to grow. Barring the rapture, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry could well ride the apocalyptic anti-statism of conservative Christians into the Oval Office."

What evidence does Professor Sutton present to demonstrate this "growing sentiment"?

This three-year-old campaign ad from John McCain.

And that's it.

Sutton's piece was one of the Times's most e-mailed pieces last week.

Over at CNN's BeliefBlog, the editors have written a piece entitled, "A movement to paint Obama as the Antichrist?" They at least quote someone who's called Obama the Antichrist in the past year - a lone protester at a recent dinner where the president was raising money for his re-election campaign.

Based on that incident, Sutton's piece, and, once again, that pre-recession McCain ad, the editors ask, "What do you think? Is there a gathering movement to paint the president as the Antichrist? Are such charges overblown attempt to discredit Obama's critics?"

Do you want me to answer that honestly, BeliefBlog?

I'll be the first to admit it - evangelical politics, by-and-large, is whack. (Although considering the level of affluence we're afflicted by, it could be a lot worse.) But that doesn't mean the millennialists are on the verge of destroying the American system. The left's treatment of evangelicals in politics is starting to resemble the Oklahoma legislature's campaign against Shariah law. (With Oklahoma's Muslims constituting .008% of the population, it was a close call!)

Unemployment in this country has been nearly at 10% for three years, and we're most likely headed into another recession. Health insurance premiums are through the roof, as are insurance deductibles. The wars are going terribly. Social Security is going insolvent, and the immigration, education and environmental crises continue to fester, with scarcely any attention from the national government. 40% of the babies born in this country this year will be born out of wedlock, and a fifth of the pregnancies in this country will end in abortion. Our national debt is skyrocketing, and our federal government has, so far this year, nearly shut down three times.

Maybe that's why reactionary candidates like Bachmann and Perry are doing so well.

Or maybe it's because evangelicals who are scared of the Mark of the Beast are driving national politics.

You never know. As Professor Sutton tells us, "evangelicals have grown ever savvier and now constitute one of the largest interest groups in the Republican Party." And how is it that this ginormous interest group can't find better presidential candidates? "A leadership vacuum exists on the evangelical right that some Republicans — Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and even Ron Paul — are exploiting." Ah. A savvy, influential leadership vacuum. How incredibly devious.

Cultures rarely castigate the true sources of their decadence. The amount of abuse that Bachmann and Perry are receiving from the political elites are as sure a sign as any that, whatever their failings, they are the sideshow.

But maybe I'm wrong. Tell me readers - when was the last time you heard someone seriously claim that Obama is the Antichrist? For me, it was November 2008.

The State of Arab Pride

2011-09-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

Preface: I wrote this post six months ago, when I was still in Syria. Everyone concerned in the story is now outside the country, so I feel safe posting it. (Yes, I'm still a paranoiac. So sue me.)

March 7, 2011

I recently attended a college fair with one of my Syrian friends, who is trying to go study abroad. The fair hosted booths from colleges in Dubai, Malaysia, England, Turkey and America. Several Syrian universities also made an obligatory appearance: the University of Damascus and Tishreen University in Lattakia among them. The Syrian Ministry of Education also had a booth there. These booths were mostly devoid of activity. They had only a few standard pamphlets and posters, and few Syrians were looking at them. When I tried to ask about Arabic classes at the University of Damascus booth, the men seemed gratified and enthusiastic that an American was interested, but could do nothing more than refer me to the school’s website.

My friend lived for most of his life in America, and as a result did not learn written Arabic (which differs vastly from spoken Arabic) in school. Since all Syrian high schools use written Arabic, he is working towards taking the GED test, so he can go study abroad. At the fair, one of the organizers told him that even if he got an American college degree, he wouldn’t be able to work in Syria without a Syrian high school degree. I’m pretty sure this is crap, but it worried him, so he went to the Ministry of Education booth to clarify the point with the representatives there.

He ended up telling most of his story to a man behind the Ministry table. When he mentioned that he had only recently moved to Syria from America, the representative of the Syrian Arab Republic’s Ministry of Education, whose mission under the Syrian constitution is to create a “socialist nationalist Arab generation which is…attached to its history and land, proud of its heritage…” had this to say:

“Leesh rej3at?” “Why did you return?”

Why indeed? (In point of fact, he had no choice.)

I didn’t understand most of the conversation, but my friend later told me that in the end, the representative insisted that he would have to get a Syrian high school degree, and boasted that Arabic is the hardest language in the world. “No it’s not,” my friend replied. “What about Chinese?” At which point, the representative said, “We will never accept your trash degree here.”

I think my friend will live.

Now our lives are changing fast...

2011-09-07T22:18:00.001-05:00

This picture makes me smile. (If you're curious, yes, it really does. Hat-tip to my Iraqi friend Saif, who found this picture and posted it on his Facebook page.)

I post this picture because it portrays two things that, God willing, are about to feature very heavily in my life: Arabic, and Washington DC. This Thursday, I will be leaving to start working for a Christian human rights organization whose American branch is based in Washington.

The office where I'll be working is in sight of the Capitol building. I'll be living...actually, I'm not 100% sure where I'll be living yet. I'll keep you updated though. (I leave on Friday).

I will be joining my friends Adam and Jordan, and I expect eventually to be joined by my friends Alvin and Brian. I am driving, not flying, out there, and I hope to visit some dear friends from Iraq and Syria who are studying at universities between here and there. I am excited to see them, excited to live in a big city again, excited to start working for an organization I believe very strongly in.

How did all this come about, you ask? Good question. The answer's too long and complicated to post here. Short version: very randomly and very providentially. This is not at all what I had planned two months ago. As he is constantly reminding me, God doesn't care about my plans.

Although I'm not returning immediately to the Middle East on a long-term basis, my quixotic quest to learn Arabic continues. Washington DC isn't Damascus, but it does have Arab churches, Arab restaurants, Arabic classes and Arabic-speaking people. I hope to use this to my advantage. Plus, I plan to focus on Modern Standard Arabic, which is used very little in street conversation, making living in an Arabic-speaking environment somewhat moot.

Anyway, that's about it for now. It has been a good summer, a blessed summer. And now, once again, I'm off.

The leaves are falling all around. Time I was on my way.

Ali Farzat

2011-08-31T21:39:00.000-05:00

Ali Farzat is a Syrian political cartoonist.

To those who follow Syrian politics, that might seem like a contradiction in terms. As a rule, the Syrian dictators of the last forty years haven't taken kindly to dissent. Ali is a big enough man that he did it anyway.

When Bashar al-Assad first came to power in Syria in 2000, Ali was allowed to open an independent, satirical newspaper. However, Ali's work is such that even this small enterprise was deemed too dangerous for Assad to countenance, and in 2003, his newspaper was shut down.

"Mauritania: Leaders of military coup pledge of hold early elections"

My thrice-weekly bus ride through Damascus used to take me right past his gallery, near the Seven Seas' Square. I always wanted to visit it. When the revolution broke out, I lost my nerve. I didn't want to give Syrian intelligence any excuse to deport me.

Ali Farzat did not suffer from this same fear, and as the revolution intensified, he started drawing cartoons like this one, which illustrates President Assad's decree "lifting" Syria's emergency law.

But here's the one that really got him into trouble.

Last Thursday, masked gunmen grabbed him off the street, threw him into a jeep, and viciously beat him, breaking both his hands before dumping him on the side of the road outside Damascus.

Is the pen stronger than the machine gun? We'll find out soon enough.

Here's to Ali's health, and to good old-fashioned disrespect. God bless him.

Syria, Libya and the (return of the) Evil Neoconservative Plot.

2011-08-29T19:33:00.001-05:00

"Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

At his blog “Syria Comment,” University of Oklahoma Professor Joshua Landis sees a looming fight between the forces of good and evil:

Two distinct camps are forming to battle over Syria policy in Washington. The first is made up of the neoconservatives [boo!], who are busy fitting the Arab Spring into U.S. strategic interests as they see them. …The second group are the “realists,” with a liberal coating.

…The first group want to take down Assad’s Syria [does he mean Syria’s Assad?] and the second do not. The first see it as a vital U.S. strategic goal, the second do not.

Plausible. As an ally of Iran, an adversary of Israel, and a stubborn fomenter of terrorism and unrest throughout the Middle East, the Assad regime has long been on the neoconservatives’ hit list. But wait. The plot thickens.

The neocons are not advocating direct U.S. military involvement in Syria today.

Right. Because they aren’t crazy. Or…

They understand this is not politically feasible.

Ah.

But they are preparing the grounds for a much higher level of military commitment in the future. …

Their strategy for angling the U.S. toward making such a commitment in the future is economic sanctions. ...Should Syrians start to starve, as they surely would if real sanctions are imposed, the moral argument for intervention and military escalation would improve. …Liberals would have to support the military option in such a case.

So let me get this straight – the neoconservatives desperately want the United States to invade Syria, but they know the American public won’t go for it. So their plan is to starve Syrians until the liberals agree to an invasion on humanitarian grounds?

That’s a conspiracy theory worthy of Assad’s state media (who have been busy detailing the activities of American-Israeli-Lebanese-Saudi-Qatari-supported “armed terrorist gangs” in Syria for the past six months.)

On a more serious note, now that we are celebrating the downfall of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, a downfall that was helped a lot by a NATO air war against Qaddafi’s military, a lot of Americans (and Syrians) are asking – why don’t we treat Assad the same way? Why no military action in Syria?

For several very good reasons.

Libya was in a very specific situation when we intervened there. A popular protest movement had broken out against Qaddafi. Qaddafi had responded with extreme violence. The protest movement then morphed quickly into an armed revolution, which quickly freed large swaths of Libya from Qaddafi’s control. Qaddafi then fought back with his well-armed, fiercely loyal military, rolling back most of the rebels’ gains and committing horrific atrocities along the way, until the rebels controlled only the large eastern city of Benghazi. Qaddafi threatened a massacre of Benghazi’s 700,000 inhabitants in a speech on the radio, and his military forces moved inexorably forward.

That was when we started bombing.

For the next five months, NATO essentially functioned as the air force of the advancing rebel army, until the rebels finally entered Tripoli last week and swept away the last remnants of Qaddafi’s dictatorship.

In Syria, the opposition has no army, no governing structure, no territory and no real organization. The vast majority of the violence in Syria consists of Assad’s police, elite military units or paid thugs beating, killing and kidnapping protestors.

What would a NATO intervention in Syria look like? The Syrian revolution is a war without fronts. It is fought every day in every city. A plane cannot stand between a protestor and a policeman. Would we simply bomb all of Syria’s police stations until Assad called it quits? And what would come after that?

Furthermore, while Libya is not an ethnically homogenous country, the Libyans were completely united in their hatred of Qaddafi. The same is not true of Syria. Assad still has a large base of support among the Syrian people, and worse, it’s largely determined by religious affiliation. Assad is an Alawite Muslim. Syria is a majority Sunni Muslim country. The majority of Sunnis despise Assad, while the majority of Alawites, Christians, Shiites and Druze (as far as we can tell) support him.

The way I see it, the Syrian Revolution can go three ways: it can stay peaceful, and be defeated in the end by Assad’s willingness to murder. It can stay peaceful, and steadily gain support as Assad’s atrocities turn away more and more of his supporters, until at last Assad’s government collapses. Or it can turn violent, and plunge the country into a vicious ethnic civil war, a la Lebanon or Iraq.

Which outcome is a NATO bombing campaign most likely to produce?

Mohammad once told his followers, “You will be governed by what you are.” In my favorite novel, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, one adolescent prodigy says to another, “The world is always a democracy in times of flux.” Every tyrant’s power rests on the willingness of his people to obey. If enough Syrians decide they’ve had enough of Assad, he will go. If they don’t, American bombs won’t convince them otherwise.

Koran by Heart

2011-08-28T14:29:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I watched one of the saddest documentaries I have ever seen: Koran by Heart. (It’s free online here: http://vimeo.com/27416877).

The documentary follows three young children who traveled to Cairo, Egypt in 2010 to compete in an international Qur’an recitation competition – a young boy from Senegal, another young boy from Tajikistan, and a young girl from the Maldives. All three of them have memorized the entire Qur’an, from start to finish, in the original, classical 7th-century Arabic. Every syllable, every vowel, every inflection.

None of them speak or understand Arabic. None of them know the meaning of what they are reciting.

To devout Muslims, that’s irrelevant. The spoken word of the Qur’an, understood or not, is significant. It carries power within itself. Muslims believe that Mohammad recited the Qur’an to his followers exactly the way the angel Gabriel recited it to him (cf. Galatians 1:8), and that it has been preserved for them in that exact form to this day. According to one of Mohammad’s preserved sayings, when the Qur’an is recited, God’s peace descends.

Nabiollah, the boy from Tajikistan, was enrolled in an Islamic school by his father, whose own education was cut short by Tajikistan’s civil war, and who desperately wants his son to be educated. Early in the film, we learn that Nabiollah’s school has been shut down by Tajikistan’s government, as part of its campaign against Islamic extremism. His father takes him to a boarding school in another city, hoping to get his son accepted there. When the headmaster interviews Nabiollah, he realizes that Nabiollah’s entire education has consisted of memorizing the unintelligible sounds of the Qur’an. He can barely read or write his own language, Tajik.

Rifdha, the girl from the Maldives, is a beautiful, hyperactive 10-year-old girl, who sometimes speaks to the camera in her native language, and sometimes reads carefully crafted essays in English from scraps of notebook paper. Her mother boasts to the camera about her daughter’s perfect scores in math and science, and tells Rifdha to talk to her father about the possibility of getting a secular education.

Rifdha’s father is a Muslim fundamentalist who is not impressed with the level of piety exhibited by the Muslims he meets in Cairo. He believes it is a sin for a man to cut his beard, and tells the camera that any part of man’s leg above his ankle left uncovered by clothing will burn in hellfire. The documentary uses him a counterpoint to Egypt’s deputy minister of religious affairs, who is in charge of the competition. The minister rages against the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism, which can only be corrected by a return to the truth of the Qur’an. Cut to Rifdha’s father, who has made his prodigy of a daughter memorize the entire Qur’an in a language neither of them understand. He insists that his brilliant daughter will not be allowed to become anything but a housewife.

In one scene, Rifdha and her mother have a private reception with the former “president” (blood-soaked dictator) of the Maldives at his home. The ex-strongman complains to the camera about the rise of fundamentalism in the Maldives – an odd complaint from a man who made it illegal for any of his citizens to belong to a religion other than Sunni Islam, a law that stands to this day. (“لَآ إِكۡرَاهَ فِى ٱلدِّينِ.” “Let there be no compulsion in religion” – Sura 2:256, as translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali). The ex-president asks Rifdha why her father didn’t come with her to visit him. “He’s at the mosque,” she replies.

Frankly, Arab-centrism is on full display in this film. The Arab judges are constantly making remarks about how amazing it is that these kids “who don’t even speak Arabic” are doing so well in the competition. Despite their amazement, it doesn’t seem any provisions are made for those competitors unfortunate enough to come from non-Arabic-speaking countries. The rules are explained to Nabiollah in Arabic, even though, as the judge says while laughing, “you have no idea what I’m saying.” After passing the first round, Rifdha is left completely oblivious to the fact that there is a second round of the competition two days later, apparently because she and her father didn't understand the announcements. In one heart-rending scene, a non-Arabic-speaking African boy is told to begin reciting from a certain verse in the Qur’an. The prompt he is given appears in multiple chapters in the Qur’an, and he begins reciting the wrong passage. The judges repeatedly cut him off and yell at him in Arabic that he has the wrong passage. Of course, he doesn’t understand a word. Tears streaming down his face, he bravely finishes the passage (all the while I’m screaming at the screen, Ween mutarjim? Where is your freaking translator?) He is failed out of the competition.

The filmmakers do a pretty good job of masking their feelings about their subject matter, but I don’t know how any fairminded person can watch this film and come away feeling good about it. Here are three kids who are absolutely prodigious. What should we do with them? Let’s have them memorize an entire book in a language they don’t understand and that no one even speaks anymore. Will they someday get a decent education and realize the potential of their stunning talents? Eh, maybe. Hey, let’s have the kid with the nice voice who doesn’t even know how to read recite for the unelected mass murderer who rules our country!

And remember everybody – extremism is bad.

In his speech at the awards ceremony in the film, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, unaware that he will be on trial for his life in under a year, declares, “Tonight is the holiest night of Ramadan, the Night of Revelation, when the Qur’an was first revealed. The night of wisdom, to lead people from darkness into light.”

Not quite yet, apparently.

Hama

2011-08-07T22:16:00.001-05:00

I made this video after my trip to Hama in January 2011, halfway through my nine-month stay in Syria. I intended to post it while I was still in Syria (which is why my narration is so oblique.) I never got around to it. Now that the Syrian army is attacking Hama once more, I thought some of you might want to see this beautiful city. The people of Hama are, without exaggeration, the friendliest people I have ever met. In three days, I had coffee or tea with seven groups of complete strangers, and probably turned down twice as many invitations. They sure could use a break. God bless them.

(Everything about this video/slideshow is highly amateur. Please have mercy on it.)

Imperial Insanity

2011-08-05T13:56:00.000-05:00

This morning over breakfast, my younger brother Simon once again recommended Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22 to me. (Is breakfast too early in the day for literary philosophy? Not in my family.) He explained, "The Catch-22 in the book is, you can only get a discharge from the frontlines of the war and go home if you're insane - but no sane person would WANT to stay, so your desire to go home is proof of your sanity."

The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its operational arsenal. There are only 3,158 cities in the world with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

But all of those weapons mean nothing if you don't actually have flesh-and-blood people ready to push the button. Not pick up a phone and tell someone else to push the button. Actually push the button that will send a nuclear warhead flying through space to the other side of the world to vaporize and sicken millions of people.

Where do those people come from? And how does the U.S. military train them to do their jobs?

Last week, we got a partial answer.

Apparently, the U.S. Air Force enrolls its nuclear missile launch officers in a training course on war ethics. The course uses many different sources to justify the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal, including St. Augustine and the Bible. By way of explanation, David Smith, a spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command, told the Washington Post that the program's purpose was to “help folks understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. In the missile launch industry, it takes a certain mindset to be able to walk in the door and say, yes, I can do that.”

Yes, I suppose that goes without saying.

But don't worry. American civil society is all over this one.

Concerned about the content of the course, a group of 30 Protestant and Catholic military officers took a powerpoint from the training course to an organization called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which then released it to the public. The Air Force quickly announced that the course was being redesigned, presumably to remove religious references, or at least supplement the course with teachings from Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and secular humanism that justify maintaining a standing threat to murder millions of human beings. That way, our country's precious wall between church and state will remain intact.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the foundation, wants to reassure us that he isn't anti-Christian. “This isn’t about attacking someone’s faith,” he told the Post. “What it’s about is remembering that in this country … we separate church and state. They don’t do that in other countries. We do that here.”

There. Feel better now?

Jesus-free since 2011.

What Kind of America Do You Want? (Pt. 2)

2011-08-04T17:07:00.001-05:00

Well.

I read an (I thought) excellent book this summer: The Unconquerable World by Jonathan Schell. I wish I hadn't returned it to the library so I could quote from it now, but one of Schell's main points is: Empire abroad is corrosive to liberty at home. This seems to be a pretty well-established law of modern history. When a democratic government acquires the power and the will to dominate entire foreign nations with violence, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep that government from doing the same at home. Returning to the example of Israel, the Jewish state's refusal to relinquish its "accidental empire" is starting to produce some nasty results, the most outrageous and recent of which is a law banning boycotts of goods produced by Israeli settlements built on colonized land. To sustain its colonies, Israel must place limits on free expression at home.

What about here?

I am convinced that the U.S.'s global power has grown to the point where it can't possibly be regulated by a concerned public in the same way that our economic and domestic policies can. Sure, Iraq and Afghanistan grab the headlines (sometimes), but our foreign policy touches every country on the planet. There is no way a single person, much less an organized constituency, can keep it all straight. For instance, do you know our country's policy towards Equatorial Guinea? It's pretty horrifying. Have a look-see.

Our Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. They haven't done so since 1941. Following the Vietnam disaster, Congress succumbed to the realities of empire and passed a law called the War Powers Act, giving the president the authority to go to war for 90 days, after which he could seek a congressional "authorization" to use force in lieu of an actual declaration of war. Ten years ago, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of military force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (It was as vague as that.) Today, our current president is using that resolution to occupy one country, Afghanistan, and bomb three others - Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen. He's been bombing a fifth country, Libya, for 126 days without any congressional authorization at all. His official explanation? It doesn't qualify as "hostilities." He's ordered the assassination of American citizens. Warrantless wiretapping, military tribunals - all standard procedure. This is what an antiwar president looks like in the American empire.

I am currently reading a non-fiction book called Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, which follows the tragic tale of a Syrian-American family living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. (Thanks Alvin!) The book's main subject, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, stayed through the storm to protect his house and rental properties while his family evacuated. He was seized by the military from his own home on suspicion of being a terrorist (really) and was held for 23 days without counsel, without being charged, and without being allowed to call his desperate wife, who we certain he had been killed in the post-storm chaos. In effect, he was disappeared by his own government.

Early in the book, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco announces that "war-hardened U.S. soldiers were on the way to New Orleans to restore order at any cost. 'I have one message for these hoodlums,' she said. 'These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will.'" (p. 118). Later in the book, A. Zeitoun's wife ponders the news reports of the military being deployed to New Orleans to "maintain order":

"[Her] mind spun as she read about the unprecedented concentration of armed men and women in the city. ...Blackwater USA, a private-security firm that employed former soldiers from the U.S. and elsewhere, had sent hundreds of personnel to the region. They were there in an official capacity, hired by the Department of Homeland Security to help maintain order. They arrived in full battle dress. ...As well as she could surmise, there were at least twenty thousand National Guard troops in New Orleans, with more arriving every day. ...If each one of those soldiers had at least one M-16 assault rifle, there were about twenty thousand automatic rifles in the city. Too many. And if Governor Blanco was right, that these were vets coming straight from Afghanistan and Iraq, it could not bode well for her husband. ...There were 5,750 Army soldiers in the New Orleans area. Almost a thousand state police officers, many of them there with SWAT teams, armed for urban combat. ...And snipers. They were sending snipers into the city to shoot looters and gunmen. Kathy added it up. There were at least twenty-eight thousand guns in New Orleans." (p. 194-196)

A. Zeitoun was held in a massive prison that was built nearly overnight at New Orleans' train station just two days after the storm hit. Eggers: "This complex and exceedingly efficient government operation was completed while residents of New Orleans were trapped in attics and begging for rescue from rooftops and highway overpasses. The portable toilets were available and working at [the prison] while there were no working bathrooms at the Convention Center and Superdome a few blocks away. Hundreds of cases of water and MREs were readily available for the guards and prisoners, while those stranded nearby were fighting for food and water" (p. 311)

Who says empire never comes home?

All of which is to say: empire is not simply another side project, another thing to cut. It is something that has already changed the fundamental character of our nation, and will change it further if we cling to it as doggedly as we have thus far.

What kind of America do we want? We can't have both the empire and the republic, and not just because we can't afford both.

Full disclosure: four years ago, I found myself on the opposite side of this debate. I was in one of my college's student research seminars, presenting a response to a paper from a Kuyperian scholar about the future of globalization. In my response, I argued that there was going to have to be a dominant superpower in the new world order. I argued that, given our democratic, religious and liberal heritage, that superpower should (continue to) be the United States, rather than China, Russia or Europe. Professor Kok challenged me on this point in the question-and-answer session. He reminded me that according to 1 John 5:19, the whole world is under the control of one person. Like any good Dordt freshman, I was about to answer, "Jesus," when he cut me off and said, "Read the passage, and you'll find out who that is."

What kind of America do we want? The Debt Crisis is over. The question is still unanswered.

What Kind of America Do You Want? (Pt. 1)

2011-08-03T17:36:00.001-05:00

So, the Debt Crisis is over.

At least until next year.

In this intensely divided political environment, what everyone seems to agree on is that this is a terrible deal. It raises the debt ceiling, which was necessary, but in exchange, we get less than a trillion dollars in cuts over the next decade. (Our national budget is $3.7 trillion a year.) No new taxes, even on those who could well afford them, and no cuts to our biggest entitlement programs.

Under the deal, a special special committee will be set up to recommend a whole 'nother $1.2 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving. Their recommendation will have the rare advantage of an undelayed, unamended up-or-down vote. Hopefully their recommendations will be good and hopefully the vote will be "up." But even then, we'll have no permanent solution to our debt problem, and our economy will still be languishing. And probably, their recommendations will only lead to another fight, this one in an election year.

So...there you go.

I'm not interested in assigning blame. We're in the mess we're in not because the Tea Party is crazy (though you could make that argument) or because Obama is a bad negotiator and too-righteous in his own eyes (and he is). Both sides are responsible. Both sides set down "red lines" that were incompatible with each other. Both sides thought they could not compromise without betraying their core principles, and both sides were right. We're in this mess because our country has overextended itself.

This country has made more promises than it can keep. The time is coming when we will have to break some of those promises. We haven't reached that point yet, but this crisis makes it clear that we are reaching it. We cannot be a country that provides quality education to all its children AND maintains a global network of military bases AND gives free healthcare to all its poor and elderly AND subsidizes health insurance for everyone else AND periodically bombs and occupies rogue states AND gives old people paychecks for being old AND is an industrial power AND is environmentally friendly AND is a free market low-tax paradise AND is a place where everyone owns their own home AND has a military budget equal to the military budgets of the next twelve countries after us combined AND that is "the last best hope of mankind" whatever the heck that means.

No doubt we would like to be all those things, because no presidential candidate that hasn't at least paid lip service to all those things has even come close to winning in decades. But we cannot. It is a pipe dream, and we are exhausting ourselves trying to accomplish it. The Tea Party may be misdirected and misinformed (and really, really annoying) but its enduring power and appeal testify to this fact. This country is not headed in the right direction; it's headed in three or more different directions, and it's starting to tear us apart.

American antiwar activists love to show pictures like this one:

"Whoa, look man, more than half our budget goes to the military, that's so whacked-out and here we don't even have government-provided daycare in this country..."

FALSE. If anyone ever says something like that to you, or shows you a pie chart like the one taped to that van, visit upon them a scowl of withering contempt, and then explain the following:

That pie chart shows DISCRETIONARY spending - or, money that is spent at the discretion of the current president and congress. But more than half of federal spending is MANDATORY - that is, the government is required to spend it by law. This includes Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid - both of which carry price tags higher than our defense spending (impressive as it is.) A more honest pie chart would look like this:

Over 37% of that circle is money we don't have.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel conquered territory three times the size of its own, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol asked President Lyndon Johnson for continued military support. Johnson responded by asking, "What kind of Israel [will] we...be expected to support...What kind of Israel do you want?" (Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire, p. 127 - yes, I cite this book a lot. It's awesome, that's why.) This is the question America faces today: What kind of America do we want? The empire, the farmer-governed republic, the social welfare state? There are precedents for all of these in our national narrative, but we cannot be all of them at once. Not anymore.

So...where should we start?

I went to Point of Grace Church yesterday, and now I want to know…

2011-07-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

What does it mean to be a Christian?

What good does it do for us, or anybody else?

Honestly.

If you acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life and the Lord of the universe, what does that mean? What does that look like? How does that separate you from other people? What is the essence of “calling on the name of the Lord”?

Do we just need to get the name right? Is it enough to refer to our Lord as Jesus, or Yeshua, or Yesua, depending on what language we’re speaking? Do we have to know that he lived as a man in first century Palestine, and died on the cross for our sins? Do we have to declare that he is a part of the indivisible Trinity? Is that all?

At the conclusion of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan destroys the old, fallen world and brings all his followers into a new Narnia, deeper and fuller than the old. There, the protagonists of the story are shocked to find a soldier from the enemy nation, from the Calormen Empire, who worship a bloodthirsty god named
Tash. The soldier tells them the story of how he met Aslan:

“[He] said [to me], ‘Son, thou are welcome.’ But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no servant of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.’ Then I…said, ‘Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?’ The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, ‘It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites – I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.”

100,000 civilians were killed in Lebanon’s civil war from 1975 to 1990. The war was triggered when gunmen belonging to a Christian militia group, alarmed at the growing number of Muslim Palestinian refugees entering the “Christian” nation of Lebanon, opened fire on a bus full of Palestinians, killing scores of civilians. On September 18, 1982, following the assassination of the Christian president-elect of Lebanon, Bashir Gamayel, Christian Lebanese militias entered two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and murdered around 800 Palestinian men, women, children and babies, sometimes carving Christian crosses onto the chests of their victims.

Who accepted that deed? Aslan or Tash?

In the 1990s, as the communist state of Yugoslavia was rapidly disintegrating into a patchwork of warring nationalities, the Christian Serbs of Yugoslavia set out to seize as much land from the dying country as they could. The best way to keep a Christian country Christian, they figured, was to cleanse Serb-held areas of their Muslim inhabitants. This was accomplished through a campaign of forced relocation, rape, torture, indiscriminate shelling of Muslim towns, and outright massacre. When the Muslim town of Srebrenica, once designated a “safe city” for Muslims and guarded by UN peacekeepers, fell to Christian Serb forces in July 1995, the Christian commander, Ratko Mladic, seized every Muslim male in the city, 7,000 in all, marched them into a football stadium, and executed every last one of them.

Who accepted that deed? The Lord Jesus or the prince of this world?

The speaker I heard at Point of Grace Church yesterday told us that the Allah of the Qur’an is the Satan of the Bible.

Perhaps.

But when that same speaker called on us to vote for leaders who would close all the mosques in the United States, ban Muslim immigration to the United States, expel all Muslims from jobs in the U.S. military and American airports, cut off all foreign aid to Muslim countries, and deport our Muslim population, or else the Muslims would take over our country and we would lose our freedom – and his listeners applauded and shouted “Amen!” in response – who accepted those words as a sacrifice?

When he told us that the former king of Saudi Arabia used to travel around with a slave in case he needed an immediate heart transplant, that Muslims in the U.S. military refuse to kill other Muslims, that Obama’s church sends money to Hamas, that Obama’s church pays for abortions, that Muslims worldwide are part of a conspiracy to infiltrate and take over America, that Obama is deliberately bringing in thousands of Muslims to shift the demographics of the U.S., that Obama specifically invited the Muslim Brotherhood to listen to his address in Cairo, that Muslims have never invented anything, that Obamacare is a plot to bring more Muslims to America in the form of doctors and nurses who will replace the ones being driven out by shrinking profits - was he speaking the language of truth, or the language of the father of lies? (John 8:43-44).

I am not exaggerating a whit. The entire service, the pastor (!) informed us, will be posted on Point of Grace’s website. You'll be able to watch it for yourself, here, if you can handle it.

The speaker told us that President Clinton had betrayed America and Christianity by attacking Serbian “Christians” in Europe and allowing their Bosnian Muslim enemies to come and live in America. He repeatedly conjured up the image of Hillary Clinton kissing arriving refugees from Bosnia in welcome, as if that would disgust any right-thinking Christian.

One of my bosses in the fields this summer is a Muslim Bosnian woman named Amira (Arabic for “princess”) who came to Iowa in 1995, at the height of the Serbs’ campaign to kill and drive out the Muslims of eastern Bosnia. She greets me every morning with a giant smile. “Hello, Mr. Joel!” she says in a beautifully thick Bosnian accent. She worries about her daughter’s ear infection, makes sure we drink plenty of Gatorade in the 110+ heat index, and commiserates with me about my fears for Syria.

Who is more closely following the path of Christ? Amira, or Point of Grace’s speaker, the pastor who prayed over him, and the audience who applauded him?

“Hold on, Joel – are you saying that profession of faith in Christ is unimportant?”

I don’t know, my friends. All I am saying is this: By their fruits, you shall know them.

That, and:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” – Matthew 7:21

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” – Luke 6:46

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?” – James 2:14

“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.” – James 3:9-10

“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.” – I John 3:14

These verses are in the Bible for a reason.

The speaker in question is Usama Dakdok, an Egyptian Baptist Christian who runs a ministry, “The Straight Way,” to educate Christians about Islam. He is insistent that his first name be pronounced “Yoo-sama,” not “Oo-sama.” (When I lived in Egypt three years ago, I had a Christian friend named “Oo-sama.” He felt no need to change its pronunciation.) He tells us that the first time he saw a Muslim in America, he knew freedom in America was doomed. To those who claim, “Only 1% of Americans are Muslim; how could they possibly be a threat?” he says, “Would you take only a centimeter of blood infected with AIDS?” He is certain that President Obama is a Muslim in hiding, who is working steadily to destroy the United States financially and militarily. He knows this because Obama was “born a Muslim,” and in Islam you cannot leave the faith without someone issuing a fatwa calling for your death. There are over a billion Muslims, and not one has issued such a fatwa. Therefore, all of them must understand the plan. Yoosama told us stories of how he, pretending to be a Muslim, spoke in Arabic to other Muslims in the U.S. and confirmed their love of Osama bin Laden and hatred for the infidels. He told us the death of Osama bin Laden was faked. He claims that Obama is trying to give the Iranians the nuclear bomb, that he orchestrated the Arab spring in order to bring Muslim regimes to power in all the nations around Israel, which will soon have to fight for its life – and if the U.S. doesn’t support Israel then, God will judge it with firestorms, earthquakes and hurricanes.

And, in case you missed it earlier, he wants us to close all the mosques in America and deport all Muslims from America.

And his “Christian” audience applauded and shouted “Amen” when he said that.

Yoosama ended his talk with a call for all of us to turn over our lives to Jesus. You can only be free in Jesus, he told us – which is why we’ll lose our freedom if people who don’t believe in Jesus keep moving here. He told us, “If you can’t name the place and time you were born again, then you’re not a Christian!” I can’t name the place or the time. And that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. My King allowed himself to be tortured to death for my sake, and the sake of the lost. I want nothing to do with Usama’s king, who wants to terrify me into kicking the lost out of my homeland.

I don’t claim that twelve non-consecutive months in the Middle East make me an expert. But I do know something about how Christians and Muslims get along in Egypt and Syria, and it’s not a merry story. There are fourteen hundred years of strife between the two groups, even if it’s below the surface most of the time. The vast majority of the time, the Christians, being the minority, are the victims. As Usama Dakdok, the South Lebanon Army, the Phalangist militias, and the Army of Republika Srpska demonstrate, sadly, this dynamic of persecution has sometimes managed to reduce the gospel to a tribal siege mentality in Middle Eastern Christians, with deadly, even genocidal consequences. I don’t blame Usama for his hatred. I pity him, and I grieve over the difficulties he must have had growing up as a Christian in Egypt. I do blame Point of Grace Church for inviting him to purvey his conspiracy theories and blood libels in this country, which until lately has been perhaps the most welcoming Western country for Muslim immigrants. We have suffered no Muslim persecution. We have no excuse.

Dear readers, I’m sorry this post isn’t very funny or entertaining. I get sick at heart thinking about this whole mess. During my sojourn in Syria, I often despaired at finding people I could talk to who would share common ground with me. Who I wouldn’t have to convince that the U.S. government was not behind 9/11, that the Holocaust really happened, that the CIA was not orchestrating the Syrian revolution, that Jews don’t drink blood for the Passover, that their Muslim countrymen weren’t ready at the drop of the hat to kill their men and rape their women. I longed to be back in America, where I could talk to people who were both in touch with reality as I know it, and willing to look past the religion of their neighbor and see him as a person.

Can you imagine how depressing it is to come home to this?

When did these twin toxins of bigotry and conspiracy theorizing infect the church I grew up in? Did it happen while I was away? Am I now seeing the American church with clear eyes for the first time, as a result of being away? Is a black man as president all it took to send us completely over the edge?

When did the American church become like this? When did it become a rendezvous point for scared white people, instead of a home for the dispossessed and an army of the mighty, ready to face death for His sake and the sake of the least of His brothers all day long?

Hate crimes against Muslims in the United States are on the rise. This is not an accident. Are American Christians going to be the protectors of our Muslim brothers and sisters, or will we feed the hatred?

If you think I’m wrong, if you think Usama Dakdok is right on any point, PLEASE e-mail me or leave a comment. I’m not angry at you, I promise. I just need to understand, for the sake of my own mental health. Please let me try to convince you.

Oh God. Restore us to yourself, LORD, that we may return; renew our days as of old.

Unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure.

Finally - the truth about Islam REVEALED

2011-07-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

It's been a mystery for fifteen hundred years, but the suspense comes to an end this Sunday, at a megachurch in the Des Moines metropolis.

Where I live!

How serendipitous.

Point of Grace Church, in Waukee, is devoting its Sunday morning service to this revelation, as well as a two-hour seminar Sunday night.

Here's the link to the trailer (yes, trailer) Point of Grace set up for its "Revealing the Truth About Islam" session this Sunday. (Anyone know how to embed videos from Vimeo? I'm such a dinosaur.)

If you don't take the time to watch the trailer, here's my trailer for the trailer:

[Footage of the 9/11 attacks, accompanied by scary scary Oriental music]

"We all know the horrors of terrorism."

[Footage of Muslims speaking scary-sounding Arabic on the TV nooz]

"But did you know that secret FBI documents PROVE that American Muslims are planning to set up a caliphate here WITHIN YOUR LIFETIME?"

Really, Point of Grace?

"Really, Joel."

Ok, fine.

According to Point of Grace's website, this Sunday's event is only part of a monthlong series entitled "The Agenda." The website's graphic for "The Agenda" shows the words "The Agenda" above a Star of David, a cross, and an Islamic crescent, all superimposed over a duststorm. I can only imagine what this agenda contains, or whose it is.

(Oh, and did I mention how I found out about all this? A Facebook ad.)

My beautiful, talented and worldly-wise mother asks me if the fact than an Egyptian Christian, Usama Dakdok, is leading the talk lends the whole thing credibility. My answer? More likely than not, it detracts from its credibility.

Don't get me wrong - Egyptian Christians rawk. But based on my limited experience with them, they are not the best source of information on Islam. Egyptian Christians live as a minority in Egypt, and have an, at best, rocky relationship with their Muslim countrymen. American Christian readers: Would you want Malcom X to tell Arab Muslims "the truth" about Christianity?

[I do two minutes of internet research.]

Apparently, Mr. Dakdok is, among other things, a proponent of the "Obama is a Muslim" meme, which, unfortunately, no birth certificate can ever disprove.

Polytheism!

I may go to Point of Grace on Sunday, if only so I can blog about it later.

Some initial thoughts:

1) There is no such thing as "the truth" about Islam. Islam is not a country, a political party or an organization, with unified tenets and goals. "Islam" exists only in the minds of one billion plus people around the world, all of whom perceive ethics and reality a little differently. If you want to know "the truth" about Islam, go talk to one of them. (Believe it or not, they live here too.)

2) Re The "horror" of terrorism: We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.

Someone wrote that once.

A Surprisingly Lucid Statement about Israel from Michelle Bachmann

2011-06-27T18:14:00.000-05:00

When I first heard Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann's name during the rise of the Tea Party in 2009, it was only because she was being relentlessly mocked on cable news and the internet for the crazy things she said. (Example:
"I find it interesting that it was was back in the 1970's that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter.")

Michelle Bachmann is now running for president. And if you still know Michelle Bachmann as "that crazy lady from Minnesota," then you REALLY need to watch this video:

Reserve all your judgments on the content of her talk for the moment. Wasn't she really...eloquent? Poised? Warm? Logical? Sophisticated even? I even found myself nodding along when she talked about the dangers of Middle Eastern populism. Her defense of our mindless alliance with Israel was not completely mindless! I don't think I've heard anyone defend it better.

I dooubt she'll get the nomination, but I think she's in the race for the long haul. Time will tell.

Ok. Time to unleash our judgments.

For me, the key to this whole video is when she tells us about her summer volunteering in Israel in 1974. This was less than a year after the October 1973 war, the closest Israel ever came to losing a war to the Arabs. By all accounts, the Israeli public was deeply shaken by the war. In his amazing book The Accidental Empire, Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg writes, "By the war's end, 2,656 Israeli soldiers had fallen, equivalent to the United States losing 165,000 men in nineteen days. Israel was a country of bereaved parents, widows, orphans too young to remember fathers. ...The Israelis...suffered World war I-level losses..." (p. 258-259). No doubt the Israelis Bachmann encountered that summer when she was eighteen years old felt extremely vulnerable, and were extremely security-minded.

Perhaps this explains Bachmann's extremely dated attitude towards the Israel question, which she sums up for us at the end of her video:

"We must ensure that Israel is strong, and gets stronger, so that it remains capable of defending itself at all times and under all circumstances."

Strong and gets stronger? How could Israel possibly be stronger?

Israel is a country that bombs other countries at will. In 2007, when they discovered Syria was building a secret nuclear reactor, they flew planes all the way across Syria to bomb it. No one tried to stop them. It was not a unique occurence. Israel has bombed Syria with impunity several times in the last decade, for various reasons. During the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli planes buzzed the Syrian president's house.

What would the United States do if someone bombed one of our nuclear reactors? If foreign planes flew low over the White House to scare President Obama out of his bed?

I'm not criticizing these actions by Israel - I'm just using them to illustrate the fact that, militarily speaking, Israel can do pretty much whatever it wants. It can do things no other Middle Eastern country even dreams of.

In short, we are WAY past the "drive the Jews into the sea" portion of our program. There is no military threat to the state of Israel today.

This misunderstanding of Israel's security situation also shows up in Bachmann's description of Obama's call for Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories:

"But shockingly and frankly unforgivably, at this time of unprecendented flux and rising dangers, President Obama just told Israel that Israel has to give up its right to defensible borders in order to appease the Palestinians. That would be the same Palestinians who don't even recognize Israel's right to exist!"

That would also be the same Palestinians who have no independent state, no army, no navy, no air force, no currency of their own, no seat at the UN, no borders at all (much less "defensible" ones), no right to travel from one Palestinian town to another twenty kilometers away without waiting for hours or days at an Israeli military checkpoint. The same Palestinians who live as exiles by the millions in refugee camps throughout the region.

(By the way, in spite of all this, and contra Bachmann, the Palestinian leadership DOES recognize Israel's right to exist - and has for eighteen years.)

Appeasement is letting Hitler take over Czechoslovakia because he promises you he won't invade France if you let him have it. (Pinky swear!) Letting the Palestinians have their own country, the one they were promised sixty-three years ago when their homeland was torn in two to make way for the Jewish state, is not "appeasement." It's mere justice.

Which brings us to the real threat to Israel.

Israel is the Jewish state. The majority of the people living under Israel's rule are Palestinians. The Palestinian birthrate is double the Jewish birthrate. Within the next few decades, Israel will face a choice: 1) permanently disenfranchise the Palestinians and enshrine Jewish minority rule in law somehow (in South Africa they called this apartheid), 2) move all the Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan by force (in the Balkans they called this "ethnic cleansing"), 3) give the Palestinian majority equal rights, or...4) withdraw from the Palestinian territories so that an independent Palestinian country can come into existence.

Choice three would end the Jewish state forever. Choice two would kill the Jewish state's soul. Choice one would provoke a new Palestinian struggle for freedom which would one day, inevitably, succeed. (Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "As soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.") Only choice four keeps the dream of a Jewish state alive. Nothing can protect Israel from this choice - not its nuclear arsenal, not its military aid from the U.S., not its omnipotent military, not the support of American evangelicals. The debate about "defensible borders" for Israel is hopelessly old-fashioned. The only way Israel can save itself from destruction is by giving up its defensible borders.

It's long past time for lovers of the Jewish state to wake up and smell the the hummus.

Got Your Proletariat RIGHT HERE

2011-06-18T11:17:00.000-05:00

Deir az-Zour, Syria, yesterday.

183 days ago, a Tunisian man lit himself on fire to protest his degrading treatment at the hands of the Tunisian government.

94 days ago, I was riding in a car with a Christian friend, who told me that some troublemakers stirred up by President Assad's exiled uncle, Rifaat, had held a protest in Damascus' famous Hamidiyye market that day.

Since that unthinkable weekend, Syria has experienced thirteen straight weeks of protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. If figures from the UN are to be trusted, Bashar has killed 100 protestors every week of the uprising.

And still they come.

Yesterday, according to witnesses inside Syria, security forces fired on protestors in six different cities, killing around eighteen people. All eighteen of those people must have known the risk they were taking as they exited the mosque with their angry, shouting brethren. They went anyway.

One of the dead was reported to have been killed in a protest in Aleppo. If this is true, he would be the first protestor killed in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, which until now has been quiet as a peep. The uprising is not dying down. It's spreading.

When the Syrian military laid siege to the southern town of Deraa in April, a Syrian pro-regime friend of mine told me, "The army cannot fail. Because after he sends the army, what else can the president do?"

Indeed - what can he do? Kill a 1,000 people a week? 10,000? Start razing cities? What can he do that won't enrage the Syrian people even more? The man has no answer for these people who would rather die than let the truth about their country go unspoken. There were more protests in Deraa yesterday.

Is it too soon to hope that this might, indeed, be the end of the Assad regime?

In Eastern Europe in 1989, most of the uprisings against the communist regimes ended in negotiations between the regime and the opposition. The regimes resorted to these negotiations when they realized that it was the only way to break the stalemate, that they could no longer govern their countries without the opposition's compliance. The main exception was Romania. Romania's dictator, Nicolae Ceaucescu, turned his tanks on the protestors. He and his wife were both shot after a one-hour trial on Christmas Day.

In a very real sense, both the president and the protestors are fighting for their lives on the streets of Syria. I'm afraid that after all the bloodshed in Syria, the chances of peaceful resolution have dropped to nil. If the protestors give up, the Syrian intelligence services will pick up every one of them. If they take power, Bashar will hang in Merjeh Square.

I'm just saying, Bashar. If you need a place to stay, give me a call.

I know it's really selfish of me, but I have three very dear friends in Syria who will be going to school in North America this fall. I just want them get out of that country and be here with me in the first world, at least for the time being. Please join me in praying for their safe arrival, and for the people of Syria.

Here's an excellent article about the residual support for Bashar among Damascus residents, especially Christians, written by an undercover BBC reporter in Damascus: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13805396.

And here's a video of the mass pro-regime demonstration the government staged in Damascus on Wednesday. You can barely hear the chants over the sound of the military helicopters flying overhead. I saw the same helicopters during the pro-regime demonstrations I got caught in on March 29. Guess Bashar really trusts his "supporters"!

Wireless Telegraphy!

2011-06-17T13:22:00.000-05:00

On June 10, I had the privilege of discussing the Arab Spring on my alma mater's radio station. Dordt's president has a weekly radio show about current events, and he invited me, my amazing professor from my Egypt semester, David Holt, and two of my good college friends, Adrian Hielema and Micah Schuurman, to discuss the recent uprisings in the Arab world. Micah lived in Egypt for a year and a half before the uprising, and Adrian smelt the tear gas in Tahrir Square. I really appreciated getting their takes, and you might too.

Here's the link if you want to take a listen:
http://kdcr.dordt.edu/cgi-bin/programming/conversations/list.pl

I realize I'm probably really late to the party...

2011-06-17T09:55:00.001-05:00

But this song, and this video, are incredible:

In my dreams, we're still screaming...

More jokes from Syria

2011-06-16T12:02:00.000-05:00

A man is walking through the desert, and gets attacked by a hyena. “God, save me!” he cries out. And God strikes the hyena dead with a lightning bolt.

The man continues on his way, but soon is attacked by a wolf. “God, save me!” he cries out once again. And God strikes the wolf dead with lightning.

The man continues on his way, and is attacked a third time, by a lion. “God, save me! Kill the lion!” the man cries out. And God replies, “I can’t.”

---

For reasons I don't understand, Homs is the most-mocked city in Syria. It's like West Virginia. When the Syrian uprising spread to Homs, my friends dug out all their old Homs jokes.

---

A man from Homs went to the doctor. The doctor told him, “For your health, you should walk five kilometers every day.” Ten days later, the doctor received a phone call from the same Homsian. “I’m in Aleppo. What do I do now?”

(I like this joke mostly because I know enough Arabic to tell it in Arabic.)

---

How many devils does it take to tempt a Homsian? Four – one to seduce him to an evil deed, and three to explain the evil deed to him.

---

A long, long time ago, the people of Homs were at war with a nearby city. Inexplicably, fire and heavy objects were falling on Homs from the sky. “How are they doing that?” the Homsians wondered. So they sent some spies to find out. In the enemy city, they saw a long, black cylinder that the enemies were loading up with gunpowder, explosives and heavy balls. “We gotta get one of those – only bigger!” they decided. So in the main square of Homs, they built a giant cylinder and filled it with as much gunpowder and heavy objects as they could find. All the people gathered to watch the attack and celebrate their victory. The match was lit, the cylinder exploded, and the entire town of Homs was laid waste.

The few surviving Homsians gazed open-mouthed upon the destruction. Finally, one of them turned to his friend and said, "Wow. Just imagine what it did to the other town!"

---

There was a big lottery in Homs last week, the biggest in Homs’ history. The winner received one Syrian pound a day for the next million years!

---

An American, A Frenchman, a Lebanese man and a Syrian are in a plane that’s damaged and losing altitude fast. The pilot yells, “Quick! Throw off anything you can bear to part with! We need to lose weight!”

The American throws a bag full of money out of the plane, saying, “I have plenty of money, I don’t need this.”

The Frenchman throws a box of cheese out of the plane. “I have plenty of cheese,” he says. “I don’t need this.”

The Lebanese man grabs the Syrian and throws him out of the plane. “We have plenty of Syrians,” he says. “I don’t need this.”

---

(This joke starting spreading after Mubarak was toppled in Egypt.)

"Did you hear? A bishop was thrown into prison yesterday."
"What? Why?"
"He was walking around throwing holy water on everything, shouting, 'Mubarak! Mubarak!'"

(Explanation: "Mubarak" is the Arabic word for "blessed." Syrian priests and bishops really do use it that way in their rites.)

Michael Weiss update and the Christian condition in Syria

2011-06-15T09:18:00.002-05:00

Regarding my earlier post, Mr. Weiss was gracious enough to write a detailed reply to my letter. Essentially, he believes that the current self-designated leadership of the Syrian opposition is liberal and non-sectarian (which I don't disagree with, but doesn't assure me that Syria's future will be liberal and non-sectarian), and that most of the Christian expressions of support for Assad are coerced to some degree. He passed along this video made by someone in the Syrian revolution, which shows Christians standing with Muslim protestors in a number of Syrian cities. (The Arabic text at the beginning says, "Christians and Muslims: One Hand."

This morning, the Catholic News Agency carries commments by a Christian bishop from Aleppo, Syria: Antoine Audo of the Chaldean Catholic Church.

The "fanatics" behind the Syrian uprising, he says, "speak about freedom and democracy for Syria but this is not their goal. They want to divide the Arab countries, control them, seize petrol and sell arms."

Pointing to neighboring Iraq, where half of the Christian population has been killed or driven away, he said, “We do not want to become like Iraq. We don’t want insecurity and Islamization and (to) have the threat of Islamists coming to power."

But what about the crimes of the Assad regime? Audo claims that there is a "war of information" being waged agaisnt Syria by "BBC and Al Jazeera, there is an orchestration to deform the face of Syria to say the government does not respect human rights and so on."

So...the government really does respect human rights? Audo: “Syria has a secular orientation. There is freedom. We have a lot of positive things in our country.”

What do the people think? "Syria must resist – will resist. 80 percent of the people are behind the government, as are all the Christians."

Audo sums up his feelings this way: “We want peace and security ... we do not want war and violence and we very much hope that in the next few weeks the situation will be better.”

In all of this, Audo is parroting the line of the Syrian government perfectly. There's the Arab nationalism, the wild accusations against BBC and al Jazeera, the call to "resist" the lone "fanatics" who have somehow brought one of the world's premier police states to the brink of collapse without any popular support. And since this is Syria, the question is, did he mean it? Or does he understand that his job, and perhaps his life, would be worthless if he said anything different?

My best guess is: both.

I heard the same lines from most of my Christian friends in Damascus, in private conversation. I know those conversations were not coerced. The Christian support for Assad is real, and their fear of the Islamists is real.

Consider Audo's line: “Syria has a secular orientation. There is freedom. We have a lot of positive things in our country.” This isn't just crazy talk. Before the uprising started, I had never felt safer anywhere than in Syria. Syria is a country where you can walk alone in a big city in the middle of the night, without fear. There is no terrorism, no war, no food insecurity. Combine all that with protection from religious persecution, which Assad provides better than any other Arab leader, and it's easy to see why Christian feel they have everything to lose in this revolution.

One of my Christian friends once asked me, "Which is more important - freedom or security?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. He wasn't some pretentious American 20-something who's never faced a day of insecurity in his life grandstanding against the Patriot Act - he was a Middle Easterner. His country borders Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, and he meant it. I tried to answer with something trite like, "You can't have one without the other," but he wasn't buying it, and neither did I. Another Syrian friend told me, after he had to change his Easter travel plans due to the violence, "I was never scared in my life until the uprising started." Would you trade the ability to go visit your parents in a neighboring town without your van being shot at by snipers for the right to vote? Neither would I.

This is the dynamic I see in Syria. It's extremely corrosive to the church's role as a prophetic voice (e.g., "Do not shed innocent blood in this place!" - Jeremiah 22:3), but it's reality. And after all, the American church doesn't have a lot of room to talk.

Is Audo's claim that 80 percent of the people stand with the government true? I have no idea, and neither does anybody else. I'm fairly certain he's right about the Christians supporting Assad. He could very well also be correct about the 80 percent. A police state is far more susceptible to dissent and discontent than a democracy; 20 percent of the population can wreak a lot of havoc. This is not to say, of course, that 80 percent of the people love Bashar and want him to rule for the next thirty years, only that 80 percent of the people prefer that outcome to violent revolution.

Down the Memory Hole

2011-06-11T11:44:00.000-05:00

Sarah Palin has a new Facebook note (don’t judge me, alright?) entitled, “Obama’s Strange Strategy: Borrow Foreign Money to Give to Foreign Countries.”

Palin opens with this blast of plain-speakingness: “Should we be borrowing money from China to turn around and give it to the Muslim Brotherhood?” Oh snap! Oh no she didn’t! Oh yes she did.

“Given,” Sarah gives, “that we are running massive deficits and are drowning in more than $14 trillion in debt, and despite not knowing who will rule Egypt until its election this fall, this strange strategy may be the end result given President Obama’s announcement that he is committing $2 billion to Egypt’s ‘new government.’”

“Now,” she continues, “given that Egypt has a history of corruption when it comes to utilizing American aid, it is doubtful that the money will really help needy Egyptian people.”

Exactly – because nothing has changed in Egypt in the last six months, right? No massive, popular, nonviolent uprising against a dictator the U.S. paid off for three decades? Maybe it has something to do with that “new government” you so helpfully put in quotation marks in the last paragraph? Just checking.

“Couple that with the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is organized to have a real shot at taking control of Egypt’s government, and one has to ask why we would send money (that we don’t have) into unknown Egyptian hands?” Sarah asks.

Good point! I wonder what we can do to make sure the Brotherhood doesn’t take over. Show the Egyptian people that the U.S. stands with them in their revolution? That they don’t need to resort to Islamic extremism to be independent and secure? What’s a practical gesture we could make to help convince them? Let’s brainstorm that one.

Sarah’s post garnered 3,838 comments. I skimmed through fifty of them. None challenged Sarah on Egypt; two challenged the GOP’s tax policy.

One of these commenters wrote, ”Its [sic] amazing how this 'ignorant' woman can make a common sense statement that points out the stupidity of our leaders. Would like to see just what they teach in those IVY league schools to produce these elite pundits.”

Ugghh…

MAYBE they teach that every year for the past thirty years the United States has both borrowed money from China and given $2 billion in aid to Egypt? That six presidents and sixteen congresses stood behind that policy without controversy? That the only thing that’s different this year is that there’s a chance our aid money will be spent to better the lives of the Egyptian people, rather than line the pockets and fund the security forces of a corrupt, murderous regime?

There’s a reason we spend so much money on education, Ivy League or otherwise, a reason we don’t simply watch CNN to inform ourselves, a reason we don’t just whip out our "common sense" and make spot decisions when it comes to issues like, I don’t know, the biggest political upheaval in the Arab world since 1918. Understanding the world requires context, history, and an ability to at least guess at how our actions look to people on the receiving end.

I’m not exactly sure why this sets me off so. Part of the reason might be that I stayed up late last night arguing on Facebook with an educated Muslim Egyptian man, who is convinced that the CIA is responsible for the violent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Egypt in the last few weeks.

God save us from our respective stupidities.

Open Letter to Michael Weiss of the Henry Jackson Society

2011-06-08T12:36:00.000-05:00

Mr. Weiss,

I am writing to you about your recent piece in Slate, “Meet the Syrian Opposition.” I recently returned from nine months of living and teaching in Syria, and while I completely share your sympathy with Syria’s liberal opposition, I fear the picture you’ve received of Syria from its opposition leaders is dangerously inaccurate.

You make much of the oppositionists’ claim that there is no sectarian divide in the opposition to Assad. I can tell you for a fact that there is. I lived and worked among the Christian community in Damascus, and never once met a Christian who did not support Assad. The Patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church praised him in his Easter Day homily. The Greek Catholic Church also hung a massive banner bearing the president’s face above the street leading to their patriarchate. Syrian Christians, in my experience, are terrified at the prospect of majority rule in Syria, and I cannot blame them for their fear, especially considering the Christian experience in Muslim-ruled Arab states. You write that, “The oppositionist in Hama, Syria's fourth-largest city, assured us that Christians had joined in Friday prayers at the Great Mosque in that city.” To me, this is simply inconceivable, under any circumstances. I am 90% sure this is not true, and 100% sure that it does not reflect the attitude of most Syrian Christians.

In one paragraph of your article, you try to diminish the fear of an Islamist takeover of Syria by noting that the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely destroyed” in Hama in 1982, that it has been banned for decades, and that the opposition leaders disavow the Brotherhood. You finish with this sentence, “Notably, one slogan heard as early as the second week of protests was: ‘No to Iran, No to Hezbollah. We want Muslims that fear Allah.’” Why is this notable? Iran is a Shia-ruled state, and Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim organization. Syria is a majority Sunni country, and its Islamists are Sunni Islamists. This chant is exactly what we would expect to hear from Syrian Islamists: anti-Shia rhetoric. Despite the suppression of the Brotherhood, we must face up to the fact that for forty years, the mosque has been the only legal gathering place in Syria. We should not be surprised if the uprising has Islamist overtones.

Like you, I am aghast at the crimes of the Assad regime, I am terrified at what crimes it may yet commit in its craven fight for survival, and I am praying for its quick demise. But simplifying the story of the Syrian revolution to one of a righteous, united people struggling against the evil dictator is extremely harmful, especially when it comes to policy-making. The Syrian people are NOT united. Assad won’t allow them to be. He and his father have spent the last forty years asphyxiating any kind of social organization that didn’t depend on their favor for its survival, and when he goes, he will leave a gaping void. There is a very real risk of sectarian civil war in Syria. If we don’t face up to that, we only make that war more likely.

Thank you for working to bring these events into the public consciousness. May we celebrate the liberation of Syria soon.

Respectfully,
Joel Veldkamp

PS: Did you choose the photo that ran with your piece in Slate? The protesters in the photo are clearly demonstrating in support of Assad. I thought it was a curious choice.

The Syrian Revolution: Media Siege

2011-06-08T11:25:00.003-05:00

My photo album from the Syrian Revolution is here (don’t get too excited.)

When it comes to news, living in Syria is like living inside a black hole. You can see everything going on outside of Syria with perfect clarity. Inside Syria, you have no idea what's happening.

Before the revolution started, foreign journalists in Syria actively censored themselves to avoid being deported by the government. I once came across this line in a New York Times story about Syria: “The basic ‘red lines’ are well known: no criticism of the president and his family or the security services, no touching delicate issues like Syria’s Kurdish minority or the Alawites, a religious minority to which Mr. Assad belongs. Foreign journalists who violate these rules are regularly banned from the country (a fact that constrains coverage of Syria in this and other newspapers).”

When the revolution started, this effect was only intensified. We were never denied access to foreign media. All news websites (except for Israeli websites) were available on the internet, all the satellite news channels came through just fine, and I could openly buy Newsweek, TIME and the New York Times on the street. Foreign media, however, had no access to Syria. Nearly all foreign journalists were ejected from the country. They were forced, like me and every Syrian citizen, to get their information from their friends, from the state-controlled press, and from YouTube videos uploaded by the opposition.


A poster on Qamareyah St in the Old City, outlining the Conspiracy.

Very rapidly, the state press constructed an internally consistent, alternative narrative of the “events” in Syria. The country, it claimed, had been infiltrated by armed gangs who were taking advantage of peaceful protests and sowing violence, chaos and sectarianism. They had been armed and trained by Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Saad Hariri’s Future Movement in Lebanon. They were murdering peaceful protesters and blaming it on the government, attacking government buildings, killing soldiers and police, attacking innocent travelers on the roads at night. Citizens of Deraa, Baniyas, Homs, Lattakia, etc. were begging – just begging – the army to come in and restore order. The government provided evidence for their narrative in the form of televised confessions from “arms smugglers” working for Saad Hariri and individuals who claimed to have been paid by Saudi Arabia to make fake videos of riots, and interviews with “eyewitnesses,” who spent most of their interview time chanting the president’s praises.

The most vigorous promotion of this narrative came from a “private” news channel called Ad-Dounia. Ad-Dounia would devote whole news programs to discrediting YouTube videos from the opposition. Of course, who is to stop government agents from uploading fake videos themselves for their clients in the press to systematically disprove? Kind of a 21st century straw-man argument. I am almost certain this was the case with one video I saw, where a flag-draped “protester” turns to the camera and says, “Ok, start filming” seconds before she is tackled by a supposed Syrian security agent. “Obviously, this was staged!” the news anchor informed us. Yes, obviously – why would these conspirators upload such a poorly-edited video onto YouTube? Hasn’t Saad Hariri ever heard of Windows Movie Maker?

My most fervently nationalist Syrian friends would hold up Ad-Dounia as proof of media independence in Syria. How can you possibly be so naïve? I would wonder – as they often did about me, when I told them that the CIA and Mossad couldn’t possibly be behind every bad event in the Middle East.

As you might guess, I never accepted the Syrian government’s narrative, because 1) it came from the Syrian government, 2) I couldn’t believe that in a country with an omnipresent secret police presence, such a vast conspiracy could be coordinated by foreign powers, and 3) after Egypt and Tunisia, and considering Syria’s 20% unemployment rate, unbelievable corruption and minority dictatorship, a foreign conspiracy was not needed to explain the country’s unrest. Yet it was extremely difficult to convince anyone who had bought into one narrative to accept the other. My conversations with my Syrian friend “Emmanuel” would go like this:

“Don’t believe the BBC; they lie!”

“Why would they lie? They’re an independent news organization. Why would they try to hurt the Syrian government?”

“Because they are a tool of the Western governments, and Syria is the only anti-Western Arab country! Besides, we know they’ve been lying!”

“How?”

“Didn’t you see that report on Ad-Dounia?”

“Yes, but Emmanuel, why do you believe the state press?”

“It’s not the state press, it’s private!”

“(Sigh). Fine, but even if the BBC reported an inaccuracy, you can’t really blame them, because your government is keeping them out of Syria, and preventing them from verifying anything!”

“I’m glad the government kicked them out! They are liars and saboteurs!”

In the end, we each had to choose which narrative to believe, to presuppose it, and then use it as a lens to examine everything else we heard. I chose to believe that the Syrian government was full of it, because it fit my political worldview. Emmanuel chose to believe his government, because as a minority, he saw the government as a source of protection, and badly wanted Syria to stay stable and peaceful.

Emmanuel was right about one thing: the BBC and Al-Jazeera got at least some things wrong. About four weeks into the protests, I went to visit a friend working in Hesseke, a town in northeastern Syria. That Friday afternoon, April 1, we walked all around the town (it wasn’t very big). We ate lunch, saw all the parks, and walked to some of the archeological sites. It a typical lazy day of prayer in Syria. Not many people were out. Traffic was light. We chatted and joked with some of the locals and soldiers we met on the street. Then we went back to his flat to cook dinner. When we got there, I got a frantic phone call from “Sadiiq” another Syrian friend of mine. “Joel, are you all right, man?” he asked.

“Yes, Sadiiq, I’m fine.”

“But there are huge protests in Hesseke! It’s on the BBC!”

“No…there’s nothing. We were just outside. We walked around the whole town!”

Later, my friend and I talked to one of his English-speaking friends, who told us that it was rumored that fifty men had gathered for about fifteen minutes outside the main mosque in Hesseke after prayers. This was reported as a “major protest” in the international media.

There were many events that neither narrative could adequately account for. State TV ran footage from the funerals of soldiers murdered by the “terrorists” (complete with music from The Lord of the Rings playing in the background). Were these funerals faked, and the soldiers merely invented? Were they shot by the government for refusing to fire on civilians, as the opposition claimed? Were there genuinely armed gangs inside the country with the power to attack the Syrian army? Who was attacking cars on the road from Beirut to Aleppo at night? The government, trying to sow instability and create a justification for its own crackdown? The pro-government mafia, known as the Shabiha, unleashed at last? Terrorists, trying to start sectarian troubles? No matter what you believe, you sound awfully paranoid.

A more recent example: The Syrian government claims that last weekend, 120 of their soldiers were killed by armed gangs in the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour. What happened there? An army mutiny? A government-directed purge, which is now being attributed to these seemingly omnipresent "armed gangs"? An attack by armed Islamists? A foreign attack? Desperate, enraged Syrian civilians striking back at the government at long last? At this point, I have no problem believing any of these scenarios.

In cases like these, reaching the truth isn't merely a matter of disbelieving the Syrian government. Once we throw out the official version, there's no way to answer the question, "What happened?" We are adrift in an ocean of ignorance, without landmarks or bearings. It's the ultimate existential crisis.

Now that refugees have begun flooding out of Syria into Lebanon and Turkey and sharing their stories, we have another stream of information to draw upon. But anyone following the events in Syria has to be aware that, until and unless the Assad regime falls, the reality of events inside Syria must remain a mystery - not only to us, but to the Syrian people. The Assad regime has successfully deprived its opponents of a common reality to operate in. Considering that these opponents may soon be the new power brokers of Syria, that's a pretty terrifying thought.

Check out this page at the Syrian Arab News Agency's website for a glimpse into the regime's alternate reality: The Reality of Events.

More pictures than any reasonable person would ever take the time to look at

2011-06-02T12:21:00.000-05:00

...are now posted on my Picasa page! Knock yourself out.

Bosra, Syria, once the capital of Roman Arabia.

Shabha, Syria, the town of Philip, the Arab emperor of Rome.

Byblos, Lebanon.

Tyre, Lebanon.

Sidon, Lebanon.

Hezbollah's "Resistance Tourist Landmark" in the Chouf Mountains of Lebanon.

Beirut, Lebanon.

Coming soon: a "best of" folder, and some commentary on Syria's Arab Spring.

How it breaks down

2011-05-28T14:06:00.000-05:00

Things I love about being back in America:

Being able to assume the presence of toilet paper in a public or private restroom.
Being able to flush toilet paper.
Having coffee on the deck with my parents.
Making fun of Nicholas Cage with my siblings.
Having my own cup at meals.
Bonfires.
Isaiah Hoegh and Adam Woiwood.
Talking shit about the president all I want.
Grass.
Roadtrips in cars.
Eavesdropping on people. (No language barrier).
Milk.
Peanut butter.
Surfing Israeli websites.
Driving.
Libraries.
Insulation.

Things I miss about Syria:

Microbuses.
Buses.
Being able to walk places.
Male physical affection.
Mosques.
The call to prayer.
Syrian food: Mhammara, zatar, shish tawook, shwarma, apple soda, lebneh.
Mountains.
Roadtrips in buses.
The rush you get when you successfully communicate with someone in Arabic.
Strawberry and apple soda – for some reason, this just hasn’t caught on in America.
Getting kissed and called "habibi" (my love) by a guy you just met.
Leo Yousef, George Jebran, George Krait, Anas Anees, Feras.

Things I've done since getting back:

Learned to drive stick-shift.
Traveled 4000 miles in a car.
Seen Thomas and Kendall Adlard get married.
Gotten spiritually raptured (I hope).
Seen a bear up-close in Yosemite National Park.
Gotten my digestive tract back in gear.
Taken a drug test.
Learned to love the song "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz.

Things I had in my bag when the TSA referred me for "additional processing" at the American border:

Three posters of President Bashar al-Assad.
A mug with Bashar's mug printed on it.
Two Syrian flags.
An English translation of the Qur'an.
A book on Marxist political philosophy entitled "In Defense of Lost Causes."
Twenty pirated DVDs.

It's good to be home.

American Catharsis

2011-05-03T07:51:00.002-05:00

First things first: I celebrated Osama bin Laden’s death, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Not even my latent pacifism could keep me from being happy that America’s finest finally got this bastard, after ten long years. I was thirteen years old when we started looking for this guy. I’ve grown up in a world twisted by the innumerable ripple effects of what he did. Every political campaign, every book on politics, every plane trip in the last decade has had to take bin Laden into account. I honestly thought we would never find him. And now he’s dead.

Today, I was talking to a Turkish friend who’s spent time living in America. She told me that she was deeply disturbed by the celebrations in America over bin Laden’s death, and asked me how I felt. I was honest about my feelings, but I told her I understood why she was disturbed. Talking to her, I think I realized a little of what has allowed nominally civilized Americans like myself to revel in Osama taking two to the head.

In the 1990s, we Americans viewed our country’s role in the world as one of enlightened humanitarianism. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and America stood vindicated, our political-economic ideology victorious and our questionable tactics in the Cold War retroactively justified. All the major American wars of the 90s were (at least on the surface) humanitarian. We invaded the Gulf to liberate Kuwait from Saddam’s clutches. We sent troops to Somalia to protect food shipments to the starving population. We sent Marines to Haiti to enforce the outcome of their democratic election. We bombed Serbia twice to stop their ethnic cleansing campaigns against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. We spent billions on aid to the developing world. We saw ourselves as having risen above the rest of the world’s bloody-minded tribalism, above even the concept of selfish national interest. We were selflessly bringing civilization to the natives. Our national attitude in the 90s is best summed up by President Clinton’s description of the war in Kosovo: “This is America at its best. We seek no territorial gain; we seek no political advantage. …This is America trying to get the world to live on human terms…”

From this standpoint, the attacks of 9/11 came as a complete shock: an unprovoked, senseless slaughter of innocents. We give and give and give to the world, and this is what we get in return? Well, we can play that game too. They want a real war, one not on “human terms,” one with torture and mass destruction? We’ll give them one. No more Nice Uncle Sam.

Senator Zell Miller, September 12, 2001: “I say bomb the hell out of them. If there’s collateral damage, so be it. They certainly found our civilians to be expendable.”

Of course, the rest of the world experienced the American hegemony of the 90s in very different way than we did. For hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living under U.S. sanctions, American hegemony meant starvation and death, and for millions in Africa and the Middle East, American aid meant dependency and empowerment for American-friendly tyrants. And over the ten years after 9/11, through bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of dead American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and all the other atrocities of our war, we learned more about the grim realities of American power in a complicated world. As Ambrose Bierce is supposed to have said, “War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.”

Now, with bin Laden’s death, we can, if only for a moment, believe the myth again: the myth of America as the benevolent empire and brutalized victim, and the myth of the American military as a lean, mean, terrorist-killing machine. The moment will pass, but for now, it’s wonderful to pretend.

Maybe now that Osama’s gone, we can exorcise his ghost from our foreign policy, and start working on one that’s truly just.

---

“So, what do Syrians think?”

So far, the consensus seems to be, “Congratulations, America – but what took you so long?” I have never met any sympathy for al Qaeda in Syria. Here, the Muslim Brotherhood is the bogeyman, but even the Brothers aren’t extreme enough for al Qaeda.

---

Changing tack here: who was the brainiac who suggested dumping Osama bin Laden’s body in the sea before most of the world even knew he was dead? What the heck? “Do ya realize what you’ve just done, newbie?”

Anyone who’s played Clue can tell you that to prove a murder charge, you need a motive, a weapon, and A BODY.

Let’s review: according to a Scripps/Howard poll taken a few years back, about 36% of the American population believes the American government may have been involved in the 9/11 attacks to some degree. Outside the United States, that number is far, far higher. (I can personally attest to that.)

In the past ten years, the only evidence of Osama bin Laden’s existence has been a series of audio and video tapes from the terrorist mastermind. Legions of public figures have suggested that these tapes were fabricated by either al Qaeda or the CIA, that bin Laden was really killed at Tora Bora in December 2001, or that he died of kidney failure long ago. No one could say otherwise, because no one knew where Osama was.

We finally got him – I don’t doubt that – and before we even hold a press conference, we promptly dispose with the only solid evidence that we did get him? That he was even alive for this past decade?

Here, from Cindy Sheehan, is the first of many conspiracy claims that we will have to endure for the rest of our lives, and that we will never, EVER be able to disprove:

I am sorry, but if you believe the newest death of OBL, you're stupid. Just think to yourself--they paraded Saddam's dead sons around to prove they were dead--why do you suppose they hastily buried this version of OBL at sea? This lying, murderous Empire can only exist with your brainwashed consent--just put your flags away and THINK!

Who can argue with her? No one. The Pentagon saw to that.

I’ve spent the last nine months trying to convince my Arab friends that the U.S. government is not responsible for 9/11, that JFK was killed by a lone crazy dude, that the U.S. is not, in fact, plotting with Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia to bring down the Syrian government. Guess what? I’m done arguing your case for you U.S. government. When Ahmed comes to me today or tomorrow (and I know he will), and says, “You know that America faked bin Laden’s death, right?” I’m just going to say, “Yeah, it’s so obvious, huh?”

Easter letter

2011-04-24T15:22:00.002-05:00

Dear friends and family,

For (I think) understandable reasons, I’ve been holding off on blogging and Facebook activity recently. But a lot of you have been writing to me, and I actually had a pretty fantastic Easter weekend, so I thought I’d give you all a break from reading alarmist headlines, and tell you a little bit about it.

On Maundy Thursday, I went out for breakfast with my great American friend Ben. We ate a Syrian delicacy called “fuul,” which is basically giant, juicy garabanzo beans dipped in oil and hummus. Later, I helped Brother George mail off his last university application (which we’ve been working together on for months), bid him farewell as he went home to his family, and decided to skip the evening church services so I could hang out with my best Iraqi friend, A. A. We spent all night exploring the Old City, eating ice cream, and watching Inception for (his) first time. “That. Was. Awesome!” he exclaimed after the final scene.

Oh yes.

On Good Friday, I climbed Mount Qassion, the mountain that overlooks Damascus, with the directors of the Iraqi Student Project and the guests they are hosting in Syria this week. We hiked to a Muslim shrine on the mountain that supposedly marks the place where Cain killed Abel. The shrine contains a cave with a handprint-like formation on its ceiling. In the Muslim telling of the story, the world was so horrified at history's first murder that the cave tried to collapse on Cain to kill him, but the angel Gabriel held up the cave with his hands so that the human race might be preserved. The shrine also features rooms where Abraham and St. George the Dragon-Slayer both prayed to Allah. A little far-fetched? Perhaps, but it was a lovely shrine, and from the balcony, we could see all of Damascus.

The upper part of the shrine is dedicated to “The Forty,” a group of forty holy individuals who are so close to God that they sustain the world by their very existence. Their identities are never revealed to living mortals, and whenever one dies, another is born to replace him or her. My Muslim Iraqi friend S. V. was overwhelmed by the beauty of this shrine, and methodically touched all forty markers while praying to God. Later, she had us sit in a circle in the shrine, so she could tell us the story of Rabia Basri, a female Muslim saint from Baghdad whom S.V. was certain was one of the Forty while she was alive. Rabia, although a slave girl, devoted her whole life to prayer and ascetism, and became renowned as a woman of great wisdom and compassion. She prayed, "O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.”

After we descended the mountain, we spent a few hours eating falafel and singing peace songs at the house of the ISP directors. We then took a walking tour through Salihiyye, a neighborhood of Damascus that contains dozens of mosques from the 12th century. Salihiyye is miles away from the Old City of Damascus; this is because the orthodox Sunni rulers of Damascus forced the mystical Sufi Muslims to practice their faith outside the city limits. Today, Salihiyye is a beautiful district where ordinary people live, work and go shopping among eight-century-old mosques and the tombs of Sufi saints and Muslim rulers.

After that, we headed to my church, the Olive Church in the Old City, for the evening Good Friday service. (Point of interest: The Arabs call it “il-jam3a il-azeem” – “GREAT Friday.”) The Patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church gave the sermon, and the priests circled the sanctuary holding up an empty coffin that we all tossed roses into. Some of the congregants on the other side of the aisle weren’t very good shots, and we ended up getting pelted with roses. Which was nice, I suppose. Even though I still don’t understand church Arabic, it was a great service.

Holy Saturday was simply wonderful. The ISP directors, their guests, two Iraqi parents, my Iraqi friend A.A., and me, all got on a bus and headed on a roadtrip to the Roman cities of southern Syria. (Yes, we made a roadtrip – and it was fine!) At this time of year, southern Syria is bright green with crops. It was a welcome sight after months of living in the endless grays of Damascus. At one stop, A.A. and I ripped some grass out of the ground and rolled it in our faces. I missed that smell. We drove past Jebel il-3arab, a mountain considered holy by the Druze religious sect, for reasons they won’t divulge. Our first stop was Shahba, a city built by Philip, the only Roman emperor of Arab descent, in his own honor. Unfortunately, he was assassinated just five years into his rule, so the city was never finished, and a result, it’s a little small. But it has some amazing, perfectly preserved mosaics featuring scenes from Greek mythology, a Roman theater and temple, and a tower from which we looked out over the whole valley.

Our next stop was Bosra, a black-stone city home to ruins from four great civilizations – the Nabateans, the Romans, the Byzantine Christians and the Muslims. I had gone here once before with my dad, but it was great to come again and see some things I didn’t catch before. A highlight was sitting at the very top of Bosra’s castle/perfectly-preserved Roman theater and eating Syrian pastries with A. A. and all my new friends from America. Also, seeing a 1700-year-old OUTDOOR fresco on one of Bosra’s churches, which still clearly depicts the angel Gabriel greeting Mary.

Today, Easter Sunday, I awoke at 4:30 AM to go to the 5 AM Easter morning mass. It was beautiful, but it lasted for THREE HOURS. And again, I understood none of it. That was a little rough. But afterward, the Patriarch handed out hardboiled, dyed Easter eggs, and I went out to brunch with all the ISP guests, so it was all good.

I spent Easter afternoon with A. A.’s family, who are Christian refugees from Iraq. They treated me to some delicious Iraqi food – roast lamb and lamb fat served on metal skewers, eaten in bread pockets with grilled tomatoes and onions. Also, a bonus: Turkish beer!

They also told me stories about their lives in Iraq before and after the invasion. They used to celebrate Easter with big parties in their family’s garden, with beers and barbeque. (Arabs love barbeque.) After the war, the lack of security and threats from Islamic extremists made it necessary to celebrate Easter and Christmas indoors, after closing the curtains on all their windows. One striking fact A. A.’s father shared with me was that after the Gulf War, 80% of Iraq’s electricity infrastructure was destroyed. Saddam Hussein’s government restored power in two months. Today, eight years after the American invasion, most Iraqis are still waiting for regular electrical service to return. Unsurprisingly, most Iraqis view this as deliberate.

It still hurts to hear stories like this about the unintended consequences of my country’s actions. Adding to the disappointment, my friends told me they had planned an outdoor picnic for Easter this year, but changed their plans because of the situation.

Still, we had a wonderful time playing chess and backgammon, watching American TV with Arabic subtitles, listening to A. A. play his oud, and looking at pictures of Iraq, Syria and Sweden on the family’s home computer.

Tomorrow, the ISP guests, the ISP students (most of whom are currently en route to Damascus from Baghdad after their spring break) and me are making a trip to three Christian holy sites north of Damascus, and I may or may not get asked to lead a hiking tour at the last site. It should be great.

I can’t give you lots of juicy details about the situation here, but I hope this summary has convinced you that a) I’m not cowering in my room from fear of Molotov cocktails, and b) I’m still loving my time in Syria and still count myself blessed to be working and learning here among such amazing people.

MaseeHa Qaam! Christ is risen!

Love,
Joel

"And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

- Colossians 2:13-15

Setting the scene

2011-03-20T17:10:00.000-05:00

Syrians love to make jokes about other Syrians. In Damascus, the two regions of Syria that take the brunt of these jokes are the city of Homs in the north, and the flat, fertile, rural region of Horan in the south.

In the Bible, Horan is called “Bashan,” and features in several of the early battles for the Holy Land led by Moses and Joshua. Later, it was a major center of power for the Nabateans, or, as my Horani friend Wihbih calls them, “the old Arabs.” The artifacts of their civilization, and the later Roman and Muslim conquerors, can be found throughout Horan.

In modern times, Horan figures both as an agricultural region and as a staging ground for the Syrian military. Horan lies adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and is littered with Syrian military bases. From the roof of my friend Omar’s house, the mountains of the Heights dominate the view to the west, and a Syrian military base lies a stone’s throw away.

The residents of Horan themselves are known for, and mocked good-naturedly for, their accent, their appetite for chicken shwerma (an Arab fast food dish), and their generally rural ways.

“What’s the fastest thing in the universe?” goes one of Brother George’s jokes. “Not light – it’s a Horani who’s been invited to dinner.” Brother George himself is from Horan, and is endlessly ribbed for his shwerma habit. It’s a habit I’ve acquired from him since I moved here in September.

There are four boys from Horan in the seminary. Whenever one of them does something funny or clumsy, the other boys will laugh and shout “Horani, Horani!” When one of them gets into a fight, their antagonist will mutter angrily, “Shu Horani!” How Horan-like!

I have visited the Horan four times – once to see the ancient citadel/theater at Bosra with my father, and three times to visit the families of my friends there. On my second visit, I was attacked by mosquitoes while I slept, and woke with a face covered in about thirty bug bites. When I returned to the seminary, the priest and the boys shook their heads knowingly. “That’s what you get for going to Horan,” they told me.

Despite the disdain of the Damascenes, the Horan has a special place in my heart. The air is fresh, unlike polluted Damascus, and the flat landscape reminds me of my home state, Iowa. The residents spend their leisure time smoking shisha on each other’s porches, riding motorbikes through their villages, and picking olives in their family orchards. The ruins of Rome, the Byzantines and the early Muslims are so common that people use them for homes and stables, and walk and play on ancient Roman streets. At night the sky is lit up with stars, and I can fall asleep to the sound of the wind over the plains, not the traffic on the highway outside my window. And there’s no better place in Syria to eat shwerma.

I have never been to Deraa. It’s one of those cities that everyone talks about, but there’s never a reason to go to. It’s mentioned in the Bible under the name “Edrei,” the capital of Og, the king of Bashan, who Moses defeated and killed before his death on Mount Nebo (see Numbers 21:33). By all accounts, there’s little evidence of Deraa’s ancient heritage left today, and the town is simply a local big city, an exceptionally normal town, part of the atmosphere. Hearing that it’s been “sealed off” is bewildering. For you Iowans, imagine if Cedar Rapids was “sealed off.”

Now go read the BBC, and you'll know as much as I do. Please pray for Syria, and for the Horan.

Psalm 46

1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
8 Come and see what the LORD has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
11 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Libya and Moral Equivalency

2011-03-14T11:21:00.000-05:00

Last Friday’s issue of the International Herald Tribune carries this brief letter from a reader in England:

Has a tyrant shooting at his own people committed a greater crime than a democratically-elected government making war on a faraway people?

Ho HO! How ironic! How avant garde! And how utterly useless toward finding a solution to the emergency facing the Libyan people.

Since this Englishman is clearly referring to the war in Iraq, the answer to his rhetorical question must be an emphatic “yes.” One need not minimize the catastrophe and tragedy of the Iraq war to recognize this: at no point did the government of either the U.S. or Britain “make war on the Iraqi people” in the same way that Colonel Moammar Gaddafi is now ordering the murder of his own people for the sake of his own hold on power.

Anyone who follows international politics is familiar with this endless moral equivalency game. It is a symptom of the present era. In our time, the crackpots and mass murderers are not dominating the world from Rome, Berlin or Moscow; they are on the periphery of the world order, occupying pathetic little hills like Tripoli, Pyongyang and Khartoum. Real, world-changing, system-reinforcing power lies with the democratically-elected governments of the West. As a result, the earnest missteps and occasional crimes of the West are almost always more destructive than the lunacy- and greed-driven policies of the world’s rogue regimes.

And so, every time the conscience of the West is aroused enough to propose intervening on the behalf of some beleaguered people, whether the Darfurians, the Kosovars, the Iraqis or the Libyans, we must endure endless taunts of “Yeah, but you guys did…” and endless warnings of, “Don’t intervene, or (insert dictator’s name) will claim he’s resisting the imperialist West and solidify his popular support.” The sad thing is, those warnings are probably pretty accurate. I have not met any Syrians critical of the genocidal Sudanese central government, only Syrians critical of the U.S. for trying to take Sudan’s oil.

Nevertheless, there is an element of truth in our friend’s letter. The status of America’s government as “democratically-elected” gives cover to actions that we would find reprehensible on the part of, say, China or Iran.

Almost every Arab dictatorship, including the fallen regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Zine Ben Ali, is/was on the receiving end of American military aid. (I live in one of the few exceptions.) After thirty years of pariah status, Gaddafi himself wormed his way into the embrace of the West after the Iraq War, made a few key concessions, and joined the club. Gaddafi is using American military equipment to attack his own people. Twenty years ago, almost the same story played out in Latin America. The U.S. propped up murderous dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, and many, many more countries. Travel over to Asia, and we can add the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, South Vietnam, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia to the list of U.S. clients. This is just off the top of my head.

Why is this? The answer, I am convinced, is not that the American government is run by evil men with curly mustaches cackling evilly behind giant computer screens as they crush the hope of freedom for peoples around the world. There is no grand conspiracy; only a self-perpetuating system. Every president inherits a global system that the United States sit atop, the world’s only superpower. No matter what his ideals or goals, every president’s first goal is to maintain the U.S.’s superpower status. That’s as natural an instinct as self-preservation. As a result, the components of that system – including alliances with dictators – are maintained and human rights go overlooked.

My dad told me last night that my views have changed a lot recently. This is true. It’s not that I’ve become convinced on anything new; it’s that I’ve become unconvinced of a lot of things I used to be convinced of. But here are two things I firmly believe: 1) Americans have GOT to keep a closer watch on their government’s foreign policy. 2) Gaddafi has got to go.

Some Friendly Advice

2011-03-12T15:08:00.000-06:00

Back in the day, I was waiting to meet a friend in Jeremana, a suburb of Damascus home to many Christians, Druze and Iraqi refugees, and I got hungry, so I walked into a sandwich stall to buy some food.

By “back in the day,” I mean when Hosni Mubarak was still president of Egypt, and the League of Nations CSI crisis in Phoenicia was still big news. The League of Nations was close to announcing its indictments over the killing of Phoenicia’s former prime minister, and everyone knew God’s Party would be indicted. God’s Party had threatened to react violently if the Phoenician government cooperated with the tribunal. At the time, Aram and S. Arabia were trying to work together to defuse the tension, but their efforts ultimately failed. Eventually, God’s Party left Phoenicia’s unity government, forcing the prime minister to step down in favor of one more to their liking.

The shop I entered had several God’s Party posters displayed prominently on the wall, and the men behind the counter were talking angrily. The only words I caught were the Arabic words for “Aram” and “S. Arabia.” After a bit, they stopped arguing long enough to notice me. “Do you have shwerma?” I asked in Arabic. (“Shwerma” is an amazing way of preparing chicken that’s extremely popular here.)

“No by God!” the man replied in Arabic. “Ok, thank you,” I said, and started to leave.

“Where are you from?” the man asked in English.

“America,” I replied. I make a point of never lying about this.

“Don’t say you are from America,” he said. “Say you’re from Britain. It’s better.” He then launched into a rant in broken English about Bush and Iraq, and somehow ended up with how the Jewish lobby had threatened to kill Marlon Brando’s son unless he stopped telling the truth about them. As far as I could tell, he was completely serious.

When he stopped long enough to let me get a word in, I asked him in Arabic, “Is the British government better than the American government?”

He grinned and said, “Or you could say you’re from South Africa. That would be best.” He then gave me directions to the closest shwerma shop.

The Prophet's Birthday

2011-03-07T02:01:00.001-06:00

February fifteenth was the moulid an-nabi, or the birthday feast of the Prophet Mohammad. Everyone, even us Christians, had the day off from work and school. One of my favorite priests, who doesn’t speak very much English, but who is one of most cheerful Syrians I know (and is fluent in Italian), went around with a big smile, saying, “Happy Christmas Mohammad!” (In Arabic, “Christmas” is “Eid il-milad,” or literally, “Feast of the birth,” the same term used for “birthday.”) One of my Muslim Iraqi students brought a delicious dessert his mother had made for my class to share. I have no idea what was in it, but it tasted like gelatinous cake, and was decorated with a giant cinnamon crescent. Everyone in my class took a spoon and helped themselves to it.

There was a time in Arab history when good Muslims wouldn’t dream of celebrating the birthday of a mere mortal. These days, Christians and Muslims alike use the occasion as an excuse to skip work and have a good time, especially in secular countries like Egypt and Syria. The Muslim quarter of the Old City was draped in strings of colored lights and banners bearing Mohammad’s name. At the seminary, the priest briefly considered taking all of us out to the movies (a la “Jewish Movie Day” on Christmas in the States), before deciding instead to take us on a walking tour of the whole city.

That afternoon, while the boys were cleaning the seminary and taking a nap, I walked through the Old City, through the Thomas Gate (Bab Touma) to the Qasaa district and back. The sun was out, I wore no coat. It was glorious. Although this winter has been mild by Iowa standards, for some reason, very few buildings in Syria – including the one I live in – have anything like quality insulation. The cold seems inescapable sometimes, and I’ve taken to wearing a coat indoors, everywhere except to bed. This spring will be very welcome.

Qasaa, a shopping district that contains both high-end clothing stores and street side entrepreneurs, was packed with people enjoying the holiday, buying new clothes, drinking smoothies and munching on the spicy corn dish sold by Iraqi vendors along the roadside. I bought a fruit smoothie myself (they’re one of the best parts of life in Syria – seriously) and exchanged some money. In Arabic, the man at the exchange counter explained to me that it was the Prophet’s birthday, and gave me some candy in honor of the occasion.

The government recently completed a huge beautification project in Bab Touma Square, where I go almost every day to grab a bus to my various destinations, or just to grab a snack. The results aren’t that impressive. The Bab Touma gate (which sits alone in the middle of the square’s roundabout) is open now, which is kind of nifty, but for some reason, they saw fit to erect a giant pastel green clocktower on the main road nearby. It’s decorated with a bunch of weird symbols, has about twenty giant bells that don’t work hanging off its sides in no apparent order, and has a giant green laser that flashes across the sky at night. It doesn’t look Arab or Syrian. My guess is it looks like what Arabs think Westerners want to see. If there are any Syrian architects reading this, allow me to relieve you of this idea.

Across the street from this clocktower is a new park containing a shrine to a Muslim saint and a bunch of signs about Old City landmarks written in execrable English. The park is nice, but it feels artificial. The redundant scale model of the park that sits right next to the entrance doesn’t help.

I was wandering in this park when I got lured into one of the most intense, bewildering Arabic conversations I’ve ever had. A middle-aged man sitting on a bench motioned me over and asked me to take his picture with his cell phone camera. He asked me to sit with him, and I obliged. “Where are you from?” he asked. “America,” I replied. I rarely hide my nationality from anyone here. He, it turned out, was from Iraq. Meeting Iraqis used to be a big deal for me, but nowadays, it’s commonplace.

My normal recipe for conversing in Arabic is 30% words I actually know, 50% context, and 20% smile-and-nod. Of course, this doesn’t always work out so well, and one of the drawbacks is that while I’m smiling and nodding and waiting for my conversation partner to use words I recognize again, the subject of the conversation can change completely. We started off exchanging personal details, including the fact that we were both single. He asked me if I wanted to get married. I said yes. He asked me if I wanted to marry a boy or a girl. For a moment, I thought I was about to be propositioned. I wanted to marry a girl, I told him firmly. He started asking me about gay marriage in America. I told him that it was only legal in five states. He told me he had seen on television that it was common. I told him that it wasn’t.

Then we entered a smile-and-nod phase of the conversation, and by the time I understood what he was talking about again, he had become quite agitated, and was asking me what was wrong with Americans, why young people from America went to Iraq and killed kids and old people indiscriminately. Of course, the vast majority of American soldiers don’t do this, but I wouldn’t be comfortable defending America’s conduct of the war to an Iraqi I’d just met in English, let along Arabic, so I repeated a trope that most Syrians use when they’re trying to assure me that they don’t hold my nationality against me: “All over the world there are good people and bad people.”

“No!” he insisted. “Arabs and Muslims would never act the way Americans do!” He then launched into a soliloquy on economic injustice, talking about how Americans and Europeans had all the money, while Syrians and Iraqis couldn’t buy food or water or clothes.

At this point in the conversation, a street child approached us, selling packs of gum for five pounds (about a dime). He was dressed in dirty pajamas, his hair was unwashed and filthy, and his face bore the intangible weariness that seems to mark the faces of all the street beggars here. I think it’s the way their lower eyelids droop and their mouths hang open. He first tried to sell me the gum, but gave up after I said, “No thank you.” (I have been advised by the priests at my church never to give money to beggars, since churches and mosques are available to them, and most of them are either running cons or being exploited.) But my Iraqi acquaintance had to refuse and say “God bless you” ten times before he went on his way. As soon as he left, the Iraqi man looked angrily at me and gestured in the boy’s direction. “Five pounds!” he yelled. “Five pounds!” I don’t know if he was angry at me for not buying gum, or angry at the world for forcing the boy into that line of work.

Finally, I just said, “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. We made a big mistake. I hate war, and God willing, there will be peace someday.” That still didn’t calm him down. In the end, I stopped responding at all, and just let him rant until he was finished. Then he smiled again, reassured me that I was his friend, shook my hand, and asked me to meet him there again the next day. “God willing,” I said. Needless to say, I didn’t go the next day.

I rarely have to take flack for my nationality here. While Arabs love to discuss American politics, they’re so friendly and so keen on being good hosts that if they criticize my government, they always act as if they’re explaining it to me, not blaming it on me. I once got applauded when I told some men in Hama that I was American. This was only the fourth time in my life an Arab in the Middle East has even come close to blaming me for my government’s policies.

For one thing, I don’t know how to defend my country to Arabs. Without fail, we’ll be operating from completely different sets of facts. In their eyes, any media source, academic study or government report I might cite (not that I can cite these things on command to begin with) was probably crafted by the Jewish lobby, but they can’t understand why I don’t believe the fawning biography of Saddam Hussein they bought at the streetcorner stand, or the YouTube video about how the Freemasons orchestrated the American Revolution.

For another thing, I’ve lost my appetite for debate – somewhat, anyway. Yes, it’s absurd for my Iraqi friend to say that Arabs and Muslims don’t kill innocent people - he’s from Iraq, after all. But even if I could get him to admit that “you guys do it too,” what would that prove? How would that make anything better?

Yes, I am responsible. No, I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe that’s why I’m here.

Happy Christmas, Mohammad.

Glorious Tishreen

2011-03-03T02:12:00.001-06:00

Pictures here.

A few weekends ago, my British comrade Peter and I decided to visit one of Syria’s newest military monuments, the October War Panorama.

The October War began on October 6, 1973, and involved Egypt, Syria, and Israel. Seven years earlier, in the Six-Day War, Israel had humiliated the Arab powers by defeating five Arab armies and conquering the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights in under a week. In 1973, Syria and Egypt, both under new presidents, decided to have another go. This time, the war lasted three weeks, caused sixteen thousand Arab and Israeli casualties, and actually saw the Arab armies gain some ground – the Egyptians managed to cross the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrians temporarily reoccupied Mount Hermon (or Sheikh) in the Golan Heights – before Israel won again.

There seems to be little limit to the celebration of this “victory” in Egypt and Syria. In Egypt, I lived in an apartment above the October 6 Bridge. Syria has a Tishreen (“October”) newspaper, university, road, and main square. October 6 is a national holiday in both countries. And both Cairo and Damascus feature a giant castle-like Panorama Museum celebrating the war.

If you think they look similar, it’s because both were designed and built by the North Korean government, a wise investment of money that might otherwise have been wasting on feeding North Koreans. (This kind of thing seems to be a common feature of North Korean foreign policy):

When we first arrived at the museum, we paid for our tickets at the gate, and then started to walk across the expansive courtyard to the entrance of the museum. We were promptly accosted, taken to a coffee shop on the far left side of the courtyard, and instructed to wait there for an English-speaking guide. We decided we’d rather not (and that above all, we weren’t going to buy anything at that coffee shop), and as soon as our escorts disappeared, we went off to explore the courtyard. On the left side of the museum courtyard was an impressive collection of captured/destroyed Israeli military equipment, with not-so-impressive English labeling. We were able to gaze upon the ruins of a “Fantom” jet, and admire a captured “Sentorion” tank. One sign, not pointing to any tank or plane in particular, simply read, “The end of the aggressor.” But before we could take all of this in, our escorts reappeared and insisted that they really wanted us to wait for the guide. So, sulking just a little bit, we made our way back to the coffee shop and ate some mints from Peter’s bag to kill the time.

After about fifteen minutes of waiting, our guide, a polite, nicely-dressed Syrian woman, arrived and began taking us around the museum. We were the only two people in her tour group – indeed, in the whole museum – and she was definitely aware of that. While she was friendly and polite, she definitely wasn’t eager to belabor any particular point for us. At one point in the tour, we passed two huge paintings showing scenes from a massive battle at sea: battlecruisers exploding into flame, destroyers making daring attacks and retreats, planes soaring overhead. There certainly seemed to be a story worth telling there. “These paintings appreciate the contribution of the naval forces,” our guide said, and marched briskly forward.

In fact, that was the feel of the museum itself, not just our guide. If you relied only on a visit to the Panorama for information about the war, you would not know a) that Egypt was also involved in the fighting, b) how long the war lasted, c) how many people died, or d) that Israel won.

On either side of the main entrance were two huge stone relief carvings depicting triumphant scenes from Syrian history. The one on the right-hand side, our guide explained, depicted Yousef al-Azma’s suicidal revolt against the French occupation in 1919. The carving on the left-hand side showed the “CorreCtionist Movement,” when, as Our gUide exPlained, Hafiz al-Assad became president and “made all things new.” Our guide also took us to the right side of the museum courtyard to show us some Syrian (Russian-made) military equipment. Unlike the Israeli jet, which lay in pieces on the ground across the courtyard, the Syrian jet was mounted in the air, its nose pointed upward into the sky. The courtyard also featured a glass-encased space capsule that carried the first Syrian astronaut into space with the Russians in the 70s.

In the first chamber inside the museum, we were presented with five huge paintings depicting scenes from Syrian history. The first painting showed what looked like two cavemen wearing animal skins shaking hands. Our guide explained that one of the oldest peace treaties in the world had been discovered by archeologists in Syria, and the painting was an artist’s rendering of the treaty being signed. “This shows that the Arabs have always sought after peace,” she said. The fact that the Arabs didn’t live in Syria until 636 AD didn’t faze her.

Next was a painting of Queen Zenobia, the rebel queen who made the Syrian city of Palmyra independent of the Roman Empire, and proceeded to conquer a vast section of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. I thought her inclusion in a monument to the October War especially appropriate, since just as soon as the Romans could get their armies together, they sacked Palmyra and took Zenobia to Rome in chains. She’s something of a folk hero in Syria. Her face appears on the 500-pound bill here, and countless shops, products and companies bear her name.

The third painting showed Caliph Khaled ibn il-Walid, who conquered Syria for the Muslims in the 600s, in front of Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque, receiving envoys from some of his newly-conquered lands. The fourth showed Saladin, the Muslim hero who drove back the Crusaders, riding victoriously in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The fifth, of course, showed President Hafiz al-Assad planning strategy at the front lines of the October War.

Our guide next took us into a small movie theater to watch a movie about the Syrian assault on Mount Sheikh, the biggest mountain in the Golan Heights, and the site of a key Israeli outpost. Before the movie began, our guide requested that we remain standing for the Syrian national anthem. We obliged.

The movie (played on VHS) began with a brief recap of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the Syrian perspective. “The Palestinians were the first to suffer at the hands of the Zionists,” the English subtitles informed us, while the screen showed a terrifying, blank-white menace spreading across the map of the Middle East. Then, “with international help,” the Zionists proceed to a crushing victory against Egypt and Syria in the 1967 war. Then comes the bold, young new president, Hafiz al-Assad, who weighs his options carefully before making his courageous decision: “It is war.” (Direct quote.)

A lot of confusing footage follows of planes taking off, bombs falling, soldiers charging and tanks firing, until Syrian soldiers stand atop Mount Sheikh chanting, “Allah akbar! Allah akbar! Allah akbar!”

That’s pretty much where the movie ends, which is understandable, since after that happened, Israel retook Mount Sheikh, drove their forces to within 35 kilometers of Damascus, and bombed Damascus from the air for good measure. At that point in the story, everyone involved thought a ceasefire would be a good idea.

When the tape finished, the projector screen went blank, and a massive flurry of strobe lights illuminated a diorama/painting set up around the screen showing Syrian soldiers attacking the Israeli outpost on Mount Sheikh. One of the Israeli soldiers was depicted with big eyes and massive teeth, like some kind of primate or boogie monster.

It’s a little hard to describe just how magnificent the next part of the museum is, so bear with me. Our guide took us up a flight of stairs into the central cylinder of the museum, which, as it turned out, was a multistory 360-degree panorama painting of a battle scene from the Syrian city of Quneitrah in the Golan Heights. The city was a ruin of war: buildings riddled with holes from tank shells, a hospital, mosque and church on fire. In the middle of the city, the main Israeli force found itself trapped between two Syrian forces valiantly charging ahead, bearing the old starless Syrian flag. Above our heads, the Israeli and Syrian air forces clashed in a massive dogfight. Mount Sheikh and Mount Bental loomed large near Quneitrah, while the white buildings of Damascus lay far off in the distance.

In the middle of the giant cylinder, we sat on a stage that slowly rotated the full 360 degrees while martial music and a speech from Hafiz al-Assad played in the background. Encircling the stage and lying in between the stage and the panorama was a ten-foot wide 3-D diorama that melded seamlessly with the carnage in the painting. A real roll of barbed wire wound its way across the diorama into a painting of barbed wire on the panorama. A soldier in the panorama painting stood atop a real bunker in the diorama. It was difficult to tell where the painting stopped and the diorama began.

At the end of the war, Quneitrah was still in Israeli hands, but it was eventually returned to Syria (under UN supervision) in the ceasefire agreement that Henry Kissinger orchestrated between the two nations in 1974. The Israelis returned a war-torn shell of a city to the Syrians, and as our guide explained, Assad ordered that the city be preserved in its ruined state, so the world could see what the Zionists had done. Quneitrah is reportedly open to tourist visits (you have to get a permit from the government), and you can have lunch at a restaurant right next to the ruined hospital. It might be worth a visit someday.

The final stop on the tour was a huge room dedicated to Hafiz al-Assad, having very little to do with the Tishreen War. Paintings of Assad meeting with just about every foreign leader you can think of adorned the walls, while glass display cases held scores of biographies about the man. Above the door hung a huge painting of Hafiz holding hands with North Korea’s late leader, Kim Il Sung. On the left wall was a collection of Baath Party flags and slogans, and on the right, a huge painting of Hafiz’s family. The far wall was completely taken up by a painting of Hafiz marching along a street in Damascus, surrounded by throngs of adoring followers, complete with balloons, doves, and the October War Panorama in the background.

After the tour, while we were waiting for a microbus to take us back to central Damascus, Peter and I chatted in Arabic to a man who was also waiting for the bus. He found out all about our lives, and we found out all about his. When the bus finally came, he paid for our fare, and refused to let us pay him back. “Ahlan wa sahlan” he told us. “You are welcome in Syria.” It was a good reminder that, regardless of war, politics and perennially terrible English subtitling, the Syrians rock as a people.

Jokes

2011-03-01T14:58:00.000-06:00

I heard this one from a dear friend’s brother when I was visiting his family for lunch recently.

Apparently, on “Arabs Got Talent,” the (yes, really) Arab version of America’s Got Talent, there’s a judge on the panel who congratulates contestants he likes in this hysterically Arab fashion: “You are a flower, you are a candle, you are shining – you’re in!”

The joke goes like this:

Hosni Mubarak sent a message to Colonel Moammar Qaddafi. He said, “You are a flower, you are a candle, you are shining – you’re in!”

---

This one is from a Syrian friend. An Iraqi friend later told me that there are numerous versions:

God grants the American president, the French president, and the Syrian president one question about the future. “When will America conquer the world?” the American president asks.

God types the question into his future-telling machine, and replies, “After 2000 years.”

The American president begins to weep. “Why are you weeping?” God asks. “Because I will not see it,” says the president.

The French president asks, “When will France conquer the world?” God types the question into his future-telling machine and replies, “After 4000 years.”

The French president also begins to weep. “Why are you weeping?” God asks. “Because I will not see it,” says the French president.

The Syrian president asks, “When will Syria win the World Cup?” God types the question into his future-telling machine, and begins to weep at the result. “Why are you weeping?” the Syrian president asks the Lord.

“Because,” God replies, “I will not see it.”

Packages

2011-02-21T06:48:00.000-06:00

Last October 19, my parents sent me a care package from the United States. The week after, a wonderful couple from my home church sent me another care package.

On January 13, the package from my parents arrived.On January 20 , the package from my church friends arrived.

At least the Syrian postal system is consistent.

From where I live, the bareed markazi (Central Post Office) is a pleasant fifteen-minute walk through the Old City. The bareed markazi itself is an eight-story rattrap, where dreams go to die.

In America, the postal truck comes to my house, I sign for the package, and the postman hands the package over. In Syria, the postman brings me a receipt for my package. It is then up to me to walk to the bareed markazi, walk around the main entrance to a hidden side door below ground level, walk into a grimy, chaotic room filled with old furniture and three-year-old re-election posters for President Bashar (“Yes!” “Yes!” “We all say yes!”), shove my way through the crowds to the front desk, and try to get the stressed-out non-uniformed men to take my receipt, instead of the receipts being held out by the five men next to me. This usually takes a while, because I’m not very pushy. When finally the men take my receipt, they take it into the backroom, bring out my package, cut it open in front of me (looking for contraband? I dunno), sign my receipt, and then send me to two separate offices to get my receipts signed by other men, also out of uniform. When I have their signatures, I return with the receipt, get it stamped, sign my name, pay 90 pounds (about $2) and then I get to take my package.

Makes sense, right?

Today, while I was in the middle of this process, the man at the counter got distracted, set my package down on the counter in front of me, and went off to help somebody else. And for one crazy moment, I thought: I could just take it. Take it and run. It’s right there in front of me, and it is, after all, mine. I could leave the 90 pounds on the desk. They’d never know. I’d save them and myself the headache.

But I didn’t.

Clyde and Charlene, your package was wonderful – more than worth the hassle. Thank you so much. Everyone else – if you want to send me a package, I appreciate the thought, but I’m worried it won’t arrive while I’m still here. A promise from you that I’ll get to take you out for coffee when I return will be a fine substitute.

Egypt: The View from Syria, and other Thoughts

2011-02-14T15:15:00.001-06:00

Add caption

You can track the latest developments in Egypt at this website: Is Mubarak Still President of Egypt?

When I studied in Cairo with the Middle East Studies Program two years ago, my Egyptian host brother on the program, Shadi, was a few months into his mandatory military service. (Mandatory, that is, for everyone but the rich and well-connected). Shadi is an engineer by training, but had been conscripted, and had to spend about half of every week at the military base. His schedule was completely unpredictable. This made him unable to pursue his engineering career or even hold down a separate job.

On my way to Damascus last August, I stopped in Cairo to visit some old friends there, including Shadi. He picked me up in his car. Now twenty-six, I could tell he had aged significantly since we last saw each other. I asked him what he was up to.

“Well,” he said, “I just returned from ninety days of military training in the desert.”

“Shadi,” I asked, astonished. “How long have you been in the military?”

“Three years,” he replied. His service, he told me, had been extended over and over. His recent stint in the desert was only supposed to last fifteen days. Instead, it became three months – his entire summer.

“But you’re done now, right?” I asked.

“I go in after the holiday to find out if I’m done, or if I have to serve for another three months.”

Egypt is not at war with anybody. It has not gone to war with anybody for nearly

forty years, and is unlikely to do so in the future. In fact, my government was, essentially, paying Egypt two billion dollars every year not to go to war with its only regional adversary. But a military dictatorship demands a big military, and so did President Mubarak’s image. The fact that he upheld a peace treaty with them made it all the more important to maintain the fiction of “Arab resistance!” So, drafting all the young men was the order of the day.

There are tens of millions of stories like Shadi’s in Egypt, most of them far more dire. Egyptians didn’t have one reason to revolt, they had hundreds. Take your pick: endemic corruption, police that arrested and tortured with impunity, a broken education system, a broken healthcare system, a water system that delivered undrinkable water, skyrocketing food prices that made it next to impossible for you to feed your family, air so polluted that it would choke your nostrils day in and day out and leave a thin film of grime on your clothes when you hung them out to dry, or that fact that your government wouldn’t allow you to hold them accountable for any of this.

Shadi’s family is upper-middle class in Egypt. Economically and socially, they are relatively fortunate. But even they could not escape being mugged by the system.
It is stories like Shadi’s that used to make my stomach churn with rage at the sight of the Mubarak posters littering Cairo. And those same stories are why lately I have been just So. Very. Happy.

When my friends and I first arrived in Cairo two years ago, the program director told us, “This might be the first group to experience a regime change in Egypt.” He was speaking about the prospects of Mubarak’s mortality. I don’t think he or anyone else envisioned anything like this. A mostly peaceful transition in power, brought about by the sheer force of the Egyptian people’s collective will – it’s the stuff of dreams.

It used to be a cliché of international relations that the Arab world was the great wasteland of self-determination, the one region of the world that remained untouched by the twentieth century’s wave of democratization. No more. One in four Arabs lives in Egypt. God willing, one in four Arabs will now live in a democracy. If Iraq’s democracy survives and Lebanon and Palestine sort out their issues, we’ll be able to add millions of more to that happy category. This is the biggest thing to happen in the Arab world since – I don’t know, help me out here, scholars – World War I?

(Add.: And it’s a happy biggest thing!)

If all goes well, the ruling military council will soon hold free and fair elections, and power will be transferred to the first popularly-elected government in Egypt’s history. Hopefully, that government will be able to start tackling Egypt’s massive economic, environmental and structural problems. Please continue to pray for Egypt. The path ahead is far from straight.

…

I am watching this change from the Middle East, but seemingly from afar. On the streets, the only sign that something is different is the televisions. The televisions in the shops and street restaurants of Damascus, which usually play music videos, movies or soccer games on their televisions, now seem to be constantly tuned to Al-Arabiya or Al-Jazeera. Everyone wants to follow the news from Egypt. On Saturday, the 30th, Raymond (one my Syrian friends, not his real name) and are walking on Straight Street, in the Christian quarter, and through the huge glass windows of a tapestry shop, I see a flatscreen television tuned to Al-Arabiya. The news footage makes the unrest look pretty severe; I see tanks and lots of fire. I have friends in Cairo, so I ask Raymond to go inside a shop to ask the owner what’s going on. The owner invites us to stay and watch with him. After Raymond explains that I don’t understand Arabic, the owner summarizes the situation for us: “The army is going to restore order, so everything will be OK soon, God willing,” he says.

…

Looking over Alfonso’s (not his real name) shoulder at his Facebook page, I notice that quite a few of his friends have changed their profile pictures to an image of Bashar al-Assad. “This is a reaction to what is happening in Egypt,” he tells me. “They want to show that they are with the president, not like the Egyptians.” Eventually, Alfonso will change his Facebook picture to an image of Bashar as well. I ask him why. “Because everyone else is doing it!”

…

During prayers at Mass last Sunday, which I usually understand very little of, I hear the Arabic names for Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Palestine spoken in a list. I infer the priests are praying for the church in these countries.

…

Most of the Syrians I talk to don’t have any sympathy for Mubarak. Over beers at a local cafe, Malcolm tells me about an occasion when Mubarak accused Syria of assassinating Lebanon’s ex-Prime Minister. According to Malcolm, Bashar replied, “We don’t respond to accusations from half-men.” “It was so great!” Malcolm exults, giddy with national pride.

…

At night, Alfonso and I watch the news. Sometimes he translates for me, but mostly I just take in the images. We switch to a channel that Alfonso tells me is sponsored by the Iranian government. The guest of the news show is yelling at the top of his lungs about how the Egyptian people do NOT believe Mubarak, and WILL throw him out. Wonder where Iran stands on this issue…

…

My favorite quote from a Syrian friend about the Egyptian uprising: “The moment the first Mubarak poster was torn down, it was all over.”

…

While I haven’t met a Syrian (or an Iraqi – or anyone, really) yet who supported Mubarak, not all of my Christian Syrian friends were so enthused about the Egyptian uprising. The vicious attack on a church in Alexandria over the Christmas season really rattled the church here in Syria. Christians in this region have good reason to fear majority rule.

…

And the icing on the cake – on February 10, without explanation, the Syrian government lifted its ban on Facebook and YouTube. One day you couldn’t access those sites through a Syrian IP address, the next you could. The ban was always something of a joke, easily bypassable with international proxy numbers that internet café owners here distributed freely and openly. Why it’s been lifted now, I cannot say. But feel free to contact me on Facebook now!

I am breathing much easier right now.

2011-02-01T14:07:00.000-06:00

I just got word that my American friends made it safely from Cairo to Istanbul. Praise the Lord. Keep praying for Egypt.

Egypt

2011-01-31T04:06:00.000-06:00

First things first – yes, I am perfectly safe. This is primarily because I live in Syria, not Egypt.

Glad we cleared that up. Thanks for your concern, everybody. I truly appreciate it. I know that from the other side of the world, Egypt and Syria seem right next door. But not only are there two huge deserts and a Canaan-sized no-go zone between me and Cairo, but the politics of the region make Damascus and Cairo very far apart indeed. Things are very quiet here in Syria, as always, except for the fact that the TVs in the shops are always tuned to news channels these days. I thank God for the peace that prevails in this country.

(Fun fact: I had originally planned to live in Egypt this year. When I got the job in Syria, I had to persuade my friends and family that it was just as safe as Egypt.)

So what’s going on in Egypt?

As part of my senior project last year, I wrote an essay about the prospects for the Egyptian dictatorship. I’m uploading it today for old times’ sake. If any of you politics junkies have any comments, I’d love to discuss this with you (time and internet access allowing). Here’s my take on the situation right now.

The Mubarak dictatorship isn’t as murderous as Saddam’s or Kim Jong Il’s, but it is amazingly corrupt, random and incompetent. The sheer stupidity of the regime is occasionally breathtaking. This is a government that responded to the swine flu scare two years ago by ordering the killing of every pig in the country. Seriously. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t for the 400,000 Christian farmers who lost their livelihoods in one swift stroke.

Almost half of the Egyptian population lives in poverty. The per capita annual income is $6,000. Among the world’s nations, Egypt ranks 111 out of 180 in terms of government transparency. The education system and healthcare systems are a joke. Unemployment and underemployment, especially among young people, is through the roof. Cairo is literally the most polluted city on earth. Large parts of the Nile River in Egypt are unusable for fishing, swimming or (God forbid) drinking. Military service for young men is mandatory and capricious (except for the well-connected). I have a dear friend in Cairo whose military service was extended over and over again until it swallowed three years of his twenties. I remember a conversation I had two years ago at a café with an upper-middle class Egyptian young man. “Is it hard to leave Egypt?” I asked him when he told me he wanted to go live in America. I was talking about ticket expenses, visa requirements, things like that. “No,” he replied flatly. “It’s easy, because I hate Egypt.” I remember being in my host brother’s car when Cairo’s miserable infrastructure turned what should have been a brief errand on the way to the bowling alley into an hour and a half detour. “Life is very difficult here,” he sighed. Even for the relatively fortunate, the day-in day-out chaos of life in that mismanaged country is hard to take.

All of this is accompanied by an incredibly repressive political system. 16,000 political prisoners, random torture and detention and killings by the police, rigged elections, violence against opposition candidates and their supporters – all this adds up to a system with no hope for change and no outlet for the people’s anger. Mubarak is now 82 years old and in poor health. In the last few years, he has started to groom his son Gamal to take his place, pretty much bringing Egypt around full-circle to the colonial monarchy it had before the 1952 revolution.

Long story short, the Egyptian population has been set to explode for a while now. All it needed was a spark. It appears that the downfall of Tunisia’s president was the needed spark. I’m amazed at what’s happened in Cairo over the past six days. People have seen that it’s possible, and they’re going for it, risking their lives in the streets for a chance at real political change. According to the BBC, a hundred people have already died in the protests, yet the protestors keep coming. There’s a video on YouTube that shows an Egyptian man shouting, “I will die today!” as he runs into the demonstrations. This whole chain of events was started by ordinary, desperate Arabs setting themselves on fire. It’s disturbing, frightening and exhilarating.

Which way will the uprising go? It’s far too early to tell. The key to making a popular revolt translate into real change is getting the army and police to change sides. (See: Romania, the Philippines, Tunisia.) Mubarak’s biggest response so far has been to appoint, for the first time in his 30-year rule, a vice president (and nominal successor) – Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s chief of military intelligence. Most people see this as an attempt to suck up to the military. If Mubarak is now willing to be brutal enough to shoot down the protestors, a la Tiananmen Square, that might be the end of this uprising. Or, it could spark an even bigger revolution.

This situation also puts the U.S. in an awkward position, because we have essentially been paying off the Mubarak regime not to fight with Israel for the past thirty years - $1.3 billion a year in military aid. With peace between Egypt and its only regional enemy, where do you suppose that money’s been spent? On the tanks now patrolling the streets of Cairo. Our government has subsidized the Egyptian government’s oppression for three decades and counting. President Obama has a chance, now, to try to atone for all this by making it clear where the U.S. stands on the issue of democracy in Egypt. It won’t come again.

Here in Syria, there is very little love for Mubarak. The man is seen (pretty much correctly) as an honorless lackey of the United States. One Syrian friend told me that the Syrian president once replied to an accusation from Mubarak by saying, “We don’t respond to attacks from half-men.” “It was so great!” he told me, giddy with national pride. Most of the Syrians I’ve spoken to feel the same way. But some are worried about the fate of Egypt’s Christian minority, especially if this revolt brings the Muslim Brotherhood to power. (Obviously, U.S. policymakers are worried about the same thing about now).

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that the Muslim Brotherhood is not going to come out of this on top. Yes, they are the most organized opposition force in Egypt (because Mubarak crushed everything else), and yes, they will certainly play a role in the new government. But an Islamic theocracy is not what most Egyptians are yearning to replace Mubarak with. And it’s not the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood (who even knows his name?) who’s been asked by the leading Egyptian parties to form a transitional government. It’s Mohammad El-Baradei, the secular, liberal opposition figurehead. Only he can attract a base big enough. Even the Brotherhood is standing behind him at this time. This, I think, is a very good sign.

Only God knows, and he knows best. Pray for Egypt. Pray also for my friends who are living in Cairo at this time: Brian, Tamer, Ismail, Samer, Shady, David, Diaa, Ramy, Adrian, Chris, Dena, and others. The Egyptian government has cut off the internet for the time being, so I can’t really contact them at this time. Apparently foreign nationals are being advised to leave, so hopefully I'll hear from the Americans on that list fairly soon.

“Blessed be Egypt my people.” – Isaiah 19:25

Snow!

2011-01-23T07:10:00.000-06:00

A few months ago, the priest and I were walking to the seminary, and he pointed up at some wispy cirrus clouds in the sky. “Maybe we will finally have rain tomorrow,” he said. “God willing,” I replied.

Winter is usually the rainy season in Syria, but the rains have been very late this year. Farmers are worried about how they will plant their crops in the spring, and ordinary people are worried about what will happen to the price of food. Millions of Syrians have been lifting prayers to God for rain in the past few months.

A few days after my conversation with the priest, it finally happened. It poured all day, turning the uneven pavement into puddles and ponds, and putting everyone into a good mood.

And the day after, we got one better.

I was Skyping with my friend Adam when some of the boys ran into the room and shouted, “Joel, tellaj! Tellaj!” Snow! Yeah, sure, I thought to myself. A few sleet particles, and they throw a fit.

Well, take a look for yourself.

I’m told that Damascus hasn’t gotten this much snow in around a decade. I certainly didn’t expect to see this much. It’s a lot of fun, but Damascus is not a city accustomed to snow. The snow isn’t good for the sketchy architecture of Old Damascus - my friend’s neighbor already had a wall collapse. The giant Christmas tree at the patriarchate where I live snapped in half. School was closed for two days over a few inches. And on a much more trivial note, I’m learning that my shoes don’t keep out slushy water too well.

After three days, the snow was almost all melted, except on the peaks of the nearby mountains. But praise God! It was just what the earth needed, and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in Damascus.

Ear to the Ground

2011-01-20T04:31:00.000-06:00

Phoenicia:

A few nights ago, I went movie shopping. (For Goodbye, Lenin!, specifically). Movie shops in Syria typically have a TV in them, so that shop owners can play the movie before shoppers buy it, to prove that it works well. (There are no copyright laws in Syria, and as a result, it’s almost impossible to buy anything other than a burned DVD in a plastic bag with a photocopy of the actual movie cover. 50 cents a pop.)

On this night, every shop I went to had their TVs tuned to the same program. No, it wasn’t a soccer game. (Good guess, though.) A pro-God’s Party TV station called New TV was airing a leaked tape of the League of Nations’ secret interview with the Phoenician prime minister. A special League of Nations tribunal is investigating the murder of the Phoenician prime minister’s father in 2005. The prime minister’s father was himself a former prime minister who was running for the office again at the time of his untimely death. The murdered man opposed Aram’s influence in Phoenicia, and his death was widely blamed on Aram and its Phoenician ally, God’s Party. The assassination (carried out with massive car bombs which claimed a score of Phoenician lives on the side) led to huge anti-Aramean street protests in Phoenicia and the withdrawal of the Aramean army from Phoenicia after twenty-five years of occupation.

The five years that followed have not been kind to Phoenicia. In 2006, Canaan launched a massive attack on Phoenicia to try to wipe out God’s Party. They failed, and 1,000 Phoenicians were killed, most of them civilians. In 2007, the Phoenician army clashed with a Muslim militant group and attacked a refugee camp filled with Canaanite refugees, sending 27,000 of them fleeing. In 2008, fighting erupted in Beirut between supporters of the dead prime minister and the supporters of God’s Party. Now, the League of Nations’ tribunal is about to unveil its formal charges. According to published reports, several members of the Aramean government and God’s Party will be charged.

In the leaked tape (recorded in 2007), the prime minister is shown explicitly blaming the assassination on Aram. (Late last year, he publicly denied believing Aram was involved). In the first movie shop I visited, the owner (who spoke pretty good English) kept saying, “Oh my God!” and shaking his head. Understandably, no one I’ve talked to here believes that Aram was involved.

Over the weekend, God’s Party withdrew from the Lebanese coalition government, depriving the prime minister of his majority and causing the collapse of his government. Talks will now begin to try to form a new government, but Phoenicia appears to be headed towards an extended period of political deadlock. When the charges are finally unveiled, Phoenicia will probably not have anything but an interim government available to respond.

Will this interim government try to arrest the charged individuals and bring them to Europe for trial? God’s Party has vowed to resist any such attempt violently. Will the interim government refuse to act on the indictments? How will they maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of their people if they do? Will Canaan decide to try to attack Lebanon and finish off God’s Party once and for all? How would Aram respond to an outbreak of war in Phoenicia?

So many ways things could go wrong. And yet, I have trouble believing that the Phoenician people will put up with yet another civil war. Hopefully the desire to hold their approval will keep the major actors in line. Please keep Phoenicia in your prayers.

Carthage:

While I was traveling last weekend, the TV in the lobby of the hotel where I stayed was tuned to an Arab news channel every night. Nearly all the coverage was devoted to the chaos in Carthage. Since I don’t (really) speak Arabic, I didn’t know what was going on. It wasn’t until I got back and got on the internet that I realized that massive street protests in Carthage had driven the Carthagian president, who had ruled unopposed for twenty-three years, into exile.

This is big. Barring Babylonia, I can’t recall a single Ishmaelite ruler who has voluntarily given up power since the region became independent after World War II, and this is the first time popular unrest has forced an Ishmaelite ruler from power. From what I can tell, people here are following the situation closely. “It’s exciting!” one person told me.

The protests that led to the Carthagian leader’s exile started when an unemployed man, in a stunning act of protest, committed suicide by lighting himself on fire in the capital city, Vietnam-war style. Since the Carthagian leader’s flight, two citizens of Mizraim, seven Numidians, and one Hassane have committed or attempted suicide in a similar way. Considering that Islam forbids both suicide and cremation, these attempts are a shocking indicator of just how desperate the situation is in many parts of the Ishmaelite world.

We’ve known for years that the status quo in this region couldn’t last. Is this the tipping point?

Cush:

After fifty years of more-or-less constant civil war, the southern region of this country – which is largely black and Christian, as opposed to the Arab, Muslim north – has voted to become independent. The vote was fair and largely violence-free, and the government of the north seems set to respect it. That may be because the ruler of Cush is more concerned about his own survival. He recently arrested one of his old political rivals after the rival threatened to start street protests like the ones in Carthage to drive him from power. The street protests have begun nonetheless.

Allah knows best. May he guide this region to peace and freedom.

Linguistic Imperialism

2011-01-20T01:52:00.000-06:00

“An American tourist was being heckled by a French anti-war protester when he turned and asked the Frenchman:
‘Excuse me. Do you speak German?’
The Frenchman replied ‘No.’
The American looked him in the eyes and said ‘You're welcome.’”
- Frenchjokes.com

Picture this scenario, my English-speaking friends.

In the part of town where you live (if you are middle-class), all the signs are in English, except for the numerals, which are Arabic numerals. Once you go to the new, rich part of town, all of the signs are in both English and Arabic. Nearly all shops have signs in English and Arabic over the door, and virtually all the products you buy have the product information written in both languages. The money you buy them with is inscribed with the denomination and the name of your country in Arabic.

Most of your clothes have Arabic writing on them. You think your clothes look nice, but you have no idea what the writing on them says.

All of the good movies are in Arabic. If you want to enjoy them, you have to watch them with English subtitles. Ditto with TV shows. Your favorite singers sing in Arabic. You don’t know what their lyrics mean.

Arabic is a required subject from the first grade onwards, even though you’ll likely never have a native speaker as a teacher, and you’ll rarely have the chance to use it in everyday life, outside the classroom, unless you’re one of the lucky few who gets a visa to the Middle East to work or study. If you want to go to university, you will have to pass an extremely difficult Arabic exam. You’re so eager for a friend who speaks Arabic as a first language that you constantly approach Arab tourists to see if they’d be interested in a language exchange.

When your parents were growing up, Farsi was the dominant world language, so they learned Farsi in school. Farsi is now virtually useless, except for speaking with the throngs of Iranian tourists who visit your country. Your parents probably know the Arabic alphabet and numerals, and will proudly show off this knowledge to anyone who asks, but the language itself is closed off to them. They strongly encourage you to study Arabic as hard as you can in school so you can make something of yourself, but for all you know, by the time you’re their age, Turkish will be the dominant language.

This is basically the situation the average Syrian finds himself in vis-à-vis English (and French).

Both English and French are mandatory in Syrian schools – French, because Syria was occupied by France for twenty years after World War I, and the Syrian bureaucracy is modeled on the French system, and English, because everyone has to learn English these days. It makes me feel lazy.

One of my students asked me the other day, “We study English and French in our schools. Why don’t you study Arabic in America?” I answered as honestly as I could: “Because everyone speaks English. Only Arabs speak Arabic.” I added: “It’s good. You’re smarter than us, because you have to learn three languages.”

Watching my students struggle through English and panic about their English exams, while I take my sweet time learning Arabic, has made the power imbalance between the West and the Arabs much more real to me. Not to belabor the obvious, but English, not Arabic, is the language of power in our time, and that’s not always easy on the ESL countries of the world, like Syria.

Back to the opening “joke”: I’ve used some variation of this theme many times in discussions about history and politics. “If it weren’t for (insert American political figure/event), we’d be speaking German/Russian/French right now!” (Because America would have been conquered by France, Germany or Russia.) The prospect of American schoolchildren learning Russian in school is supposed to be positively chilling.

So what does it mean that not only the French, but our adversaries in the Middle East, teach their kids English?

So what is my role in all this? I do my best to help them, I suppose. There’s nothing wrong or oppressive in learning a new language. It can, and should be, exciting and rewarding. I just wish my students were learning it under better circumstances.

Languages

2011-01-11T02:46:00.003-06:00

Pick up any of the complimentary guides to Syria at the tourist offices in the Old City, and you will find the following passage:

“The official language is Arabic. Most Syrians also speak another language, which, most often, is French or English.”

This impossibly lame paragraph doesn’t even come close to capturing the true linguistic diversity of Syria. Yes, almost everyone speaks Arabic, and yes, many people speak French and English. But there’s far more to language in Syria than these three, the languages they teach in schools. In recent weeks, I’ve begun to realize that many of the people I take for granted – my students, friends, parents of friends – are, in fact, bilingual geniuses. It’s taken me a while to find this out, because it never comes up in conversation. They don’t see it as a big deal.
Here’s a sampling of the languages I’ve found in Syria.

Syriac

In many ways, this is the indigenous language of Syria. It far predates the introduction of Arabic (which was basically imported with Islam) and is still spoken in many villages in central Syria. It’s a Semitic language, like Arabic, but it has its own alphabet. It’s also the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the biggest Christian denominations here. Like the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, which uses the ancient Egyptian language in its services, the Syriac Orthodox Church holds on to Syriac. It is a intriguing reminder of Syria’s pre-Islamic past. I was at a Christmas party a few weeks ago with two priests from the Syriac Orthodox Church in attendance. The host asked them to bless the food before the dinner was served. Their reply was a stunning, multi-verse, multi-part chant-and-response in Syriac. It was awesome.

Fun fact: Most of the language spoken in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is Syriac.

Aramaic

“Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, ‘Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.’”
- Isaiah 36:11

“Jesus took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koum!’ (which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, get up!’)”
- Mark 5:41

Aramaic, or “the language of Christ” as its speakers proudly label it, is spoken as a first language in three villages in Syria, most prominently in Maalula, a Christian holy city about an hour north of Damascus. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Middle East for several centuries, from at least the time of the Assyrian Empire until the time of Jesus. Chapters 2 through 7 in the book of Daniel – the chapters that deal with the Gentile world, instead of Daniel’s people – are written in Aramaic.

From what I understand, biblical Aramaic is probably as close to Syriac as to the language that Maalulans call “Aramaic.” (Hence Syriac’s use in The Passion of the Christ.) But the Maalulan dialect is unique, and its speakers proudly hold it up as the genuine article. Kids in Maalula grow up speaking Aramaic, and learn Arabic in school. One of the brothers and one of the students at the seminary are from Maalula, and speak Aramaic as a first language. They’re happy to demonstrate the language for me, but neither of them speak very good English, so usually we end up meeting in the middle with Arabic.

I bought an introduction to spoken Aramaic in Maalula on my first visit there. My goal is to have a partial conversation with one of my Maalulan friends in Aramaic before I leave here. (I’m looking at you, Brian Cassels.)

Armenian

There’s a surprisingly large population of Armenians living in Syria, particularly in Damascus and Aleppo. Most of them came here as refugees after the Ottoman Empire tried to wipe them out in Asia Minor during World War I. The Armenian Orthodox Church is one of seven officially recognized churches in Syria, and it’s not uncommon to see the Armenian flag in decal form on cars in Damascus. Many of these Armenians still speak Armenian in the home, along with Arabic. But some of my Arab Syrian friends speak it to, for a variety of reasons – they went to an Armenian Christian school as a child, their mom spoke it and taught it to them in the home, etc. The picture at the top of this post shows the sign in front of the Armenian Orthodox Patriachate in Damascus. It's written in three languages, from top to bottom: Armenian, Arabic and English.

Kurdish

About 10% of Syrians are Kurdish, meaning they hail from the region where Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria meet, and speak Kurdish, rather than Arabic as their first language. Their very existence in Syria is something of a sensitive subject. But it’s happened several times in Damascus that I’ve introduced myself as an American, and the Syrian I’m speaking with says, “Oh, I’m Kurdish!” (Ever since 1991, we’ve had something of a rapport.)

I have a friend working in Hesseke, a town in northeastern Syria There, almost everyone speaks both Kurdish and Arabic. He’s even started to pick up on the Kurdish, to the delight of the kids he teaches. How sick is that?

Arabic

You knew this one, right? Maybe not.

When I visited my friend George for Christmas, he and his friends showed me a video of his sister’s wedding. The men from the groom’s family danced into the church, chanting vigorously. I asked George and his friends what the men were chanting. They looked at each other and laughed. “We don’t know,” one of them said. “It’s Horani.” (Horan is the region where George lives.)

“Really? It’s not Arabic?” I asked.

“No, no, it’s Arabic, but it’s Horani Arabic, very Horani.”

Arabic is an extremely complex language. It exists at three levels: classical, which has remained basically unchanged since 700 AD, and which is used in the Qur’an, Islamic prayer, and classical literature; modern standard, which is used in school, books, newspapers, signs, speeches – basically any formal occasion; and spoken, which is far simpler than the first two and vastly different from the first two, in both grammar and vocabulary. Kids learn spoken Arabic in the home, and written Arabic in school. This is by no means as simple a task as learning written English in school. The high schoolers I work with regularly stumble over the rotating after-dinner Bible readings, to the point where the priest has to take the Bible from their hands and finish it for them. On the day when it’s their turn to read, many of them spend dinnertime practicing the passage beforehand at the table instead of eating.

In this sense, educated Syrians are automatically bilingual – they know spoken and written Arabic. (It’s possible to speak and write in both spoken and written Arabic, by the way. "Written" is simply more complicated and formal.) If they’re from Hesseke, Maalula or Armenia, they’re probably trilingual, without ever stepping foot in an English class.

Spoken Arabic also varies widely from region to region. I am only vaguely familiar with two forms of spoken Arabic – the spoken Arabic of Cairo and of Damascus. These two, I know, differ significantly in vocabulary and pronunciation. From what I’ve told, Gulf Arabic and Moroccan Arabic aren’t even mutually intelligible. Within Syria, the dialect changes after about an hour of driving time. Not exaggerating. Horan is forty-five minutes from Damascus, depending on the traffic, and once you get there, you find that the glottal stop is now a “g,” the “z” is now a “th,” “ee” is now “ai,” and “your father” is “abook,” instead of “abak.” On my visits to Horan, I often whip out my Arabic notebook to write down a new word I hear, only to be chided, “No, no, that’s Horani. Don’t write it down.” My old Arabic teacher told me he would have to spend a month living in Lattakia, a city on the coast, before he could understand the speech there. Syria is slightly bigger than Iowa, and there are at least five dialects or sub-dialects of Arabic here.

In short, as my Syrian friend Qosi has told me, “Arabic is an ocean. Not even Arabs know Arabic.”

People here have a hard time understanding why I’m trying to learn spoken Arabic here, instead of written Arabic. In the minds of most Syrians, written Arabic is the real thing, the “correct” way to speak. The fact that no one speaks “correctly” does not deter them from trying to adjust my quest for me. “I want to talk with people,” I say. “Everyone here knows proper Arabic,” the reply comes. A) That’s just not true, especially with children and the less-educated, and B) Nobody speaks it in everyday life, even if they know it. It’d be like quoting Shakespeare over burgers. It’s simply not done. I do want to learn written Arabic someday (God have mercy on me), but I can learn written Arabic from a book. While I’m here, I want to be a part of the life of Syria. That means speaking, for lack of a better term, Syrian.

So. Now you know!

Where is that guy?

2011-01-11T02:26:00.001-06:00

He's busy, and depressingly bad at time management! And while hopefully one or both of those things will change soon, they're both true today. But you guys are wonderful readers and friends, and I'd like to take a few minutes to keep you in the loop.

What's been happening lately:
- Trips to Lebanon, the ancient Roman cities of Palmyra and Bosra and the Christian holy city of Maalula.
- A new teaching project with some amazing Iraqi refugees who are preparing for college in the United States.
- Me actually understanding people when they talk in Arabic - a little, anyway.
- Exams, exams, exams - for my students, that is. And I thought they studied all the time before...
- A wonderful, four-day visit from my father, who, I'm pretty sure, loved the Syrian experience. My dad can beat up your dad!
- Attacks on churches in Egypt and Iraq, and an attempted assassination of a congresswoman in Arizona. And you guys are worried about my safety? Thank God for the peace that prevails in Syria. My prayers are with God's church in Iraq and Egypt, and with the families of the victims of the Tuscon shooting.

What will happen soon, by the grace of God:
- A 10-day vacation from school. In the middle of January. No, there's no religious or state holiday, but exams are over, and I guess they thought it would be a good time. Found out about this two days ago.
- Due to the aforementioned, a spontaneous trip to some distant corner of this beautiful country.
- More blogging. My promises are probably empty to you folks at this point, but it is a goal of mine. There are so many stories I want to share with you guys. I also want to start posting my thoughts about a book my dad brought me, at my request, when he came: In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Zizek, a Slovakian Marxist and cultural critic.

Reading Zizek's Living in the End Times last summer was a terrific experience, and I'm eager to get back into this guy's head. I don't understand a lot of his jargon, but he's endlessly fascinating nonetheless. Last summer, I followed up Living in the End Times with Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom. Zakaria is much, much more readable, and probably more basic, but it struck me that both men asked the same question - "How can we reverse the tide of destruction and chaos brought about by the free market and globalization?" - and gave opposite answers. Zizek wants to shed all the ties that bind - culture, capitalism, violent force - in a vaguely-defined "global emancipation project." Zakaria forcefully advocates the ties that bind. He favors limits on democracy and a benign class system. Those of you who know me can probably guess than I'm with Zakaria on this one, but my political beliefs are probably more ambiguous at this stage in my life than at any point before. Praise God, who makes fools of wise men, and gives his love and truth to little children.

Hope to write to you again soon. Until then, الله معكن. God be with you all.

Look out for the jackal, look out for the wolf

2010-10-30T15:01:00.002-05:00

Pictures here.

Yesterday was a classic day in Syria. What could be better than an impulse trip to a holy city with two people you’ve never met before?

I woke up at 9:00 to go to the English-speaking congregation I attend here. This was trickier than it sounds, because the night before was Syria’s time change, and Syrians are even worse about time changes than Americans. I found out about it from an ex-pat at a coffee shop; his Syrian Muslim friend had no idea. As I tried to sleep in the next morning, the church bells were one hour ahead of me. As of this writing, they still haven’t been changed back. In short, I was convinced that I would show up an hour late to church. Thanks be to God, I didn’t.

My church is an international, interdenominational, English-speaking church that meets in the basement of a school in the New City. After the service, I met a British student named Peter who’s studying Arabic at Damascus University. We clicked almost immediately. (Afterward he bought a book at a coffee shop on my recommendation - The Life of Pi – “I know I only met you an hour ago, but I think you would like this book,” I said). After we had talked for a while, the pastor introduced us briefly to an Iraqi man whom I’ll call Tim. We chatted for a few minutes, then made our way out.

Since we both live in the Old City, Peter and I decided to travel home together. We were walking down the street, trying to find the bus stop, when we ran into Tim again. He was going to Seidnayya for the afternoon. Would we like to come? We would! Microbus away!

According to the non-authoritative Lonely Planet guide, the Crusaders viewed Seidnayya as the holiest place in the Middle East next to Jerusalem. It is a small town in the mountains north of Damascus, and home to some twenty monasteries, though only eight or so are still active. Some of the monasteries predate the birth of Christ by hundreds of years. They were originally pagan temples; Emperor Constantine converted them into monasteries after he converted to Christianity. The biggest and most famous monastery is Our Lady of Seidnayya, which supposedly holds a painting that St. Luke made of the Virgin Mary. At this place, a Christian Roman emperor was out hunting, and was about to shoot the gazelle, when the Virgin Mary appeared to him and told him to build a monastery on the site. (“Seidnayya” is Arabic for “Gazelle Hunter.”)

The contrast between polluted Damascus and the breathtaking blue skies and clean streets in Seidnayya is amazing. The town clings to the side of the mountains like moss. There is a nary a flat street in the town, and any spot you pick offers a spectacular view of the valley below. Its several thousand residents are mostly Christian, but there is one very prominent mosque in the center of town. All in all, Peter, Tim and I visited four monasteries: St. George’s, Our Lady of Seidnayya, St. Thomas’, and the Cherubim Monastery. We also ate hamburgers with eggs.

St. George killed a dragon, and he’s very popular in the Middle East, though I’ve never gotten the full story. He’s also the patron saint of England; as Peter says, “We nicked him.” The monk we met there was very enthusiastic, and showed us a cave at the monastery that was significant for some reason – I think because they found one of St. George’s bones there, and it smelled like perfume. The monk gave us free incense and holy oil there, claiming it would heal us of any sickness if we believed. He instructed us sternly to burn the wrapper the oil came in after we were done, instead of throwing it away, because it was holy. (If you’re wondering, Tim was translating all this for us.) We saw a man there who had come to the cave hoping to be healed of his back problems.

Our Lady of Seidnayya is perched on the top of a rocky cliff, and designed like a European castle. (It’s been expanded and improved on since it was first built by the Romans.) St. Luke’s painting of Mary is kept deep inside the monastery, in a dark room inside a silver safe built into the wall, so I can’t judge the good doctor’s artistic ability. It was something, though, to see the throngs of pilgrims kissing the safe, including some hoping to be healed there by God’s mercy. Reportedly, Muslims (who honor Mary as the virgin mother of Jesus the messenger) also make pilgrimage to this monastery, though I didn’t knowingly see any there. The views from the wall of the monastery were spectacular. Tim told us that the monastery and convent at Our Lady’s provides rooms for many Iraqi refugees while they search for new homes in Syria.

St. Thomas’s monastery is three hundred years older than Jesus. It was a place of sacrifice for the Roman gods until the Romans adopted Christianity, and we could still see the sacrificial pits inside the church and in the caves around the church. Saint Thomas (the apostle) is said to have visited this monastery on his way to India, where he would be martyred for Jesus.

The Cherubim Monastery also predates Christ, and sits at the very top of the mountain, far above any other buildings. If it weren’t for the thunderstorm that crept up on us that day, we probably could have seen Damascus from the top. As it was, we could see all of Seidnayya, and the mountains beyond, and the plains beyond those mountains. There is currently a Russian-funded project to build a statue of Jesus at the monastery that will be tall enough to be seen from Lebanon. We saw the completed base of the statue there – it’s pretty big. The monastery welcomes visitors. I may go there to spend a night sometime.

At the Cherubim Monastery, a priest who spoke pretty good English was talking to Peter and I. Peter explained that he became a Christian only recently. The priest turned to me and said, “And you, have you repented?”

Repented? Repented of what?

Seeing my blank stare, the priest elaborated. “Have you repented? Are you born again?”

Ohh… “Yes, yes I have repented, thanks be to God.” It was a good reminder.

Throughout the day, Tim told us his story. It’s long and intense, and this is how I recall it.

Tim is from Baghdad. He grew up under the rule of Saddam Hussein. In school, he memorized 1,400 pages of American English words in font size 8, so his English is pretty good. (Also, compared to him, I fail at life.) In 1987, when he was attending university (and at the height of the brutal Iran-Iraq War), Saddam ordered that all the university students spend three weeks of their summer vacation in army training. Their supervisors were students from the military academy, whom Tim claims resented the civilian students, because only people who fail the tests to get into civilian university went to military school. Tim and his friends were allowed only three hours of sleep a day. If they didn’t finish their meals in the allotted time, their overseers would force them to vomit. (Tim told us this over some delicious hamburgers in Seidnayya, to explain why he ate his so fast.) Six students died during the training. One of Tim’s friends tried to run away, but when he got into the desert, he saw some wolves and jackals, and hid in the sand until morning, when he was found by the army trainers, and brutally punished. Saddam, Tim claims, hated all Iraqis, because “they f***ed his mother.” (He claims she was a prostitute. I hadn’t heard this before, but I know Saddam grew up poor).

Eventually, Tim became a chemical engineer. Hussein Kamal, Saddam’s son-in-law (who would be murdered by Saddam in 1995) was in charge of Tim’s program. Kamal treated the engineers brutally, and Tim was pushed to the psychological breaking point. He decided to escape to Yemen.

After Saddam fell, Tim tried to return to Iraq. He spent fifty days in northern Iraq – forty with his family, ten in jail. The Kurdish militias came to his hotel, arrested him, accused him of being from Yemen (after living there for fourteen years, he had picked up the Yemeni accent) and of forging his Iraqi citizenship papers, and beat him so badly he couldn’t move his right side for a week. After that, he decided he wouldn’t be safe anywhere in Iraq, so he moved to Syria.

He spent a few months as a novice in two of the monasteries in Seidnayya. Now he works as a chemical engineer in a factory in Damascus. He says he loves living in Damascus. But he wants to go to America. All he wants, he says, is a “calm life."

Iraqis have a saying, he told me. “Look out for the jackal, look out for the wolf.” It describes a life that is never calm or restful. There is always danger to look out for. He is sick of living like this, he says. He just wants to rest, to be calm.

In Seidnayya, we visited a 105-year-old woman that Tim had lived with for a time after he came to Syria. (For perspective on how old that is, she was born under the Ottoman Empire, was ten when World War I devastated the Middle East, forty when the Syrians kicked out the French occupiers and gained independence, and sixty-five years old when President Hafiz Assad came to power in Syria in 1970.) She hobbled down the cement stairs in her home to greet us. She was impossibly short, impossibly wrinkled, and had an impossible warmth and strength about her. She asked Tim to bring her a candle, so that should could pray for the war in Iraq to end.

“Is Iraq getting better?” I ask Tim.

“No. Iraq is gone forever.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “We did not know what we were doing.”

He smiles gracefully and changes the subject.

What Learning Arabic Is Like

2010-10-04T02:35:00.000-05:00

Learning Arabic is like playing football. I am not naturally cut out for either. When you make a pass, take a shot, or construct a sentence in a conversation, there is no time to reflect. You have to be aware of multiple things at once, and remember multiple things at once. Is this in the right tense? Is it conjugated towards the right person? Am I pronouncing all the letters correctly? Do I need a direct object suffix or an indirect object suffix?

All of that is for one word, the sentence’s verb. When I come to the noun, if it’s plural, there three different ways to say it, depending on if it’s a pair, a set of 3-10 objects, or more than 10 objects. Did I mention that the regular plural forms are almost never used? Almost every noun has a unique plural form. Also, make sure you pick the right prefix for the preposition you have in mind. These prepositions do not line up with English prepositions. When the noun’s done, onto the adjective. Make sure you match the gender and number of the adjective to the gender and adjective of the noun.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim is quickly losing interest in what I’m trying to tell him. “Use English!” he says.

The ball comes towards me. Should I head it, or try to move back for a kick? Who should I pass it to? Do I have time to stop the ball on the ground and aim, or do I just have to pound it? Oh crap, I might not get to it in time. It’s going out! Wait – who touched the ball last? Maybe it’ll be out on the other side? Get out of the way! Too late.

But when you get it right – in football or in Arabic – there’s nothing sweeter. I get a big smile, and a “Bravo, Joel!” from the priest or the students.

And if you’re wondering – yes, they make me play football. Twice a week. It’s anyone’s guess as to how long it’ll take them to get sick of my fecklessness.

Learning Arabic is like listening to a really crappy radio. Most of the time, all I hear is static. Every once in a while, a word I know pops up, and I get excited. But by the time I’ve translated it in my head, Brother Sarkiz has moved on to something completely different.

On especially staticky days, I catch maybe every 10th word. On clear days, I catch every 2nd word. On brilliant blue-sky days, I can occasionally catch an entire conversation, then wow my students by interjecting a comment. I wonder how much they think I understand. That kind of ambiguity could be useful…

Learning Arabic is like being in second grade again. When reading, you take it letter by letter, until you remember that you already had this word five times in class today. “Kh…kha…kharo…wait a second, I know this word! Kharouf! Sheep!”

Favorite phrases so far:
“Qatar il-mot”: Literally, “train of death.” It means roller coaster.
“3ala 3ayni”: Literally, “on my eyes.” It means, “You’re welcome.” (The 3 stands for a letter not found in English. To pronounce it, trying saying “Ah” like you’re being strangled.)
“Hammam”: Bathroom.
“Hamam”: Pigeon. (Be careful there.)
“Ya Lateef!”: “Oh, kind one!” (meaning, God).

Four words that sound exactly the same to my Western ears: Flip-flops (shahata), martyrs (shuhada), the Muslim declaration of faith (shahada), university degree (shahada).

Tomatoes and Free Time

2010-09-23T12:14:00.000-05:00

My boys are here. The other day, I was eating lunch with all twenty-three of them in the dining hall. I think I mentioned before that I'm not yet comfortable with Syrian culture? Well. One of the boys asks me, "Beddak bendora?" Do you want a tomato? Yes, I would. But I don't have a knife to cut it with. Before I can expalin this, he hands me one, and takes one for himself, and bites into it like an apple. When in Rome, I think to myself, and start to eat my tomato the same way.

Father Mayas walks along the table monitoring el-shebaab (the young men.) He takes one look at me, throws me a knife and says, "Joel, don't eat like you're from Saudi Arabia."

That's all for now. I am insanely busy this week and next week, and it's hard to make it to an internet cafe. If you've sent me an e-mail, I really appreciate it, and will respond when I get the chance. Just not now. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Grace and peace,
Joel

Jedaydah

2010-09-14T11:07:00.001-05:00

This is how things sometimes go in Syria.

I am eating lunch with the priest in charge of the seminary, and three of the boys who attend it, Jan, Jon and Issa. Jan says something in Arabic to the priest. The priest (who speaks halfway-decent English) turns to me and says, “Jan wants to know if you want to go to Jedaydah with him.” All I know about Jedaydah is that it’s the hometown of Jan, Jon and Issa, it’s a suburb of Damascus, and its name is pretty similar to one of the multitude of Syrian Arabic words for “good.” (MniiH, helwa, kwayyis, tayyib…)

“Of course,” I say. “Tomorrow?”

“No,” the priest says. “Today.”

“Today? What time?”

“2:00,” he says.

I have four worksheets and three new verb forms to memorize for Arabic tonight. “Uh…OK!” I say. Hey, I’m in Syria, not college.

I rush to my room, throw some things in my bag, and walk to the bus station with the boys. The big green city bus takes us a short ways, but we catch a microbus to make the rest of the journey to Jedaydah.

What are microbuses? Glorified 12-passenger vans. They’re basically the cheapest form of transportation in the Middle East. (Camels have to be fed. [Just kidding. I haven’t seen any camels here - and unlike Cairo, no donkeys or horses.]) They seem to go everywhere, and they’ll usually pull over for you if you signal them from the side of the road. Twenty cents lets you on board, and you can get off wherever you want, just by yelling at the driver to stop. In Egypt, drivers use hand signals to tell potential passengers their destinations. (The “surf’s up” hand wave means “Giza.”) In Damascus, some bright person thought to write their destination on a piece of cardboard and stick it in the window, and the idea caught on. I appreciate that.

One last factoid: I have yet to find a microbus in the Middle East with enough space between the seats for my legs.

Anyway, Jedaydah. The town is on the other side of the mountain range the runs alongside Damascus, which makes for a pretty scenic drive. Jedaydah is squarely in the desert, which I love. There’s something about that vast sandy expanse that fills me with awe every time. The town itself is a lot like Damascus, but perhaps a little more rundown.

The reason my students wanted me to go with them on that particular day was that it was Eid es-Saliib, the Feast of the Cross. I’m not sure exactly what the feast commemorates, but it involves the Emperor Constantine discovering the location of the One True Cross, and something about fire on a mountain. Appropriately, the Christian residents of Jedaydah (a good percentage of the town, apparently), celebrate with huge bonfires and lots of fireworks. Issa set off a couple that briefly deafened me, but his grandmothers didn’t seem to mind. They laughed hysterically and lit a few themselves.

I had an afternoon meal with Jan, his brothers and his parents. None of them spoke English very well, but we had some conversation. At the start of the meal, I was handed a cup of tea, a thin circle of bread, and presented with eight bowls filled with different, unfamiliar foods. I wasn’t exactly sure where to go from here. This, I gathered, was wildly funny, and “just like Steven” (the American student who had this job before me.) At the end of the meal, Jan’s mother spread an unknown substance on another pocket of pita bread, rolled it up, and handed it to me. Not knowing quite what to expect, I bit into it, and tasted maybe the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. It was a delightful shock. Of course, I couldn’t remember the Arabic word for sweet at the time (helu!) so they probably thought I was chocking at first.

Afterwards, Issa took me to a Greek Catholic (Melkite) mass. It was all in Arabic, and I only understood a few words. (“God,” “evil,” “amen.”) It was very ceremonial and very liturgical, and the priest walked around the sanctuary several times shaking a bowl of sweet incense. I asked Issa (who speaks more English than any of the boys I’ve met) to make sure I was doing everything right. He showed me the proper way to cross myself, and how to light a votive candle.

After church, I went to Issa’s grandmother’s house, and met most of his extended family. The house is at the edge of town, where the desert begins in earnest, and I was able to see the stars for the first time in two weeks. We had a delicious meal of chicken and potatoes grilled over a desert fire, followed by an extensive round of hookah (“argille,” or “hubble bubble pipe” here). Even Issa’s aunt joined in. Issa – sixteen years old - drank a glass of arak, a strong spirit, with his meal. He’s a big kid, but I was still a little surprised that his elders didn’t mind. To the contrary – they insisted that I try it. It tastes like black licorice.

The arak and argille were followed by an acapella Arabic song-and-dance session. Issa’s cousin Katrina drummed on a plastic chair, and Issa sang in deep, nasal baritone. I was forced into the dancing part. Syrians have a cruel sense of humor. Issa’s nine-year-old brother Ilyon took it upon himself to teach me Arabic. (I learned the words for “foot,” “fire,” and “firecracker.”)

I slept at Issa’s house (after watching Gone in 60 Seconds with Arabic subtitles), and took a microbus back to Damascus with him early in the morning to catch my Arabic class.

All in all, it was a wonderful night, and one you probably can’t find out about in a Lonely Planet guide. I feel like I was able to transcend the tourist effect and see how Syrians actually live and celebrate with each other. Once you go off the beaten path a little, it’s pretty easy. The people here are incredibly hospitable, even to people who can’t speak their language.

Other highlights from this week in Syria:

Going rock-climbing for the first time at a mountain near the border with Lebanon with my new friends Ben and Jordan.

Starting a new Syrian Colloquial Arabic class. Four hours a day, plus homework. Oof.

Trying to explain “emo” to a Syrian Catholic priest. Apparently, it’s catching on here. Thanks, Fallout Boy.

Listening to, and finally “getting” Sufjan Stevens’ new EP. It’s terrific.

Ana fil Damascus!

2010-09-09T10:05:00.003-05:00

Hello, friends and family. Today is my fourth day in Damascus. I am still adjusting to life here, still trying to figure out exactly how the city works, but I am doing quite well. I arrived here after spending five blessed days with my old roommate Brian Cassels in Cairo, Egypt. Photos of that week and of my first few days in Damascus are up on Picasa.

Last night, I went to meet an American friend who lives with his wife and little boy in the Old City. Since it had been three days since I had talked fluent English in person with anyone, I was eager to spend some time with them. We met at the Roman Arch, a two-story arch that juts into the Street called Straight (the street the Apostle Paul stayed on during his period of Christ-induced blindness). The Arch must have been much taller when it was originally built, but thousands of years of dust, construction and destruction have left the original Old City, and much of the Arch, below the ground. The Street called Straight is one of the widest streets in the Old City, which is to say, it is wide enough to allow for one-way traffic and some parking on the curb.

My friend greets me in beautiful American-English, and we exit the expansive street into the dark, winding alleyways of the Old City. We are surrounded on all sides by two and three-story apartment buildings that seem to flow into each other like a giant organism; we cannot see more than a hundred feet in any direction. After a few minutes’ walk, my friend stops at a random metal door in a wall, and says, “Here we are.”

His second-story flat is very nice, but the architecture of it all bewilders me. He shares an oddly-placed veranda with his oddly-placed neighbor, whose flat seems to form an L (or some Arabic letter) around my friend’s flat. There is a hookah shop just below my friend’s flat, recently converted from a café. His wife worries that the second-hand smoke from the shop will flow into their young son’s room. They briefly discuss enlisting some of the neighbors to jury-rig a new chimney for the shop.

The night before, I had tried to explain to my Syrian Christian friend George why there are no buses where I live. This is why: in West Des Moines, everyone has a house, everyone has a car. In the Old City (and, I suspect, most of Damascus), people literally live on top of each other, or above and to the right of each other, or diagonally, or any other combination possible in three dimensions. I suspect there’s very little room for garages.

“Want to see the roof?” he says to me. Of course I do. We walk through his bedroom, onto a seemingly-purposeless annex that connects to his neighbor’s living room, walk through a ramshackle door onto the lower roof, and then shimmy up his neighbor’s wall onto the higher roof. (Confused yet?) From there, we can see the whole Old City, and much much more.

“As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, both now and forever more,” the Psalmist wrote. If God had chosen Syria as the Promised Land, the Psalmist might have said the same thing about Damascus. From my friend’s roof, Mount Qassion seems surreally close, and thousands of multi-colored lights from the slums built into the mountain’s side light it up like a Christmas tree.

To the southwest of Mount Qassion, my friend tells me, we could see the mountains of the Syrian Heights if it were daytime. (The Syrian Heights have been occupied by Israel ever since the 1967 war. Israel and Syria are still technically in a state of war today.) Below Mount Qassion is Melki, where the President lives. To the northwest, my friend points out two isolated clumps of light. Right in between those clumps, he tells me, is Maluula, one of the three villages left in the world where people speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

From the roof, we search for the moon, but don’t find it. Our search is pertinent to the entire Muslim world, including the non-Muslims who live in it. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, and this is the month of Ramadan, the month of fasting. If a full moon (or a new moon – we’re not sure) appears tonight, Ramadan will be over, and tomorrow will mark the beginning of the Eid al-Fitr, a weeklong celebration of feasting and prayer. But in any case, the official moon sighting, and the final decision, has to be made in Saudi Arabia.

As it turns out, the feast won’t start until September 10 – tomorrow, as I write this. The feast also means that the boys I will be tutoring will not arrive at the seminary until the 19th. I’m trying to use this time to prepare as best I can – learn how to get around Damascus, study Arabic, learn how to work the laundry machine, study Arabic, buy a cell phone, enroll in an Arabic class, study Arabic. I am living with Christians in a Christian part of town, but I hope to experience some of the Feast. Damascus is not nearly as chaotic as Cairo, but it should still be interesting.

There’s more to say, but I think this is enough for one post. I would appreciate your prayers during this time as I try to get used to living in this completely foreign city, amongst people who do not speak my language. I am very excited to be here, and getting more excited as I learn more about this place, but there is definitely an adjustment process to go through.

I hope this post finds you all well. If you know about this blog, there’s a good chance that I love you dearly and wish you could be here with me. Go with peace, my friends.

Packing

2010-08-31T00:42:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, I leave for Cairo, and eventually Syria. As is my tradition, that means I'm up all night tonight packing.

In my defense, I started packing at 9 AM this morning. But between family meals, last-minute shopping trips, and taking a break to watch iCarly with the younger siblings, the day went fast.

My main problem: I have too much stuff.

I'm hoping to get away with taking only one big suitcase, a duffel bag, and a backpack. I know I can. I'm not moving to the Congo; if it turns out I forgot something I can't live without, I can buy it in Cairo or Damascus. But it's not so easy to convince myself of that while I pack. Part of feeling secure or comfortable is having your stuff close-by. When packing for nine months away from home, it's difficult to distinguish between the things I really need, and the things that merely make me comfortable.

It's been a great summer in America. Many of my good friends got married, and I was fortunate enough to be at two of those weddings. I went to Yellowstone National Park with my family. I got a wonderful visit from my old Egypt-roomie Adam. I had a good job, read some really good books. I got to live at home and have some great times with my parents and younger siblings. There are things I didn't get around to - mostly the post-college writing I had planned on doing - but there's no use thinking about that now.

Wheels up at 1:40 PM. Am I ready for this? God only knows.

PS: Even if we're one or two continents apart, I would love to hear from you guys. I'm not on Facebook this year, but please e-mail me or Skype me. You'd make my day.

Go with the Lord.

- Joel

Since it’s the latest “national controversy”…

2010-08-22T16:12:00.001-05:00

...I guess I may as well jump in.

The “Ground Zero Mosque”:

1. Is over two long city blocks from Ground Zero (six normal-sized city blocks),
2. Is farther away from Ground Zero than the New York Dolls Gentleman’s club, and another already-existing mosque,
3. Is not and will not be visible from Ground Zero,
4. Is not a mosque, but a Muslim cultural center containing a mosque, and also a library, a culinary school, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a restaurant, and a performance theater. It is all open to the public,
5. Is headed by a man who the Bush administration sent to the Middle East TWICE to represent American Islam to the Middle East, and who delivered the eulogy at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, an American-Jewish reporter who was murdered by the Taliban in 2002. In that eulogy, he said, “We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind and soul…hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one…If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one...”
6. Is being built on private land, by a private organization, and is thus completely protected from government intervention (which raises the question of why the Republican Party has made it an unofficial centerpiece of their November campaign),
7. Contains a memorial to the victims of 9/11, among whom were many American Muslims.

So why are we still talking about this?

Two final thoughts:

1. Has the Republican Party officially decided that scared white people are the ticket to future election victories?
2. The anti-Mosque Movement is sure giving plenty of ammunition to communist propagandists who talk about the upper classes distracting the masses from the power of capital with fake scandals.

Hat tip: Alvin Shim, Micah Schuurman, Andrew Knapp.

Further reading:
'Ground Zero' Imam: 'I Am a Jew, I Have Always Been One'
Fact-checking the 'Ground Zero mosque' debate
How the "ground zero mosque" fear mongering began
9/11 Memorial Pledged as Part of Mosque Plan

J.R.R. Tolkien on World War II

2010-08-05T18:45:00.001-05:00

The real war [World War II] does not resemble the legendary war [the War of the Ring] in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, in his Foreword to Lord of the Rings.

Tales from the Great Recession

2010-07-29T20:55:00.000-05:00

One of my newest co-workers was recently laid off from one of America's biggest banks. He's my age, gradauted with a two-year degree in 2008, and went straight to work for this bank's foreclosure department. Needless to say, things were about to get busy.

According to my new co-worker, this is how one of his foreclosure calls went:

My New Co-Worker: Hello, sir? I'm with _____ and we're calling about your failure to make mortgage payments on your house.
Borrower: Oh, yeah, that house. I had it cut up into three pieces and shipped to Mexico.
My New Co-Worker: Really? Wow. Well, you still have to pay for it, you know.
Borrower: You'll have to find me!
[Click]

I don't know whether to cheer or cry.

Possibly the Greatest Thing Ever

2010-07-25T12:18:00.000-05:00

Then maidens will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

- Jeremiah 31:13

I Saw Inception Last Night...

2010-07-24T10:24:00.002-05:00

...and then decided to shamelessly appropriate a long Facebook post I wrote on my friend Alvin's wall about it as a movie review here.

[SPOILERS]

Hoo-kay...saw Inception last night. Concept was pretty great. I love the opening scene a lot now. Still haven't figured out how they connect into each other's brains by hooking up their wrists to some machine, but whatevs. It wasn't nearly as mind-blowing as everyone made it out to be. I expected to come out of the theater with my mind reeling, and to stay up all night trying to figure it out. But I never didn't know what was going on. (Not to brag). You had to work to follow it, but it wasn't that hard. It was like Memento in that way. I did not notice the smarmy lines you referred to. (By the way, ever wonder if what we consider "smarmy" is just how non-English majors talk in real life? They say people in everyday situations "script" what they say partly based on what they see on TV and the movies, so maybe it's a feedback cycle...) Anyway. Your mom is right that it was too loud. I thought the idea of getting trapped in a dream for decades was absolutely terrifying, and they executed it really well. Their whole mission was weird though - were they being the good guys by breaking up a world energy monopoly (snort) through, essentially, emotion-rape? Or was Leo just doing what he had to do to get home to his kids, and screw the morality of it all? Finally, I did not think any of the characters were vapid, but I didn't have very high expectations for character depth going on. And I thought the special effects were as good as were needed. It wasn't Avatar, but then, it didn't need to be.

Yes, I liked this movie, very much.

I Know It’s Cliché to Complain About Arizona…

2010-07-20T17:16:00.002-05:00

…but their new immigration law is starting to hit close to home.

On June 8, I voted for Terry Branstad in the Iowa GOP’s governor’s primary. His leading opponent was Bob Vander Plaats, a native of my homeland, Northwest Iowa, who actually went to high school with my dad. I’m sure Mr. Vander Plaats is a decent man, and almost anyone would be better than our current governor. I voted for Branstad for two reasons: 1) he was governor for sixteen years a long time ago, and did a lot of good, and what we need now more than ever is a little competency, and 2) he’s a moderate like me. He opposes gay marriage, but unlike Vander Plaats, he’s not willing to provoke a state constitutional crisis by ordering state agencies to stop issuing same-sex marriage licenses. And, significantly to me, Bob Vander Plaats supported Arizona’s new hard-line immigration law, while Branstad said he would not like to see it in Iowa.

So imagine my disappointment when Terry Branstad declared on Wednesday, “When people are stopped for a criminal violation or traffic violation, if they cannot show they are here legally, they ought to be detained and turned over to the federal government for deportation.”

Essentially, that is what the Arizona law does: when state police officers make a “lawful stop” and “reasonably suspect” that the person they have stopped is in the country illegally, they are required to demand proof of legal residence. If no proof can be produced, they are required to arrest them.

Immigrants are already required to have their green card with them at all times. But American citizens have never been required to carry proof of citizenship around with them. The very suggestion evokes thoughts of Nazi Germany and South Africa. But that’s what the Arizona law amounts to. It’s all well and good to say, “You don’t have to carry papers around if you’re a citizen – only if you’re an immigrant.” But if you can be arrested for not being able to prove that you’re a citizen, what difference does it make?*

If Arizonans were actually afraid of being arrested for forgetting their driver’s licenses or birth certificates at home, this law never would have passed. But ah! Here’s the catch. The police officer must have a “reasonable suspicion” that you’re an illegal before asking for proof.
What amounts to a reasonable suspicion?

According to a training video produced by the Arizona Police Department, police are forbidden to profile by race, but can use the following indicators as a basis for “reasonable suspicion”:

• A suspect speaking English poorly.
• A suspect dressing like they’ve just crossed the desert (layers, apparently).
• A suspect being in an area where illegals are known to congregate to look for work.
• A suspect running from police.
• A suspect traveling in an overcrowded vehicle.

Uber-helpful, huh?

These guidelines notwithstanding, what cop would ever suspect a white person in an overcrowded van of being in the country illegally? That’s simply not, well, reasonable.

Thus, the only American citizens who need to worry about forgetting their papers are Latino-Americans.

Please don’t take this as an attack on the integrity of Arizona’s law enforcement personnel. Arizona police groups vigorously opposed this law, and for good reason: it gives them a mandate that’s nearly impossible to enforce. Question and detain people you suspect of being in the country illegally. Do not use race as a factor. By the way, there’s about 460,000 of them, and they’re almost all of the same race. Good luck!

Ah, the complexities that arise when a government ostensibly committed to human rights decides to try to deport 7% of its population:

The law's various requirements have baffled many lawyers, and the training materials show that even the state government is not certain what some provisions require.

For example, the law requires that all people arrested be held until the federal government verifies their immigration status. But the video says it's unclear whether this applies to arrests for any offense or just those involving possible illegal immigrants.

Additionally, the law allows any legal resident of Arizona to sue if a local agency has a "policy" against enforcing federal immigration laws, but the video warns that no one knows what that means.

(Remember that whole competency thing I was talking about at the beginning?)

So, in sum, the Arizona law:
• Is hopelessly vague,
• Effectively, if not on paper, imposes a paper-carrying requirement for a particular ethnic group in Arizona,
• And deprives 460,000 Arizona residents of a secure relationship with the state police force.

Keep in mind that the ethnic group on the business end of this law will make up 29% of the population by 2050. Are we trying to commit societal suicide?

I know that illegal immigrants broke the law of this land. I understand why some want to hold them accountable for that. But we must remember that for decades, our immigration laws were barely enforced, while our corporations, businesses and farms practically begged low-wage Latin American workers to come over. They are here because of our demand for their labor, not to take advantage of our social programs, kill our children or raid our wine cellars. Now they number twelve million – workers, families, communities. We can’t simply ship twelve million people away. That would be one of the biggest forced population movements in history. How would we justify it? By saying, “That’s the law”?

Sooner or later, we need to figure out how to integrate them into our society as fully equal participants. Our national leadership has been ignoring this need for decades. Hopefully, they will get their act together in the next few years. Hopefully, the passage of the Arizona law will convince them to.

But in the meantime, we need to figure out how to live in peace with our illegal neighbors. And we need to call on our state governments to treat them like the invaluable part of our society that they are.

So, back to Iowa.

Terry Branstad has clearly decided, along with most of the Republican Party leadership, that the image of the derelict, pious, haughty Obama administration suing poor, embattled Arizona over this law is too good not to take advantage of. I must say, I’m disappointed.

Should I vote for him again? His opponent’s reply wasn’t exactly inspiring:

"I think the point here is that Terry Branstad is out of touch. He's going to suggest that the local Iowa property taxpayers pick up the tab, which we're not going to do, which would only result in a property-tax increase."

Appeal to the pocketbook. Classic.

The case for democracy is getting weaker every day.

*Does a driver’s license count? There are five states where illegal aliens are allowed to have driver’s licenses: Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, Utah and Washington. Elsewhere, a driver’s license would presumably qualify as proof of legal residence. And of course, you should never drive without a license. But people still do walk places, you know.

The Abortion Conundrum

2010-07-18T13:56:00.001-05:00

The abortion issue jumped back into Iowa politics last week when the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, Kim Reynolds, tried, and failed, to articulate a consistent prolife position on the issue.

Asked by the Carroll Daily Times-Herald what penalties she, as a self-identified pro-lifer, would impose for abortionists and women who have abortions, she replied, “Well, I think it would be equivalent to murder. I would want to research that before I would lay specifically out what the penalties would be.”

Reynolds went on to say,

• Abortion (a procedure that usually involves stabbing, cutting up or burning a fetus to death) is NOT equivalent to stabbing an adult to death.

• The punishment for abortion should fit the crime.

• “I would want to take a look at that and make sure that I completely walked through that before I would say anything right now.”

Anyone else confused yet?

Don’t blame Reynolds. Neither side in the American abortion debate has been able to articulate a consistent position on the matter.

The pro-life position rests on the status of a human fetus as a person, which, by extension, does make the act of abortion equivalent to murder. If abortion is not murder, it is merely distasteful and perhaps damaging to a country’s demographics, but in a liberal* society, neither of those problems is grounds for criminalization.

But if fetuses are persons, if abortion is murder, then over one-fourth of human beings worldwide are victims of murder before they are born. Abortion would rank as the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world, abortion-on-demand would surpass slavery as America’s greatest societal crime, and stopping abortion immediately should be the highest priority of pro-life politicians. Because the practice is so widespread, we would at a minimum need a new Department of Preborn Rights to enforce an abortion ban. Huge funds should be dedicated to saving human beings from death by miscarriage. And if conception is marked as the beginning of personhood, then discarding frozen embryos should also be considered murder, and efforts should be made to rescue embryos that fail to attach to the uterine wall.

When was the last time you saw someone running on that platform?

Even if someone did run on that platform, they could never succeed in implementing it permanently. The pro-life movement, ultimately, has no political constituency, because unlike other oppressed groups, the potential victims of abortion can never be integrated into our political system. They are permanently voiceless. They can never be liberated or empowered. By the time they are old enough to speak (or even think, or be aware) for themselves, they have exited the oppressed group. If the oppression were ever ended, there would be no positive consequences for anyone else, only increased misery, as millions mothers who didn’t want to be mothers were forced to carry their babies to term. The only benefit would be the abstract sense of satisfaction that babies were no longer being killed. And society can fulfill its need for moral self-respect far more easily by convincing itself that respect for abortion rights demonstrates tolerance, rather than genocidal neglect. The utilitarian ethic provides absolutely no reason to ban abortion. The only possible rationales for protecting unconscious human beings that do not truly experience pain or happiness would have to come from a transcendent moral law that places human life above all other needs and values. Good luck getting everyone to agree on that.

The pro-choice position (and current U.S. law) on the other hand, holds that human beings assume all the rights of personhood at the moment of complete birth – a moment that, while emotionally significant for families and society, marks nothing more than the movement of a young human being from inside its mother to the outside world. Mentally and physically, nothing significant distinguishes a newborn baby from a fetus. Moreover, current U.S. law regards a human born at seven months a person, while a human still inside the womb at eight months is regarded as a part of the woman’s body. A consistent pro-choicer would regard human beings as full persons only at a later date of development (speech?) (adulthood?) and would have to argue for the right to infanticide. A few pro-choicers, such as the ethicist Peter Singer, have actually gone this far. The vast majority of pro-choicers, being properly socialized, somewhat decent human beings (like their pro-life opponents), would recoil at that proposal.

So I think it’s fairly clear that the standard parameters of American liberal* thought leave us in a quandary on this issue. There is no (tenable) way to be consistently just. To resolve this quandary, we will need to leave those parameters, and start again with the first questions: 1) what does God require of us as individuals, and 2) what does God require of the state?

The first question is easier to answer than the second. We’re supposed to love and care for all human beings, for the sake of our Lord, who loves them as well, and whose image they bear. If I believe anything about politics these days, it’s that the government should as well. But does that necessarily entail the liberal* quasi-legalism of rights, that demands that all persons be treated exactly the same, and that their deaths be avenged with equal ferocity?

That might sound like a rhetorical question, but it’s not. I have no answer right now.

Curse these ambiguities.

Thoughts?

*Classical liberalism, not contemporary. Individualism, capitalism, and limited popular government. Think John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.

It's Worse than We Thought

2010-07-17T12:16:00.001-05:00

So it's been pretty obvious for a while that Hugo Chavez is a power-hungry megalomaniac who's working steadily to install himself as Venezuela's Dear-Leader-For-Life. Unfortunately, it now appears that, in addition to all of those things, he is also shatbit crazy.

Today, without warning, Chavez unearthed the remains of Simon Bolivar, "the Liberator," who helped to liberate almost all of South America from Spanish rule in the 18th century. Why? So Chavez can prove that Bolivar did not die of tuberculosis, as the historical consensus holds, but that he was murdered.

Now, I'm no coroner, but after TWO CENTURIES in the grave, what possible proof of murder could be left (other than, say, a split skull)?

I'll let His Excellency's tweets (yes, tweets) from the exhuming ceremony do the rest of the explaining:

"Viva Bolivar. It's not a skeleton. It's the Great Bolivar, who has returned."

"Our father who is in the earth, the water and the air ... You awake every hundred years when the people awaken. I confess that we have cried, we have sworn allegiance."

"That glorious skeleton has to be Bolivar, because his flame can be felt. My God, Bolivar lives... We are his flame!"

"Chavez said he has at times doubted that the entombed remains are those of Bolivar, but that as he gazed at the eye sockets in the skull, he asked: 'Father, is it you?' And, Chavez said, 'My heart told me, "It's me."'"

To recap: Chavez asked Bolivar's skeleton if it was really Bolivar's skeleton, and CHAVEZ' HEART replied, "It's me." [!]

Caracas, we have a problem.

The Plan

2010-07-11T22:08:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, my visa came in the mail. My plans are now as official as they get. God willing, on August 31, I will fly to Cairo, Egypt, the Mother of the World.

I'll spend six days there hanging out with my friend Brian, meeting old friends, and exploring parts of the city I didn't see during my semester there two years ago.

After that, I will fly from Cairo to Damascus, Syria, where I will spend nine months at the Kinesat al-Zeitoon (Olive Church) in the Old City, living with Syrian teenagers, taking Arabic classes during the day and tutoring the students in English in the afternoon. My goals are pretty simple: 1) See most of what there is to see of Syria - Palmyra (ancient Roman city), Lattakia (on the Mediterranean), and Malulu (where they still speak Aramaic), for starters, 2) become conversational (at the very least) in Syrian Colloquial Arabic (a dialect spoken in most of Syria, Jordan and Palestine), 3) make some lasting friendships with Syrians, 4) keep writing on this blog throughout.

After May 2011, the plan gets murkier. But for now, that's okay. I feel blessed beyond belief to have this opportunity, and I plan to make the most of it. To what end, I have no idea.

Before I leave, I need to finish going through my copy of Syrian Colloquial Arabic (Level 1). Encouragement, please! (iza betriidon!)

Now, some photos of Damascus, interspersed with some fast facts about Syria:

Since the U.S. dominates the aerospace industry, U.S. sanctions on Syria have forced the Syrian government to ground most of the country's civilian air fleet, along with the president's personal jet.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, inherited the presidency from his father, Hafiz al-Assad, in 2000. Assad the elder took over Syria in a military coup in 1970. Bashar was an ophtamologist in London until his older brother, the heir apparent, was killed in a car crash in 1994.

Syria has one of the largest, most secure Christian populations in the Middle East - Christians comprise at least 10% of the population.

Damascus, the capital, is claimed by its residents to be the oldest continuously-inhabited city on earth.

Over one million Iraqi refugees live in Syria.

Syria, along with Iran, is a key sponsor of the Shiite Islamic Lebanese politicaly party/militant group Hezbollah (The Party of God). Hezbollah was formed to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Since Israel's occupation of Lebanon ended in 2000, Hezbollah justifies its continued attacks on Israel by claiming that the Shebaa Farms, an area of the Golan/Syrian Heights, Syrian land still occupied by Israel, is really a part of Lebanon, not Syria or Israel. (Got all that?) Paradoxically, Syria supports this claim. The Shebaa farms are 5.5 miles wide and 1.5 miles long. In other words, one could run all the way around them in a half-marathon. Over 1,000 people died in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

According to the U.S. government's Overseas Security Advisory Council, "Unlike many other capital cities around the world, Damascus enjoys a low crime rate. This is probably due to the pervasive police presence around the city, as well as traditional Syrian culture." Nice! (The traditional culture and low crime rate part, I mean.)

However, the State Department's travel website warns, "While most Syrians appear genuinely friendly towards foreigners, underlying tensions can lead to a quick escalation in the potential for violence. In a few recent examples: an American reported being verbally harassed and told 'you Americans are not welcome here' after he avoided stepping on an Israeli flag that had been placed on the ground in a shopping area."
The State Department's website also advises Red Sox fans not to wear fan apparel on visits to the Bronx.

The last time I went to Damascus was only a few days after U.S. forces attacked a Syrian village on the border with Iraq, killing eight people. Anonymous U.S. officials claimed the strike was aimed at an Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq terrorist cell. Things were a little awkward on my visit, to say the least. However, as the State Department helpfully notes, everyone I met there appeared genuinely friendly. (My guess is, it's because they are genuinely friendly. But as everyone knows, Arabs are oh-so-crafty.)

That's all for now. Tomorrow I return to my job calling businesses to verify employment for loan applicants. I've read eight books so far this summer, and I hope to post some book reviews here soon. I'm currently reading Living in the End Times by Slavoj Zizek. So far, it's wildly entertaining but not very accessible (to me). For the uninitiated, Zizek is a populizer of neo-Marxism. If that upsets you, blame the initiated (you know who you are.)

Enjoy the summer, everyone!

Signs Something May Be Seriously Wrong With Your Political-Economic System

2010-06-27T17:53:00.000-05:00

The AP:

"According to the Labor Department, three out of four farm workers were born abroad, and more than half are illegal immigrants."

MORE THAN HALF?

So the federal government is officially trying to deport over half of America's farm workers.

Even if that were moral, or physically possible, it would make zero economic sense. These illegal immigrants want to work, farms want their labor, and Americans (it can be safely assumed) want to eat. A pathway to citizenship for these workers and their families is in everyone's interest.

But our politicians can score points by taking tough stands against illegal immigration and "amnesty." So the majority of farm workers America remain underground, without legal protections or day-to-day security. Every now and then, federal agents descend on some rural town, deport all the illegals they find, issue an overblown press release, and leave the community to pick up the pieces. The economy continues to benefit from illegal labor, right-wing politicians continue to use illegal labor to rally their base, the federal government is allowed to maintain the pretense of a "rule of law," and illegal workers continue to live in fear. Predictably, everyone benefits except for the disenfranchised.

But hey! What the American people want, the American people get.

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Why Helen Thomas Was Wrong

2010-06-12T19:54:00.003-05:00

On June 3rd, three days after the flotilla attack, veteran Arab-American White House reporter Helen Thomas was approached by a rabbi with a camera at Washington DC’s Jewish Heritage Celebration. “Any comments on Israel?” he asked her.

She replied, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” When the rabbi asked, “Where should they go?” she replied, “Go home! Poland, Germany, and America, and everywhere else.”

Four days later, Thomas resigned over the outrage her remarks elicited. Four days after that, this letter appeared in my hometown newspaper, The Des Moines Register:

Helen Thomas spoke up like more Americans need to do. This whole fiasco started back in 1947 when the United States supplied Israel with the war materiel to drive the Palestinians out of what is called the Jewish state.

What the United States did was continue to inflame the discourse that had been going on for centuries.

Thomas is a true American, just a shame there isn't more Americans like her.

- Clarence Swartz, Orient

A letter to the editor is just a letter to the editor, but I think this letter represents some feelings and beliefs that shouldn’t go unaddressed.

First, let’s look at Clarence’s claim that “the United States supplied Israel with the war materiel to drive the Palestinians out of what is called the Jewish state” in 1947.

This is simply false. The United States did not supply Israel with any “war materiel” until 1964, when we gave them a handful of F-4 fighters. Before the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Israel ranked twenty-fourth among nations receiving aid from the United States. Today, it is the largest recipient. (See Aaron David Miller, The Much-Too-Promised Land, p. 80).

True, President Truman recognized the State of Israel within minutes of its declaration of statehood on May 14, 1948, but that was mostly because the Soviet Union also recognized and supported the infant state, and Truman didn’t want the Soviets to get an exclusive foothold in the Middle East. (Israel’s founders had strong socialist leanings.) The Jews did the actual fighting bit mostly on their own.

This is an important point, because Clarence’s commonly-held misconception has led to Israel being portrayed as a creation of the West, when in reality, it was forged by Jews fleeing from the West (and Russia and the Muslim world). In the latter decades of the pre-state Zionist movement, Jews fleeing to Palestine had to sneak past the British occupiers, who were determined to keep the Jews out to placate the Arab Palestinian population. Eventually, Britain found itself at war with both the Zionists and the Arab Palestinians, and called it quits in 1948. Israel is not a tool of the West. (After all, what purpose could “the West” possibly have for angering the world’s largest oil producers by staking out an outpost in an oilless tract of land smaller than New Jersey?) It is a country in its own right.

But the larger misconception that lies behind Clarence and Helen’s call for the Jews to “go home” is the idea that the wrongs of 1947-1948 can somehow be righted today by yet another mass expulsion. It is all too tempting to think of history only in terms of nations: “The Jews,” “the Arabs,” “the Americans,” etc. This line of thinking has apparently led both Clarence and Helen to conclude, “Well, this whole mess started when the Jews came and took land away from the Palestinians. The Jews should just leave!”

Who are “the Jews”? The Jews who settled Palestine from the 1880s until 1948 are long gone. There are six million Jews living in Israel today. Many of them were born there, have lived their whole lives there. Their great-great-grandparents are buried in Palestine. Whatever the crimes of 1948 were, they are innocent. Sending all six million of them packing (a mass expulsion that would exceed the Palestinian expulsion by nine times) would fix nothing. What Helen Thomas said wasn't simply "taboo." It was a call for ethnic cleansing.

History is littered with massive crimes that cannot be undone. Even if one regards the creation of the state of Israel as a great crime (I do not, for the record), we cannot fix the past by destroying the future.

And really, considering the history of human population movements, no one, except possibly the Africans, has a right to disagree.

Thugs and Criminals!

2010-06-12T10:23:00.003-05:00

Sadly, he didn't win.

Wrapping up the Prophets

2010-06-07T20:01:00.000-05:00

Nahum: God Judges the Empire

Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims! The crack of whips, the clatter of wheels, galloping horses and jolting chariots! Charging cavalry, flashing swords, and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses-

“I am against you,” declares the LORD Almighty.

- 3:1-5

Habakkuk: God Judges the Next Empire

“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime! Has not the LORD Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”

- 2:12-14

Zephaniah: Universal Destruction and Universal Salvation?

“Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD, “for the day I will stand up to testify. I have decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms and to pour out my wrath on them—all my fierce anger. The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger.

“Then will I purify the lips of the peoples, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him shoulder to shoulder.”

- 3:8-9

Haggai: Once More

“This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty.”

- 2:6-7

Malachi: Sudden Judgment

“So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, those who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD almighty.

- 3:5

Now that I’m done reading the prophets, there are three huge swathes of the Bible left that I’ve never intentionally read all the way through: 1) the history of Israel from Leviticus through Esther, 3) the wisdom literature – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and 4) the epistles of Paul, Peter, James, and whoever the heck wrote Hebrews. I’m gonna start with the epistles, because I miss the New Testament.

Still haven’t started reading the Qur’an. But it’s coming down the pipe.

Zechariah: His name the only name

2010-06-06T15:23:00.006-05:00

Of the last six prophets I read, Zechariah was my favorite. The first six chapters contain nine of the trippiest visions in the entire Bible, which all came to Zechariah in a single night. And starting in chapter nine, Zechariah embarks on two massive oracles that, as near as I can tell, revolve around four events in Israel’s future: the coming war with the Seleucids (predicted in detail in Daniel 8 and 11), the first coming of Jesus, the destruction of the Jewish nation in 70 AD, and the second coming of Jesus. The four events all run together in the narrative, and it’s only with the benefit of partial hindsight that we can distinguish between them (or, alternately, our historical perspective causes us to read these events into the oracles).

Chapter 9 is the craziest example of this:

V. 9:
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Most Christians readily identify this with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem five days before his crucifixion, riding in peacefully on a donkey.

V. 10:
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River [Euphrates] to the ends of the earth.

This part could be seen either as Jesus inaugurating a kingdom that spreads peacefully through love, service and the work of the Spirit, or a prediction of the final political peace Jesus will bring at his return.

V. 11-12:
As for you [Daughter of Zion], because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit. Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.

This passage can be pretty straightforwardly interpreted as declaring the spiritual freedom that Jesus would bring to the former prisoners of sin.

But then...

V. 13:
I will bend Judah as I bend my bow and fill it with Ephraim. I will rouse your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and make you like a warrior’s sword.

So the peace agenda is out, then? And where do the Greeks come from?

If biblegateway.com is to be trusted, outside of Daniel and Zechariah, the words “Greek” or “Greece” appear only four times in the Old Testament. Greece is not a big player in Israel’s history until the intertestamental period, when Alexander the Great conquered Judea, and his heirs, the Seleucids, tried to destroy Judaism. This didn’t go over so well, and as the Book of Maccabees (according to what I’ve heard, somewhat inaccurately) details, the Jews resisted and eventually drove the Greeks out of the land, restoring Jewish independence for a brief time, and giving the Jews something to celebrate during Christmastime.

So...that war must be what Zechariah is talking about here, right?

V. 14-15
Then the LORD will appear over them; his arrow will flash like lightning. The Sovereign LORD will sound the trumpet; he will march in the storms of the south, and the LORD Almighty will shield them. They will destroy and overcome with slingstones. They will drink and roar as with wine; they will be full like a bowl used for sprinkling the corners of the altar.

The Bible (at least the Protestant canon) is curiously silent on the merits or demerits of the Jewish resistance against the Seleucids. Daniel describes the war and persecution that is coming in great detail, but never mentions the Maccabee rebels directly, as far as I can tell. We are reassured that the evil king, Antiochus, will be destroyed, “but not by human power” (8:25 – he died of illness in Persia). Daniel 11:33-35 says only, “Those who are wise will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by the sword or be burned or captured or plundered. When they fall, they will receive a little help, and many who are not sincere will join them.” So who are the insincere? Does Daniel here bless the resistance? Does Zechariah?

Perhaps I should add the Books of the Maccabees to my reading list.

Anyway. In Chapter 11, Zechariah assumes the voice of Christ, and bitterly narrates his rejection by the Jewish religious leaders. God gives Zechariah charge of the “flock marked for slaughter” – so-called because “I will no longer have pity on the people of the land.”

“So,” Zechariah says, “I pastured the flock marked for slaughter, particularly the oppressed of the flock.”

“You hypocrites!” Jesus said. “Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:15-16)

But soon the flock turns on Zechariah, and Zechariah declares, “I will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die, and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another’s flesh” – a graphic description of the siege conditions in Jerusalem during the war with the Romans in the 60s AD.

“Then,” Zechariah says, “I took my staff called Favor and broke it, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations.” The nations will now come against Jerusalem to attack it.

Zechariah tells the flock, “If you think it best, give me my pay.” So they give him thirty pieces of silver – “the handsome price at which they priced me!” – and he throws the silver into the temple, to the potter.

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the coins and said, “It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners.

- Matthew 27:3-7

The rejection of the shepherd brings disaster:

“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!” declares the LORD Almighty. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones. In the whole land,” declares the LORD, “two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it.”

- Zechariah 13:7-8

“I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half the city will go into exile...”

- Zechariah 14:2

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

- Luke 19:41-44

But in the second oracle, which starts in chapter 12, Zechariah blends together what appear to be two separate attacks on Jerusalem – the one in 70 AD, which brings mass slaughter and exile to the Jews, and a second, in which God “will make the leaders of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a flaming torch among sheaves. They will consume left and right all the surrounding peoples, but Jerusalem will remain intact in her place” (12:6). Chapter 14 portrays the LORD himself coming down to the Mount of Olives, returning just as he left (Acts 1:11), splitting the mountain in two, and making the enemy troops go crazy and start killing each other. When the Jews see Jesus, “the one they have pierced,” returning, God will send a “spirit of grace and supplication” on the Jews, and they will be seized with remorse for what they did to the shepherd. “The weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo [where King Josiah was killed]” (12:10-11).

Evangelical dispensationalists often read this passage as a prediction of a future war between the State of Israel and the Arab states, perhaps allied with Iran, Russia and Europe under the leadership of the Antichrist. Interestingly, Orthodox Jews read it almost the same way. According to Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg (The Accidental Empire, p. 260-262), in the wake of the 1973 war, in which Israel triumphed, but suffered greatly and acquired no new land, Orthodox Rabbis turned to Zechariah for an explanation of the war’s meaning: “[Rabbi Yehudah] Amital explained [that] the war was part of the messianic process. Any war over the Land of Israel was actually a war over Jerusalem, and so fulfilled the prophet Zechariah’s vision of the battle for Jerusalem at the end of history.”

The Reformed theology in me rebels against this interpretation, since in Reformed theology, there is only one people of God throughout history: the church, first in the form of early Israel, now in the form of the borderless, multilingual, multicultural body today. The implication is that the Jewish race and culture no longer has anything but a historical significance to redemption (cf Romans 9:4-5). But what, then, to make of Zechariah's prophecies? Perhaps a battle between Israel and the world powers is coming, and God will intervene to put an end to war and empire once and for all. I dunno.

In the end, though, the message of Zechariah and the rest of the prophets is crystal clear:

“The LORD will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD, and his name the only name” (14:9).

Amin. Allahu akbar.

File this under "Unintentionally Revealing Statements"

2010-06-06T00:41:00.001-05:00

“We are not seeking to fill our (bellies), we are looking to break the Israeli siege on Gaza."

- Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, explaining why Hamas will not let Israel deliver any of the aid from the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza.

Priorities.