Transcript - Separate Worlds, Shared Dreams

SEPARATE WORLDS, SHARED DREAMS

NARRATOR: Growing up in an environment of political tension, underemployment and often-unfulfilled yearnings for freedom under repressive regimes, many Muslim youth today see a difficult future for themselves. Those demonstrating in cities and towns across the Muslim world, are overwhelmingly young, their views of the world are being shaped today by media images that are conflicting and contradictory. Just as there is shared angst and confusion between youth in the Muslim world and in America, there’s also a shared youth culture, music and style and seamless global communication via the Internet, skype and cell phones. Soliya, an international non profit organization based in New York City, runs CONNECT, a cross cultural education program that enables college students in the United States and Muslim countries in the Middle East, to collaborate in exploring the relationship between the United States and the Arab and Muslim worlds. Through innovative use of video conferencing and online communications, students who participate from around the globe forge relationships and build bridges.

NARRATOR: I’m Mark Sommer and this is A World of Possibilities. This program, Separate Worlds, Shared Dreams: Voices of Youth from American and the Muslim World is underwritten by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Coming up, Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. First though, let’s turn to a pair of young people, both graduates of the Soliya Connect Program that makes innovative use of videoconferencing and online communications technologies to build collaborative relationships between youth in the United States and the Muslim world. Joining us now are Joseph Philips, a 22 year old student majoring in History and Politics at Carnegie Melon University who speaks to us from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and Faiçal Baamer, a 23 year old student of international studies and diplomacy at Al-Akhawayn University who joins us from Ifrane, Morocco. Faiçal, I was surprised to learn recently that only about 11% of Muslims in the world are in the Middle East. I think the perception from the United States is that Muslim and Arab is almost synonymous.

FAICAL: You raised a very important point in saying that many believe that Muslim and Arab are synonymous. You are right, there are many Christian Arabs, Jewish Arabs in the middle east and the Arab world there is contact with Christians and with Jews and as a Moroccans we live all as Moroccans as Arabs, as a Muslim we live too as a Muslim should live too as the Jews in the same country. This geographical division of religions, I see it as also one of the main problems that we say 11% of Muslims live in the Middle East, and that’s right and a lot of Muslims are in Europe, in Latin America, in Africa. So I think that you’re right, this regional division of religions is controversial and we create a geographical map within people’s minds that are totally opposed and they have no real meaning and no reality at all.

NARRATOR: What you think if anything, what special or unique role can people of your age do to bridge where your elders have not been able to?

F: I mean, I see it several times; youth has the most important role in all of this process and in all of this subjects, so as a people it’s so difficult to change their mind and to change their perceptions about the other world. But what we need to do about these youth people is first to well educate them, to well teach them democratic laws and democratic values, and essentially I see this side of the problem is youth still receive a very poor education and they still don’t have the most basic skills of research of critical thinking of knowing how to know what is right and what is wrong, they only receive the information being given to them, they take it as it is and they believe in it as it is everything. They don’t think to question it and to critically think about it. So that’s one of the main points, especially for the Arab and Islamic world is before even teaching them democracy and before even teaching them norms and values we should teach them to think critically, that’s one point. The second point is that to give them free and reliable access to information, they have very limited access to information, much of the information they receive is limited to only one point of view, so we need to broaden media access and we need to broaden information access and this may not be necessary about political issues, they can know about provincial, economic, social issues, about the world and what’s happening, how did they achieve this, what are they develop, why

didn’t we achieve this status? So I mean we need to give them the opportunity to know and not let them just let us only limited to only one point of view and taking not even question or criticize. However, Joseph I don’t know if he agrees with me or not.

JOSEPH: No, I definitely think so, I think you know, the youth are so important to the future of the world and I think that education is such a key part of this development. I mean I definitely agree I think it’s important that we teach our students both in the Arab world and in America and for that matter all over the world, you know, to be able to be critical thinkers. I think everyone needs a solid moderate well rounded education, I think they, they need to be able to go to the media sources and find out the information they want and it needs to be as unbiased as possible, of course, you know, we’re never going to be able to achieve that I think, having a totally unbiased source of information is impossible, but I think that we need to be able to see the issues as they are and without people putting outside ideas on the issue. But yeah, I definitely think the youth is just so important and I think that we are in a great place now. Youth, the people that are in their teens and twenties right now, because globalization is just taking over the way we look at the world, the way we do business, the way we do politics, and I think that it’s great because I think most youth really embrace that idea and I think that that’s what’s so important, to really resolve the conflicts and making better relations between people of the world, and I think that I hope Faiçal agrees with me I think that globalization is just so important that we learn about other people and accept them and understand why they think the way they do and why they behave the way they do.

NARRATOR: Given that we’re the internet generation and the iPod generation, what do you think can be done with those kinds of tools to engage a much larger range of young people in this kind of cross boundary conversation? Faiçal, why don’t you start, and then Joseph why don’t you pick up?

F: You’re absolutely right, and I’ve had the opportunity to have access to such problems, Soliya Program, because if I can say it, I’m in a privileged university in Morocco, it is an American style university. We have access to the Internet, we have access to computers, we have, I have the good opportunity. But people like, that have the same opportunities, do not constitute even five or maybe less of the total of the Moroccan population, the information infrastructure particularly is still very poor in this country and I think maybe even in the Arab and Muslim world, high schools and secondary schools they didn’t even have computers or internet access and even if they available, people do not have access to them or maybe they don’t know how to cleverly use them. Maybe they can use them but only for watching, I mean we have Internet cafes but what are they for, just for chatting, for watching movies for downloading music, they are not adequately used. I think that this should be through development agencies who have more access to such things, to have educational programs like this and maybe conventions with schools or something like that, to provide more access to the internet and to computers and to orient people and orient students to such programs and to tell them okay we have programs, do you want a certificate, it’s interesting. Okay, come and then we’re going to show you. I mean we need to teach them and to explain to them what is it for, what’s its use and to motivate them more to participate and to give them more access to such facilities.

NARRATOR: there used to be things called Pen Pals. In the United States and foreign countries where people and mostly youth in their teenage years corresponded by mail, and they would send their photographs, they would write letters to one another and sometimes they eventually met. And it seemed to humanize the relationship across great distances. Are there ways that the Internet can be used, and schools, universities etc. could be used for that purpose?

F: Who is going to tell the students, okay, there is this opportunity, use it? And who is going to tell them this is how you’re going to use it and this is its usefulness and this is what you are going to take from it and this is what you are going to understand from it? I mean yes, there are lot of opportunities and a lot of means to achieve this dialog and such, but there is no one that goes to people and tell them okay, come, use these facilities, have conversations with other people. I mean there is no orientation, there is no, we have a lack of orientation and we have a lack of giving people the necessary skills by which to use these facilities.

J: What I eventually see is that Soliya is just the first step on a long journey where we’re going to really cut down the borders and you know, not only into personal conversation but in classroom dialog, and in academics. I think that while it’s a good first step we need to continue on it. There needs to be more types of I think really, if you want to call it institutionalized things where there are things set up in the educational programs both in the – I mean even starting in elementary schools, maybe, especially in the secondary schools and in the colleges and universities – where there’s opportunities for this dialog to take place. For example, Carnegie Melon has one of the most amazing classes I think I’ve ever heard any university have. It’s called US Arab Encounters. And basically what we do is there’s a web conference set up between two classes. One class here at our main campus in Pittsburgh and then one class at our other campus in Qatar in the middle of the Middle East. And basically what we do is we sit down and we have a professor on each end and we talk about the current issues that are involved in US Arab relations. And I mean it was just amazing to have almost a seamless class, where although we’re separated by thousands of miles we’re actually talking about the same issues and working these things out, and it was almost like we were in the same class. And it was just amazing and I’d like to see a lot more programs like that. It gave the issues such a personal touch, I mean instead of just reading a book and seeing the base issues and you know, understanding the arguments you’re seeing the people and the emotions, and it was just so amazing and I’d love to see more of that, I’d love to see an international web cast class in every college and university and then moving down into you know even the secondary schools, because I think youth of all ages can benefit from something like that.

NARRATOR: College students Joseph Phillips in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and Faiçal Bahmar in Iphraim Morocco.

NARRATOR: To read joint articles written by Joseph and Faiçal on the relationships between Americans and the Arab and Muslim worlds, visit our website at aworldofpossibilities.com and click on the listener action button. Up next, Anwar Ibrahim, renowned dissident and former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia.

This is A World of Possibilities, a production of the Mainstream Media Project. Copies of this program are available on CD and can be requested by email at comments@aworldofpossibilities.com.

NARRATOR: Much of the relationship between Islam and the west is focused around the Middle East and the Arab world yet just 11% of Muslims live in the Middle East while 30% live in Southeast Asia, mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia. Anwar Ibrahim comes from this other Muslim world, a prominent Malaysian political figure for more than 30 years, he first gained fame as a student leader in the early 70’s and was jailed for 18 months for his social activism on behalf of poor Malaysian villagers. A former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim was heir apparent to Mohammed Mahateer, the long time autocratic ruler of Malaysia. When after refusing to comply with a demand to give special preference to his boss’s children, he was beaten and jailed for six years in solitary confinement, before being released after an international outcry in late 2004. Currently a Visiting Professor in the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding in Georgetown University, Anwar Ibrahim joins us now from the studios of ABC Radio in Washington DC.

It’s often portrayed in western media and particularly in American media that Muslim youth are angry, disaffected, unemployed and sort of the seedbed of terrorism. From what you know of Muslim youth, both in Asia and elsewhere, does this conform with your sense of where Muslim youth are today?

ANWAR: Yes they are angry, they are frustrated, they see very little hope for the future, there is no avenue for free expression, but frankly Mark visiting most of these countries and meeting all the government leaders and also civil society groups, and the disaffected youth, I find very, very little evidence to suggest that they would support terrorist activities. If at all, some of them express sympathy it’s just because they’re so angry with just things are just hopeless. If you are given a chance to engage with them, then they would certainly realize that finally what is found wanting in the societies is the lack of reform and transparency and justice by the old governments. To my mind, the issue remains the reform including the promote market reforms that put, promote growth with clear commitment for distributive justice.

NARRATOR: Back in the 1970’s when you were a youth leader, it seems that Muslim youth were part of a kind of global culture that had the Beatles and all of the music groups at the time and a whole sort of ethos and spirit of youth at that time. But today, are Muslim youth singing the same songs as youth in the west? Is it part of a common culture? Or are they increasingly divided post 2001, by these kinds of tensions?

A: Well, of course the songs are different; I of course am more familiar with Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, Neil Sedaka and Paul Anka. I mean my children probably go for some other something that even post Beatles, not too familiar with it. But I think this is acceptable, I was very western in that sense that I appreciate this sort of culture and enjoy the music. But we are still Muslims, we are practicing Muslims. Even my generation, yes there are committed Muslims who wouldn’t want to have anything to do with Hollywood movies or western songs. But they are very small in number and I don’t think they are able to influence the west. Similarly, at present I mean my children some of them play the guitar, some the piano, and they play music, but they will grow up in the Muslim sort of atmosphere, and I don’t think that this is actually a problem. The problem is more in terms of the frustration and because of the abject poverty and the destitute and the deplorable living conditions in these countries. But the admiration, it’s interesting you realize among some of the surveys conducted by some institutions here about the Middle Eastern attitude. They hate their governments; there is so much poverty and corruption. They are all virtually they are anti United States because of Iraq, because of Arab Israeli conflict. But when you ask them given the choice, where do you want to go and live, they say of course United States. So the sole notion about inherent hatred for United States society and culture is of course absurd. What is being objected to is clearly foreign policy. You ask the brightest students in Malaysia and Indonesia if given the chance where do you want to go? They mention the top league universities in United States.

NARRATOR: You said earlier that terrorism and violent action is really not endorsed by the great majority of Muslim youth today, but fundamentalism or what’s called fundamentalism, fundamentalist Islam, does that exercise a considerable attraction for many disaffected Muslim youth today, when they find themselves challenged by a future that doesn’t seem to have any hope in it?

A: Well this terminology, fundamentalism, is loaded, because I’ve also observed fundamentalist Christians, Secular fundamentalists. So that is why I have great difficulty in swallowing this term. Applicable except for these people are, you know, the small clan of extremely intolerant Muslims and fanatics who do not appreciate the need to engage and live peacefully with the others. But if fundamentalist mean you are right to observe your rituals and articulate and espouse your views on the role, relevance of religion in society, I don’t have any difficulty or qualms about that. What we resent or have to be mindful is the danger of those who use Islam a cloak of religion to continue in the intolerant manner or to be oppressive with their power. And of course the Muslim society, Muslim countries have to deal with it, I mean we’ll have to accept role of non-Muslims in our society in our political life, and this will continue. But Mark, we need to generate a more vibrant, active, lively debate within the Muslim countries

themselves, and this is not happening because of these countries do not give the democratic space. That is why I am critical of the US foreign policy, I am very supportive of the US foreign policy when it comes to promoting reforms and democracy and freedom in the Muslim world, but allowing Muslims themselves to articulate and set the agenda, and we of course need the support and understanding of United States, not to compel them, like they did in Iraq, but to allow the development like what happened in Indonesia and Turkey. It’s indigenous, it is done peacefully, there was clearly no presence of one foreign soldier in the soil, to dictate a foreign policy. So whilst you actually resent this sort of policy to compel people to accept, you should promote it as a universal ideal. And therefore, never mind whether one perceives this from a secular liberal party or Muslim party or Christian party. Let them engage and chart a program defying policies and state it very clear in non-ambiguous terms about the need for freedom for conscience of expression of social justice etc.

NARRATOR: Anwar Ibrahim, former Youth Leader and Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. Optimism and idealism are often thought to be the province of youth. Qualities that tarnish with time and bittersweet experience. But facing a world of increasing uncertainty, today’s young people – be they in Boston or Beirut -are less sanguine about their own and the world’s future. For Muslim youth in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, raised on televised images of easy western affluence, the forbidden fruits of American enterprise are both tempting and taunting. At the same time their leaders play on these frustrations to stoke anti American sentiment, as a means of diverting anger from their own misdeeds. And for American youth raised in the shadow of September 11^th, a steady diet of stereotypes from their media and political leaders, associate Muslim youth with street rage and suicide bombings. In this cultural environment of conflicting images, it’s all the more surprising that many on both sides of their parents’ divide remain deeply curious about one another, and eager to know more. For better or worse, today’s youth share a common culture, from hip-hop to iPod, as well as the angst and aspirations of adolescents the world over. Religious zealotry and its flipside, hedonism, tempt a relative minority, while a majority yearns for family, stability, a good job and a comfortable life. How then can the moderate majorities of youth in both cultures find their voices amid the strident shouting of an extreme minority? Though their elders govern and in some cases misgovern their relations across the great divide, it’s today’s youth who will inherit this confusing and conflicting relationship. The impressions they form today will determine whether decades hence will see a clash or a coalescence of civilizations. It’s in everyone’s interests that they embrace the latter choice. I’m Mark Sommer, and this has been A World of Possibilities. Thanks for listening.

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You’ve been listening to A World of Possibilities. For more information on today’s topic click on the listener action link at aworldofpossibilities.com. This program was produced and edited by Chuck Rogers, Tim Silva, Cathy Parlato and Malia Mulder-Wollen. Production engineer is Chuck Johnson. Special thanks to Jackson Allers in Beirut and Sylvia Gross in Kansas City, as well as Lucas Welsh of Soliya. Support for this program was provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Music is courtesy of MCA, Putumayo World Music, ATO Records, Bibbly Wax Records, Stefan Smith, Universal Hobo, Symphonic Records and RCA. This program was distributed by the WFMT Radio Network. Thank you for listening.