Spirit in Action
Islamic Ways of Peace - Afra Jalabi
Afra Jalabi was one of the speakers at Ways of Peace II: Non-violence in the Islamic Tradition. With degrees in anthropology, political science and journalism, and passion for nonviolence, early Islamic history, Quranic exegesis and feminist theory, she's an insightful mind and powerful, compassionate speaker.
This program includes Afra Jalabi's presentation as part of a panel on Theology, Philosophy and History of Non-Violence in Islam and a follow-up phone interview.
- Broadcast on:
- 08 May 2011
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Back on April 9th, there was a wonderful event at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was called Ways of Peace to Nonviolence in the Islamic Tradition. It was the second conference on nonviolence sponsored by Friends for Nonviolent World. That's F-N-V-W dot org, if you want more info. Among the full day of powerful speakers was Afra Jalabi, and she's my guest for Spirit in Action today. Afra Jalabi was raised in Syria, Germany, and Saudi Arabia before immigrating to Canada with her BA in Anthropology and Political Science from McGill University and Master's Degree in Journalism from Carleton University Plus her work as a columnist in London for all Jadita magazine and currently as a weekly columnist for the Saudi Daily newspaper All Yom. She's well-traveled and deeply insightful. As you'll hear in just a moment, Afra Jalabi is wise, passionate, and compassionate. She reexamends the nature of activism, nonviolence, and the underlying principles of coexistence through a Muslim lens. Finally, she's a member of the W-I-S-E Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, Shura Council. At the Ways of Peace to Conference, Afra was part of a panel on the theology, philosophy, and history of nonviolence in Islam. At a future date, I'll be sharing other speakers who are part of that panel in conference, but today we'll first listen to Afra's presentation, a bit of the Q&A session that followed, and then she'll join us on the phone from Montreal. First, let's go to the University of St. Thomas for the Ways of Peace to Conference Nonviolence in the Islamic Tradition, Afra Jalabi presenting as today's Spirit in Action Guest. Salaam Alaykum. Peace be upon you. An Abbas in Montgomery in Alabama, a black woman refused to give up her seat, and she disobeyed the dominant law, and she changed the face of America. But I would like to put you in a time machine and transport you to 1,400 years to another black woman who changed the history of humanity. Her name was Sumaya Bentulchayat. She was the first martyr of Islam. She died under torture, non-violently, because she also disobeyed the unjust law of the Quraysh tribe. So you could imagine, when I see sometimes graffiti saying that God is a woman and she is black, that we see the divine manifesting in compassionate acts and beautiful acts through women, oppressed women. And these are the stories we tend to forget to retell when a religion ends up becoming dominant and triumphant, and then history is written by those who triumphed. The history of Islam was actually established by those very people who non-violently and peacefully resisted unjust practices of Quraysh. The first followers of the Prophet Muhammad were slaves, women, children, and the male elites rejected him, and they persecuted and tortured his early followers, the early converts. When Islam slowly took over in Arabia and became slowly the dominant religion, and when Muhammad arrived back in his own hometown non-violently peacefully, then the male elites started converting. And it was those very people who actually also committed the first coup d'etat. After a few members were elected by the consent of the community, and then we went back to dynasties and monarchies, and history was written by those, not by the first martyrs, who like the followers of Jesus died under rocks or spears, and here today I see Jesus, the image of Jesus hanging on the cross. And when I think of Islam, I think of the Black slave Bilal under the rock, being tortured for being Muslim, and saying "Ahadun Ahad, one, one, one." He did not harm anyone, but he also refused to obey. That is the third way. Walter Wink in his little beautiful title, Jesus and the third way, shows that the prophetic way is the third way. It is between flight or fight, fight or flight, submission or aggression. This is what we tend to forget, that the prophetic figures throughout history, what they did was quite profound, very simple, but profound and difficult sometimes to comprehend, because people tend to either submit to injustices or raise the hand, raise the sword and fight injustices. What the prophets throughout history and all the reformers came with was disobedience, peaceful disobedience. Exiting from that one religion that dominated the world. So when Jesus says, "Turn the other cheek," it means that if you slap me and I slap you back, we belong to the same religion. What the prophets did is that they came up with a new religion, the religion of love and compassion, that I do not return hate with hate, that I stand in the face of hate with love and compassion, because I see your humanity, you are not my enemy, you are my brother, you are my sister. I'm talking about these in the midst of revolutions unfolding in the Arab world, peaceful protest, and they're being met with gunshots. Yesterday, I learned that my uncle was among protesters in Syria, and I would like to tell you a little bit about his history. I was born in a pacifist family in Damascus. My uncle in the late 50s started writing about nonviolence, because at the time he hadn't read about Gandhi, he was a young man at Al Azhar, the grand seminary of the Muslim world. He wanted to find out for himself what jihad was about, what arm jihad was about. And when he read the Quran very closely in a structural, critical way in the early Muslim history, he found out that the norm in Islam is actually nonviolence. And of course later, when he started coming upon the writings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and all that, that confirmed what he had discovered for himself. And the reason I use the term nonviolence is because when people generally use the term peace, they mean that I am peaceful as long as you don't hit me. When you hit me, only then I'm allowed self-defense. And some Muslims, unfortunately, who are not closely reading the text, the Quranic text, say Islam is a religion of peace, because the word Islam comes from the word peace. So they say Islam is a religion of peace, except in cases of self-defense. And I smile when I hear that, because actually in many contexts in the Quran, self-defense is not allowed. And this is what some people find difficult. And then I say, how would you then understand these early acts of complete lack of self-defense under torture and injustice? Because people sometimes think only when there is injustice and aggression is violence allowed. But that is exactly what the prophets and reformers stood against. That in the face of injustice and in the face of torture, all the prophets in the Quran say together, "Well, al-Nasbiran nalama avetumunah, that we will withstand and bear your harm with patience." And so our early Islamic history, the first 13 years of Islam, were radically non-violent, and two-thirds of the Quran were revealed during that period to the Prophet Muhammad, in which the community, the early community, were advised to lower their hands and perform prayer, kufu-a-di-a-kum-wa-a-kim-us-tulat. And so then the word spread, Muhammad kept convincing different tribes, and at some point they had lost hope. And some of the young men in the community would come to Muhammad after many years of persecution, and they would say, "Muhammad, we want to fight." We were dignified people in Jahiliya, Kunna Aizzet and Phil Jahiliya. And now we have become humiliated with you, because they were not allowed to raise their hand in self-defense. And Muhammad would tell them, "We're not allowed to do this." And tell the tribes of Medina, of Yathreb, which was renamed Medina, the city. Welcome to Muhammad, and they migrated to Medina. So the first acts of violence in Islam were actually committed when a city-state was formed. We need to understand that the history of Islam, the first founding years, are 23 years, 13 of which were conducted completely and violently, and even the violence that was done was then in self-defense. They were allowed self-defense after they formed a collective community with the moral consent of its inhabitants. And the Treaty of Medina was actually the first historical secular treaty in which citizenship was granted on the base of the agreement, rather than religious affiliation, where Christians, Jews, pagans, and Muslims came together to form a community to have obligations and duties according to the agreement, rather than the religious affiliations. And so these phases need to be understood by Muslims and non-Muslims, that before you have a collective political entity, when you are defending any cause, you are not allowed the use of violence. And why is that? The Quran is very clear on that, because it says that those who die die clearly, those who live clearly, because when you are defending a cause, if you defend yourself, if you raise the hand, then the first casualty is the cause, and the issue becomes muddled, and you become a terrorist. And that's why the Egyptians and the Tunisians and the Syrians are showing us incredible levels of self-restraint. And I've heard yesterday that the security forces in the southern city of Dara left arms lying on the street. And that even one security officer stood in the street and started screaming, "Are you cowards? Defend yourselves. Come on, let's fight. Let's fight them back." And what the people did, they collected the arms, and some they put in front of the mosque, and some they put in front of the security office buildings. They returned the gifts. And so you see that arms are now being out given freely as gifts to those peaceful protesters, because once they start firing, they have lost the cause, because then truth is no longer clear. And that's exactly what that black slave Bilal was doing under the rock, saying one, one, because his position was clear. Although he was owned by masters and he was black and he had no power, but once his humanity awakened, he knew that he was free instantly, that he had the power to choose truth. As Gandhi said, "You can break my bones, you can torture me, you can kill me, but you cannot get my obedience from me without my consent." And this is what the Arab people are finding out now, the power of disobedience, that little act by Rosa Parks, that changed the face of America, and that little act by Sumayya, who was the first martyr of Islam, that changed the face of humanity. These people show us that those very small acts of consciousness and awareness and awakening, no matter how small make a difference. There were moments in the last few weeks where my sisters and I, and some friends, because we're trying to support the Arab peaceful revolutions, whether by protesting or writing or mobilizing the community, there were moments where we felt frustrated and we felt like in any community. Is this helping? And then, last week, there was a pro-regime rally being planned in Montreal. I initially thought, "Let's just ignore them." There are people scared, actually, in the Arab world, and the regime is saying that there will be civil strife and there will be violence. Of course, a dictator tells you, "When I'm gone, life is worthless." And that I am the only civilized person in this country, and I have to keep you under siege to protect the civilized world from you and from yourselves. So people are scared of democracy. When you are in prison for a long time and your children are born in prison, they don't know what freedom looks like or what it tastes like. So there's fear as well. So there are people participating in pro-regime rally. Some of us wondered, "What should we do?" My initial reaction was, "Let's just ignore them. Let's do our own work." My youngest sister, who's a human rights lawyer with the government of Quebec in Canada, said, "Afra, I will not stay silent, even if I have to go by myself and stand on the other side of the street and protest against them." And she said, "I'm going to put duct tape on my mouth and wear black in solidarity of the dead and in solidarity of the silenced." And I said, "I'll come with you." So we started telling friends and we formed a line on the day of the pro-rally regime. They brought loud music and they were dancing and over 100 people had died in Syria two days before. So we stood on the other side of the street in downtown Montreal in silence with sober faces wearing black with large duct tape on our mouths. And it was interesting to see the shock and the embarrassment of some of the members when they saw us show up on the other side of the street in this state. I saw some people leave, especially the elderly, with sad faces. Of course, the media, although they had invited the media, they ended up being more interested in our side. And the nice thing is that we have discovered that wherever there is a pro-rally regime rally in North America now and in Europe, people started coming out on the other side with duct tape on their mouths and standing in silence. And we have friends who told us that in LA, when this happened, the pro-rally regime because they were also not as large in number as in Montreal, they were very furious, so they put the music, they turned the volume up and the police and the neighbors started complaining, so the police came and they completely silenced them. And so you see the power of small acts of disobedience and that even silence, even silence, while standing in truth is far more powerful than loud, loud and angry protests, or for to defend dictatorship. That's why Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall free you." And that's why in the Qur'an, we read, "Jah al-Haqu was a haq al-Baltil, in al-Baltil al-Aqan as a haqah," that when truth comes, falsehood withers away for the nature of falsehood is weak. And that's why in Buddhism they say, "When you light a candle, you don't need to fight darkness. It is dispelled instantly." And that is what people slowly are discovering, that it takes a lot of energy and a lot of noise to spread falsehood and it takes nothing to stand in truth. And that's what we see in the image of Jesus here, who was on the cross and saying, "God forgive them, for they don't know what they do." And that's what the Prophet Muhammad said too, when an angel came to him and he said, "Do you want me to bring this mountain upon the people who are hitting you?" And he was bleeding and he said, "They don't know what they do and maybe they will give birth to beautiful offspring." And that's what I say to people around us. We need to believe in the pro-regime people. We need to believe in people who have been involved in the regime, because in dictatorships you have only survival tactics and it turns people into persecuted and persecutors. And it's very hard for people to find that narrow gate that Jesus talks about and Allahqaba, that is in the Quran, that is between submission and aggression, that where you stand in that narrow line between submitting and fighting, where you stand in truth and in compassion, and you say, "I shall not obey, but I shall not harm you." That I'm going to stand here in beauty, because in Arabic, compassion actually is derived from the word "debutih" - "husan" - "husan." And that's why the verses you are translating, I generally translate them as "push back with that," which is beautiful. It's "fabbility" here "husan," because compassion is beautiful. And people respond to that. It resonates, because it is in all of us. And that's why I sometimes say to people, even physically, we are made from love, because when we love and forgive, we feel beautiful, we feel wonderful, and when we hate, when we're angry, even our bodies react in convulsion and in pain. It's almost you have something in your body telling you, "beep, beep, stop the pain. Please love, because you are made of love, for love." I don't know what's going to happen in Syria, that's where I was born. Egypt is still struggling, but the people have awakened. For the first time in Islamic history, we see the people coming back to power, which was abducted very early on. And this is why people, including Muslims themselves, sometimes confuse our beautiful history, because early Islam, like early Christianity, was based on that third way, was based on disobedience, with compassion, and seeing the humanity and the brotherhood and the sisterhood of the other side. And so for the first time, after the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, the Arab world is coming back and saying that we have the power of disobedience, and it is a gentle power. And it is fairly interesting and humorous to see Mubarak send his men on camels and horses after young men in jeans and with laptops. It's as if the darkest of our dark history are coming back to haunt us. And that is what Muslim people themselves have been trying to do for centuries. Western people have done that. They have been able to liberate themselves from internal dictatorships. But unfortunately, and sadly, they have practiced the rule of the jungle internationally. We, as a people, awakening altogether, we have to join our forces to say that the veto right is shameful to all of humanity. How could we espouse values of democracy and equality while we have a Security Council in which the United States can veto the decision of the entire world? There are sometimes two little islands, I think, that join the United States. In the Middle East, I always tell people, if you know the American people, you will love them. They are good people. They are peaceful, and they are loving, and they share your values. And many of them don't know that the United States, two weeks ago, vetoed things about justice in the Middle East. Because on the other side, that's what they see the United States doing, dropping bombs and using the veto right. So we have a world order in which might mix right. And some people in their own nation states have a clean house. But we live in an international world order where we don't subscribe to the rule of law. And that has prolonged the suffering of many people under the mercy of single dictatorships. So what is happening now is just the beginning. These are internal revolutions, but on the other hand, this is the beginning of the awakening of the international community. We live in a world economy that revolves around an industrial military complex. This is shameful. We are producing technologies and weaponry that are designed to kill our brothers and sisters. I don't care what their religion or color is. They are our brothers and sisters. We are one family here. This is the global village. And we need to start acting like one family. And we need to all help each other in changing our old values. And coming back to the real values of those people who stood out in history. The Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Socrates, whether they were philosophers or prophets. They were these lone individuals who were able to stand in the face of that collective hatred and collective rejection. And we're able to say, "I don't want to change you. I'm going to change myself. I'm going to start with myself. If you harm me, I still love you, and I will take the consequences of my actions." That's why Gandhi said that freedom is not taken, is not demanded. It is exercised, and then you take the consequences. And that's why we cannot wait any longer. We need to stand together and exercise our freedoms around the world. Muhammad did not ask Hooresh to give him freedom of expression. And I'm not asking the Syrian regime to give me freedom of expression. I am talking, and I'm willing to stand the consequences of my actions. Thank you very much. You were listening to Afra Jalabi presenting at the Ways of Peace Two Conference held at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, back on April 9. Afra was part of a three-person panel on the theology, philosophy, and history of nonviolence in Islam. You'll be hearing other presenters on future programs. After the panel, there was a Q&A session. There were plenty of excellent probing questions, but we only have time for a tiny portion of them today, because we'll be getting Afra Jalabi on the phone shortly as well. One participant raised some questions about passages in the Quran used by some folks to justify their violence, sometimes known as the sword verse. The panel moderator, Terry Nichols, co-director of the Muslim Christian Dialogue, gave some valuable response, followed by comments from Afra Jalabi. I'd like to say something to it. Verse 9.5, the sword verse, is the most famously quoted violent in the Quran. And it reads, "When the sacred months are over, kill the idolaters, Mushra Koon, wherever you find them." But if you read the immediately preceding verses, it's clear that what it's talking about is people from Mecca, there's pagans from Mecca, who had violated the treaty that Muhammad and the Muslims had made with them. And so I've read a number of commentators who would say about this verse. It only applies to that specific situation. It doesn't mean you can't pull it out of context and say, "Let's go out and kill all the idolaters." But I think sometimes that is done, but that's just a bad interpretation. So if you actually read the verse within its larger context, it's clear that it's limited and it's in a wartime situation. I would like to add a little bit to that, because you refer to a certain verse as being called the verse of the sword. And that is how it has become known in the tradition, but there is a peculiar absence of any reference to sword in the Quran. The word sword never, ever is mentioned in the Quran. The Quran has 6,236 verses. 36 of them deal with violence, but in the term fighting. So the word used in the Quran is qital. The word jihad, actually in Arabic, is derived from the verb to strive. So it's actually never mentioned in the context of actual fighting. It is mentioned in striving with your soul and with your resources in the way of God, but it has become a misnomer. And we always hear holy war as being the translation of jihad. Actually, holy war in Arabic is al-Herb al-Mukkadesa. Two words, jihad means striving. And so the word sword is not mentioned in the Quran at all. Not only that, there's a very peculiar verse, which I call it the death of war verse. Hata ta ta ta ta al-Herbou Ozaraha. That until war downloads or uploads its burdens. Because it says do this, do this, and tell war, and without the article, war in general as a phenomena. So among these 36 verses that deal with actual fighting, they are severe conditions. And if you read early Islamic history in accordance with the Quranic texts, you will realize that fighting is not allowed under conditions like injustice or being disgruntled about the ruler. But that you have to have achieved a state sort of entity with the moral consent, with the consent of the people, basically some sort of legitimate democracy. And then you cannot fight to gain economic, political, or even spiritual gains. Because the Quran clearly, there are verses that says, if you fight in the cause of worldly gains, political or economic, your destination is held. But it does say, why don't you fight in the cause of the oppressed who are caught up in towns, calling out God save us from this town whose people have become unjust towards us. There are also repeated several verses about that you have no way and no right over people who do not exile and kill others except to be good and compassionate towards them. So basically, this is similar, I've met the Dalai Lama and my uncle and I discussed this with him. The Dalai Lama also accepts that, that violence can be used as a policing form to spare blood, not to spill blood in the cause of something. In the situation of Rwanda, for example, where in two weeks you saw the death of millions of people, that was the responsibility of the international community to intervene immediately and to spare the blood of these people. When you read the Quran in its entirety, structurally, this is the kind of fighting it refers to. It's very precondition, it's extremely prescribed, it's under severe, severe rules, and not anybody can undertake it, otherwise it becomes crime or armed rebellion, which are completely forbidden in the Quranic text. You just heard a very small portion of the Q&A session that followed the panel presentation that Afra Jalabi was part of at the ways of peace to conference on non-violence in the Islamic tradition. Afra is my guest today for Spirit in Action, and I'm Mark Helpsmeet, your host for Northern Spirit Radio Productions, on the web at northernspiritradio.org. Find links, listen to the six years of archives, or post comments. You are listening, of course, so your response and input is very welcome. In a moment, we'll speak with Afra Jalabi at home in Montreal, Canada. Afra's got degrees in anthropology, political science and journalism, with deep interests in feminism, non-violence, and activism in general. She's a journalist currently with a Saudi daily newspaper, Al-Yalm. Afra Jalabi joins us by phone from Montreal. Afra, I'm delighted that you can join me for Spirit in Action. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm so delighted you come back and speak to me now. Of course, since we listened to you just before I got you on the phone, a lot of things have happened in the interim in Syria and other places in the Middle East. Could you update us on your experience since you're from Syria, since you have friends and relatives there? Can you tell me what's happened and maybe what hasn't happened that should be happening? Well, what's happening is that unfortunately, a foreign journalist are not allowed into the country. Otherwise, I think the world would be awestruck by the commitment of the Syrian people to keeping their revolution, white revolution and unviolent revolution, despite the brutality of the regime. It's very sad that not many people are hearing the heroic stories, but I'm sure that eventually they will come out. It's quite amazing what's going on on the ground. People are really committed to violence, so basically you have people walking into live ammunition and they're being fired at. We're seeing some of the videos coming out and we're seeing the banners, a large banner that came out in Duma in the suburbs of Damascus, red. If you shall raise your hand to kill me, I shall not raise my hand to kill you, which is a verse from the Quran about the story of Adam's two sons when one killed the other. Because the Quran zooms into that conversation and you hear the dialogue that happens before the brother kills his brother. And then other banners where the people are saying non-violent, non-violent, even if you kill 100 every day. The regime, of course, is trying to create a smear campaign. It's trying to portray the protesters as fanatic or as religious, which is fascinating because it's capitalizing and riding on Islamophobia, Western Islamophobia. So it's basically using the same Western arguments to suppress and brutalize its own people. And, of course, with the recent, I guess, assassination, the killing of Osama bin Laden, people have been turning in that direction. Is there any idea, any projection of when change might also come to Syria? Is that a certainty, a likelihood, a dim possibility? How does it look from your point of view? It's a certainty change is inevitable anywhere, especially now in the Middle East because what's happening in the Middle East is a form of popular uprising across the board that people are really coming out of the dictatorships. They no longer want to live in that sort of situation, Soviet-like control of the state. The question about Syria, it seems that Syrian people are completely determined, not everybody is still joining in because of years of fear and repression. However, the question is how many casualties will end up having in order to achieve freedom? This is the sad question, the sad equation for myself and for many others who are involved in this. How many people, as Bashar al-Assad, are willing to kill before he's willing to acknowledge that there is a civilian population in his country? He's the only president who has not addressed the people directly via TV. So, democracy, as I say, and equality are like electricity. They're arriving everywhere. So, the faster people adapt to these situations, the less casualties they'll have. And I hope the Syrian regime understands this. They can no longer live the way they have been living for the last 41 years. Syria has been under martial law for over 48 years, almost 50 years, half a century. And although recently the Syrian regime lifted the emergency law, it's not doing anything legal or lawful. It's still using bullets and security forces to deal with a political demand. It's using military force and violent force to deal with political demands. Basic human rights issues that the population is raising. From your point of view, Afra, is the non-violent tactics that have been used in Egypt, in Syria, and elsewhere? Are they a tactical plan, or are they fundamental morality being expressed? Fundamental Islamic morality, in this case. This is a very good question. I think some people have been dealing or writing about non-violence, especially people like my uncle, Joseph Said, who started doing this 50 years ago when he wrote about non-violence from a Muslim perspective from a moral perspective. However, what's going on in the world at the moment, we cannot be sure. I have the feeling that some groups might be using it as a tactic, which is still to me promising, because when they see how powerful it works, it is allowing the kind of moral argument to gain ground. So what's happening in the Arab world is that non-violence is spreading in a viral way to deal with dictatorships, to deal with many issues, and it's mobilizing women, children, because non-violence is very empowering to society. So it's creating a context in which people like my uncle, or myself, or other people who are pushing for non-violence as a moral alternative, not just as a tactical solution, are gaining voice in these places. For example, when non-violence arrived in Syria as a tactic, many Syrians felt, "Oh, we have this. We've had this for 50 years. We know, Joseph Said is being talking about this. Oh, now we understand." And when the Egypt revolution happened, many people started calling my uncle or writing him saying, "Now we know what you've been talking about. This is powerful. This is an amazing tool to use." And I saw actually some Facebook groups in Syria, and I was very heartened to see that, where they said that, "Non-violence is not just a strategic tactic for us or merely a tool, but it is a moral alternative and a daily practice and a way, a lifestyle and a way of living. I'm translating from the Arabic." And I was very happy to see that. So I think you have the tactical side, but because people are seeing it, and because they have been people on the ground who have been writing about non-violence from a moral and spiritual perspective, it's going to happen. It's going to take place as not just as a tactical tool, but also as a moral alternative. And just to be clear, the people in leadership, dictators, rulers, often people in privileged or powerful positions, they tend to conveniently ignore parts of morality. I think that's as true for Christian's Buddhist Muslims across the board. The rulers, certainly of countries like Syria or Mubarak in Egypt and so on, they're Muslim too. Are they not aware of the kinds of things you spoke about at the Ways of Peace Conference, or do they just conveniently ignore or de-emphasize things that are not convenient to their power base? I think we have to understand that throughout the planet, there are people who believe in the power of violence, and then there are people who believe in the power of truth. This is the power of the story of Adam's Tucson, because even in the Biblical version, it's the one who's offering not accepted that decides to kill the other. In the Quranic version, he goes and he says, "I shall kill thee." So the other brother says, "If you stretch your hand to kill me, I shall not stretch or raise my hand to kill you." And he dies, and he doesn't defend himself. So you have two models, and the Quranic doesn't even mention names, it's kind of an archetypal story. It just is the thumbs of Adam. And so you have this kind of archetypal story about humanity where one brother kills to achieve his ends or to compensate for his failing, and you have the other brother who refuses to defend himself. The beautiful part about that story is that the brother after killing his own brother, because what happens when you don't defend yourself, as Gandhi said, is that what two people meet on one side does not defend himself or herself, it becomes a crime. When the other side defends itself, it becomes war. So the death of the brother, when his own brother murders him, impacts him morally, which is what nonviolence always seeks to impact the conscience of your brother and sister on the other side. So at the deep level, I think every human being is programmed around love and mercy. I always say that physiologically, we are made of love because when we love, we feel great, we get a soaring sense of feeling, and we feel comfortable even physically, and when we hate and we're angry, we feel uncomfortable even physically. So it's fascinating to see that we're all actually designed by love for love in love, and yet this is kind of an ideological option to believe in the power of violence and to think that it will actually aid you. So this will tap his dictators. They think that bullets and tanks are more powerful than the will of the people or the power of love or the power of compassion. So they rely in a false way on that, and they are deluding themselves because that's not real power, even if it looks so tremendous in front of you. And that's, I think, the power of the story of Pharaoh and Moses, for example, of Pharaoh who kept believing in his own army and he drowned. And I think that's what happened to Mubarak, he drowned by a tsunami of people. Really, when you think these are, I think, powerful stories because they're symbolic, they capture the encounter of truth and violence. And violence, even if it looks powerful, it's weak. And that's why when the Quran talks about truth, it says when truth comes, false withers away for the nature of falsehood is weak. And that's why Jesus says, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." You quoted that same passage from Jesus when you spoke the ways of peace conference. I guess I'm not used to thinking about people who are very studied in Islam about knowing Jesus's. Of course, I know that Jews and Christians are people of the book. Is your knowledge extensive? Do you study with other folks to complement, supplement, and bring together these religious truths? How wide is your knowledge and how is it that you've built this knowledge base? Of course, you know, I love the Bible and many of us are involved in interfaith groups. However, there is something many Americans don't know. And that is that Jesus is a central figure in Islam and in particularly in the Quranic scripture. Mary also in particular. The story about Jesus actually, the chapter, is titled, "Maryam." You know, Mary. The Quranic story emphasizes the Immaculate conception. However, it's very ambiguous about the end of Jesus. The Quranic focus is very much on the story of his birth. Because the Quranic uses magical realism elements and fantastical elements, so you have kind of beautiful imagery. So for example, in the story of Jesus in the Qur'an, he talks as a baby and addresses the people who accuse Mary or attack her in public. And that's a powerful image because basically, when you think about the image of Jesus for all of us in the Semitic traditions, you have the image of a mother and a baby without a father at the height of a society that was patriarchal and military. So you have an image of a woman and a child facing a masculine armed man. So it's completely the counter-image of the way the world has been going. It's the other direction of pulling back humanity towards gentleness. And so I think also the emphasis of the Quranic story on the birth of Jesus and the mother giving birth is also a refocusing of the power of Jesus as a symbol of life. You know, when he says difficult is the path and time is the gate and yet it leads to life. So Jesus, for me as a Muslim, is a symbol of life and living. And I think I always say that for Muslims and Christians, even if we have different versions about the crucifixion story, at the end what we agree upon is the empty tomb. And that Jesus is a symbol that represents the triumph of life over death. And when we look at the world today, we see so much reliance on force and by superpowers and relying on large scale violence to achieve political and economic ends. And that is so sad we have a global economy that revolves around a military industrial complex basically designed to kill human beings instead of dialoguing with them. So I find the image of mother and child quite powerful because it invites other members of society to come back to the political arena and to have power. I love all of this that you have to say. I have to suspect that perhaps you're on the liberal end or say non fundamentalist end of the Islamic continuum. I'm Quaker and so I tend to be towards the liberal end of the Christian spectrum as well. Can you say something about how you relate within Islamic society and thought? Yes, when it comes to interfaith or Christianity, the views I represent about like the centrality of Jesus in the Quran and Mary. These are mainstream orthodox beliefs because you cannot actually be a Muslim unless you believe in Jesus and in Mary. Because the Quran represents the chain of prophethood as being throughout history, throughout humanity and that Muhammad is part of that chain. So that in order to be a Muslim, you have to believe in all the messengers and in all their books and in all the traditions. Of course, some people interpret that a little differently and they say but some people didn't preserve their traditions accurately which actually represents Muslims as well. This is why and it speaks to your question. This is why some Muslims have actually resorted to violence to resolve their conflict which according to the views of some Muslims is anti-Islamic. It violates Islamic principles. There is an agreement that violence is not always allowed in Islam even in the mainstream orthodox community. The differences happen when it comes to like severe radical or you could say like radical non-violence where people are saying that in some instances the Quran doesn't allow self-defense in specific context or that the norm in the Quran is actually non-violence and pacifist or resistance. Some people may disagree, they may take other verses. And you have somebody like you know, whether bin Laden or other groups that have taken some verses out of context and used them to create a certain interpretation of jihad. However, with what's going on in the Middle East at the moment, I'm finding that the ideas that were somewhat seen as liberal or somewhat radical when it comes to non-violence are becoming fast mainstream and orthodox because there is that element of non-violence in Islam. And let's not forget the role of people like Abdullah Farhan in India who organized an army of 100,000 people who were completely trained and disciplined with non-violent methods. And so you have figures like that even in modern history who used non-violence and he was a devout Muslim and he saw his non-violence coming from his own Islamic tradition. So these examples and these models are coming back to, I think, inspire popular imagination. So of course, you know, some of my feminism or my non-violence might be a little bit on the liberal side, but I'm actually heartened to see a lot of what used to be a decade ago becoming more mainstream even being embraced by orthodox groups. I think that's great to see that too. Can you say a little bit about your feminism and about your involvement with the Surah Council of W-I-S-E-Ys, Women's Islamic Initiative in spirituality and equality? And you know, you were born back in Syria, lived several other places now in Canada. Would your women's advocacy be welcomed back home in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East? Well, in Syria, Syria paints itself as a secular regime, so it used to actually boast about its own pro-women's stance. However, when you don't believe in human rights, you can't advance the women's cause. So in Syria, you have women who are bloggers who are in prison, a young blogger who was taken to prison at age 17 and who was sentenced recently actually on Valentine's Day in Syria to five years in prison for having basically being a blogger and in a secret trial. Of course, the government is, you know, trying to say that she was a spy for the United States. We will not believe any of that until there is an open and fair trial of that young woman. And there are other women that have been imprisoned. And they're either released or they're still inside, they're doctors and activists and novelists in prisons in Syria. And some of them are secular and some of them are religious, some of them are not religious. The point is that in Syria, there's just a general suppression of basic human rights across the board. So no matter how much the Syrian regime tries to paint itself as different from countries like Saudi Arabia, it can't do that unless it allows freedom of expression. How can I be a feminist in Syria when there's no freedom of expression? On the other hand, of course, in the West, you have this stereotyped image that Muslim women are oppressed. Of course, you know, in patriarchal societies, there are always injustices, but I also find that Western propaganda against these countries tends to use women's issues as a way also of trying to vilify another culture instead of dealing with its own sexism and its own inequalities. So you have really difficult issues on the ground because you have a country like Saudi Arabia where women are not allowed to drive. A very sexist practice and women are not allowed other kind of public stances. But then you have a country like Syria that boasts about being a secular regime and being pro-women, but it can't actually put it into practice because it's just a dictatorship. Yes, contradictions from all sides. How long have you lived outside of Syria, outside of the Middle East, let's say? My family moved to Germany when I was five, and then around the age of 13, my family moved back to the Middle East. I did my high school in Saudi Arabia, and then we moved to Canada. But always through and through we kept contact, we kept going back, I spent many summers. There were times where I almost went back to Syria every single summer. I haven't been back in the country for the last three years because I started doing democracy activism, and that kind of, my relatives and friends became concerned over my security. And so I would like to go back fairly soon if I could have any positive impact. People are being detained for doing any sort of activism. So sometimes I do ask myself, how can I serve what's going on in the Middle East? And I find that doing awareness work and that sort of democracy activism outside the country is probably my role at the moment. But of course I am so proud of the tremendous level of sacrifice that people are doing, and it would be an honor to work with people on the ground in these countries. Well, it's a complete honor to be able to speak with you. Your whole thought, your effort, your energy is inspirational, as is your sisters and your uncles. It sounds like a really wonderful family. I wish I could have you all living next door so we could share thoughts and activism together. It's really been wonderful speaking with you, Afra. Thank you for being part of the Ways of Peace Conference. Thank you. And when you say that, it's kind of a bittersweet compliment because I get that all the time, Mark, in Canada, where people tell me we are happy that there's this dictatorship in Syria because we gain families like yours, and that's a bittersweet compliment because I feel we are a security threat in our own countries, and we are beautifully welcome into countries like Canada and the United States, especially by the people where we are appreciated for our democratic and liberal values and ideas, and so you can imagine my feeling. Yes, and hopefully we can all not just pray, but work for well-being of all of our brothers and sisters around the world. Thank you so much for joining me for spirit and action. Thank you for saying that, Mark, because we are living now in an increasingly global community. It's becoming a smaller and smaller village. Our destinies and states are increasingly becoming intertwined, and therefore we need to understand each other as cultures. We need to work together, and we also can no longer afford in a world where one dictator can take his nation as a hostage, because that impacts the rest of the world. We can no longer live in a world where some distant nations are traumatized because that could eventually impact our own future and well-being as an interconnected community. So I feel that working together for the values of democracy, equality, compassion, and justice will serve us in not that long term, but actually even in the short term we will start breaking the benefits we really focus on working together. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for spreading these kinds of ideas. There's so many misconceptions. I really appreciate your efforts, Mark. Thanks again for your work, Afra. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.