Spirit in Action
Mosque Event - National Peace Foundation and Islamic Society of North America
A powerful sharing of activist culture between the West and the Middle East co-sponsored by the National Peace Foundation and the Islamic Society of North America. Representatives from Qatar, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates met Chippewa Valley activists at the Altoona mosque to listen and learn from one another.
- Broadcast on:
- 26 Apr 2009
- 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 ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. 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 ♪ Today, for Spirit in Action, we take you on site to a significant cross-cultural and cross-religinal exchange held on March 8th at the Altoona, Wisconsin Mosque of the Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin. Organized by the National Peace Foundation and the Islamic Society of North America, travelers from Qatar, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates joined with a diverse representation of activists and congregations from the Chippewa Valley. There were a couple hours of presentations on a number of topics, with translators keeping everyone informed, so I can't include every speaker in this hour, but I'll attempt to share with you some of the highlights. I want to take you now directly to the event and allow the presenters to tell you about the many topics and speakers. For today's Spirit in Action program, we'll start with the welcome by Dr. Mahmud Tamar. Salaamu alaykum. In the name of God, the most gracious, most merciful, our Lord help us to hold fast altogether to your past, even in the shaky times, Lord, you have promised to help us in our time of trouble and need. We rest upon you word. This is a prayer by an imam given to the Texas Legislature in '03, obviously repeating it because it is applicable. My name is Mahmud Tamar. I am the past president of the Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin, Al-Tunah Mosque. I have been here for 36 years in this area. Today, as you could see, we have gathered a number of people. We have guests from Yemen, Qatar, and Dubai. We have guests from the university. We have some from the ministers in this area. That was Dr. Mahmud Tamar, and the next speaker will be Sahar Tamar, who is, among other things, a member of the National Peace Foundation. One of the sponsors of this event held at the Al-Tunah Mosque of the Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin. Before I introduce the next speakers, I want to tell you a little bit about this program that is bringing international delegates to the U.S. Let me start by first say that I have never seen our mosque, the Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin, so full. So full of people, so full of concern, so full of interest, and so full of love. Maybe we need a bigger bus. That's so nice. I want to also say that we have upstairs our prayer hall, our miselea, and afterwards, for those of you who have not been here before, you really have to see the whole mosque, which is rather small, to come upstairs, and we can give you a tour. This project is done under the title of religion and society, or faith and community, but really the word religion and society is preferable because it translates into Arabic, makes more sense. The program is an exposé to the place of religion, the role of religion in society, and it is not just one role, it's the many roles, and it is not just one society because we come to the U.S. and we bring delegates here to bring their societies to the U.S., but we also take American delegations abroad to more than one country, bring that understanding. The program is designed so that there is great diversity in it, it is not a peer network. There is multi-country, so from here, this particular, we have from three countries in the Gulf, and you may have seen our attempts to provide some geographical information, and there is a factor here because the Gulf is so diverse, it's not all the same, so our delegates learn much from each other. It's also intergenerational, we have young people, recent graduates, and we have people who are professors and universities, and also multi-background, people who are activists, people who are practitioners in religion, people who are looking for a way to find a future in their leadership and trying to impact and influence society. It's been a wonderful experience because we have had so many people build a program, people who said, "You should do this, and you should do this," and what we found is that these are study tours, we physically travel, you know, in the United States, we start in Washington, D.C., we decide to focus on the Midwest because there is a lot of greatness in the American Midwest, and we go to Chicago because it's an excellent example of many things, the large city of America, then we, this time, this particular set of tours, we said Wisconsin is the place, there's a lot to be learned from visiting rural America, I don't know if you consider yourselves rural, and the Chippewa Valley, but there's a lot to be learned here, and I have to tell you that since yesterday when we arrived in Eau there, I say many, many of the delegates are quite taken with our town here. From here we go to Minneapolis, and then we'll go back to Washington, but along the way, we are visiting, again, this exposé, we go to universities, tomorrow we're going to the University of Wisconsin-O-Claire, we're going to be hosted by Dr. Ali Abu Talibi and other professors there, we bring all kinds of people together, we attend a church this morning, and Pastor Matt was here, and I see that Jill Kristofferson is here at the United Church of Christ, first congregational. They asked us to have one of our speakers, Nabilah, present a supplication from the Quran, actually, in the service, and it was very touching, it was, you know, touching on both sides. They stayed overnight, last night with members of the Valleybrook Church, we are here today, we are going to Bethel Synagogue in Minneapolis to celebrate Purim Tuesday morning, we're going to the Minneapolis Jewish Day School, we are going to the Muslim full-time school, we're going to visit the Somali community as examples of recent immigrants, and the reason I'm going to is to our community, to our community, and that's just here, we've done so many other things, so first it shows, I think, the diversity and the richness of American society, it's truly, truly there. Second of all, I think that in order to do that, the complexity of American society is shown right here. One of the things that I think that we're looking at here, we're going to first start with what our people in our groups doing in terms of activism, Steve and Eric and Mark, to learn how much information and what it takes to engage in creating change, in creating change under a particular purpose and a particular cause. And now, we're going to talk with many of our activists, in this instance, two people from Yemen who are also engaged, the same struggles they have and how they may reach what they're doing. And the idea is that we could perhaps learn from both ways that we can give each other advice. I've mentioned that the National Peace Foundation was one of the sponsors of this event. Sahar Tamar is a member of that group, and the next speaker, Sarah Harder, is also a member, and we'll speak about the group, and in particular, how they came to discover their mission. But it was clear to me that while our work has been successful, we're very proud of it, that we were not dealing with what was the most fundamental peace issue in the world, and that, of course, is the Middle East. It is the divide that comes not based on any of our religions, but almost in spite of what all of our religions preach. And I was very lucky to connect with a woman here in Eau Claire, who many of our guests met yesterday, Kathy Sultan, who is an author, she lived many years in Lebanon during its civil war, and she's written several books about that experience and about her effort to make peace in the Middle East between Palestinians and Israelis. And together, we were lucky to have Sahar Tamar stand up and ask some very intelligent questions at one of Kathy's book readings a few years ago, and Kathy and I looked at each other. We very soon invited Sahar to come to lunch, and we made a deal, and Sahar has now gained three projects for us, which I believe are among the most esteemed by the State Department in serious work in the Middle East. Unfortunately, right-wing activists began speaking to Congress last summer, caused the cancellation of the third grant that we had, because they argued that we are only bringing terrorists. Now, it's interesting that Muslims from Indonesia, Muslims from Sri Lanka, Muslims from other parts of the world can still come under this program, and we hope under the Obama administration that we will be able to have many more such meetings. Our partnership with the Islamic Society of North America has been fundamental to our work. We had great deal of work in the Soviet Union and did citizen exchanges, but this has been, I think, the high point of the work at National Peace Foundation, and we appreciate all of you taking part in this piece of it today. The other co-sponsor of the March 8th, 2009 event, was the Islamic Society of North America. Iran Salah is their national membership and affiliates coordinator. On behalf of the Islamic Society of North America, we do welcome all of you, and thank you very much for accepting this offer and this invitation, and for you to come out and meet with us. Obviously, this kind of work is extremely important. If governments did not want to talk to one another, let the people talk to one another. And by people talking to one another, then we get to know one another. Yesterday, Pastor Mark may God bless his heart, he invited us to his church. People have never, I'm sorry, Pastor Matt, or the Imam of the church. He invited us to his church and he brought his congregation out. And with that did, he brought people together. For the first time, people who have never seen Christians in their life, let alone shaking hands and breaking bread with them. People who have never seen people of the Jewish faith, as we did three nights before meeting the Jewish coalition for peace in Chicago. And so as we bring people like this together to speak and to talk to one another, I think the element of fear will be taken away. But the only reason the element of fear is taken away because of the unknown, that causes fear in our hearts, is now become known. I know, as National Peace Foundation President earlier said, that certain people are working very hard to eliminate such programs. What is it that makes a man look at another with gazing eyes of disgust and belittlement? For no reason except bigotry, hate and ignorance. And what is it that makes a man speak ill of another? For no reason except their own formulated preconceived ill notions. That was Rodwan Saleh of the Islamic Society of North America, co-sponsor of the event held March 8th at the mosque in Elton, Wisconsin. It was a bringing together of activists and interested parties to learn from one another. The event began with representatives from several local groups, talking about their work and concerns in the Chippewa Valley, and ending with talks by some of the visiting folks from Qatar, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. The first presentation was by Steve Wagner of Military Families Speak Out. I'm a lifelong citizen of this community and I'm real proud of that fact. I strive real hard to stay in this community my entire life as much as possible. I worked the skill as a bricklayer and I had two knee surgeries and went back to school and that's how I actually met Dr. Tman and his family. I went to school with Ali Yos of Muhammad Ali. He was a nephew of Dr. Tman. Today, and now a nephew of Rafael, sorry, we became very close friends. Many years later, I'm here now speaking in front of you for an organization that I represent called Military Families Speak Out and my son joined the U.S. Army December of, I think it was 2000, and December of 2000 he said, "Dad, you know that deal we always had about you pay half of my college?" Well, I just signed up in the Army so in four years or three years you better have about $18,000 because that's what I get from the GI Bill. And I was proud of him. This was December before 9/11. He joined in January. He was making a life decision and one that I thought was truly patriotic. But his time passed and he spent some time and most of his time in Germany and he went to Kosovo. While he was in Kosovo, something changed for Nick. He was trained as a forward observer where he would be giving coordinates on artillery hits. But he was there long after any artillery had fallen. He was there in 2002, but he saw the after effects of war and it was after that point in time that he made a conscious decision that he was against war. But he was still in the military and he definitely couldn't speak out and he didn't necessarily call his dad up, but he knew that his dad would always speak out. Over the period of time, towards the fall of 2002, when the drumbeats were beating for this war into Iraq, my son was certain that he would probably be part of the invasion force. And they were trained and they were ready to go, but Turkey did not allow U.S. troops into Iraq. So Nick more or less missed the invasion and his term was to be up January of 2004. In October of 2003, he was what a term that's called stop laws. What that means is the military can extend your duty and then he was sent to Iraq. And on the day he was sent to Iraq, they usually give him less than 24 hours notice and we knew he was going to go, we just didn't know what day. But the day he left, he filed for conscientious objection, which is where you state that you feel that all war is against your conscience. He took considerable heat for this. He was punished by the military, as I call it, even though while his case was waiting. But he had a very quick turnaround on his case, and he still had to serve his entire term in Iraq. While I was trying to find out what this war was all about, I discovered a group called the military family speak out, and since then I've been involved with them heavily. I was about the 50th person to join the organization, and now there's well over 4,500. Ironically, similar to the number of total soldiers, U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq, you spent billions, and people continue to die. Today in Baghdad, 30 people, again, were ravaged by terror. We had our event here in the United States in September 11th, but we don't know what many of you know firsthand. That terror is not just one event that happened many years ago, where people say it changed the world. No, terror is something that happens continuously on this planet, and I, for one, want to cease the terror that my government reigns on people around this planet. It's ironic to belong to an organization that says they're members of the military, and to at the same time say that you want to end war. But as I took my son to the Minneapolis airport, as he was about to deploy for his last time to see us before he went to Iraq, I was telling him how, as we stood at the end of the driveway and he saw my son sign at the end of the drive, and I said, "That must feel strange for you. Here you are going off to war," and the sign said, "War is not the answer." And he said, "Dad, if you didn't have the sign, that would be strange." As time passed on and I got to know more and more members and became more involved, I found myself as an activist, standing with people at times, writing, you know, the age old saying right to your congressman. I did that for a long time, but I found that writing to other people who knew me and talking to people individually about the issues seemed to be a lot more effective than simply standing on the street. But I found that standing on the corner, which I continuously do, and Eric's going to talk a little bit about that. But for instance, yesterday I stood on the corner with just six or seven other individuals. They've been doing this every Saturday in Chippewa Falls, just a small community, north of here, for over five years. What you gain, Mark explained this to me one time, and I understood what it meant immediately as he said it, "What we need to do is when we gather, we need to gain more energy than what we had when we came so that we can then go off and help others to understand." I truly feel there would be peace if people took the time for three things, first to listen. What are the issues? What is it that concerns you? Once you listen, then you need to learn. You need to seek out knowledge that goes beyond just the one or the few that you've listened to, but to learn more. And then you must teach, and it's a circular event. You can enter this chain any place along that chain, but it's circular. You must listen. You must learn. You must teach. And so, as an activist, I hope that we can all go off and we can each be committed to whatever transition you're in, to move on to the next, to listen, to learn, to teach. And now it's my turn to listen. That was Steve Wagoner of Military Families Speak Out, and he was the first of several speakers from the Chippewa Valley at the meeting of the cultures held at the Altoona Mosque right here in the Chippewa Valley of Wisconsin on March 8th. This is Spirit in Action, and I'm Mark Helpsmeach, your host for this Northern Spirit Radio production. Please go to our site, northernspiritradio.org, for links to the groups presented here today, and please drop us a comment when you visit. You can listen to this and many other programs there. Come and help yourself at northernspiritradio.org. Next up, speaking at the March 8th Mosque event, is Eric Rosenquist. He works for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, and he'll be speaking on the Iraq moratorium. I grew up in a rural community, a narrow player, a family with Wisconsin. It wasn't necessarily an environment which promoted civic engagement. That isn't to say that my family background didn't promote civic engagement. I'm proud to say that both my parents demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, and they have done so once again with the war in Iraq. I'm also proud to say that they both went and demonstrated against the RNC conventions in St. Paul. You trained them well. I trained them well, right? Yeah, so it has been instilled in me from a young age, but briefly I came to university back in 2002 to major in philosophy, and I've been involved with the peace movement since our invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraq moratorium isn't so much a group as much as it is a campaign. I'll briefly explain the name. Iraq moratorium basically means that we're going to take a short break from our normal days to demonstrate against this financially costly and immoral war in Iraq. It seems like at this moment the Iraq moratorium movement will transform into a more of a war moratorium movement. A lot of people ask this and I'm sure that some of you have gotten this question as well of why are we still protesting this war, Obama's going to end it, right? He's going to solve this problem, but not true. As we've seen with latest status of forces of agreement with the National Guard moving into from Wisconsin, he still wants to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq after 2011, which we don't see as acceptable. It's still an American presence in a place that we don't deserve to be. So, it is transforming to a war moratorium movement. We are against the Afghani War, of course, as well, and this is something that doesn't seem to be closing anytime soon with the Obama administration. He actually wants to do another surge, like he did with Iraq, and keep our troops in. So we really need to stay strong with our movement and we need to grow our movement as much as we can as well, otherwise this war will continue to exist and other wars in the future will continue to develop as well. So it's important that we fight against the institution of war and I hope that that's what the Iraq moratorium can evolve into. I guess I'll close with a quotation from one of my favorite politicians, Paul Wellstone. He said that if we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we really don't stand for those things at all. That was Eric Rosenquist speaking on the Iraq moratorium movement. We have one more local activist to speak out, and we'll allow Dr. Mahmoud Taman, former president of the Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin, whose home is the mosque where this event is taking place. We'll allow Dr. Taman to introduce Mark Ruddy and Jonah's treatment instead of prison program. There is an organization in Wisconsin, a civic organization, it's called Wisdom. This is a safe-wide organization, which is congregation-based. What do they do? They make a commitment to build community by building one-to-one relationship in a congregation and beyond a congregation. In each community, they have a branch. These are all made from the community itself. The local one here is called Jonah's, J-O-N-S. This is an abbreviation for joining our neighbor's advancing hope. That is the word Jonah means. Wisdom itself has a number of goals from social justice to healthcare, to environmental issues, to tax fairness, and each community will find for itself what is important for the community. This community shows Jonah, J-O-N-S, about three or four subjects. One of them is healthcare. The other is environment, and the third one is what we call TIP, T-I-P, means treatment in place of prison for those who are addicted or mentally ill. To this, my friend Mark, who is going to talk about this, there is actually, in most of the counties, something called drug courts or mental health courts or courts for signal mothers. These are specific courts, but they are too small and too narrow, and they are not able to cope with what they have. We are asking, to enlarge it a little more, to increase the funding, to have a little more effective way of dealing with this type of people. Mark? Dr. Tamon has been part of the treatment center prison group. This is fall. I've been with it for about a year. A huge problem in the state is that we've put so much energy into our attempt to fight crime by putting more and more people into prison. We spent more on prisons than we have on any other departments on our state level. Between the years 1993 and 2005, in those years, the Department of Corrections budget has gone up 346 percent, where the average of all other agencies has been up 123 percent. So, three times as much increase in funding over those years for the Department of Corrections, part of a national trend to be tough on crime. At the same time, we find that in our Wisconsin prisons, 80 percent of the people who are in prison, it's stated that their root cause for being in prison is that they're addicted to alcohol or other chemicals or they're mentally ill. So, we have this huge population that have a health problem, who are being treated as criminals and treated in the law enforcement criminal justice system, rather than being treated in the health system, and it's not meeting their need. Of every ten of those addicted people who are sent to prison, only one of those people will actually get treatment when they're in prison. So, we find that when those people come out, and most of them are going to come out at some point, especially the non-violent offenders, 40 percent will have a new offense within three years. So, the system is not working, it's costing us too much. One of the good things about hard economic times is that it forces us to look at how we are spending our money and say, "Can we be more efficient?" And clearly, we can find a better way to treat non-violent offenders who have mental illness or chemical dependency issues rather than putting them in prison. In Saturday's paper, I pulled out an article about one individual, and I don't know all the specifics about this case, but I'll take it as a general example. But a judge in this case happened to be Lisa Stark, and Lisa Stark is a very progressive judge in our community who's looking for alternatives to not send people to prison. But she was even faced with this situation. A man with a string of burglaries, it stated that he threatened force in one of these burglaries. He's clearly addicted, he was stealing to be able to feed his drug habit, so he was sentenced to four years in prison, and then once he got out of prison, he would be on supervision for three years, and if he had a problem during that three years with his following up on his probation, he would end up back in prison. So four years at $29,000 a year to put him in prison, it will cost us $116,000, and if he doesn't get in treatment, if he's not one of the lucky people, he'll come out with even more strikes against him. He'll have a felony record, it'll be more difficult for him to get a job, he won't have a support system in the community, and so he'll likely re-offend potentially for another three years. For seven years for him to be in prison would cost us $203,000 a poll. So what could we do for that person with $203,000 over the course of seven years to make that person a productive member of society and a member of a family? So there's been some attempts to find a different way. Maloon talked about our drug court. This is an attempt to look at people who have been committed of a crime, who are addicted, who have a nonviolent history, to say let's give you intensive support rather than going to prison, rather than putting $29,000 a year to keep you locked up, let's find a better way to fund your rehabilitation. One of the complaints that Judge Stark had about this individual was that he didn't have any community support to keep him from re-offending. He clearly says yeah, I'm addicted, I need treatment, but the judge is saying hey, we just don't have any resources in the community, so I can't let you not go to prison. We're saying we need to create more programs for this individual that will really make a difference in his life so he'll have a much less likelihood to re-offend that he'll actually get his health care problem treated, his health care being addiction, and we can do this for far less than the cost of $29,000 a year sitting in prison. With the drug court model, someone in that drug court meets with the social worker and the judge every week. There's a team approach, the parole officer is there, there's someone from the Department of Human Services, there's about perhaps 10 different agencies involved that meet every week on this individual, and they say how this person is doing, what other community supports do we have that person can fit into, and then after they meet, they meet individually in front of the judge with the offender, and they see how that person is doing, maybe that person has been having drug tests during the week, so they can keep him clean, they can keep him accountable, and so this is every week at the beginning trying to assess specifically what this person's problem is so that we can define the problem, and by defining the problem then we can know what we can work on and make a difference in this person's life, and it's not an easy program, there's lots of hurdles to jump through, but it is a way to get a real definition of what that individual's problem is and set up services to correct those problems and give that person a potential to be a productive citizen. Another example of an alternative court, the county of Winnebago, has set up a program, it uses the acronym of stop, but it works for people who've had the second and third offence of driving while under the influence. Right now, someone with that offence, they'll spend somewhere between 30 and 120 days in jail, and then have other hoops they have to jump through to try to make an attempt to meet their needs. Winnebago County has gotten a waiver from those state requirements, and they say, "We'll give you a choice, you're going to have to spend five days in jail rather than 130 or 120, but then if you want to, we'll put you into our special treatment program," where again, they'll have resources, things they're held accountable to, work they have to do to specifically meet their problem, and they've found that 80% of their graduates of that program do not reoffend. We have statistics on drug courts going back to 1989 in this country. There's over a thousand drug courts in this country, so we know they work. We know that they keep a significant number of people from spending time in prison, and they pay for themselves. In La Crosse County, they have 53% of their offenders who would be sitting in jail. They have 53% of those people in the community, in programming, similar to drug court, where they're held accountable for their actions, but it's what's called community-based programming. Rather than sitting in jail, they're held accountable and get services while in the community. Therefore, they're able to stay with families, often stay on the job, and carry on with their life and be responsible, and learn how to deal with their problem in a real-life situation, rather than spending several years in jail, getting more strikes against them, and then come out, and have to dig themselves out of it even deeper whole. There's a huge racial disparity in this country, and how we treat crime. In Wisconsin, African Americans are 42 times more likely than whites to go to prison. 42 times more. Wisconsin is the worst in the United States, and the percentage of our black population that we have in prison. Wisconsin is the worst in that disparity. So clearly, this is a structural kind of racism that we have that's maybe not one individual person being racist, but a structure with a whole bunch of attitudes and assumptions and logistics that mean that we have this huge disproportionate expense to the black community, taking those people out of their homes, taking away their right to vote, taking them out of the households. It's relatively simple to see alternatives to this history. We can set up putting in more funding for these jail diversion programs to keep people from ever going to prison, using proven programming from, since 1989, with drug courts, to really make a difference in these individual lives and save money and have less real fenders. With the treatment, instead of a prison program, we've tried to say, "Okay, what can we do? What one specific thing can we do to work on this problem?" What we've come up with is there's a program in the Department of Justice called the acronym of TAG, T-A-D, Treatment Alternatives and Other Diversions. This is saying treatment in the community rather than going to prison. Up until now, there's been approximately two million dollars in the state budget for that program. Treatment, instead of prison says, in this budget cycle that we're in right now, let's increase that significantly. Let's put 22 million dollars into that budget so that counties from around the state can set up these programs that have an effective track record so that someone like this in the paper Saturday will have a better chance of getting effective treatment rather than spending a potential seven years in prison at over $200,000 cost. So we're saying in this budget cycle, we have a petition designed that's directed to our state legislators and the governor saying that we see the problem, we see as one part of the solution to increase these fundings that counties can apply for to support these alternative programs. So one thing you can do is to sign this petition because we're in the budget cycle right now, it's probably even more important to write your state legislators, write governor Doyle and say, let's find a way to take money that's going to be spent, let's take that and allocate it to these alternative programs that can keep people more effectively out of prison and not reoffending and actually lead productive lives and lead to more justice in our justice system. I'll ask you to consider contacting your state legislator to express your opinion of whether you think that's a good direction to go in these hard budget times. Thanks for your time. It was Mark Ruddy of Jonah's treatment instead of prison program. The last of the local activists from the Chippewa Valley to speak at the March 8th event at the Altoona Mosque. Next up are two visitors, part of the delegation from Yemen, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. They are husband and wife team from Yemen. We'll start with Mohammed Ismail Abdul Rahim Al-Nimi, and I apologize for my pronunciation of the Yemeni Ministry of Education. His words will be translated in English for us. In a few minutes, I'm going to try to clarify the relationship between Islam and the Western civilization and I would start with a few questions and I hope that I'll be able to respond to it through some of the verses from the Qur'an. Is Islam and Muslims constitute a threat towards the Western civilization or it's like other religions which would add some vibrant and some more and help the Western civilization to move to the next level? The Western civilization is nothing but a coalition of values as it has been mentioned or referred to in so many different international treaties and agreements. The Westerners, they have taken this as being coming from them and not from their religions and the values of their religions which really backfired on everybody around. And of course, this is on one hand, on the other hand, the advancement of technology has its problems. So what is the relationship between Islam and the rest of the values? I believe and from my research, I'm certain that the values are available in the West and the times where we've started talking about values and international values and global values. All what we have there on the international scene is based or driven from Islamic values. I won't be having time to really refer to all the verses and all the aspects of the Islamic civilizations or the verses highlighting the relationship between Islam and human rights which I could really prove through the verses in Qur'an. But I'm going to take five values and refer to the verses itself without any comments or any other, you know, supporting schools of thoughts. And I would leave this for you to continue the research and decide for yourselves what you believe or what you think is the right path. The dignity of humans, freedom of thought and religion, freedom of life and accepting of others and really working to eliminate corruption. With respect to human dignity, God says that God has created humanity or humans to be dignified. We have created the humans on the land and in sea and we have given them all the dignity to represent us in this world. And he's the one who's going to inherit everything on earth irrespective of any other aspect of the life because he is the one who's going to inherit Islam with prevent people from making fun of others, other humans, whether they're males to males or females to females. With respect to the freedom of thinking and freedom of religion, Islam called for coexisting with all religions, with all people irrespective whether they're religious or not. And the verse which confirmed this, we have over 100 verse in the Qur'an emphasizing this fact. Whoever wanted to believe would be okay, those who want, that would be okay too. And the prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, he was told to God that you can't really force people to get into his step. And he told those dumb believers that you've got your religion and have got mine. Despite this, we need to live together and we can't coerce or there's no coercion in religion and you're not controlling them. So there are lots of verses which clarify this with respect to the life. A life is so sacred in Qur'an and Islam emphasized that one who would kill a life as if he'd killed the whole nation. One who would really take care of life as if he'd taken good care of the entire nation. He prevented people killing another and he prevented you from killing yourself. And there is a clear verse that you shouldn't be killing yourself. Again, you shouldn't be throwing yourself into disaster. And there are lots of stories about the Rasuz's life emphasizing. And despite the mysteries that our people are living in back in our countries, the suicide rates are so nominal. We need to go back to the harmony and living and accepting each other. And this is really a part of accepting others and freedom of religion. We are really requested to live with non-believers. And there was the verse which I've alluded to earlier that you have your religion and I have mine. The prophet Muhammad peace upon him lived in his uncle's house and his uncle was not a believer. And when his uncle passed away, prophet Muhammad named that year the year of grief. With Christians and Jews, he emphasized Islam, he emphasized that we need to communicate with them with extreme and to be really kind to them and to be just with them and to be kind to them. If we abide by this, God would love us. With respect to the international or global corruption, you would probably be surprised if I would tell you that Islam 1400 years ago has called for eradicating corruption. The corruption in Islam is of two types. One kind is destroying the environment on land and in sea and committing suicide. And you might be really shocked to see somebody who would you like to listen to, but he's really bad for all those around him. And such people usually, whatever they would do, they will never take into consideration the environment or other living. So they would not only kill others, but they would destroy the environment, but they would kill even plants. And obviously, ultimately, it would affect and would destroy humans. And God would never like corruption. And after that, the corruption spread on land and sea. And those who were corrupt on land, he ordered to be disposed. So if they were so destructive on land with respect to the plants and the humans, though they'd need to go to another plant. So I'm concluding that we don't constitute any threat to any civilization. And with respect to your combination about the crimes and the study and research with respect to the sentencing and prisons and so on and so forth, I would predict before seeing your research that most of those involved in organized crime. The Muslims in the states, they don't constitute any part or any significant part with respect to the citizen. So if you'd go back to see who are those in prisons, who are the members of the gangs and the organized armed robberies and drugs cartels and so on, I believe that their percentage of involvement in such crimes, they're so no matter. I would want to tell you that back in our countries, the administrations running those countries, they're corrupt and they don't exist. But why, at the same time, do we don't have organized crimes or sometimes it doesn't exist? So despite the very poor governance and corrupt officials, you would still don't see the crime as an epidemic. So Islam has declared war on organized crime. It's known at the populist level that those involved in organized crime are not Muslims. Thank you. That was Mohammed Esmail Abdul Rahim al-Nimi of the Yemeni Ministry of Education. There were questions after his speech that we don't have time to include for this spirit and action program. But one of the questions seemed particularly to the point in terms of mutual understanding between the Islamic Society of Yemen and the mostly non-Muslim society of Wisconsin. And fortunately, the other speaker, Mohammed's wife, Thawakul Adusalam Khaled Kaman, chose to address the question. If Islam has such high ideals, how do we think about the actual situation on the ground in the Middle East? Thawakul is a member of women journalists without chains, also from Yemen. She speaks a bit of English but chose to speak through an interpreter. So don't be surprised if it sounds like a man is giving her speech. Again, this is Thawakul Adusalam Khaled Kaman of Yemen's women journalists without chains. Speaking at the Altunu, Wisconsin mosque event, co-sponsored by the National Peace Foundation and the Islamic Society of North America. Assalamu alaikum. Assalamu alaikum. In our greating means peace with you. I would hope about human rights, about the real status of rights in Yemen, freedoms in Yemen. I will start my presentation from the question that Sara has proposed. If the freedoms are well clear by Islam, so why we are struggling then I mean in our countries. As human rights activists, as journalists and as intellectuals and elites in our societies, we struggle to put a pressure on our government to commit to be to with Islam values and upon the constitutions in our countries. What I mean by the Islamic values is the international treaties, international definitions about the freedoms. Well, I will call everybody from you. I call researchers to make a thorough study through international law and through the declaration of human rights and to make a comparison between what's given provided in these treaties and these laws and the Islamic law. The five components or the five values that have been given by Muhammad and we do have much more values than these actually. We have an advanced and a great constitution in Yemen that recognizes these freedoms, these values. In contrast, I mean we suffer from lots of violations for these values. For example, freedom of expression and thought. So our Yemeni constitution gives the individual the full right freedom of expression, whether by picture and sound. The truth is that the freedom to express ourselves, whether by sound or picture, is not president, is absent, and writing yes, it is there. It is there, but I mean permission or license to publish a paper cannot be granted unless you are a patron or you are or you belong to the government. Freedom of expression in terms, let's say of demonstration, rallies, marching. It was available at a certain time. Unfortunately, has been restricted by a law that prohibits the most reason, which gave the government the right to arrest and to put tens of demonstrators in jail. Corruption, according to the agency of transparency and the indicator shows that Yemen got the highest rate of corruption actually among all other states in the world. We got one out of ten. Two, one into one percent. Point one percent because the indicator from zero, from zero to ten. So the more indicator, I mean, is less, okay, the more corruption you have. Presence, it's full of prisoners. Those who have expressed opinions, the authority power is like a cartel and it is in the hand of one person. Constitution gives us the right to transform power, but the status quo our president has been 30 years so far in his office. Presently, he's trying to, you know, turn this power to his son. For this reason, that's why we're here and we are struggling actually to do these changes. The more we struggle and the more resistance we have from the government or suppression. And we do have some lights, you know, down the road. The culture of rights became a cosmopolitan, became a social culture. Our population is 20 millions. Fifty percent, according to the international bank, are illiterate. Seventy percent, they live in the rural areas, but those they gained actually the privilege and the culture of demanding, of calling upon the government for the rights. Recently, Yemen has started moving forward simply for two reasons. Because there is what you call collective participation from the society and there is in human rights, political and human rights movements. Many people turn to listen to the NGOs and to civil sounds. And there is what you call, I mean, beginning or indications of some balance in compromise in the opposition and the leadership and the governor or ruler. The opposition now has launched or has began, began gaining some power and its voice, began well heard and its relationship with the international community improved a lot. Those two pillars and those two components have affected us and we have interacted positively with them. This is a general picture about the light, general picture about the situation about the situation in Yemen. Thank you for your attention. That was the final speaker we have time for on today's spirit in action. Actually, there were others, including representatives from Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. We can look forward to another tour to the Midwest, I think, sponsored by the National Peace Foundation to be held in July of 2009. Check their website for more information, nationalpeace.org. You can find their link and many more for today's speakers, Iraq moratorium, Jonah, military family, speak out, etc. On my site, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. When you visit or listen to our programs, please drop us a comment. Let me send you off with some music by someone who bridges the West Middle East span for me, Yusuf Islam. Born in London, his stage name before his conversion to Islam in 1978 was Kath Stevens. He still touches my heart and my aspirations for peace, like with this song about what we all really want and need. "Green Fields Golden Sands" by Yusuf Islam. Green Fields and Golden Sands are all I need are all I want. Let the wind blow hard, I don't mind the small house and an olive tree To keep and feed my family. Let the wind blow hard, I don't mind the small house. One day we long realize I'm not the only one, just raise your eyes up and you'll be gone. To those green fields and golden sands, that's all I need, that's all I want, that's all I really need. Let the wind blow hard, I don't mind the small house. When day we long realize I'm not the only one, just raise your eyes up and you'll be gone. One day we long realize I'm not the only one, just raise your eyes up and you'll be gone. To those green fields and golden sands, that's all I need, that's all I want, that's all I need, that's all I really want. 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.