Happy Passover and Happy Easter!

Happy Passover! Happy Easter! Eid Mubarak wa Majeed!

Passover

This year, Passover started on March 25 and ends April 2. So, Happy Pesach! Chag Sameach! Eid Mubarak! Happy Holiday to all the folks who are celebrating! 

I remember my first seder, at Lauren Erdreich's parents' house in Edison, NJ, not far from where Lauren and I were in college. I remember being struck by the beauty and value of having an annual celebration focusing on liberation from oppression and enslavement, the moral consciousness this could awaken in a child, and the reminders it provided to adults. 

Over the years I continued to learn about Passover from such sources as T'ruah: the rabbinic call for human rights (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights - USA), Jewish Voice for Peace (l think it's worth noting this from them as well), and Tikkun.

Of course, who says holiday says food, yum! And though I was raised in Morocco, sadly, I have not been to a Mimouna celebration there. Inshallah, next year in Casablanca! I look forward to being able to exclaim, "T'frah, uw t'rbah!" (Be joyous & prosper!)

That first seder was not my last nor was it my only interfaith experience, sharing friends' religious festivals. I grew up in a multi-faith family, in Morocco, a Muslim-majority nation with hybrid heritage proud of its pluralism. Perhaps because of this, interfaith work gives me inspiration and a deep satisfaction.

You can imagine my pleasure, just as Passover is coming to a close, at finding this interfaith, comparative discussion of the Exodus story (how the Jews fled from ancient Egypt, led by Moses) as described in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions.

Easter

Passover is not over yet, but today is, of course, Western rite Christians’ Easter. Happy Easter to all those celebrating and observing!

This year, G*d willing, I will travel to Morocco to mark Eastern rite Christian Easter with my mom, who is Greek Orthodox. This year Eastern (or Orthodox) Easter falls on May 5. The Greeks and most Orthodox call Easter Pascha.

The Greek Orthodox Church in Casablanca my mom attends is a part of the Holy Archdiocese of Carthage, itself a part of the Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, which rules all of the Orthodox churches in Africa. The names alone, Carthage, Alexandria, sound ancient. They are of course, modern towns in Tunisia and Egypt respectively.

I can barely wrap my head around the ecumenical issues or the denominational differences in any religion, but here goes. The Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa is: 

the second in rank of the fourteen Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, which in their totality constitute the Orthodoxy, one of the three essential doctrines of Christianity, along with the Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Located in Alexandria of Egypt, its spiritual jurisdiction spreads throughout the African continent, which is accounted as a single geographical Church region.

I care about the Greek Orthodox church in Casablanca because of my mother's tie to it and my passion for diversity and inclusion and my dedication to interfaith work. I also care about it because it is part of the cultural patrimony of Casablanca. The church is a solid example of 1920's modernist architecture that can be found across Casablanca and Morocco, and is worth preserving and feeling proud about. Not too long ago it underwent restoration of its icons and internal décor and I found these photos on Facebook taken by someone who traveled there. [Note, the person who posted the album calls it a "Cathedral" but it has no bishop and is a small community church.]

Enjoy! And Happy Holidays!

Love, Light, & Peace,

Kamal

Also of interest:

Interfaith Easter at Sacramento Mosque

Bronx Mosque Opens Doors to Jewish Congregation

US Synagogue Welcomes Muslims Seeking a Place to Pray

United Nations Alliance of Civilizations: Many Cultures. One Humanity.

Morocco Celebrates Restoration of 17th Century Synagogue
Palestinian Christians Face Greater Restrictions this Easter
Egyptians Christians Head to Jerusalem for Easter

ENOUGH!

ENOUGH!

Enought what?

Enough with men talking about women and calling them prostitutes, attacking their honor and dignity, thinking that as men they have a right to regulate what women wear or how women should behave, and that they should comment on all of it whenever they want.

The article above on a Moroccan Facebook group posting pictures of women (and the commentaries that followed) triggered my memories of growing up in Casablanca, surrounded by men much too comfortable uttering such sexist and insensitive remarks.

The sense of entitlement many men have to comment on women's bodies and appearance astounds me. And I remember my sister's pain and that of other women I care about in response to this backbiting and constant, negative evaluation, not to mention the harassment.

To the brothers, fathers, sons out there: Live your own life. Live your own life as morally as you can. Be an example to others, if you think you can be. But enough with these attacks and insults, this policing of others' gender expression and sexuality. How is it your business? (How is it anyone's business, whatever their gender?)

Another article I read sums up my attitudes on this:

Alleviating human suffering and bringing hope to the lost is [everyone's responsibility]. Loving people — loving them with every ounce of strength you’ve got, alleviating their suffering rather than exacerbating it, treating them with empathy and dignity and sensitivity and charity — is your obligation as members of the human race, a vocation you have no right to reject. When you’re an asshole, the echoes of your assholishness — and the lives destroyed in its wake — may be farther-reaching than you could ever imagine.

Real men don’t feel the need to put others down to advance their own self-interest. 

Real men don’t hurt others, even in good fun. 

Real men don’t mistake caddishness for humor. 

Real men appreciate real beauty that proceeds from the heart, demanding nothing more and settling for nothing less.

Real men take seriously their call to protect, preserve, and defend women. 

Real men think before they speak.

It's time for more men to think before they speak, not to put others down to feel better about themselves, and not to hurt others (even in fun). It's time for all human beings to do this.

I promise to do this in my own life.

Will you make a promise too?


See Also:
Bell Bajao: End Domestic Violence Against Women
Stop Objectification: Turn Objectification into Empowerment
Ni putes ni soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive)
Global Rights: Maghreb Region

Rallying for Rights

I missed the May 31, 2011, rally to preserve New York City’s HIV-services budget. The Bloomberg Administration’s solution to the current fiscal crisis is to cut funding across the City’s budget (some suggest, fairly). Critics propose raising taxes on the banks that caused the financial crisis, asserting that:

“There’s plenty of money,” said Heather Stepanek, 29, from the Bronx. “It’s not a revenue crisis, it’s a priority crisis.”

Today, June 2, 2011, City Hall faces another rally. New Yorkers are determined not to let Cairo, Casablanca, or Tunis have all the glory! And New York City can show the world what it looks like when a government allows citizens freedom of assembly and opinion—even when those citizens criticize their government and leaders.

The right to education is a human right, a civil right. Literacy is fundamental to the right to education. Citizens cannot function fully within society without being literate. At the very least, they are at a significant and unfair disadvantage without literacy.

Literacy facilitates economic self-sufficiency. With literacy, people are dramatically better able to support themselves. Economic self-sufficiency is laudable all on its own. But it also brings greater empowerment: power to make decisions and choices for ourselves; power to access health care and advocate for our needs; power to leave abusive relationships and stand on our own; power to demand safer sex from a partner or spouse who pays the bills but we believe may cheat (this is a big issue in male-to-female transmission of HIV around the world). Literacy education enables positive change in a society, in people’s economic conditions, and in their quality of life.

The statistics on adult literacy in NYC are clear. The need is great:

38% of New Yorkers are foreign-born (2000 Census).

47% of New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home (2000 Census).

Barely one-third of public school students performed at grade level on the 2001 English Language Arts exams (NYC Department of Education). 

1.5 to 2 million adults in NYC need literacy services. Fewer than 60,000 receive them (NYC Mayor’s Office).

The fact that New York has a sizeable foreign-born population matters because many countries around the world fail to educate their citizens adequately. Morocco, for example, has a literacy rate of 52%. The literacy rate for Moroccan women is just under 40%, which definitely has implications for HIV-prevention, domestic violence prevention, and other issues.

The Bloomberg Administration has shown it cares about these issues. But it needs us, the citizens, to press it to do the right thing. This is what democracy looks like: we are all accountable, not just the politicians and the banks. We all need to do our part.

Will you join me at the rally?

How to React to Osama's Death?

How did you react when you heard  Osama bin Laden was dead?

My first—immediately suppressed—urge was to dance, “Ding, dong, Osama’s dead!” (I refer, of course, to the paean sung by liberated Munchkins, “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!” in the Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz, interpreted here by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald).  A more restrained and adult part of me held sway—an inner voice reminding me never to rejoice in the death or suffering of another, even a self-declared enemy—and I contemplated what the families and friends of those who perished on September 11, 2001 (some, people I knew) might be feeling, along with survivors of terrorism committed in the name of Al-Qa^cida around the world.

I don’t usually take my direction from the mouthpiece of the Vatican, but sometimes they say something I pretty much agree with—so when they do, why not repeat it?: “In front of the death of man, a Christian never rejoices but rather reflects on the grave responsibility of each one in front of God and men, and hopes and commits himself so that every moment not be an occasion for hatred to grow but for peace” (only difference for me, is I would add “and women” to that sentence and I think it’s true of most people, non-Christians too).  Thank you, Brandon Lacy Campos, for directing me to that quote and the one that follows: ‎"Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble" (Proverbs 24:17).  Surely there is wisdom in these words.

Some disclosure: I am a proud US citizen, and a proud Moroccan citizen.  I am Muslim.  Ethnically, I am Arab and Amazigh on my father’s side (though I know much more about the Arab ancestry as can trace my lineage to the founding Arab Muslim fathers of the modern Moroccan Kingdom, in the late 700’s C.E.), and Greek and Italian on my mother’s side (all of it from the island of Crete, with its ancient, pre-Hellenic, Minoan roots, and where I also trace ancestry to a Venetian family that first came to Crete in the 16^th Century C.E.).  I am gay and in a committed relationship with a man (we’ve been together 6 years).  I admit to having an Ivy League undergrad & law school education, preceded by a private American and International School education in Casablanca Morocco, where I was born and raised. 

Bottom line: Al-Qa^cida never was going to be my friend!  And I doubt I will ever be theirs either.

I lived and worked in NYC on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked.  I saw the first tower go down on a TV in our office conference room (I worked for Children’s Defense Fund-NY on immigrants’ access to health care).  I saw the second tower go down as I walked down Fifth Avenue from our offices at 45th & Lexington to a friend’s apartment in Chelsea, not having been able to get by the camouflage-wearing National Guard keeping all from entering Grand Central Station, and from subways or trains home.  I remember a pervasive sense of fear as people pushed at the yelling Guards trying to keep order (those guards still are there, though probably not as rattled today as they were then).

I drifted down into Chelsea, passing clumps of people marching up Fifth Avenue, some covered in powder I could not comprehend, obviously refugees from the WTC.  I heard for the first time (not the last) a woman say to her companions, “We need to round up all those Arabs and Muslims!  I’m telling you!  Put them in camps like the Japanese in WWII!”  I silently walked on, unaware I was attending the birth of an onslaught I have since termed, “The New Anti-Semitism” (sadly, the “old” anti-Semitism is alive and well, even in the USA).

Then I witnessed the second tower go down in a cloud of dust.  People around me screamed in shock; it took my mind a while to register what the billowing cloud signified.  I doubt any one of us truly fathoms what we witnessed that day.

I still live in New York, most of the year, though I write this from Casablanca, in Morocco, a city and country going through tremendous transition.  The Arab Spring blowing through the region is airing out this corner of the Arab World too.  It has moved the King to re-launch a process of reform.  Perhaps the King now agrees with his sometimes-estranged cousin, Moulay Hicham, that the interests of the monarchy are best served by reform. 

Morocco also has suffered from Islamist terrorism in the past, some inspired by the late, unlamented Osama.  While things here have been pretty safe, just last week a café in Marrakesh was bombed—an odious act as yet unclaimed by any hostile government, faction, or terrorist group.  The café faced a historic square , a World Heritage site. The response has been heartening—Moroccan citizens across the country have rallied to denounce terrorism, global support pours in through online sites, and the government has proclaimed that the need for security can coexist with the project of reforms.  This gives me hope Morocco can be a leader for the region as it meets this challenge.  It also can show the world another face to Islam.  If the change takes, it will be a beacon for human rights and dignity, answering the call that kindled the Arab Awakening.

Thankfully, President Obama proclaimed “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam… our war is not against Islam, because bin Ladin was not a Muslim leader, he was a mass murderer of Muslims.  Indeed, al-Qa^cida has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

As a Muslim, Osama never spoke for me, nor did he ever represent what I saw as the best in Islam.  I understand what he was angry about.  He hated any “foreign” interference in Muslim lands: he hated the Soviets for invading Afghanistan (1979) and was radicalized then; later, when the US planted garrisons in Saudi Arabia, near Islam’s heart and holiest sites leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, he decided the US was his enemy and began a 20-year campaign against us (we fought back, obviously, and it is not over, though Osama may be gone).

Osama and Al-Qa^cida represent a fringe group within Islam that is self-righteously puritanical.  I believe they commit the ultimate sin in Islam, shirk: they arrogantly aggregate themselves with the Divine, asserting they know what the Divine's will is and denying the rest of us the right to think for ourselves or to approach the Eternal in our own way, on our own path.  

I am not the only American Arab or Muslim who rejects Osama and his ideology.  Many Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans have rejoiced, “Obama got Osama!”  I am glad to report most Arab and Muslim reaction around the world was the same, denouncing terror, rejecting Osama.  All but HAMAS, whose Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the killing and described bin Laden as a holy warrior.

At the same time as I completely reject the totalitarian ideologues within the Islamic Right, the surge in anti-Arab attitudes and Islamophobia in the US and the West following the attacks of 9/11 worries me today just as it made me feel unsafe on the streets of NYC, my home right back in 2001.  I remember being called by friends to join them at Union Square for candlelight vigils, and fearing leaving the apartment.  I feared another possible attack from the skies (or who knows where), but also was not sure my fellow citizens on the ground would not assault me (there were regular news reports of assaults).

Less than a week after the 9/11 attacks, back at CDF, I rode a packed elevator up to my office, overhearing yet another woman assert, "We need to round up all those Arabs!"  “Will they pass a law requiring me to wear clothing identifying myself as Muslim first?”  I thought to myself.  Thankfully, that has not happened, but the rise in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim attitudes continues.

I recently came across printed out copies of hate mail and death threats the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society received—from Americans using anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slurs (not hate mail from Osama and Al-Qa^cida, who I am sure had no love for us either)—that we distributed amongst ourselves.  I remember Ramzi telling us how he, gay and Christian, was visited at 3 a.m. by the FBI at his apartment, who interviewed him and said they were there to ensure his safety, yet all the while their questions were only whether he had any terrorist ties.  

While anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes continue to rise, the FBI has improved at partnering with and serving Arab and Muslim constituencies.  Many non-Arab and non-Muslim Americans stood up for us and alongside us (and all those mistaken as Arabs and Muslims).  Among them were prominent Jewish Americans and organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League, which joined in an interfaith group formed to protect mosques from attack.  In New York, Mayor Bloomberg and many 9/11 families spoke up against the hysteria regarding the World Trade Center (Adjacent) mosque.  I hope my fellow Arabs and Muslims with any of the “old” Anti-Semitism pay attention to this and excise that hatred.  Aware of their history "littered with injustice and tragedy,” our Semitic cousins came to our aid.  I, for one, am thankful for it.

Just like I cannot expect Islamic extremists out there to disappear with Osama’s splunk in the ocean, there will still be nut jobs committed to seeing Muslims as a threat.  Even Western Muslims’ seeking to integrate into our host societies—while retaining a commitment to our faith, as each of us, individually, may interpret it—may be seen as harboring a fantastic hidden agenda of Islamic Supremacy.  These lunatics fantasize about a potential Islamic Caliphate as much as Osama bin Laden!

I understand fear and pain due to loss of loved ones or a sense of insecurity resulting from the attacks; this incites anger.  I don’t understand that the fear and doubt would apply indiscriminately to all Muslims.  No matter how many times Muslims or Muslim groups act or say otherwise, some people remain convinced we are all dissimulating sleeper cell agents for Islamic militant groups like HAMAS.  Their Muslim Panics, alongside immigration panics and other obsessions make me wonder if the version of the US they will end up creating if they successfully infect America with their hate is not perhaps aptly portrayed in the innovative and dystopic facebook game, America2049, created by Breakthrough.

So, back to my conflicted initial urge and subsequent self-control: I am glad I did not cheer and dance.  I do not find it seemly or appropriate, and I am concerned about fall out images of Americans cheering in the streets will generate.  I understand why people joined the jubilation and celebration, but I also know how distressing I find cheering crowds burning American flags.  So, a self-declared enemy was laid low.  Maybe, as a Muslim relative here in Morocco said, “He was responsible for terrible crimes.  He got what he deserved.”  I don’t know.

I wish he had been tried in a court, all the while treated for his diabetes.  I think the compassion would have been a triumph over his hate.  I believe Martin Luther King, Jr., violence begets violence, “Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.  In fact, violence merely increases hate…  Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

What’s more, I know there is always another side.  Growing up a bridge between cultures, I learned this: every story can be viewed from an alternate perspective.

Casablanca, Morocco

May 2^nd, 2011