Saturday, April 25, 2009

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

Millions of students in Afghanistan are still waiting for their new textbooks, promised and paid by US and foreign donors, the Associated Press recently announced. The news reminded me of the pioneer who introduced this human aid to impoverished Muslim areas: Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time.

Three Cups of Tea inspires the kind face of human nature. It highlights the principle of paying it forward. Here, Greg Mortenson, an aspiring mountaineer trying to ascend K2, stumbled across the Islamic culture in one of the remotest areas on earth: Pakistan’s Karakoram Himalaya. The modest villagers who found him hanging to life while lost in the remote area nursed him till he regained strength and health. This kind act brought the villagers what they have dreamt of all of their lives: a school that Mortenson promised to build. Thus, Mortenson declared war on illiteracy with the most effective weapons: knowledge from books taught at schools. His good deed became a national project throughout Pakistan’s impoverished land. Across a Muslim community, he became a popular Christian who won people’s hearts and challenged the status quo with books and not with bombs.

For several years thereafter, he lived in Muslim lands and interacted with Muslims as one of them. Describing the first time he joined communal prayers with other Muslims, he wrote: “kneeling among one hundred strangers, watching them wash away not only impurities, but also, the aches and cares of their daily lives, he glimpsed the pleasure to be found in submission to a ritualized fellowship of prayer.” Mortenson’s memoir unveils many myths lumping Muslims. My favorite is his honest account of an incidence that brings out the many virtues in Islam, one like justice. In 2003, a Shariah court ruled in his favor against a Muslim Mullah. That Mullah, according to Mortenson’s book, was a corrupt individual who opposed Mortenson’s activities of building schools for Muslim girls. The Mullah demanded that Mortenson be banned from carrying out his projects, claiming that his activities were anti-Muslim. Yet, the Muslim court stood up for the American stranger after evaluating the case.

“Three Cups of Tea” is a folklore custom with a deep analogy according to Mortenson. Pakistani locals offer the first cup of tea to a stranger out of hospitality, and they offer the second one to a guest, but by the third cup of tea, the stranger becomes one of the family. A pretty neat custom, chivalry-like, that many more sophisticated and civilized people across the globe don’t have it.

If you read Three Cups of Tea, what did you like about it the most?

Friday, April 10, 2009

How to build a bridge: Obama's mission

Picking up from where I concluded my last post, President Obama's quote about dusting ourselves off is inspiring. As a lover of history, I understand that in order to comprehend our own present and plan our future, we need to have a total understanding of history. History repeats itself. The bridge of communication that President Obama is promoting is adherent to the dreams and hopes of Muslims across the globe, including yours truly.

When President Barack Obama landed in Ankara, Turkey on April 6, 2009, he came with a mission and a statement: "the importance of Turkey, not only to the United States, but to the world." Why Turkey? Because of its strategic position as a crossroad between East and West lying across two continents: Asia and Europe, its rich heritage, its blended ancient tradition with modernity, its membership in NATO, and its Muslim majority.

Turkey's rich heritage goes back many centuries when it rose in 1299 as the Ottoman empire that assumed the leadership of the Islamic world until World War I. It was able to rule over three continents during much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: its' territory expanded to Southeastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and North Africa. Ottoman leadership was called in the Arabic curricula that I studied back home,the "High Door," reflecting an authoritarian environment. As the empire started to weaken, it started to lose territories. On the eve of its downfall in 1923the empire became "Europe's Sick Man."

Modern Turkey rose when Kemal Ataturk established the republic of Turkey in 1923, but it wasn't until after World War II that Turkey enjoyed a multiparty democratic government. In 1952 Turkey joined NATO, and in the 1980's it applied for acceptance in the European Union, an ongoing debate. In 2005, Turkey and Spain initiated the "alliance of civilizations," a forum that looks into the roots of polarization between societies and cultures. American members of this alliance include Professor John Esposito and Rabbi Arthur Schneier.

Hence, when Saudi King Abdullah initiated an interfaith conference last year, he chose Spain for its historical significance as a lighthouse of Islamic history and religious toleration. Arabs have traditionally been famous for the wealth of literature they produced. Many of their poems and prose lament over the ruins of past civilizations and dear losses. I feel this weeping crave coming to me as I think back of the past of our Muslim civilization; its rise and fall. It seems to me that both King Abdullah and President Obama are aware of the significance of the two cities they had chosen and who knows, maybe a beacon of hope is glittering somewhere in the hazy horizon of our present.

So President Obama sees an ally in Turkey and has great hopes to turn it into a great opportunity to mend differences with the Muslim world and bring back America its popularity in the Muslim streets. But you may ask: what? America was ever popular in Muslim lands? Yes. Muslims and Arabs look up to what America stands for. They love the freedom, rights, civility, and order that makes up America. But they dislike wars and bombs dropped by American F-16s on the heads of innocent Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even though Muslims are no longer united under the leadership of the Ottoman empire, they still hold brotherly bonds amongst them. They sort of have their own "NATO" rules: an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. That is why they dislike American politics, but not the American people by any means.

Back to my passion for history, I am glad to see world leaders like the Saudi king and our president going back to history and aspiring for some insights. I need to polish my memory in this regard, but for now, President Obama is confident about his visit to Turkey. He hopes it will shape the strategies to "bridge the divide between the Muslim world" and the West. To this I say Amen..