ISSUE
: “WHY I want to be a lawyer?!?!”
RULE: The purpose of this blog is to encourage discussion. I am totally aware that my opinions usually vacillate between the cynical and the idealistic, and this is my attempt, before I take the bar, to “come clean.” Thus I subject myself to you for debate. Don’t hold back.

HOLDINGS:

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Winning story for People Building Peace 2.0





The 25 Winners

A Women's Grassroots Peace Movement in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Published: Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:27:00 +0000

Consult conventional history of the brutal communal conflict that lasted from 1998-2007 in Poso, on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, and prospects for a lasting peace in the region are pretty grim. It was part political battle, part religious crusade between Christians and Muslims, part scramble for natural resources, and part grab by investors for influence in the region, all steeped in an intricately tied community with a small enough population and a long enough history to make tensions run deep.
But Lian Gogali, a native of Poso, is determined to rework this record of history to reflect the real story of the survivors of the conflict – one that is vastly different from the one that outsiders looking to use Poso for their own purposes have shaped. Reporters, politicians, and religious leaders fanned the flames of religious reprisals by calling to arms Muslims and Christians to avenge the deaths of their loved ones and to train for combat to protect their homes and their villages. But Poso residents tell of courageous demonstrations of friendship – Muslim women sending their Christian friends headscarves to wear during village raids, women from both sides teaching each other their religious language to cover their identity during genocidal sweeps.
In addition to her personal ties to the region, Lian has dedicated a lifetime of research on how to end the conflict there. She lived in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp for over a year where she conducted research for her Master's thesis on women and children's perspective on conflict. One woman asked her "After you write your research, then what will you do for us?" Statements like these proved to her that it was with the women that she belonged. She learned that only when these women's stories were brought into the local and national dialogue on the conflict could it be permanently put to rest. She decided that working through large international development organizations or applying theories learned through her research were not anywhere near as effective as simply sitting with the women, listening to their stories, and creating an environment where they could generate their own ideas to restore their community. The key to a seemingly impossible peace in the region would be recreating the history to reflect the experience of those actually involved in the conflict –who, when removed from outside influence, just wanted peace on their land and for their children.
Therefore, Lian moved back home and opened her porch to the women of Poso, creating Institute Mosintuwu (Mosintuwu means togetherness), a place where post-conflict victims, former combatants and women of any religion can come together as friends, first and foremost. The result has been multifaceted –part healing and new reflections on the conflict, part social and civic training, and part peace building. So far, Institute Mosintuwu has trained over 100 women in eight different villages. Trainings range from interfaith peace education, domestic violence prevention and intervention, household economic analysis, women and politics, and public speaking. In one village where school children had recently been decapitated because of religious vengeance, field visits by Muslim women to a church and Christian women to a mosque helped demystify each other's faith. After the trip, one Christian woman said "I thought that Muslims were evil, but now I see that there is no difference between us." These simple, cost effective activities are key to ending the cycle of distrust and violence in Poso.
But the vision for Institute Mosintuwu doesn't stop there. Lian hopes that eventually the women of Poso will connect with other women around the world in conflict areas to brainstorm about ways to help their communities achieve lasting peace and elevate women's voices in the household and political arena. This is a slow, organic process. Every day women show up on Lian's front porch to find solutions to their problems, to participate in trainings, or just to talk. The peace process multiplies when women are taking what they learn at Institute Mosintuwu back to their families. These women's strength is a force to reckon with. They have already convinced Lian, who as a single mother is somewhat ostracized from her community, and who suffered for two years from a motorcycle injury that left her entire calf-bone exposed (and subsequently gave her tuberculosis) –to move back to Poso, raise her daughter, and work tirelessly on one leg and a pair of handmade crutches to get their community, and herself, back on two feet. With the guidance of Institute Mosintuwu and Lian, the women of Poso have chosen to set the course of peace, reconciliation, and gender rights themselves, for Indonesia, and hopefully, the whole world.
For all the stories: http://www.peaceportal.org/web/stories-contest

Friday, September 16, 2011

A good article....

A new rallying cry

Why the concept of justice - not freedom, not democracy - is becoming a potent tool for political reform in the Muslim world

Imran Khan, founder of the Pakistan Justice Party, speaks at an October anti-government rally in Pakistan.
Imran Khan, founder of the Pakistan Justice Party, speaks at an October anti-government rally in Pakistan. (Getty Images)
PAKISTANIS ARE USING the Urdu word zulm a lot these days. The twin suicide bombings last week in the port city of Karachi that left hundreds injured and dead were zulm. So is a deal between political rivals that left millions of dollars stolen from the state unaccounted for. The Pakistan Army's continuing military assault on the tribal areas is being termed zulm. The bombing of girls' schools by Taliban militants in the same tribal belt along the Afghan border, the US military's operation in Iraq - all zulm.
The word signifies severe cruelty or injustice. The Arabic root implies doing wrong, and is used in the Koran as the most basic reference to sin. Zalimeen are sinners who commit zulm. Allah does not guide them, it says in the holy book - their abode is a fiery hell. In Pakistan, a country caught in the middle of several wars, the words are read in the press and heard on TV and in tea-stalls on street sides every day. There is much zulm in the world today, and many zalimeen on all sides.
The antithesis of zulm is adl, the Koranic word for justice, and insaf, the Persian equivalent. The demand for adl-o-insaf, for justice, has emerged as a compelling rallying call in Pakistan. It has become a vital tenet of the nationalists and of Islamist party rhetoric, it is built into the spirit of the civil society movement for democracy led by lawyers and championed by Supreme Court judges, and it is the platform for the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, or Pakistan Justice Party, a political party led by Imran Khan, a onetime cricket star.
In many postcolonial Muslim states, a new call for justice is catalyzing a process of transformation. Political fronts with Islamist roots and leanings based on justice are making rapid inroads to power from Indonesia to Kosovo, from Morocco and Turkey to the Maldives. The concept of justice has sparked a new conversation between Islam and governance in these countries, creating a third way that recognizes the universal notions of freedom and equity yet casts them in an indigenous, sometimes explicitly Islamic light. It is a potent political formula that appeals to economically depressed classes by addressing issues of social injustice while also drawing in the growing middle classes, who are frustrated with rampant corruption in their countries.
The call for justice is striking a chord with broad swaths of the Pakistani public: with the religious who hear the divine in it, with the secular and urban educated who are frustrated by the blatant corruption in bureaucracy and government, and with the country's economically depressed majority.
"We are living in a society where the strong are crushing the weak, where an avarice elite has become a parasite on us all," said Khan, sitting in his sparsely furnished, bare-walled office at the party headquarters in Islamabad. "A system based on justice would liberate the people, give them true freedom, and unleash their real potential."
Western rhetoric - concepts such as freedom, democracy, and liberty - are being rejected in favor of the more incontrovertible "justice." The West's efforts are often dismissed as insincere, but it matters little, since concepts such as democracy and freedom are often partly lost in translation. In many cultures, freedom is incomplete without responsibilities. Some orthodox religious scholars might even argue that true freedom is found only in the complete submission to the will of Allah - a far cry from how the concept is appreciated in the West.
In Pakistan, the movement for justice has the potential to redefine the discourse of religion and politics. Come the elections in January, it could emerge as a powerful contender for power. In the second largest Muslim country in the world, which has been struggling to reconcile its secular foundation and Muslim identity since its creation, some are hoping that this new movement could cure a decades-old political schizophrenia that has brought chronic instability. And, of course, it could also pull Islamist politics, which has always tended toward extreme rhetoric and militancy, closer to the mainstream.
At a time when Pakistan has become a front-line state in the "war on terror," the United States is throwing its chips in with Pervez Musharraf. It hopes the "moderate," pro-American leader will be able to keep a lid on what seems like a country on the tipping point of change. But by supporting the general, American policy is suffocating a robust and eclectic opposition movement - Khan's movement, elements within the Islamist coalition, nationalists, a growing secular civil society movement led by lawyers in their black suit and ties - based on justice.
"Americans," Khan warned in a recent newspaper column, "are pushing people who are in favor of democracy at the moment towards extremism."
. . .
Justice has long been an important element of classical Islamic social and political thought. Two of the 99 qualities of Allah described in the Koran are al-Adl, "the just," and al-Muqsit, "the most equitable." Words with the root a-d-l are used dozens of times in the book, most often in reference to establishing social order. At one place the Koran instructs: "And let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety."
In Muslim countries the political emphasis on justice has traditionally been garbed in calls for social welfare and focused on social inequities. The pro-West Justice and Development Party of Turkey, which holds power in both the Legislature and the executive branch, is an offshoot of Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) established in 1983. In a country in which the separation of religion and politics was militantly guarded, the Welfare Party cloaked its Islamist ethos in the call for Adil Duzen, or "Just Order."
Similarly, the Justice and Development Party of Morocco is the only legal Islamist party in the country and forms the main political opposition, having secured 46 parliamentary seats compared with the winning party's 52 in this year's election. Its leader, Saad Eddin Al Othmani, fashions the party along the lines of the Christian Democrats in Europe and claims that "efforts, such as combating bribery and corruption, are based in sharia." The Islamist Prosperous Justice Party in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, is now a major political force, working off a strong anticorruption platform.
Imran Khan was a newcomer to politics when he founded the Pakistan Justice Party in 1996, but he was hardly an unknown. After studying politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford alongside political rival Benazir Bhutto, he embarked on an illustrious sports career. He was captain of the Pakistan cricket team that brought home the World Cup in 1992, becoming a minor deity in a country in which the sport might as well be a religion. His rugged good looks and larger-than-life persona made him a global heartthrob and to this day he is haunted in his political career by allusions to his "playboy" past. Many never really forgave him for marrying British heiress Jemima Goldsmith. (Khan and Goldsmith have two children, and were divorced in 2004.)
After retiring from cricket, Khan wrote a book on the tribal areas of Pakistan (he is of tribal Pashtun decent). When his mother succumbed to cancer, he raised funds to establish Pakistan's first and largest cancer hospital, which provides free cancer treatment to the poor. Only after carrying out the largest fund-raising campaign in the country's history did he decide to enter the political arena.
The Justice Party's manifesto includes detailed reform proposals for every institution of the state - an anomaly in a country in which slogans and cults of personality are usually enough to rise to power. But the cornerstone of the Justice Party is the establishment of an independent judiciary. This alone can begin to cure Pakistan in profound ways, the party states, by keeping its rulers in check.
. . .
Initially, Khan's call for establishing a free and independent judiciary found little popular support. But this year, things started to change when on March 9, Musharraf attempted to remove the chief justice of Pakistan to clear his path to a reelection. The activist judge had earned a reputation as being pro-poor and had aggressively prosecuted corruption, embarrassing Musharraf. But Musharraf's move backfired; public rallies attracted antigovernment crowds of the kind that hadn't been witnessed in the general's eight-year rule.
"After 9th of March people began to understand what it means to have an independent judicial system," Khan told a private television channel recently. "Eventually, if the civil society and the political forces stand behind an independent judiciary, you will have a revolution in Pakistan."
Khan is now contesting a political deal between Musharraf and Bhutto in the Supreme Court, which granted the ex-prime minister amnesty from charges of stealing millions of dollars from the state and allowed her to return from exile this month. The country, he says, is struggling to shake off a feudal system in which the government bureaucracy attracts only two kinds of people: those who want to get involved in crime and those who are already criminals and need protection.
The young Justice Party holds only one seat in the Legislature. But Khan has built alliances with the lawyers' street movements, some prominent Islamist leaders, and the nationalist Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which has twice swept elections in Pakistan. When the elections come in January, he has high hopes for his party - and, more importantly, for the idea of justice behind it.
"It's not something particular to Islam or even Pakistan," he says. "It's the basis of every civilized society."
Shahan Mufti is a freelance writer based in Islamabad.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Remembrance and Reconciliation






Here is my final essay for my school's memorial session today...and I won! (That means you should do what I say in my essay.)

I was eager to speak about today’s theme, “Remembrance and Reconciliation” because reconciliation is what brought me to DU, and that journey began on September 11, 2001. My cousins, Timmy and Johnny Grazioso, were killed in the World Trade Center.
Kathryn and Kristen, Johnny’s two daughters, are now teenagers, and they’re stunning. But no matter how many highlights they put in their hair, or how many scandalous comments they post on Facebook, I can’t erase the images of them, 7 and 4, crouched under the sink anxiously waiting for their dad to come home. My sister and I had lost our own father just a year earlier to cancer, and so we formed a bond with Kathryn and Kristen because we empathized with their grief. But I don’t think we can ever fully understand how it feels for the families of the victims of September 11th. They not only have to deal with grief, but the surrounding circumstances of this grief that ushered in a new era. They not only have to deal with death, but with murder, and a history of hatred that long preceded the attacks. I only had to deal with one type of reconciliation –reconciliation with death. But for those who lost someone on 9/11, or in the subsequent wars, there is also reconciliation with the perpetrators, and the surrounding circumstances.
As I studied the history leading up to September 11th, and I observed the direction we took afterwards, I could see the cycle of violence was a chain threaded throughout history. What most consumed me at the time was the loss of lives in Iraq –both Americans and Iraqis. I realized the cycle of violence would never be stopped unless there were no longer perpetrators and victims. We must work together to ensure that the situation that is causing us to take up these roles is annulled.
Theories of justice have gradually expanded from being largely focused on the offender –retributive justice –to restorative justice, which takes into consideration the victims, the offenders, and the surrounding community, and more recently to reconciliatory and transformative justice. Reconciliation means confrontation between the perpetrators and the victims. Reconciliation requires honest acknowledgment of the harms done by each party, sincere remorse, readiness to apologize, readiness to ‘let go’ of anger and bitterness, commitment not to repeat the injury and sincere effort to redress past grievances that caused the conflict.[1] Reconciliation extends as far as reconstruction of the community, in this case the global community, construction of non-exclusive ideologies, and promotion of intercultural understanding, respect and development[2]. Transformative justice works to reconstruct our societies to make sure that there are no beds to sow the seeds of violence in. It goes beyond the justice system, into the fibers of our society, where we all have a role in rooting out and correcting the things that are causing the injustices. We must all take responsibility for the state of things and devise an action plan to fix what’s broken. There are two underlying values involved in transitional justice: justice and reconciliation. Although they appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, the goal is an end to the cycles that perpetuate war, violence and human rights abuses.[3]
As lawyers, we have many roles. One path I am suggesting is that we use our skills to advocate for peace to lessen the likelihood that tragedies like September 11th happen here or anywhere else. Promoting rule of law, helping disadvantaged people advocate for themselves, providing alternatives to violence through public policy, and strengthening forums for the peaceable resolution of grievances are all options. They will all help transform our world into a place where violence is not a viable option for having your voice heard.
             All of us standing here today, but particularly those of us who lost someone on September 11, 2001 have been chosen as guardians of our generation and those to come. By light of our experience, by light of the grief that we have suffered for the past ten years, we have been given an insight that many others who are shaping policy for our nation and our world have not. These ten years have shown us that the process of grieving is similar to breaking a bone. The initial loss is sharp and all-consuming, and time –the only healer –takes away this sharpness, replacing it with a dull ache that, on rainy days, pains us down to the core. Loss is permanent and so is the pain that accompanies it.
We are the keepers of this tragic insight. We are protectors of others who have not experienced it. Nothing can change our pain or our loss. But we can harness our grief, and gain strength from it to make every effort to make it less likely that others shall have to suffer grief unnecessarily or for unjust reasons in the future. Transformative reconciliation is our obligation, if we don’t want to leave the mess we are in now for our loved ones in the future. We must change the environment of our world that allows many young Muslims, poor and with limited options for the future, to be vulnerable to religious fanatics that would turn them into terrorists. We must make sure the grounds are fertile to sew with seeds of peace –not seeds of violence.
Most of the time I fear engaging in conversation about these ideas with my family because the hurt still runs too deep to suggest the personal strength necessary for reconciliation. But the more time that passes, the more seeds are sewn for future acts of violence. In essence, I am asking my family and fellow Americans to make immense personal sacrifices not for ourselves as much as for future generations. But ––it is worth the cost. Nothing is more important than a human life –your own and the lives of those you love. This is our one universal human goal –everything else is inconsequential. So, on the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, I think it’s a good moment to step back and remember and reflect on that. I began by saying that my own personal journey has been a journey of reconciliation –it has been guided by the spirit of my two cousins. Their voices are gentle and remind me to never forget, but also, to never let this happen again.


[1] European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation; “The Meaning of Reconciliation”; http://www.gppac.net/documents/pbp/part1/2_reconc.htm
[2] “Transitional Justice and Reconciliation”; http://www.huntalternatives.org/download/49_transitional_justice.pdf
[3] ibid