In my experience, I have found the Muslims of Kashmir to be peaceful, peace-loving, tolerant and compassionate, open and welcoming to strangers. The Muslim leaders of the Kashmiris do not call for violence. They call for nonviolent protest. I am always surprised that after 20 years of repression and disappearances, rapes and violent deaths of unarmed protesters, the Kashmiris can remain open-hearted and welcoming to strangers. Kashmir is the most militarized place on earth, with no good reason for it.

I will be returning to Kashmir soon to continue my work for the disabled there. And to look for solutions to rickets. And to do what I can to help the Kashmiris in their work for peace and the removal of the Indian military.

Every problem would lend itself to solution if we determined to make the law of truth and nonviolence the law of life. Gandhi i

I was a Korean linguist in the Air Force, not an Arabic linguist, so I had to go to the web to look up the phrases you mentioned.

The first definition of Dar al-Islam that I found was “areas where Muslims are the majority” and the first definition of Dar al-Harb that I found was “areas where Muslims are in the minority and are persecuted.”

I learned as a linguist that translating certain words or phrases can be tricky if you don’t really understand people and their culture. During the last eight years, I’ve gotten to know many Muslims from different parts of the world. My most intense experience was in Afghanistan in June of 2002. As a Jew, I was nervous about being in a Muslim country, especially one that had suffered such trauma in the months leading up to my time there. The first time my new friend Iftekhar Hai introduced me to a group of Afghans by saying “Here is my friend Craig, he is Jewish” I was pretty nervous. The reaction then, and every single time I was introduced everywhere we went, the response from the Afghans to whom we were being introduced was the same. Hand touching heart and the words “a person of the book.”

Everywhere we went, we were welcomed with open arms. What little food people had, they shared. What little comfort they could offer in the rubble, they gave to us as their guests.

Once, an Afghan who happened to speak English really well, took me aside and asked if I would chat with him about Israel and the Palestinians. We had a very engaging talk – disagreeing somewhat, but it was a great conversation.

One day while we were leaving a village that had been particularly destroyed by U.S. bombs, our interpreter was sitting near me in the car and he was unusually quiet. I asked him what he was thinking about. He was furious over the destruction but not at me, or Americans, or Jews….. He had been living in Afghanistan when the Taliban came into power and he eventually escaped to Pakistan. In Pakistan he studied Arabic and English and for the first time in his life he was truly able to read and understand the Koran. What he’d been taught in Afghanistan, he told me, was a pack of lies. He and others like him had been misled, had been told that the Koran said things which it did not say, and it was the lies, the evil in some men’s hearts, that eventually led to so much destruction, death and despair. That’s why one of his most important goals was to make sure Afghan children, boys and girls, got a decent education… learned how to read several languages, so that no one could lie to them about what a particular word or phrase meant.

Yes, Jack, there are hateful people who will use religion, language, fear, and violence to get what they want. Yes, there are things said in the Koran, the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), the New Testament, and other sacred texts that can be interpreted to mean we should hurt and kill in the name of our creator. Onward Christian Soldiers…. marching off to war…. Manifest destiny….. white man’s burden…… Yes, there are those who believe that their religion is the one that should dominate the planet, and they will kill if that’s what it takes to spread their religion.

The real question isn’t what do certain words mean. The question, for me, is what do I believe the creator intended. The answer, for me, comes from the fact that virtually every known religion has within its sacred texts some very common themes and messages. The most common being what we call the “golden rule.” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As a linguist, the small nuance I add to that is that before you can do unto others you have to get to know them. What I want and what they want may not be exactly the same. What I’ve done with my life, especially in the last dozen or so years, is to go out and meet the people in places like Afghanistan and El Salvador, and learn about them, live with them, eat with them, pray with them, laugh with them, and cry with them. And I stick to my belief based on that real experience that 99.9% of people want to live in peace, paz, salaam, shalom.

Peace be with you brother Jack.
Saalam Aleikem
Ahn Yong Hee Kay Ship Shi O

I’ll stick by my assertion that 99.9% of people in this world want peace. But, when you live in fear and with oppression, and someone asks you what you’d be willing to do to those whom you perceive cause that fear and who oppress you…… Many will answer violently.

Let’s start with fear. Many Americans were afraid that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, fears egged on by a lying White House and its machine, and the trauma of September 11th which the neocons used to terrify us further. Given that fear, according to Wikipedia posts about polling prior to the war, 55% of Americans supported invading Iraq, which we knew by then would involve a “shock and awe” campaign of massive bombings. We knew that tens of thousands of Iraqis would be killed and perhaps 100,000 maimed. What does that say about us? We support killing massive numbers of people with bombs from the sky, many of whom are completely innocent, we support missiles being fired from unmanned drones, mortars, and other forms of ground assaults. Many Americans support torture and assassination.

We kill because we are afraid that if we don’t, others will hurt us. And others have hurt us – with September 11th being one of the most heinous of attacks on our soil.

Let’s look at oppression. Many people on this planet live under horrible oppression. There are walls/fences around them. They are deprived food, decent shelter, housing, meaningful work, safety, health care, and when they look at the future they see nothing changing for them or their children.

Oppressed people may support whatever tactics / weapons are available to them because they too are afraid and they do live every day under oppression. Just as President Bush and his minions scared Americans into supporting their mayhem against Iraq, there are other “leaders” across the world who use other people’s fear and oppression to convince them to support, and carry out, acts of mayhem against those who are labeled as their enemies. One of the most popular tricks is for the actual oppressor to blame someone else for the oppression, thus taking the heat off of themselves.

By the way, if you haven’t noticed it, in addition to the fear that folks like Vice President Cheney and his ilk used to ramp up the war machine, others like Rush Limbaugh like to convince folks that they are actually the ones being oppressed. Despite millions of listeners, Rush will often lament how terrible it is that the conservative message is being silenced by the “tyranny of the left.”

So, the machine that gets Americans fired up for war is no different than the machine that fires up other people to strap on suicide vests and blow up pizza places. Scare people enough, and if they aren’t really oppressed, convince them that they are oppressed, and they’ll support whatever violence you decide to dish out (especially when the violence is carried out by others and you actually have no skin in the game).

Still – with all that – if people actually had faith that MOST people really do want peace, most people really don’t want to hurt anyone else, that there is actually more than enough food, shelter, water, access to health care, and that a better world truly is possible (read Michael Lerner’s Global Marshall Plan), then we could all have peace.

We ALL have to stop believing those who tell us we have to kill or terrorize to overcome our fear and oppression. We have to work to stand up against oppression where we see it, but to do so through nonviolence.

Pretending that Muslims are not responsible for most of the riots and violence in the world is not a solution.

http://heartofskycafe.blogspot.com/2009/08/in-memory-of-celeste-sullivan-1955-2009.html

After that first book, in Mike’s back pocket or carrying satchel, there was always another in progress. Michael himself is a talented writer. But moreover he is an adept at living a good and decent, generous spirited, phenomenally hard-working and human harvest of peace – productive Life.

Salaamu aleikum–my beloved brother and friend