In Reply to: Re: Feeling sad posted by MG on June 20, 2004 at 00:39:54:
Thanks for the correction. I can and do get sloppy with the details.
I visited Luxor, Egypt in 1998--just one year after this attrocity. Everywhere I visited in that country, people went out of their way to show me kindness and hospitality, to explain that murdering tourists was not part of their religion or traditions--that, in fact, it is an ancient mid-eastern tradition to treat traveling visitors as honored guests.
I rode public buses, trains, taxis, and a horse-cart throughout central Egypt to reach Assuit, a central town in the region where the 1997 terrorists had come from. I felt extremely safe and the people who helped me along the way with directions & interpretations expressed gratitude that I did not fear or blame them for what a few of their cousins & countrymen had done. Of course, it helped that I respected their culture by dressing in a modest fashion, which included covering my head. Although I am a radical feminist, I didn't find the Islamic way of dressing oppressive. The extreme climate & conditions of Egypt are such that I found it expedient to block out the sun, sand & dirt in this fashion.
At the University of Assuit (where I was an honored guest--the treatment I received was truly amazing), I met Egyptian social scientists who were studying the families and communities that have given rise to Islamic terrorists in that country. Many of the young men attracted to terrorism were raised in families where their mothers had died when they were quite young, their fathers had remarried and produced more children, and the young men ended up marginalized & disenfranchised from the patriarchal clan and immediate family fortune.
In several mid-eastern Islamic states, including Saudi Arabia, the population of young people under 18 years old makes up more than 50% of all the people in the country! This is a demographic time bomb of enormous significance.
The Egyptian social work response to this has been to put more resources into women's health and economic development programs. The Egyptian notion of how to stop the "root causes" of Islamic terrorism is to keep the mothers of at risk young men alive, healthy & prosperous. Although Moslem women may appear to be oppressed by western standards, within the home (which includes a private social domain of economic resource & producitivity) they actually wield significant power & influence. For one thing, Moslem women have a long history property rights & entitlements via Islamic law. Women in the US have obtained similar property rights only in the last 50 years.
There is a level at which I resonate with President Bush's rhetoric about bringing democracy to the middle east. At the same time, I have enough training and education in international social development (i.e., "nation building") to know that our current policies in Iraq will probably not lead to the outcomes we are seeking. The folks who know how to nation build and manage social development initiatives are employed by the U.N. It was another very sad day for peace & justice when Iraqi terrorists killed the first U.N. envoy, Sergio Viera de Mello, back in March.
I do not feel a lot of optimism about conditions in the middle east. I think it will take a miracle--the Second Coming--if we are to see significant improvement in that part of the world during our lifetime. However, if you believe biblical prophesy in a literal way, the situation is supposed to get a lot worse before it gets any better. Since I do not live in that part of the world and do not suffer consequences of the violence & social injustice on a daily basis, it makes me sad to think about conditions getting worse before they get better.
It also makes my heart ache to know there are hundreds of thousands of young people in the middle east who have no hope whatsoever for a better future. It is exactly that despair, I believe, that gives rise to the spiritual and psychological alienation at the heart of someone who can murder innocent human beings in the name of a higher purpose and religious ideals.