Sherry Chandler

Here’s a campaign video for you. The Arab Conscience, part II:

Watch at YouTube

From Juan Cole:

“The Arab Conscience” is produced by Ahmad Al Aaryan, written by Karim Maatouk, Sayed Shawki, Ahmad Al Aaryan and Siham Shaashaa, composed by Tarek Abou Jawdeh and Khaled Bakry, and arranged by Adel Hakki. It has been performed at the Cairo Opera House.

Although the opera works within the framework of Arab nationalism, it has a strong anti-war theme and it is not sectarian. One singer has the refrain, “The origin of the human race is the human being; all the prophets are brothers/ Moses, Jesus, Muhammad reject aggression.” This verse explicitly states the brotherhood of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and daringly shows the Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount as a site of Muslim-Jewish conflict while doing so, seeming to say that holy places should not be a basis for violence. The lyrics say God is love, God is peace. At one point the “love of the Gospels, the wisdom of the Qur’an” is celebrated, and Christians, Sunnis and Shiites are all called to peace.

For Americans, the most touching part would probably be the Egyptian songstress Amal Maher’s libretto sung over a powerful visual condemnation of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I think she knew she would be singing over those unspeakable images. She turns away in horror as her stanza ends.

The images of US actions in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, etc., interspersed with a denunciation of the assassination of Lebanese leader Rafiq al-Hariri and of Israeli occupation forces’ brutality to Palestinians, give a sense of how the Iraq War is viewed in the region, as yet another attack on the Arab nation. But there is also a critique of the internal divisions and use of aggressive violence by that nation. (It does not condemn what it sees as resistance to occupation; but I think the underlying message is that violence just begets more violence.)

…Note that a lot of the performers here are Lebanese Christians; others are wealthy members of the new upper middle classes in the region, who speak English and sometimes have signed with American labels. They are condemning violence and war and intolerance.

Also from Juan Cole:

You contrast the concerns of the Iraqi Christians, with just staying alive this Easter or finding enough food to eat or avoiding being kidnapped, with those of Americans in southern California. Many are struggling to avoid losing their homes; for some it is too late, and they just have to be grateful for their new small apartments. Then this brought me up short:

‘ Former Marine Cpl. Gustavo Aguilar Jr., a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war who was profiled in the Daily News last week, also has something to be thankful for in tough times.

Aguilar had been laid off from a bakery-delivery job and feared losing his home. But after his story appeared in the Daily News, Aguilar immediately received several job offers.

He now likely will be able to avoid either foreclosure or having to sell his Sylmar town home.

“Despite all the hard times we’ve gone through, we never lost faith,” Aguilar said. “If it can carry us through, it can do the same for the country.” ‘

So if the Iraqis are being devastated by the war, and if the Americans who fought the war are losing their lives, or if alive are losing their jobs and barely avoiding being made homeless, who exactly is benefiting from the war?

Enough with the slaughter. Enough with the violence. Enough with the hatred in Iraq.

Sing it.

The rumbling, rattling, stuttering train of my thought has got sidetracked and left me stranded on the platform on this bleak Easter morning where the gray sky meets the gray horizon and the wind howls out of the west and batters the single ragged daffodil blooming in the scree by the side of the tracks. How’s that for flogging a metaphor? Actually the morning is still. We have achieved a second daffodil here on the farm but it finds itself born into an unwelcoming world, temperatures having plunged back into the twenties and snow in the forecast tonight and tomorrow.