WIN-WIN: Building Not Blowing up

This weekend will be the second anniversary of the 7/7 bombing of the London Underground trains. Most Americans will enjoy a long Independence Day weekend with their families, along with barbeque, and white bread smeared with lots of mayonnaise. Muslim Americans may add curry or collard greens and perhaps a few prayers. But people are people.



Scores of Iraqis die almost every day but we do not mark these occasions. Perhaps we should. People are people—right? A General Strike would be a very appropriate response to our nation’s policies—instead of another holiday. But pass the curried chickpeas.



Few of us are in danger from others. Some of us may believe we are. And as we discuss the present dangers perhaps some may pause to remember the American troops— at least if we live in those states that allow the flags to fly at half-mast. But let us remember more than our boys in harm’s way. Let us remember what put them there and what is keeping them there. There is surely enough blame to keep us busy smearing it around, enough to fertilize a football field.



Anyway, on 7/7 I will moderate a panel on civil liberties at the ICNA-MAS Annual Convention in Hartford Connecticut. Along with noted community leaders, we will include Heidi Bogosian, the Executive Director of National Lawyers Guild as well as Br. Khurrum Wahid, defense attorney for many sensitive national security cases. These are some of the most committed human rights defenders in the nation.



Given the anniversary, I have also been trying to assist another organizer in reaching out to law enforcement representatives for another panel. Why is it important? Often we reject the complaints about Muslim leadership that allege they did not voice their opposition to terror. “You are not listening to us Muslims,” we say. But it is true that our leadership is often ineffective.



How can Believers of this faith spend so much time struggling for dominance, opportunity, power; the glories of the garbage heap? Do people really get the leadership they deserve? And if so, how do we change that paradigm?



How do we find that Muslim doctors are –apparently—linked to the latest terror attempts on British airports and nightlife? Five of the seven people arrested so far in Britain appear to have such links. One can only hope that these doctors were more competent with patients than with gas cylinders.



Three other people were arrested Monday, including a hospital worker in Australia and two others at a residential facility attached to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Strathclyde, Scotland. Beware the Stethoscopes of Strathclyde!



We cannot pretend there is not a problem of radicalization. There needs to be a massive religious re-education plan in our community instead of ad hoc measures, face-saving gestures and denial. For example: recent reports of a plot to blow up JFK airport have frightened our friends and neighbors. Has the Muslim leadership reached out to them in any meaningful way? No!



But this also requires community support and a measure of commitment from you and me. As Jason Burke has written in the Guardian (July 3): “Al-Qaida has traded competence and discipline for resilience and dispersion. Both are effective in their way.”



Who are the agents of dispersion? Surely like gang members, many suicide bombers go through brainwashing, influenced by strong-willed role models. This is exactly the wrong sort of leadership—thug style. Though I do not believe in all the “cells” described by our prosecutors, this radical trend is happening among students apparently and among other small groups of friends. A recent film named Alpha Dog shows the journey decent young men may take to become killers. It is a strong film—not for those with sensitive ears—but honest and frightening in its depiction of slow corruption—based on a true story. Is this a lost generation-- that sees no alternative to materialism than nihilism?



Interestingly, Prime Minister Tony Blair stepped down just before the recent bombing plot took place-- only to be named a sort of ambassador to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But despite his support for the Iraq war, not all of his ideas about conflict resolution are wrong, however. It is nice to hear him assert, “"The idea that if one side wins something in Northern Ireland, the other loses, that's gone. The essence of what we have agreed is a choice: we are all winners or all losers. It is mutually assured benefit or mutually assured destruction."



Blair’s words refer to the concept of “Win-Win.” In 1981 writers William Ury and Roger Fisher introduced the concept of the "win-win solution." They argued that every problem holds a solution in which everyone can win. This is not compromise but a process of collaboration.



However, much of the world—including the so-called Muslim world—is committed to win-lose as well as military solutions. Recently Hamas rejected a proposal by the Palestinian president to send an international force to Gaza to enable early elections. In a statement also released Saturday, Hamas’s military wing warned that any international force would be “received with missiles and rockets.”



Israel still largely controls the traffic of people and goods in and out of Gaza strip. Some 6,000 Palestinians are stranded on the Egyptian side of the border without shelter in the sweltering heat. With all the suffering and degradation no wonder that "Farfour" the Mouse in a Hamas affiliated children's program was “killed” by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy land. "Farfour was martyred while defending his land," said Sara, the teen presenter; he was beaten "by the killers of children." This is how we poison the next generation with win/lose views and a victim mentality.



In The Way of Conflict, Deidre Combs writes, “Paradoxical as it might sound, the path to stability requires that we let go of how we think things should be, to move to an understanding of how things can be.” Sometimes winning includes losing and letting go.