Tonight was the final Arab-American Dialogue at the German-American Institute for 2006. The evening had two topics and I must say it was the best Dialogue I have experienced of the five or six I have attended. Initially there were only 12 or 14 people there, by the end of the first hour, however, there were 21 people in the room, including three Americans, Arabs from Iraq (2 or 3), Lebanon (1), Jordan (1) and Syria (2).

The first topic was the Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice. Much like our discussion of Thanksgiving last month, two of the Arabs explained the holiday to the group. It is an annual festival celebrated at the end of the Hajj in which people speak a ritual prayer, visit and eat with family and friends, and give to the poor. The theological center of the festival is the story of Abraham and Ismael. According to the Koran, Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his son Ismael (the first born, unlike the Biblical account where his son Isaac is to be killed) and then holds him back from doing it. Muslims reflect on the two values they see reflected in the story: the abolute subserviance to God reflected in Abraham, and the mercy and charity of God for not making him actually carry out the sacrifice.

While the discussion threatened to dissolve into pure theology at a few points, this was a strong part of the evening. People talked quite openly. There was some discomfort among the Germans and Americans with glorifying total obedience - no longer a value held very dear in the west, regardless of how merciful the one giving the orders proves to be. It was also a westerner, however, an Australian, that pointed out that this story was perhaps a turning point in the history of mankind, away from human sacrifice. There was the tension in the whole discussion inherent in any discussion of religion. The discussion lead to comparisons between Jesus and Muhammed, which of them might be considered pacifist and to what extent, and how that all played out in history. There was mention by several of the Arabs and others of the common roots of the three "Abrahamic" monotheist religions.

For me, this part of the evening showed how good this dialogue project can get when there is a rock-solid Gegenstand ("thing") to discuss. We all, atheist, Muslim or Christian, know the story of Abraham and his son. The variations only make it more interesting. It cuts right to the heart of our values and gives us something to measure them by. The fact that it is at the center of a major holiday for one of the cultures in the dialogue made it even more powerful.

The rest of the evening threatened to get abstract with the topic, "How does war effect a society?" It was introduced by a chain of observations by Penny P.: There is the discussion going on in American churches about how religion should be more about life and less about death, there was just this past weekend the Pazifismus-Tage here in Tübingen (read about it at the ProgBlog) in which a major theme was how pacifism might become more energized and associated with action and not with cowardice, there is a quote from Erich Fromm about the need to glorify life over death, and there was a letter to the editor by Bruce Allen, one of the participants in the Dialogue, about the war in Lebanon and the lesson it might have taught the Israelis. Penny tied that all together to introduce a discussion on war and society. Since this is my field (I teach a a class on it and am writing my dissertation on it (see my homepage) I had to hold back and not talk too much.

Although Penny soon intervened, stating that nobody was talking about death, suffering, loss, force, etc., much of the conversation from the start seemed to be about politics from the "top" down. An example of this was a sidetrack on Wilsonian politics and American historical ambitions to spread democracy by force and how it can lead to catastrophe. There were remarks about the positive effect wars have in teaching lessons to those who take part (what the U.S. will presumably learn from its misadventure in Iraq, for example, or what Germany learned in 1945). I remarked that many wars are evaluated positively after the fact by majorities in at least some of the countries which took part in them - America's recollection of the "Good War" and the "Greatest Generation" came to mind.

Near the end, Wulf, an older German, remarked that society changes in war because our energies become directed at an enemy. He commented that we must learn to face up to our differences at a personal level, learn to not always insist on being right, and practice that at the societal level as well. At the close of the evening, one of the Arabs present remarked on the recent Lebanon war that he wished that the hypocritical democracies ("verlogene Demokratien") in the west had used military force to stop Israel, the survival of which they rate higher than any concern for the human rights of Arabs. Penny closed the evening stating that her attitude on war is that it is "obscene" and never really an option.

For me, the highlight of the evening was when the war and society discussion turned to Iraqi society in the current war. The partipants from Iraq spoke about how optimistic Iraqis had been after the invasion, how the Sunni-Shia divide, the ethnic cleansings, and the religious violence are products of small interest groups hated by the vast majority of Iraqis. They gave vivid examples of how most Iraqis get along fine with members of other religious groups; in the past, religious differences had played no role in daily interpersonal relationships.
The portrayal of how neighborhood-level ethnic cleansings work was especially enlightening. Apparently, people living in neighborhoods where their religion (Sunni or Shia) is not dominant, might get killed, might get threatening letters, might get threatening visits in the middle of the night giving them some time limit to get out of town, or might get visited by a real-estate agent offering them housing in a more appropriate neighborhood in exchange for their current abode - forcibly arguing to take the offer while they still have the chance.

When I mentioned a survey I had heard about according to which most Iraqis think the war has been worth it, they countered that nobody they know thinks so. At the dialogue, I didn't have the data handy. Here it is:

The data from this survey taken in September reveals this (emphasis added):

A majority of Iraqis (61%) still believe that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth the hardships, but this is down from the 77 percent who said this in January. Among Shias, the majority saying getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth it has slipped from 98 percent to 75 percent, while among the Kurds it has dropped from 91 percent to 81 percent. The number of Sunnis saying it was not worth it has drifted upward from 83 percent to 89 percent, with only 11 percent saying that it was worth it.

So as of September of this year, long after the bad news had begun to get worse, most
Iraqis seem to think that it was worth it, despite the estimated 600+ thousand violent deaths. That is something to contemplate. Also noteworthy is the stark difference between Sunnis and the rest of the country.

This survey comparing American with Iraqi attitudes about the war
in March of this year is also revealing (emphasis added):

Americans also have a more negative outlook overall on the current situation in Iraq than most Iraqis themselves. Americans largely perceive the situation in Iraq is getting worse— a majority of Americans (64%) have this view, while only 1 in 3 Americans believes that the situation in Iraq is getting better.
This contrasts sharply with Iraqi perceptions of how things are going in Iraq. When asked in January, 64 percent of Iraqis felt that Iraq was headed in the right direction, with only 36 percent saying Iraq was headed in the wrong direction, interestingly the reverse percentages of Americans’ views. However, it should be
noted that dramatic distinctions occurred between ethnic groups, with Shia and Kurds largely positive (84% and 76% right direction) and Sunnis overwhelming negative about the direction Iraq was headed (93% wrong direction).

There are several surveys of opinion in the Middle East at worldpublicopion.org. Some shed light on the distinct differences between Iraqi groups. Some of the data would make for interesting discussion at the Arab-American Dialogue. I would recommed browsing through them.